100%

If it was someone talking it would... really missing the ball on that one I think.

I think he should publish a book with this content. I would buy it and study it carefully.

Everything happens for a reason

@@freshwateraquatics5567reeeee is the time I fell asleep watching this episode, and the above is what I woke up to having typed. I see it as a most rare glimpse into the goings-on of the unconscious mind, and it would be greedy to not share it. Read it, people. Read it, and know that reeeee is the time.

Lol, yes I suppose he was! No one looks forward to a visit to the dentist.

Having to listen to him waffle on about "karma" and "the good guys" was torture enough.

We're not lost any more.

I tend to believe that Jack had actually re-started Sayid's heart during the CPR, but it was incredibly faint and took Sayid some time to become conscious again. We know the spring healed his gunshot wound otherwise he would still have been bleeding out. I don't think he was dead for as long as it seemed.

@@LOSTEXPLAINED108 is it possible that a candidate's touch can mean anything once Jacob is dead?

Really dude? They went from trying to give Sayid a second chance to redefine himself as more than a killer and the have him remain that for the rest of the show going as far to make him a mindless minion with that dumbass pool of water that once again broke another thing the writers promises they would never introduce: resurection. The problem is killing Ben as a child doesn't make sense as it won't save Nadia anyways and they just butcher his character though what should I expect since this rationalization is on par with an AI voice saying the man in black became evil because he childishly took his village being slaughtered to mean he could do anything. The obvious fact is that as confirmed in a season 1 leaked script is that the smoke monster started out as a military experiment gone wrong and thus why it behaved as a mindless monster. The Man in Black was never planned at all.

This was a bit all over the map as comments go. It’s easier to respond to comments that stay on one or two points but I will try to cover your complaints as best I can. 1. If you don’t like the AI voice then all of these videos have been remade with my own voice under the banner of The Theory of Everything. I haven’t used an AI voice for about almost two years now so it’s weird to come across someone still complaining about an issue that has long since been fixed. 2. Sayid’s arc was always about him dealing with his inner darkness. The culmination of that six season arc is a logical one. Since the Man in Black represents darkness then it makes sense that Sayid would be amenable to coercion. His character has lost everything by that point but the good in him still exists and he fights back against it to save his friends. I get people not being happy with final season Sayid but to me it was inevitable that his arc would come down to him choosing between light and dark. 3. The writers could not have promised that there would never be resurrection in the show because there is literally at least two resurrections in Season One lol! Remember that both Rose and Charlie die and Jack brings them back to life? Charlie is literally dead! How about Charlotte Malkin in Season Two? She is dead for almost a whole day and comes back to life on the autopsy table! With a message from Yemi no less! People were being resurrected from literally the first episode and first season of the show. 4. Killing Ben as a child does make sense. Because it’s about the butterfly effect. It would change the future significantly. If Ben is erased from Sayid’s life then he will never lead The Others, or turn the wheel. Which will effectively prevent Oceanic 815 from crashing since the time travel is the reason that the plane crashes in the first place. And even if we divorce all of that from the equation and go into Sayid’s emotional motivations, he is doing this because of his own guilt. It’s not necessarily about bringing Nadia back to life. It is about wiping his own slate clean. If he kills Ben as a boy then future Ben will never manipulate Sayid into killing all of those people. Sayid is trying to wash the blood from his hands. Not everything he did was about Nadia directly. 5. Send me the link to that “leaked episode script” that confirmed the smoke monster was supposed to be a military machine and I’ll give you a million dollars. You won’t find it because that script doesn’t exist. I suspect that you are referring to a vague memory you probably have about the pitch document that JJ and Damon made for ABC in 2004, which contains a mix of ideas for where the series could go, some of which were never used and others that were. The smoke monster evolved from those initial ideas as did other elements. Not everything was set in stone from the first episode and no one from the show has ever made the claim that they knew all the answers from the start, which is another myth about the show perpetuated by people who misremember creator quotes. The Man in Black was a concept they had in mind in some form as an arch antagonist (they wanted two characters to eventually embody Locke’s presentation of the light and dark pieces from the Pilot) but the details behind what that character would be exactly were nebulous at best. They found a lot of these concepts between Season One and Season Two and fleshed them out. I get that you have frustrations with the show, and while I might disagree with what those problems are, it’s important to accurately recall what was promised and intended versus what we wanted or would have preferred. A lot of these issues come down to a mix of personal preference and misconceptions/mis-remembrances of what was said by the showrunners. I’m making a video all about this very subject actually.

@@LOSTEXPLAINED108 2. This is completely sidestepping the point over how the show made it so Sayid remained a killer to the end and was never able to redefine that. His character is butchered in the last 2 seasons to where the only heroic moment we get with him is self sacrifice. 3. Dude you're being disingenuous and condescending to the max. CPR is resurection? Really? We're talking about a magical pool that removes plotholes with Ben remembering the cast as a kid, healing wounds, bringing back the dead, and robbing people of "innocence". This also breaks the promise of the creators that every answer would have a reasonable scientific explanation as made in many interviews in the early seasons. Also Charlotte appeared to come back to life off the island according to the wiki compared to Sayid who couldn't be revived by CPR and was really dead. Also no resurection was a promis repeatedly made in early interviews along with any use of purgatory at all, time travel, magic, etc. 4. The butterfly effect? Really? Why not just move a mug. Killing Ben would do nothing save preventing Sayid from being dragged back to the island a second time after Jacob killed Nadia. He was much better off spending his time doing something that would have worked better such as sabatoging certain dharma projects. And no the hatch caused the plane to crash, that's...very vital lore that is rememberable. 5. Dude you don't get to claim it doesn't exist and then mention it and try to weasle your way out of that through semantics. Can you not insult my memory over an online document that is viewable when you forgot the hatch was responsible for crashing the plane not the magic donkey wheel that was turned later? Also Really, dude the man in Black was crafted by season 4 at absolute earliest or the end of season 5 realistically. There's a reason why the smoke monster acts like a monster mindlessly killing people and acting as a security system. Because, its impossible to try and recon the idea that it could be a sentient being with a clear agenda to leave the island and steal Locke's body despite being forbiden from killing him for it to kill the pilot, attempt to kill Locke at one point, and never do anything strategic save ensuring the candidates found water. It is impossible to recon these ideas because even a child watiching the show with their mother at age 9 can understand the difference in portrayal and that the monster was never meant to be a man in black.

I’ve said that too!

You also use really great examples with very incisive character analysis.

@@LOSTEXPLAINED108 Thank you!

This particular series of videos is coming to an end soon, but the channel will not be closing for business. There is still more content to come :)

@@LOSTEXPLAINED108 thank you for these. They’ve really been insightful and added to the Lost mythos

@@LOSTEXPLAINED108 Thank the Source for that 😊!

At some point in the future I shall be making discussion videos on unresolved mysteries like Henry Gale, Ilana, Libby, etc. Plus, more on contentious mysteries such as Jughead's detonation, pregnancy problems, the DHARMA purge, etc.

Yes, it does take a large suspension of disbelief to buy Michael Emerson as a twentysomething man in his prime 😂 And also to believe that Ethan, by the time we meet him in 2004, is supposed to be 27 years old.

Well, Chapter 30 is shaping up to be a similar length. The big one is going to come after that when all the chapters are stitched together for a supercut! Five hours long!

I’d like to see that too. At times, I found Jack, with his stubbornness and self-righteousness, to be insufferable, even if I respected his leadership. But he evolved so much as a character that I grew to really care about him. He had a different kind of redemption, and so did his father.

@@ATMyles Jack is my favourite fictional character of all time. I've rewatched countless times and that has never changed. I think it would be so interesting to see an in depth character analysis of Jack. Others that would interest me would be Kate, Locke and Ben.

@@raeliamrussi2679 you might find this interesting: www.cbr.com/lost-michael-keaton-jack-shephard/

I would make the argument that Ben had made the complete swing towards redemption by the end of 'Dr. Linus' and his behaviour in the final run of episodes was a combination of survival mode and manipulation. He needed Fake Locke to believe that he was on his side in order to survive long enough and to wait for the right moment to convey the information to our Losties about the location of the boat -- information which leads them to the fight site on the cliff edge where Kate shoots Fake Locke. They wouldn't have made it in time if it were not for Ben. Further to this, Ben shoots Widmore in part to fulfil a vendetta, yes. But if we really observe the scene from the POV that Ben is a good guy now, he actually shoots Widmore before he can fully explain the significance of Desmond's purpose. Widmore is about to give the whole game away to the one person who should not be in on the ruse. Ben sees this and kills him, then covers up this shooting with a Man in Black-friendly bloodlust motivation. He proclaims: "Didn't you say there were some other people to kill?" We know Ben never had any intention on delivering on this by 'The End'. He was stringing the Man in Black along to buy time. I believe that Ben had genuinely made a full turnaround by 'Dr. Linus'.

@@LOSTEXPLAINED108 Very interesting take on that! I would never have considered that explanation. It makes perfect sense in terms of stopping Widmore from giving the whole plan away. (MiB did say that he had already told him what he needed to know, but maybe he didn't realize there was more?) I suppose the vendetta part of it just explains why he freely and immediately tells MiB where Widmore is hiding in the first place - in addition, perhaps, to just wanting to gain his trust. In addition, I had never stopped to wonder how Kate and the others even knew to go to that spot where the final battle took place. I mean, Kate knows how to track people, but they didn't even go with Jack, MiB, and Desmond to the Source cave - and presumably couldn't have found it without being with Jack as the new Protector. (Not to mention it might be a BIT tricky to track while the island is shaking and falling apart.) I just happen to be about 10 episodes from the end in my current watching of the show, so I'll definitely watch those last few with that POV in mind.

Let me know if you read those final episodes in the same way. It had honestly never occurred to me that Ben had reverted back to type at that point. I always saw him as stringing along the MiB until he saw a window of opportunity.

Thank you so much! 🙏

Well, the Man in Black had spent 2,000 years trying to find a loophole and a way of cheating the rules so he could escape. If he did have this power to turn people into followers through some kind of supernatural influence (whether they were alive or dead) then logic dictates he would have used it to build up his forces a lot sooner. In fact, MiB would have used every avenue and power available to him. What I find interesting is that although he is credited with bringing back Sayid from the dead and having this supernatural hold/influence over the man, he still has to sit down and talk Sayid into becoming his footsoldier, which means whatever power the MiB has over him is not psychic or supernatural mind control. He still needs to talk people into doing things by lying and making false promises. So, I don't believe he actually had this power to raise the dead and control them like zombies. It's one of the many belief myths shared in season six.

I explain the polar bears and their purpose in Chapter Fourteen on The DHARMA Initiative 🙂

I extensively discuss the time travel paradox on this channel and how it informs the entire story of LOST, so I agree with you to some extent. However, your suggestion that Ben recruits and keeps Juliet *because* of the time loop isn't accurate. Ben isn't aware that there is a time loop at that point. He doesn't even remember getting shot by Sayid. The temple springs reversed his injuries and, more crucially, his memories. It's possible that Ben has an uncanny, distant memory of a woman who looked like Juliet from his childhood days, but he wouldn't (and doesn't) connect the dots. Those experiences informed his psychology but he was never aware of the time travel.

@@LOSTEXPLAINED108 of ourse he was aware of the time travellers when he was with the others..if he was working with Eloise..he was aware..even Charles was aware..but Ben wasn't...Ben admits..he lies..that's what he does.. and the way he says to sun. I don't know where the time travellers disappeared to..now he was ignorant of the monster. His people don't even call it a monster..but Richard must remember the black smoke..unless he thought he was dehydrated and trippin..I mean he did see a boar. Could a beee. Trippin...but serious question...the man in blacks mum...she died on the island..can the source..heart.. light of the island bring dead people back to life ..and communicate with the living..I love talking about lost..it changed TV forever..well that and Stargate sg1

I disagree that Ben was aware of the time loop. His reaction to seeing that DHARMA recruit photograph is genuine. He had no idea that Jack, Sawyer, Kate, Hurley et al were in the Initiative with him as a boy. Remember when he sees John Locke appear at the beechcraft during the compass hand-off scene? He can barely wrap his head around the fact that time travel is happening before his very eyes. He's like: "Who is that man? What's going on? How did you know when to be here?" Then after time travelling Locke disappears he says: "Where did he go?" Ben was clueless as to the time loop and the time travel until he is back on the island in 2007. Also, Ben didn't start working with Eloise until *after* Locke was killed and there is no evidence to suggest that Eloise told Ben about the time loop mechanics. Because he didn't need to know. Charles Widmore was aware of the loop for the same reasons that Eloise was -- because of their encounter with Faraday, Jack and the journal in 1977. Also, Ben as a boy would have had very little contact with Sawyer (who was the head of security) and Juliet (who worked in the carpool as a mechanic), which gives the show a plausible deniability as to why he doesn't really remember them. As I said before, he might have had a subconscious sense of familiarity with Juliet and that is what draws him to her (although the fact that she looks like his mother too gives it a Freudian spin as well). As for Jacob and MiB's real mother -- Claudia -- I discuss her ghostly appearance in my latest video on the channel about "Ghosts and Apparitions on the Island". You'll find your answers there :) I do agree with you that it's still a lot of fun to talk about LOST and that it changed TV forever.

He would i guess but he couldn't easily get sccess to it 😊

This is a fairly common misconception that I have come across, but it is easily disproven. It is established that only someone entering the open aperture of The Source can be transformed into a smoke monster. After the ancient incident during the Egyptian era, and their installation of the cork, it made it so that this could never happen again because in order to get to the light you need to uncork The Source, but by doing that you also turn the light off. Creating smoke monsters is no longer possible. The Man in Black was the last of his kind. Furthermore, Jack is clearly alive after being transported out from The Source and dies of his wounds in the jungle, not in The Source. Let your friend know! :D

@@LOSTEXPLAINED108 thanks!

I agree that Mother was the catalyst for the conflict between the two boys and a lot of their wrongheaded beliefs, but I don't agree with this "Man in Black was not really bad or responsible because his Mother that made him that way." We don't use this logic in real life when talking about mass murderers, do we? Parental abuse is often a factor, of course, but just because someone had a traumatic or messed up childhood doesn't give them a clean slate for all the evil or immoral acts they commit later. Mother had been dead 2,000 years by the time the Man in Black was wilfully slaughtering people in the jungle in 2004. He wasn't pure evil as claimed, but he was the closest thing to evil on the show.

I discuss the lighthouse in detail in the chapter on The Candidates.

This is not the last video ;-) More still to come.

This is a very thoughtful comment! I shall try to be as equally thoughtful in how I respond to it. I will say that these are questions and conversations that the showrunners absolutely want us to be having, at least on some level. I will have to self-quote some of my own content here, as I do tap into this in my video on "Destiny", but it's all relevant to the questions at hand. I would argue that choice still exists within the universe of LOST in the same way it would exist for us in a deterministic reality. It is partly a matter of perception. Example: we know that the events of Season Five were all predetermined because of the time loop, but does that render the choices of our characters within that time loop inert? Do they have any choice at all? Are they just automatons? The answer is no, yes, and no. Fate does not preclude that our characters have no free will to make choices, it's just that the show's embodiment of fate -- aka The Island -- already knows what choices they will make since time has no meaning within the light. We know The Island guides people and events to create causal outcomes, and we know that the past cannot be changed so therefore the present and future are also set in stone from the POV of The Source because time does not exist within it. It might see and experience all time simultaneously in its fourth dimensional reality because it is *beyond time* as we understand it. But from a subjective human POV on the ground, with a linear perception of time and reality, our characters are absolutely making choices of their own volition, day in and day out. Every second of their lives. They don't know it's part of a larger tapestry or that A will lead to B. Therefore, they must reckon with those choices on a personal level. Michael still decided to pull the trigger and kill two women. That is something he has to reckon with on a psychological and spiritual level as a man. Sawyer still chose to become a better man and redeem himself from his past. But that doesn't mean he won't have to reckon with his own demons, such as shooting an innocent man in Australia. The best question to ask is: "Does it matter if our choices are predetermined if *we don't know* that they are already predetermined?" Does that take away our sense of free will? Does it take away our sense of responsibility over our own choices, actions and inactions? Let's say that we definitely live in a predetermined world where everything has already happened, only we don't know it. Does that take away our internal sense of agency over what we decide to do today? Do you feel like you didn't make the choice to watch and respond to these videos? Because if we do live in a deterministic universe (and we very well might) then everything you do and say is already set in stone. But you don't know that, so you continue to make your own choices and living your life. This is also true of our characters in LOST. Jacob understands that whatever choice a character makes in a situation will be the choice they were supposed to make at that time. Jacob doesn't always know what someone will choose to do only that it was what they were supposed to do in that moment. And this is what Jack has to reckon with in 'Lighthouse'. It's why he has to sit on a rock and look at the ocean for while. Because he is trying to reconcile the same issues that you are bringing up. He is probably thinking to himself: "Did I ever have a choice in anything I ever did? Did I ever have any control? Does any of it matter?" But we see that Jack does reconcile these truths with who he is and wants to be. He can still make choices of his own even knowing that destiny and predestination is real. Hence why he laughs to himself as he restarts The Source in the cave in 'The End'. He finally understands that he is part of something bigger and has fulfilled his purpose in life. The difference with LOST's view of determinism versus real-world determinism is that there is a clear prime mover responsible for this predestination rather than it being a random effect (and inescapable trapping) of the universe. There is a reason for why everything happens the way that it does in LOST, which is clearly demonstrated throughout the series, whereas we don't have that same reassurance in our real world lives. A prime mover is defined as either "an entity chiefly responsible for executing a plan" or "an initial source of motive power", at least according to Google. And this is what The Island, aka The Source is. The source of motive power and the architect of a grander plan. How much it influences even the tiniest human choice is impossible to say for sure, we just know that it always gets the outcomes it wants/needs. So, LOST characters can and do make their own choices even though those choices feed into a predetermined causality. It doesn't make the choices they make any less significant or any less meaningful to them and others just because a prime mover exists who knows what they are going to do next. Yes, The Island triggers certain events and makes certain things happen (e.g. moving our Losties very specifically through time) but it is not literally moving the characters like pieces on a chessboard at all times throughout their lives. They are not puppets. The Island guides them towards causality by incorporating their choices into the grander tapestry. That's why Jacob's tapestry is such a good metaphor. Lots of threads weaved together over time, crossing one another and creating a grander picture that we, as individual threads, cannot see. We see that some characters become aware that destiny is a real thing. Which is something we will, theoretically, never have happen to us in our real lives. But we do see man of science Jack Shepherd reconcile this mind-bending fact when he tells Desmond: "There are no shortcuts, no do-overs. What happened, happened. Trust me, I know. All of this matters." He does not jettison meaning and purpose in his actions simply because he has a destiny. Determinism is not a get out of jail free card for morality or personal responsibility. And that is one of the last lessons Jack learns in the show before his death. To me, this doesn't make for a cruel universe, at least not in LOST. It's the opposite. It means that everything that every character ever said or did had meaning. That all of their collective suffering, misery and pain is about something bigger than themselves. It's a somewhat spiritual way of viewing existence, because it means that everything they did matters and everything happened for a reason. This is what makes the show so fascinating to me. Because it reconciles notions of faith and science together. Good and evil are constructs to help human beings understand nature. Even if choice is simply a matter of perception, human consciousness gives those choices meaning; a sense of agency and ownership. But we are all part of the same chain. The same energy. The same consciousness. The same tapestry. We all matter. And everything that we do matters. I hope this helps to address some of your points there!

​@@LOSTEXPLAINED108 Thank you for the very thorough and generous reply! It's easy for me to just throw questions out there, but now I actually have to work to provide an intelligent response to you! lolz. I hear what you are saying regarding LOST not being a cruel universe. I'll wend around my way to that question eventually, but here are a few reactions to your beginning paragraphs: I think that you've phrased the 'free will' debate questions (in your second paragraph) very well, and I will agree with your answers of "no, yes, and no." So we're in agreement that the players in our drama do not know that their fates have already been set out for them (i.e., determinism) and, thus, they are not automatons. But does the ISLAND know the future? For that matter, is the Island conscious of its own actions in a way that we would recognize? When you state that "The Island guides people and events to create causal outcomes," you're at least opening up this possibility. And you reaffirm it with your discussion of the Island as a "prime mover." All of which was fascinating, and very well explained in your discussion above. The manner in which the Jack changes throughout the show (as you sum up in his quote to Desmond) is illustrative of these themes, and definitely makes for an entertaining set of stories! I'll come back to this discussion of the Island in a bit. In general, the debate on free will is found in that gap between our subjective experiences and the objective universe. Most people subjectively "feel" that they are in charge of the choices that they make. Many neurological experiments point to this perspective as an illusion. I'm comfortable with this possibility, although I think that anyone who speaks definitively on the topic is presupposing many things with which I'm not comfortable. Many people who talk about our "real-life universe" (i just had to add the quote marks! lolz) consider it to be deterministic and random, like an ocean tide breaking on the shore. There's nothing meaningful in it for these people. So, from that perspective, I can definitely see (and partly agree) that your interpretation of LOST - an interpretation with meaning and purpose - is not cruel. And, so far, I think your opinions are pretty much the best I've heard on this show. The part where I circle back around to talk about cruelty is when objective reality (in our world) is replaced by the ISLAND, a semi-conscious player that weaves a pattern throughout history. In this grand scheme, the ISLAND uses the bit players in the world (as presented on the show, but presumably there are millions of others used similarly) to accomplish its ends. Michael was required to return to the island, so that he could save the Oceanic Six by sacrificing himself on the freighter. Yes, he appeared to have a choice in all of this, but his fate was woven for him. Locke needed to die so Jack and Hurley and Kate could return to the island, Charlie needed to die to warn Desmond, both were sacrifices the island demanded. As you state in PART 28 - DESTINY (at the 10-minute mark), "Even the most minor character, or seemingly insignificant person, contributed to the cause and effect that is destiny." And then you list a few of these: "A businessman gets hit by a bus in a terrible accident. An unforeseen terminal illness strikes down a mother. A cold-blooded murder / suicide takes place at home." All so that the next chain of events, as woven by the ISLAND, can take place. If these bit players were given a true choice, it's likely they would request not to be used in such a tapestry, eh? You are seeing the more positive outcomes of how The Island manipulates our Losties (in that all of their 'collective suffering' held a laudable purpose, and gave meaning to their lives), while I can see the slightly more sinister outlook. In our universe, I would almost prefer a Prime Mover that isn't conscious or semi-conscious. Because if there is an agent sometimes directing us, it's easy to wonder, 'Is this the best he can do?' And, yet, I'm not here to denigrate the show, just to observe. And, unlike real life, there is tangible evidence in the show that there could be a purpose to all of this seeming cruelty that would JUSTIFY what the island is forced to do. And that purpose is the survival of this universe. We'll never know, ultimately, from where the light under the island originates, but it would be a fair assumption that the reality in the show of LOST is not a guaranteed thing. Perhaps the tapestry of cause and effect, and its many torturous undulations, is what the ISLAND has deemed to be the best way to keep the light from winking out forever. I'm not a fan of the concept of the 'ends justifying the means,' but if your two alternatives are to let everyone die or to use the lives of people in a sometimes cruel way... That would be a choice I'd still respect. So, perhaps there are a larger set of RULES by which the island is playing, hmm?

Another very thoughtful and well reasoned response! Just a couple of additional points to add to the discussion: In LOST, it's useful to view the The Island as being tantamount to a god-like entity. In the LOST universe, The Island *is* god, to a very large extent. That's how I view it, and how I believe the writers viewed it. I think The Island does know the future. How could it not? The light is eternal and time does not exist within it, therefore its view on time itself would be from a fourth dimensional perspective. We don't know if The Island is simply a slave to itself, forced to play out this bootstrap paradox because -- if it doesn't -- the world would perish and all souls everywhere would cease to exist. How sentient The Island truly is in all of this can be speculated upon. We know that it "needs" and has a certain power over people and events, but does it feel? Does it care? Is it inherently good? Or, like a bolt of lightning or a tornado, is it just part of nature? Or is it like an animal and is about its own survival? I feel like there is no wrong answer there. We also don't know what comes first: a person's choice or the causal outcomes of that choice. Is it the chicken or the egg? Do people make choices that create an unbreakable causality or are those choices simply the result of the unbreakable causality? It's hard to unpick that. One view is that LOST is trying to find a balance between the two ideas. Human beings have agency, but their actions have a butterfly effect on the world, and those effects lead to events that both risk then ensure the continuation of existence. And choice. I totally get what you're saying about the bit players suffering a seemingly unfair fate and being the pawns of a larger game since they appear to be mainly used to further the chain of causality and predestination. Such as Sawyer's parents. And, if season six had not shown us the sideways and the afterlife, then I would be inclined to agree that The Island is a cruel god in that way. However, the show definitively demonstrates that all souls continue on past their mortal lives. There is not only another plane of existence -- a continuum for consciousness -- for them to exist within, but opportunity for renewal and "rebirth" What that rebirth means -- i.e. where their souls ultimately end up -- is totally open to interpretation: reincarnation, heaven, becoming one with The Source, a permutation of all three of those things, etc. As for how much of this we can apply to the real world... we don't have nearly the same reassurances or evidence that a god or prime mover exists. Therefore, we can only operate on either faith that there is one somewhere with will and intention for us, or we can trust in science and learn the building blocks and make-up of existence. And without definitive proof then the jury is still out on god. LOST has the luxury of saying that science and faith can reconcile one another, because they have The Island to explain the mysteries of our existence. We have yet to discover such an entity in our everyday, non-fiction world. What I love about this show is the philosophical and existential concepts that it presents and asks us what we make of them. And if we care to explore and engage with those ideas more deeply. I think you and I are doing that, and it's great! :-)

No ETA right now. It’s proving to be more time consuming to make than I previously planned.

If I had to take it guess it was because since releasing the electro magnetic energy was so important, it had a lockdown mechanism in place to protect the button in case the hatch came under attack. Example: it would have been useful to Eko to keep Locke out in season 2. What the conditions are to make it Trigger on it’s own or if there was a command or manual way to trigger it that was lost to time I’m not sure of. I’m guessing the way they rigged it to happen by crossing those wires wasn’t the original way to do it 😂 Edit: actually now that I’m thinking about it, I think it might have been mentioned that it happened when the supply drops were coming 🤔

I haven't specifically covered that. I think the lockdown procedure was originally designed to lockout an incursion by the hostiles in an emergency (like the explosives at The Flame). We know that when it occurred to Locke whilst alone in the hatch with Ben, it was triggered remotely by someone or something. The assumption became that it was related to the supply drop outside. Perhaps it was. Or... perhaps it was intentionally tripped by someone like Mikhail at The Flame station in order to create a potential opportunity for Ben. We know The Others were watching what was going on down there via video feed. And, by this point, The Others were trying to work out what to do to get their leader back. With just Locke present down in the hatch, this would have been an ideal opportunity to facilitate an escape plan. But Ben decides to remain, in the hopes that his Henry Gale story will check out and he can burrow in deeper with the survivors. But the story doesn't check out. Then, a couple of days later, Michael returns to the camp with orders to jailbreak Ben. The timing is interesting. This is all speculation, but it's how I view the lockdown. Just as I view Michael's communications with "Walt" via the hatch computer as really being Mikhail drawing him out.

@@zackolmert9622 That was part of a separate ruse. The Others wanted to lure Michael out in order to learn more about Walt -- by this point Walt was starting to cause them trouble on Hydra Island -- and they thought having Michael present might help them with their research and controlling of Walt. At the same time, Ben is also studying Jack's file and watching him in the hatch via The Pearl, learning what he was emotionally attached to. He is almost sure that using Kate could control Jack. And using Sawyer could control Kate. They wait until Michael is alone near the computer and fake the message from Walt. The original plan was to get Michael to The Others for Walt-related research then potentially use him later to lure out Jack. Two birds, one stone. It was never Ben's intention to get caught by Rousseau's trap. I speculate that he was moving between The Pearl and the barracks when he got ensnared. Once news got back to The Others about Ben's capture, they had to improvise a plan in which to get him back. They use Michael to bust out their leader. But they also use this as a window of opportunity to execute Ben's original plan of luring Jack, Kate and Sawyer.

I have indeed :-) This question is answered in my video on "Mother". The answer is actually simpler than it may seem. I'll share the timecoded link with you here: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/grNppduildmYfps.html

@@LOSTEXPLAINED108 thank you very much :-)

I think it's clear that Jacob's reason for crossing off Kate's name was not really about her being a mother. As you rightly point out, this did not prevent Sun and Jin from being crossed off the list. Once someone is a candidate, they are a candidate until they either die or someone else accepts the position. Jacob says: "It's just a line of chalk on a wall. The job is yours if you want it, Kate." Which means Kate was still a candidate regardless of her name being crossed off. The real reason why Jacob did this was to throw off the Man in Black. Consider this. Jacob has two lists -- the lighthouse and the cave. The Man in Black was supposed to find the cave to keep track of Jacob's work. When he saw Kate's name crossed out, that set him at ease about Kate's importance. He could use her to draw the other candidates in but she wasn't a threat to him anymore. However, what do we know about Kate's destiny that made her so important in the endgame? She is the one who delivers the fatal shot to the Man in Black in 'The End'. Her name being crossed off meant that MiB never saw her coming. Jacob sensed this and concealed her MVP status.

@@LOSTEXPLAINED108 thanks for the reply it makes sense for me now I just always found it odd thanks ^^

There is one more video to be released to complete this particular series but it’s stuck in copyright dispute limbo right now. If and when it clears it shall go live on the channel.

Guess this is why there is 4 private videos on the playlist…..

Anyway…. Congrats on the series! Awesome job getting the lore and history well connected. Just rewatched Lost last month and besides the poor visual effects I can say that the series and how I understand it got much better than when I first watched.

I touch upon this subject in my video on The DHARMA Initiative: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/gdyhkpmrm63Hp3k.html

The chapter on the flash sideways is probably the closest I come to addressing that misconception: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/ntl4g7lnya_Oo4E.html

This video is about the themes of good versus evil in the story, and the show presents that morality is complex. I think a lot of that is fairly self-evident. Or are you referring to the deep mythology itself? LOST can be watched as casually or as obsessively as one prefers. Some people will pick up on all the plot points to decipher the mysteries laid out, while others just watch it for the ride and to see who ends up with who. You can go as deep as you like. But the hardcore LOST fans like to go deep and the layers of the show offer us that opportunity. So, I guess my answer to you is: it depends on what kind of fan you are.

@LOSTEXPLAINED108 I meant if you're casually watching the show, how would you figure out any of the things you've done videos on, I guess the thought culminated with this video.I just watched to the end of your playlist and it helped give a lot of context, but it seems to be a shame you couldn't infer a lot of the mythology from the show itself.

@atme365 As I said, it depends on the viewer/fan. LOST was a puzzle made to last six seasons. Some of the mysteries I talk about from the show are self-evident, and others less so. The only way for someone to pick up on the more abstract answers is if they watch it more than once. And like I said, some people enjoyed LOST without needing to untangle the Egyptian history or to figure out whether or not Mother was a smoke monster, etc. Some people just wanted to enjoy Sawyer without his shirt on, or the romances, or the action and twists. The best comparison I can make is with Christopher Nolan movies. A lot of people do complain about Nolan movies being too complicated and confusing. Example: “How is anyone supposed to follow the plot of Tenet and work out what is happening?” Well, maybe a portion of the audience won’t because it’s too much work. Either they’ll like Tenet without fully understanding the mechanics and plotting, or they’ll dismiss it as nonsense. While other people who watch Tenet will rewatch it more than once to untangle and understand Nolan’s intention. They will draw charts and make speculations and debate it online. They will figure out how what was happening because they are invested and motivated. It’s the same exact principle with LOST. Any fan can do what I’ve done. Many have figured out different elements from the show for themselves, or found their own readings and interpretations that work. It just takes effort and analysis to do so. I don’t think I’m unique in putting in that kind of work to a story that is complex and full of mystery and ambiguity.

@LOSTEXPLAINED108 thanks for this 😊

Don't worry, there is still much more to come :)

@@LOSTEXPLAINED108 you should do an analysis of The Leftovers at some point on this channel

Could you clarify what you mean by this?

@@LOSTEXPLAINED108 in 28 you say everything is predetermined, here you fault him for who he's become

I replied to your other comment on the Destiny video regarding free will vs determinism, which covers a lot of this ground so I won't rehash it all here. We have to ask ourselves: is The Island forcing people's choices or is it simply fulfilling the outcomes of those choices? In other words: what comes first? A person's choice or the facilitation of said choice? It's hard to deinterlace but I believe the show is saying that both things are happening simultaneously: people are making choices and The Island is guiding them to those choices. Because our Losties appear in the distant past of the island and create a causality wave through their actions. A wave that will dictate centuries of events to come, leading right up to 2007. The Source knows our Losties will make choices throughout their lives that will lead to the island and the time travel, and it facilitates for all this to happen. The show also establishes that choice matters. And the Man in Black made bad choices (more so as a smoke monster than before when he was a mortal man), and he does all this regardless of The Island's need to fulfil the future. Remember, the time travel only happens because the smoke monster exists in 2004 and 2007. The Man in Black's choices feed into a larger tapestry of causality. But a deterministic reality with predetermined outcomes does not excuse the choices someone makes. Especially not in the context of LOST's view of determinism and destiny. Just because The Source knows what is going to happen and plays its role in events accordingly, doesn't mean it is forcing people to do things against their will. It plays its part, and they play theirs. Everyone remains responsible for all the good and bad they do.

Already rerecorded and re-edited most of them. The latest 12 videos on the channel all use my own voice. Start with this playlist then work your way backwards: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/pbqKa5uWurfWeqM.html

I have no denominational faith although I am open to spiritual concepts, especially in terms of how I look at our existence and the mysteries of the universe. I guess I can best describe myself as being somewhere between Jack and Locke.

The interaction between Jack and Christian in the church makes it abundantly clear that this is the dead version of both men reuniting in the afterlife.

I went to the same school for sound quality that you did for writing in all caps. ;)