The LOST Writers' Island

From the first day we started watching Lost, all of us had our ideas and theories as to what the whispers were and what the smoke monster was and what the numbers meant, etc.  Well here it is 6 years later and alot of questions have still remained unanswered but, again, a whole lot got answered. 

I'm not going to rehash the whole series finale act by act.  What I'm going to concentrate on is the idea of enlightenment, the afterlife and idea of going into the light.  There will also be some biblical references as well which we will touch on as we go along.

It occurs to me that the basic premise of the "sideways world", or whatever they want to call it, is that one must complete the things that needed to be done in their lives in order to move on.  And the fact that our people were there waiting for Jack tells me that he was the last one to move on.  As we saw last night, everytime he came into contact with someone that caused him to have a memory of the island, he would pull back and resist it.  Why?  Perhaps he wasn't ready to remember yet?  Perhaps he wasn't able to accept his own death, which we gathered from his conversations with Christian.  Whatever the reason, Jack was not ready to finish his world and move on to the next.

So in order to do that he had to be confronted with who and what he really was and then understand that he was dead and then be the last piece of the puzzle so that the entire group could "go into the light."

Okay so now that we have general idea of what the "sideways world" was all about, let's see if we can figure out exactly how it all worked.  At the start of this season, we were shown what would have happened if the plane had never crashed, and we all thought, okay this is just an idea of what reality would have been like.  That wasn't completely the truth.  It wasn't until last that we got the absolute idea that this was some form of purgatory or a stop on the way to Heaven. 

So it seems that in order to leave the "sideways world" and go on to the afterlife, one must complete the tasks set before him.  This brings to mind Sawyer (actually everything brings to mind Sawyer, but that's a different story).  On the island, Sawyer had been a conman and killer, but in the "sideways world" he is a cop.  Now he still has some of the same issues because those were there from his childhood, but he is "atoning", for lack of a better term, for those sins by being in the "sideways world" and doing some good.  Now this does not hold for all the characters.  Kate for example, is still a fugitive and still trying to "protest her innocense." 

The real question is who is "enlightened" enough to know they're dead and ready to move on and who doesn't.  Eloise seems to know everything, but then again, we have always seen that Eloise seems to know everything.  As she said to Desmond, "you're not going to take my sone with you, are you?"  And Desmond said, "he wasn't ready."  This comment meant that Daniel wasn't ready to cross over yet because he hadn't gained his enlightenment.  He still had to finish the "work" he had to do before he could move on.

Now on to Shannon and Sayid.  In my opinion, Shannon was the love of Sayid's life and not Nadia, because in the "sideways world" it was Shannon who he had to protect and care for.  Nadia was married to his brother which meant she was taken care of and he didn't really have to care for her once he had eliminated the threat of Keamy.  But later on when Hurley and Boone put him together with Shannon, he realized that he needed to connect with her and when he did, their past came back to both of them and she immediately recognized him. 

Same with Sawyer and Juliet.  As soon as they touched each other, they both became "enlightened" and realized who and what they were.  It puts me in mind of the movies, The Sixth Sense and Ghost.  In The Sixth Sense, we see that Bruce Willis can't move on to the next life because he doesn't know he's dead.  And in Ghost, Patrick Swayze knows he's dead but he doesn't want to leave because he doesn't want Demi Moore's character to be left alone.

So that is a good portion of why the characters couldn't leave without Jack.  Jack was needed to be the last piece of the puzzle so that they could go on to the next world.

Okay so if they're going on to the next world, the next thing we need to touch on is the idea of the afterlife and going into the light.  The theory is that when you go into the light, the people who were most influential in your life are there to help you as you go.  They're called escorts.  These escorts help you cross over and help you get to where you need to be.  It is with this in mind that everyone congregated at the church.  They had to do that and they had to wait for Jack so that they could go on as group.

There has been a lot of discussion as to why they looked to way the do at the church and I think it has to be realized that the reason for that is that they looked that way when they remembered each other.  See it works like this.  As Christian said those people were connected at that time in their lives so they look the way they did because that is how they looked at the time they were connected.  Now the amount of years between their deaths were different, but when they finally were reconnected, they were seen by the person they were reconnected with in the same way as they did when they were connected to that person in life.

Jesus tells us in John 14:2&3, "In my Father's house there are many mansions.  If it were not so I would have told you.  I go to prepare a place for you, and when I have prepared the place, I will return and take you back with me."  This is the basic premise of why they entire group was at the church.  They must be there to go on together to the place that has been prepared for them.  And if you noticed, there was no sadness, no pain, no worry in any of their eyes.  They knew the joy that the peace that passes all understanding brings.

Now some people are asking why some moments were considered most important and some were not.  For example, why did Kate's enlightenment occur when she helped Claire birth Aaron and not when she touched Sawyer.  Well the answer to that would be that he was not the most significant moment in her life.  Helping to birth Claire's son, a child she would later be left to raise as her own, was much more significant than a relationship with a man.

Now another question has been raised as to why the other survivors weren't there.  The reason that this happened is because the core, original season 1 survivors, with the exception of Juliet, Des and Penny were all connected closely to each other.  Technically that included Desmond because he was in the hatch in Season 1, though we never actually saw him until Season 2.  Penny of course was part of Desmond, and Libby was connected so closely to Hurley.

So basically if we ask for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for all of them because they were all connected and they were all in need of something from each other.  They were all at their best when they were connected and the more they stayed connected to each other, the better their lives would be.

Wouldn't it be wonderul if we all had such connections in our own lives.  The show creators have always said this show was about the characters more than anything else and about love.

I think they proved it last night.