TV: Lost
- Thread starter Lost Horizons
- Start date
Too bad my tour didn't go to that particular location. Would have loved to have seen that.
So, anybody up for some unsolved mysteries?
Today's Topic: Eloise Hawking.
How did she become so knowledgeable of space and time? In 1977 she's co-leader of the Others on the island, in the 1980s she spent some time in Massachusetts with no discernible change in character, then next time we see her in 1996 she's teaching Desmond about course-correction. There's a big gap there.
During season 5 I presumed she gained all her knowledge of future events from her son's journal, creating another compass-like paradox, but there's no way Faraday's journal could have gone into enough detail about Desmond's life for her to have known exactly when and where to intervene in it. My new theory? She was working as an agent of Jacob, who we know and accept has some sort of 'super-intuitive' powers.
How did she fit into Jacob's plans? I assume that shortly after the Incident Eloise would have fallen into a deep depression knowing that Jack's plan failed and she was destined to kill her own son. It was at that point that Jacob approached her, having never talked to Eloise or Widmore before. He would convince her that there was no way of bringing her son back to life (much like he told Richard about his wife) no matter how hard she tried, and that Daniel's death was essential in a chain of events that would help save the world (which I go into in more detail in another theory of mine).
So Eloise eventually agrees to become an off-island agent in Jacob's war against the Man in Black, and much like when Richard agreed to be his go-between with the Others, he gives her a gift. But we'll talk about that later. The question now is why does Jacob need an off-island agent? Well, we saw two instances in the show where her actions directly helped Jacob attain his goals.
First, in Flashes Before Your Eyes she makes sure that Desmond continues on his path toward the island. Seeing as Desmond is unique and the one person who can change his own past to a degree (according to Faraday in The Lie), he could have theoretically made it so he never ended up on the island, and thus never caused the crash of Oceanic 815, which was an integral part of Jacob's grand plan.
Second, she was the one who made sure the Oceanic 6 returned to the island, threatening grave consequences if they didn't. Jacob was also threatening grave consequences throughout season 6 if the MiB wasn't stopped, and the Candidates were an important piece of that puzzle.
The most damning evidence that Eloise got her information from Jacob? In The Variable, when Penny asks her what happens next, she says that for the first time in a very long time she doesn't know. If she were getting her information from Dan's Journal her information source would have been cut off in 2004 but clearly that wasn't the case. But what did happen right around the time of her statement was the departure of Ajira 316 and the death of Jacob. Can't see that as a coincidence. Her knowledge of the future died with him (not saying that in a supernatural way, just that he didn't tell her anything past that point).
The facts all seem to fit together well enough, but there's one pretty important piece missing: What was Eloise's motivation in all of this? Why trust a man that she didn't know and push her son towards death because of the vague threat that evil will consume the world? Because even though Jacob couldn't bring her son back from the dead, he promised her something just as good: A chance with him in the next life. That's what we saw in the season 6 episode Happily Ever After. Again, Eloise is shown as someone with far more knowledge of events than the other characters in the show but we aren't given a reason why. Maybe Jacob's gift to her was some of that intuition of his, allowing her to understand that she was in some sort of purgatory so that she could properly enjoy her time with her son. This time she gives him whatever he wants and encourages his passion for music, but she still leaves Widmore because she has bitter memories of him from her past life.
Today's Topic: Eloise Hawking.
How did she become so knowledgeable of space and time? In 1977 she's co-leader of the Others on the island, in the 1980s she spent some time in Massachusetts with no discernible change in character, then next time we see her in 1996 she's teaching Desmond about course-correction. There's a big gap there.
During season 5 I presumed she gained all her knowledge of future events from her son's journal, creating another compass-like paradox, but there's no way Faraday's journal could have gone into enough detail about Desmond's life for her to have known exactly when and where to intervene in it. My new theory? She was working as an agent of Jacob, who we know and accept has some sort of 'super-intuitive' powers.
How did she fit into Jacob's plans? I assume that shortly after the Incident Eloise would have fallen into a deep depression knowing that Jack's plan failed and she was destined to kill her own son. It was at that point that Jacob approached her, having never talked to Eloise or Widmore before. He would convince her that there was no way of bringing her son back to life (much like he told Richard about his wife) no matter how hard she tried, and that Daniel's death was essential in a chain of events that would help save the world (which I go into in more detail in another theory of mine).
So Eloise eventually agrees to become an off-island agent in Jacob's war against the Man in Black, and much like when Richard agreed to be his go-between with the Others, he gives her a gift. But we'll talk about that later. The question now is why does Jacob need an off-island agent? Well, we saw two instances in the show where her actions directly helped Jacob attain his goals.
First, in Flashes Before Your Eyes she makes sure that Desmond continues on his path toward the island. Seeing as Desmond is unique and the one person who can change his own past to a degree (according to Faraday in The Lie), he could have theoretically made it so he never ended up on the island, and thus never caused the crash of Oceanic 815, which was an integral part of Jacob's grand plan.
Second, she was the one who made sure the Oceanic 6 returned to the island, threatening grave consequences if they didn't. Jacob was also threatening grave consequences throughout season 6 if the MiB wasn't stopped, and the Candidates were an important piece of that puzzle.
The most damning evidence that Eloise got her information from Jacob? In The Variable, when Penny asks her what happens next, she says that for the first time in a very long time she doesn't know. If she were getting her information from Dan's Journal her information source would have been cut off in 2004 but clearly that wasn't the case. But what did happen right around the time of her statement was the departure of Ajira 316 and the death of Jacob. Can't see that as a coincidence. Her knowledge of the future died with him (not saying that in a supernatural way, just that he didn't tell her anything past that point).
The facts all seem to fit together well enough, but there's one pretty important piece missing: What was Eloise's motivation in all of this? Why trust a man that she didn't know and push her son towards death because of the vague threat that evil will consume the world? Because even though Jacob couldn't bring her son back from the dead, he promised her something just as good: A chance with him in the next life. That's what we saw in the season 6 episode Happily Ever After. Again, Eloise is shown as someone with far more knowledge of events than the other characters in the show but we aren't given a reason why. Maybe Jacob's gift to her was some of that intuition of his, allowing her to understand that she was in some sort of purgatory so that she could properly enjoy her time with her son. This time she gives him whatever he wants and encourages his passion for music, but she still leaves Widmore because she has bitter memories of him from her past life.
Jovavic
Gaslight Object Project
Glad you enjoyed it.
Today's topic: Time Travel
Fair warning: This will be long. And I will probably go off on several tangents. If you want to skip that, scroll down to where I summarize in point form the Man in Black's plan.
So, time travel. The driving force behind season 5 that kept us asking until the series finale "Did whatever happen, happen?" As it turns out, it did. But we were still left with some unanswered questions. Why didn't the Others time travel as well? What was the driving force behind these time flashes? Were they random, or did the Losties end up where they did by design?
My theory attempts to answer those questions and tie time travel into the greater mythology of the show. First, a few important notes.
1. Remember the compass we saw in season 5? The one Richard gave to Locke and Locke gave back to Richard? That plays an important role in this theory. Not the compass itself, but the concept behind something existing in an endless cycle with no beginning or end.
2. When Locke finally stopped the time flashes in This Place is Death, there were two details that didn't make sense the more I thought about them. One, what was the MiB doing in Christian's form down in that well more than 140 years before (as evidenced by the statue of Taweret still standing) the crash of Flight 815? Two, why was the wheel still off its axis in that year if Ben turned it in 2004? Hell, they may have landed in a time when the wheel didn't even exist yet. It's the answers to these two questions that help explain how time travel on the show works.
If you look at your standard time travel story there's usually two elements: A time machine and a pilot. Lost's time travel is a bit more complicated than that but it boils down to the same thing. The Man in Black's presence as Christian pre-1867 (in what we'll call year X) would seem to indicate that throughout all the time flashes he was traveling alongside the Losties. I'll go one step further and say he was in fact controlling the time flashes. What makes me believe that? For one, the ramifications of the time flashes went a long way in helping the MiB achieve his goals (which we'll discuss later). But also, the writers provided us with a perfectly plausible explanation as to how the MiB could control these flashes.
In Across the Sea we learn a few important things about the MiB and the Smoke Monster. He was "special", able to understand things intuitively, like how to play the senet game that washed ashore or how to manipulate the light in the well to escape the island. We also learned that the Smoke Monster was born from this light. It's therefore logical to conclude that the MiB would have the knowledge and capability to perhaps manipulate this energy to his own ends. Only one problem: He can't turn the wheel himself. Remember in This Place is Death when he told Locke he couldn't help him? Makes more sense now. As we have seen, those who turn the wheel leave the island, and the MiB cannot do that. So he needs somebody to turn it for him to start the time flashes, and another to turn it to stop them. Presumably he jammed the wheel somehow before Ben turned it, as otherwise his plan wouldn't have worked.
Now, if the MiB is the pilot, then what is the time machine? It's not the island because that wasn't traveling with them. But the donkey wheel and its surrounding chamber evidently were. You'll have to suspend disbelief for a moment here and allow yourself to accept the concept of an arbitrary area around the source of light being able to move through time and the idea that two things can occupy the same space. If you can accept that, then you have your answer as to why the wheel was off its axis in year X.
We have the pilot, we have the time machine, but we also have passengers: The Losties. But why them and not anybody else? Why did John Locke disappear but not Richard and the Others? I've come up with two possible explanations, one that I prefer but has some holes, and another that makes more sense but I find less exciting. We'll start with my flawed theory: The Others didn't time travel because they're part of the island. As we saw in Lafleur, once Charlotte died her body did not continue to time travel. She was dead, just another part of the island. Does that mean the Others are all dead? No, just that they're so in tune with the island that they're considered an extension of it. So why did the flashes affect Juliet? There were a bunch of Others with similar histories to Juliet's, recruited by Ben and having only spent a few years on the island. Hard to say, but considering Ben had everybody moved to the Temple perhaps a process there, like bathing in the Temple waters, would leave people like Cindy, Zach and Emma immune to time travel.
This theory also helps explain why Claire didn't time travel. Being claimed, likely due to her near death experience at the Barracks, she had become part of the island as well. What this theory doesn't explain is why inanimate objects that the Losties were touching, including their clothing, traveled with them. Also, shouldn't all the non-human wildlife have traveled with the Losties as well? Meaning there'd be a serious lack of squirrels on the island post-2004.
So what's the better explanation? The much simpler one: The Man in Black chose who would be affected by the time flashes. He's the pilot, it's his time machine, he gets to choose who's along for the ride. It's kinda boring in its simplicity, but it makes the most sense.
Now that we have all the time travel nonsense out of the way, it's time to explain why it was important.
The Man in Black's Plan
It may have been just me, but upon initial viewing of the series I interpreted the Man in Black's grand plan as follows:
1. Take the form of John Locke
2. Manipulate Ben into killing Jacob
3. Manipulate the Candidates into killing one another
It was only upon further reflection that I realized I mixed things up. It looked more like this:
1. Manipulate the Candidates into killing one another
2. Take the form of John Locke
3. Manipulate Ben into killing Jacob
What makes me believe this? Jacob's last line in The Incident. As Flocke stood triumphantly over his dying brother, his mood suddenly changed for the worse when he heard him say "they're coming". We've since learned that "they" meant the Candidates, but why would that upset the MiB so much if he was planning to kill them anyway? Because he thought they were already dead.
Now that we've concluded that the MiB was behind the time flashes, we have to discuss the importance of where he sent them. They were all over the place at the beginning of season 5, but 3 years stand out to me.
1. 1954 - This one is the most obvious. It was the year in which future Locke visited Richard and gave him the compass, also telling Richard that Jacob sent him. So, Locke essentially made it so that the Others viewed him as important which was essential to the MiB's plan as he needed to take the guise of somebody who could demand to see Jacob. It was also analogous to the compass as Locke was important because the Others believed he was, because he told them, etc.
2. Year X (pre-1867) - The year we were discussing earlier, in which the statue of Taweret is still standing. I'll warn you, this is a reach because there's nothing in the show to indicate that what I'm about to say happened as it did. So why do I think this year is important? Because it book-ends the Man in Black's plan. This is the earliest time the Losties travel to, with the year 2004 being the other book-end (ignoring when they travel to the future and see the Ajira bottles). But nothing really happened in year X, they were there for less than a minute. Long enough to view the statue and leave something behind: The rope in the ground. And who do I theorize eventually stumbles upon this rope? The Man in Black, of course. This inspires him and his people to dig there, allowing them to discover the light under the island.
What this means is that the entire show was like the compass in season 5. The Man in Black built the donkey wheel only because his future self told him (indirectly) where to find it. The Man in Black was caught up in a scheme to leave the island before he even knew it, which makes his character that much more tragic and brings into question the whole idea of destiny and free will. It also touches on a concept brought up in season 3 that wasn't really explored until season 5.
If you recall (and you probably don't, as I only remember because somebody mentioned it on another forum recently) in the episode Not in Portland from season 3 we saw a video mentioning Jacob in Room 23. Incidentally, this was also the episode that gave us some of our first clues about time travel on the show. What was also in the video was a message that read "We are the causes of our own suffering". This was a recurring theme in season 5, as we saw with Sayid shooting Ben, which would eventually lead to Ben putting Sayid through Hell; Juliet detonating (or not) Jughead, causing the pregnancy problems that would bring her to the island; Jack and the other 815 passengers causing the Incident that would eventually lead their plane to crash on the island. We even heard Hurley's voice reciting the numbers in 1988, which I assume was a plot point lost in the writers' room but just highlights again how most of these characters' troubles were brought on by themselves through time travel. The Man in Black is just another victim of his own time traveling actions.
Anyway, back to my main point: The Man in Black could only complete his plan via information he gave his past self. But why go to all this trouble in creating that paradox? Because it creates a time loop. Between the years X and 2004 the MiB's actions are set in stone because you can't change history. He made a plan that can't be stopped because there's no beginning or end to it, much like the compass always has to go from Locke to Richard and back forever. You might even call those years between the book-ends a loophole, but that's a little on the nose.
3. 1974 - The year the Losties eventually ended up in and still part of the MiB's 'loophole'. Three years later the other Candidates would show up and cause 'The Incident'. It was because of this incident that the MiB thought he had won. He thought all the Candidates died when Jughead detonated, as did Richard as he revealed in Follow the Leader. There was no saving the Candidates either because "whatever happened, happened". All he had to do now was kill Jacob and he'd be free to leave the island.
Summarizing the Key Points of the MiB's Plan
1. Discover the rope left in the ground by time-traveling Losties and build the donkey wheel.
2. Allow John Locke to convince Richard that he is special in 1954.
3. Deposit time-travelers in 1974, eventually resulting in them detonating Jughead in 1977 and killing all the Candidates.
4. Orchestrate the exile of Charles Widmore from the island, circa 1993. I further explain this in a Widmore theory of mine, tying much of his story into the Incident.
5. In 2004, as a direct result of the Incident, a button that needs to be pushed isn't and Flight 815 crashes on the island.
6. Ben, now having an antagonist in Widmore, is forced to move the island to protect it, allowing himself to assure steps 1, 2 and 3 occur.
7. Locke puts the wheel back in its place, causing him to leave the island.
8. Ben brings the Candidates who left the island back, causing them to end up in 1974 and John Locke's corpse to end up in 2007 where the MiB takes his form.
9. The Man in Black manipulates Ben into killing Jacob.
But that's not what happened.
Jacob's Counter-Plan
Through all this, Jacob is essentially powerless to stop the MiB's plan. These events always occurred and mucking with them mucks with time and space. But as we've seen, Jacob is a very intuitive fellow, so he must have at least had an inkling as to what the MiB was up to.
Jacob organizes it so that the Oceanic 6 come back to the island and he himself flashes certain of them off the plane and plops them in 1977: The remaining Candidates. That's Jack, Hurley, Sayid and Kate. But Kate was no longer a Candidate and Sun was, you say. Well, using the logic of the show, Kate regained her Candidacy when she gave up Aaron and Sun lost hers when she had Ji Yeon. Jin was the only Kwon Candidate.
Why did he drop them in 1977 though? Why not 2007? Because he needed the MiB to believe they were dead. If he didn't he would have found another way to kill them. Instead, he let Jughead do it, but instead Jacob caused one more time flash dropping all the Losties back in 2007. Jacob then dies, but the MiB's plan is thwarted, leaving him scrambling all of season 6 to kill the Candidates.
Essentially, the entire show is one giant con by the Man in Black to kill the Candidates via a time travel paradox that is countered by Jacob at the last possible moment.
LightningStrikes
Champa Bay Lightning
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scrappylilnobody
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ClicheGuevara
Registered User
Good job, Frogurt. That made me want to watch the series all over again. You really ought to make a blog for your Lost analyses.
Randy Butternubs
Registered User
Happy to see the positive response to my ramblings. My friends thought I was insane. 
But that was pretty much my chef d'oeuvre when it comes to lost theories. Closest thing I came to an all-encompassing theory. Much 'deeper' than some of my other ones (and still not all that deep as I only touch upon some of the themes in the show).
My Widmore one, which I'll post some time soon, is just as long but is much more of a fill-in-the-blanks exercise. I'll say this though, you can tie up a surprising amount of loose ends if you really think about Widmore's backstory.
But that was pretty much my chef d'oeuvre when it comes to lost theories. Closest thing I came to an all-encompassing theory. Much 'deeper' than some of my other ones (and still not all that deep as I only touch upon some of the themes in the show).
My Widmore one, which I'll post some time soon, is just as long but is much more of a fill-in-the-blanks exercise. I'll say this though, you can tie up a surprising amount of loose ends if you really think about Widmore's backstory.
Today's topic: Charles Widmore
He was built up as the big baddie of the show in seasons 4 and 5 but took a back seat to the Jacob/MiB conflict in the final season, leaving a lot of unanswered questions in the process. This theory attempts to fill in those blanks and explain his different motivations throughout the show.
And yes, I think this may be longer than my last post…
But before we discuss Widmore, let's talk about Jacob and the Man in Black. Though they never really went into depth with regards to it, there was that plotline involving Jacob proving to the MiB that mankind isn't all bad. All we know about this little wager of theirs is that it presumably involved Jacob bringing people to the island. How does that prove to the MiB that people are good, though? There has to be some sort of end game that we aren’t aware of. The way I see it is that over the years Jacob built up his own little community of ‘chosen ones’, these are the people we’d come to know as the Others. They are the control group for this ‘experiment’. Then, another group of people would be introduced to the island to test whether or not the two could coexist. We saw this with the US Army in the 50s, the DI in the 70s and even the Losties in 2004. Clearly in the cases of the army and the DI, the MiB was proven right (though he arguably had a hand in the turmoil between the groups). The situation with the flight 815 survivors is a bit murkier but the relations between the two groups were hardly friendly.
What’s important to take away from this is that the Others were the control group, and as such they had to follow certain rules so as not to become ‘contaminated’. Jacob viewed them as lab rats, they viewed him as a religious figure and thus accepted his laws like dogma. Considering Jacob did not believe in interfering in the every day lives of these people, having these rules afforded him at least some control over the actions of his people.
Below is a list of a few rules we’ve seen in the show and why it makes sense for Jacob to have decreed them:
1. An Other cannot kill an Other – Simple enough. If your control group is murdering one another you have no chance of proving that mankind is good. This also mirrors the rule that existed between Jacob and the MiB. Seen in Stranger in a Strange Land.
2. Others cannot leave the island – This basically contaminates the group. They bring in ideas from the outside world and suddenly it becomes easier to relate to new groups brought to the island. They need to be isolated. It also mirrors the MiB’s inability to leave the island. Seen in Dead is Dead.
3. Others cannot have children with outsiders – Similar to the above, cross-breeding mucks with the results of the experiment. Seen in Dead is Dead.
These are some of the rules that the Others have come to believe as gospel. There are most definitely others, but these are the most important, and they’ll tie into my theory.
Anyway, onto the theory. The way I see it, you can break up Widmore's life into three key periods: between 1977 and 1993, between 1993 and 2004 and post 2004. Of course, there was the time between 1954 and 1977 where he rose up the ranks of the Others to become their co-leader, but I have no interesting explanation for that other than he's an influential guy.
Much like with my Eloise theory, we pick things up immediately following the Incident.
1977-1993
Presumably while the Incident occurred, Widmore was where we left him, sitting around with some Others at their camp. I imagine what happened next was similar to what happened in Live Together, Die Alone. The sky turned purple and everything shook as the island released an enormous amount of energy. Then everything was suddenly back to normal. Where Eloise would fall into a deep depression over her son’s death, Widmore would have a very different reaction to the events of that day. He'd always known the island was a special place, but this was the first time he'd seen how powerful it truly was. So naturally, he decides to exploit it. Over the next few years he'd make connections with people like Alvar Hanso and the other benefactors of the DHARMA Initiative, selling them island secrets for his own personal gain. This not only helps to explain why Widmore frequently left the island, as Ben accused him of doing in Dead is Dead, but also how he managed to build a sizable fortune as well.
Skip ahead a few years, say to 1984 or 1985, and Eloise has long since left the island and Widmore is the sole leader of the Others. Eloise did, however, leave an important item behind: Her son's journal. Not important right now, but keep that in mind.
So we're in the in the mid-80s now, the perfect time to resolve a certain issue: Why do Ben and Widmore hate one another? Now, this may not be an issue to some as they just assumed that two people vying for a leadership role would be natural rivals. But what sparked this feud? Why did Ben decide to make it his life's mission to unseat Widmore? Wasn’t it enough that he found a group that accepted him?
The way I see it is that as a young adult, around the age of 20, Ben approached Widmore to seek his approval to leave the island. As it turns out, Ben had impregnated his girlfriend (yes, I'm attempting to solve the Annie non-mystery here) and because pregnancy issues were now arising on the island post-Incident, she could only give birth off-island. Widmore of course says no, as outlined by the laws I detailed at the beginning of this post. He essentially forces Ben to choose between Annie and the island, and as we saw Ben chose the island, never seeing Annie or his child again. Did she die? Did the child? Not really important, Ben cut them out of his life as another in a long list of things he sacrificed for the sake of the island.
I particularly like this explanation as to what caused the rift between Ben and Widmore as it really goes a long way in explaining a lot of Ben's motivations and also ties their backstory in with the Incident. The latter is important because, as I detailed in my previous theory, if the Man in Black was essentially responsible for the Incident, then he's also responsible for the pregnancy issues on the island, which led to Ben hating Widmore, which led to his exile, which led to him sending the Kahana to the island, forcing Ben to turn the wheel, setting off the entire cycle.
On a character level, think of all the things this does for the Ben-Widmore dynamic. Remember their meeting at the pier in Dead is Dead? Ben throws it in Widmore's face that he frequently left the island and had a child with an outsider. Those lines have a lot more bite under this new light. His obsession with the pregnancy issues, which are obviously linked back to his mother, but could also be explained by this event, as well as his adoption of Alex as we saw in season 5. And, as already mentioned, it's just another in a long list of things Ben had to sacrifice for the sake of the island.
And this is also my explanation for the "rules" that Ben and Widmore follow. They follow them without question because it's what they believe. It’s their ten commandments. Here we have Widmore, as leader of the Others, enforcing these rules and as a result making Ben's life miserable. How can Ben seek his revenge? By unseating Widmore and proving to everyone he's the 'better' Other, and he can only do that by following the rules. It's essentially a battle of moral superiority. If either man breaks these rules he'll lose the hearts and minds of the community (Ben admitted a similar concern to Locke when he thanked him for blowing up the Sub in The Man from Tallahassee). Widmore “changed the rules†when he had someone else kill Alex in The Shape of Things to Come. He probably saw this much like the Man in Black saw himself using Ben to kill Jacob, as a loophole to accomplish their goals. Ben saw it as cheating, but still wouldn’t kill Widmore in his penthouse because, again, he wanted to prove he was the better man. Unfortunately for Widmore, his daughter was not an Other so Ben saw no problem in threatening to kill her.
Of course, in the end we saw that both Ben and Widmore frequently broke the rules, showing they weren’t as different from one another as they thought.
And all this makes me question whether or not the Man in Black was ever even confined to the island. Widmore and Ben were only following the rules that they were conditioned to believe, much like we don’t go around murdering our neighbours or stealing their stuff. Maybe Jacob and the MiB were doing the same, having grown up believing they could not harm one another and it eventually just becoming a truth for them. I have no answer to that mystery, and I think the writers kept it intentionally vague.
Anyway, skip ahead to 1992, and the Ben-Widmore feud has escalated to a boiling point. Ben accuses Widmore of having ties to the DI and brings up his frequent trips off-island, Widmore accuses Ben of not really being one of them. Widmore senses he's losing his hold on his people and feels he needs to do something about it, and soon. That's when he meets a stranger in the jungle who calls himself Jacob. Only, unlike Eloise, he isn't dealing with the real McCoy. It's in fact the Man in Black posing as him, and he plants the idea of the Purge in Widmore's mind. He reasons with him that by killing off the DI he shows that he has no sympathy for them and also weakens Ben by killing those he was close to. Widmore finds this logical and orders it done.
Only problem is he underestimates how heartless Ben is. His time with the DHARMA Initiative was not something he looked fondly on, so he goes through with it. It also leads his own people to view him as somebody they can't trust, somebody who'd turn on his allies and brutally murder them at the drop of a hat. Ben uses this change in public sentiment as well as all the other crimes Widmore has perpetrated to have him exiled, letting Ben become the undisputed leader of the Others.
1993-2004
Most of the above was just window dressing, filling in Widmore's back story to give his and Ben's characters the proper motivations for their actions in the series. It's interesting, but none of it is really based on anything we've seen in the show. This next era of Widmore's life is different, and therefore much more interesting, IMO.
I’ve previously discussed time travel on the show and how “whatever happened, happenedâ€. Jacob knows this, Eloise knows this, and eventually the characters discover it when their plan in The Incident fails. But what if you didn’t know this and had knowledge of the future? What if you saw that 10 years from now that you won the lottery even though you never buy tickets? You’d probably start buying lottery tickets. Keep that in mind.
Following his exile, Widmore immediately begins searching for the island again. He seeks out anything that can help him in his cause, whether that be purchasing the Black Rock ledger as we saw in The Constant or torturing Ben's lackeys as we saw in Eggtown. But he does have one key source of information at his disposal: Faraday's journal.
I said in an earlier post that I at one time theorized that Eloise had used Faraday's journal to gain her knowledge of future events, but that her knowledge was too perfect for that explanation to be possible. Widmore's knowledge, however, is definitely imperfect. But there is evidence in the show that he displayed as much knowledge as the journal could have provided.
In my estimation, aside from a bunch of scientific theorems, Faraday's journal could have easily contained (and certainly did, in some cases) the following information:
- The names of several passengers of Flight 815
- The name Desmond Hume
- The fact that Desmond caused the crash of Flight 815 and also turned the failsafe key at the Swan
And if you add in the fact that Faraday had memory issues while on the island, you could easily assume he left some pretty detailed notes for himself in that journal. Combine this with Widmore's visit from John Locke and he actually has a lot to work with. So what is Widmore's plan to get back to the island? How does the Kahana find it if it's constantly moving?
The first step is to find Desmond Hume and insert himself into his life.
He needs Desmond to maroon on the island in order to cause the plane crash. Anybody remember when Desmond met Penny in Catch-22? Who was Des delivering the monastery's wine to? Charles Widmore. We also see in that episode a picture of Eloise Hawking with Brother Campbell, involving herself in Desmond’s life on Jacob’s behalf.
Naturally, Widmore never planned to have his daughter fall in love with his pawn, but this can be taken as clear evidence that he involved himself in Desmond's life. Other evidence? The most obvious is that it was Widmore's race Desmond was on when his boat crashed. I've also always been partial to the theory that Widmore gave Libby the boat to give to Des, as it actually gives her character something to do.
Now that Desmond is on the island, Widmore must make sure Flight 815 and its passengers crash on there too.
Like I said before, Widmore isn't educated on the intricacies of the space-time continuum like some characters. He just knows certain events happened and he logically concludes that if he assures they do happen it'll be beneficial to him. He doesn't know that they'd occur regardless if he interfered or not. That said, we have clear evidence in the show that Widmore knew Flight 815 would crash on the island long before it did. For one, he had Matthew Abaddon encourage Locke to go to Australia in Cabin Fever. We didn't see him interfere in the lives of other Losties, but it's not hard to imagine that he did. We also know that he planted the fake plane in the Indian Ocean. A project of that magnitude would definitely take a lot of foresight on his behalf, so presumably he knew well in advance that he’d need a bunch of dead bodies and an airplane.
Flight 815 has now boarded, it's on a crash course with destiny, time for the final part of Widmore's plan: Sit back and wait.
Why, you ask? Because he knows what comes next: A giant electromagnetic anomaly. It's not a coincidence that this is how his daughter found the island in Live Together, Die Alone, she took the idea from daddy. Once he finds the electromagnetism, he finds the island, and he can send his freighter out.
And how did Penny know that this was the proper way to find the island? Presumably because she suspected correctly that her father had something to do with her boyfriend's disappearance. Snooping through his files, she found out way more than she expected: a vast operation, using countless funds to find an island that somehow involved Desmond. I imagine she then confronted her father about it, causing the rift between the two that we saw in seasons 5 and 6. This is why Penny contacted Charlie in Through the Looking Glass, and why she was constantly calling the freighter in season 5. She knew her father's history with the island and that he was actively looking for it.
With regards to Penny, that only leaves the question of why Naomi had her picture with Desmond on her when she crashed on the island? The simplest answer is the correct one: She was looking for Desmond. Naomi seemed rather redundant considering Widmore had a whole mercenary team on the boat, but that's because she was indeed on a rescue mission as she said. He may be a dick, but Widmore loves his daughter, and now that he no longer needed Desmond he saw no harm in rescuing him from the island. Didn't work out that way, though.
2004-2007
The Kahana mission failed, the ship blew up, and Widmore was left wondering what to do next. It's soon after that Ben visits him in his Penthouse apartment in The Shape of Things to Come where he claims he has been having nightmares. Presumably island-induced ones, punishing him for his misdeeds.
We next see him rescuing John Locke in the Tunisian desert, a seemingly changed man. What happened? Jacob. That's what. The man Widmore worshipped for decades on the island finally took the time to introduce himself.
How else would Widmore know where the exit point from the donkey wheel is? He had no cameras set up when Ben came out in 2005, but he did in 2007, indicating that he learned that fact some time between those periods. How else would he return to the island in season 6? He even claimed that he had talked to Jacob, though it's hard to take anything anybody says on this show at face value I trust him here.
Why did Jacob finally involve Widmore in all of this? He needed Locke to return to the island, Widmore had the resources to save him in Tunisia. Widmore wants redemption, Jacob can offer it to him. And when Desmond refuses to go along with Eloise's plan to return to the island, Jacob offers Widmore a passage back if he brings Des along with him. A chance to redeem himself and return to island? Hard to pass up.
Only thing is Widmore blew it. He returns to the island and sets up camp, wanting to help Jacob in his war with the MiB. He then, in my estimation, slaughters the surviving passengers of Ajira 316 to assure that things go smoothly. Some may think it was the Smoke Monster behind the massacre, but the time frame just doesn't sync up well enough to my liking. And because Widmore blew his chance at redemption, the island was done with him and gave him the death he deserved at the hands of Ben.
He was built up as the big baddie of the show in seasons 4 and 5 but took a back seat to the Jacob/MiB conflict in the final season, leaving a lot of unanswered questions in the process. This theory attempts to fill in those blanks and explain his different motivations throughout the show.
And yes, I think this may be longer than my last post…
But before we discuss Widmore, let's talk about Jacob and the Man in Black. Though they never really went into depth with regards to it, there was that plotline involving Jacob proving to the MiB that mankind isn't all bad. All we know about this little wager of theirs is that it presumably involved Jacob bringing people to the island. How does that prove to the MiB that people are good, though? There has to be some sort of end game that we aren’t aware of. The way I see it is that over the years Jacob built up his own little community of ‘chosen ones’, these are the people we’d come to know as the Others. They are the control group for this ‘experiment’. Then, another group of people would be introduced to the island to test whether or not the two could coexist. We saw this with the US Army in the 50s, the DI in the 70s and even the Losties in 2004. Clearly in the cases of the army and the DI, the MiB was proven right (though he arguably had a hand in the turmoil between the groups). The situation with the flight 815 survivors is a bit murkier but the relations between the two groups were hardly friendly.
What’s important to take away from this is that the Others were the control group, and as such they had to follow certain rules so as not to become ‘contaminated’. Jacob viewed them as lab rats, they viewed him as a religious figure and thus accepted his laws like dogma. Considering Jacob did not believe in interfering in the every day lives of these people, having these rules afforded him at least some control over the actions of his people.
Below is a list of a few rules we’ve seen in the show and why it makes sense for Jacob to have decreed them:
1. An Other cannot kill an Other – Simple enough. If your control group is murdering one another you have no chance of proving that mankind is good. This also mirrors the rule that existed between Jacob and the MiB. Seen in Stranger in a Strange Land.
2. Others cannot leave the island – This basically contaminates the group. They bring in ideas from the outside world and suddenly it becomes easier to relate to new groups brought to the island. They need to be isolated. It also mirrors the MiB’s inability to leave the island. Seen in Dead is Dead.
3. Others cannot have children with outsiders – Similar to the above, cross-breeding mucks with the results of the experiment. Seen in Dead is Dead.
These are some of the rules that the Others have come to believe as gospel. There are most definitely others, but these are the most important, and they’ll tie into my theory.
Anyway, onto the theory. The way I see it, you can break up Widmore's life into three key periods: between 1977 and 1993, between 1993 and 2004 and post 2004. Of course, there was the time between 1954 and 1977 where he rose up the ranks of the Others to become their co-leader, but I have no interesting explanation for that other than he's an influential guy.
Much like with my Eloise theory, we pick things up immediately following the Incident.
1977-1993
Presumably while the Incident occurred, Widmore was where we left him, sitting around with some Others at their camp. I imagine what happened next was similar to what happened in Live Together, Die Alone. The sky turned purple and everything shook as the island released an enormous amount of energy. Then everything was suddenly back to normal. Where Eloise would fall into a deep depression over her son’s death, Widmore would have a very different reaction to the events of that day. He'd always known the island was a special place, but this was the first time he'd seen how powerful it truly was. So naturally, he decides to exploit it. Over the next few years he'd make connections with people like Alvar Hanso and the other benefactors of the DHARMA Initiative, selling them island secrets for his own personal gain. This not only helps to explain why Widmore frequently left the island, as Ben accused him of doing in Dead is Dead, but also how he managed to build a sizable fortune as well.
Skip ahead a few years, say to 1984 or 1985, and Eloise has long since left the island and Widmore is the sole leader of the Others. Eloise did, however, leave an important item behind: Her son's journal. Not important right now, but keep that in mind.
So we're in the in the mid-80s now, the perfect time to resolve a certain issue: Why do Ben and Widmore hate one another? Now, this may not be an issue to some as they just assumed that two people vying for a leadership role would be natural rivals. But what sparked this feud? Why did Ben decide to make it his life's mission to unseat Widmore? Wasn’t it enough that he found a group that accepted him?
The way I see it is that as a young adult, around the age of 20, Ben approached Widmore to seek his approval to leave the island. As it turns out, Ben had impregnated his girlfriend (yes, I'm attempting to solve the Annie non-mystery here) and because pregnancy issues were now arising on the island post-Incident, she could only give birth off-island. Widmore of course says no, as outlined by the laws I detailed at the beginning of this post. He essentially forces Ben to choose between Annie and the island, and as we saw Ben chose the island, never seeing Annie or his child again. Did she die? Did the child? Not really important, Ben cut them out of his life as another in a long list of things he sacrificed for the sake of the island.
I particularly like this explanation as to what caused the rift between Ben and Widmore as it really goes a long way in explaining a lot of Ben's motivations and also ties their backstory in with the Incident. The latter is important because, as I detailed in my previous theory, if the Man in Black was essentially responsible for the Incident, then he's also responsible for the pregnancy issues on the island, which led to Ben hating Widmore, which led to his exile, which led to him sending the Kahana to the island, forcing Ben to turn the wheel, setting off the entire cycle.
On a character level, think of all the things this does for the Ben-Widmore dynamic. Remember their meeting at the pier in Dead is Dead? Ben throws it in Widmore's face that he frequently left the island and had a child with an outsider. Those lines have a lot more bite under this new light. His obsession with the pregnancy issues, which are obviously linked back to his mother, but could also be explained by this event, as well as his adoption of Alex as we saw in season 5. And, as already mentioned, it's just another in a long list of things Ben had to sacrifice for the sake of the island.
And this is also my explanation for the "rules" that Ben and Widmore follow. They follow them without question because it's what they believe. It’s their ten commandments. Here we have Widmore, as leader of the Others, enforcing these rules and as a result making Ben's life miserable. How can Ben seek his revenge? By unseating Widmore and proving to everyone he's the 'better' Other, and he can only do that by following the rules. It's essentially a battle of moral superiority. If either man breaks these rules he'll lose the hearts and minds of the community (Ben admitted a similar concern to Locke when he thanked him for blowing up the Sub in The Man from Tallahassee). Widmore “changed the rules†when he had someone else kill Alex in The Shape of Things to Come. He probably saw this much like the Man in Black saw himself using Ben to kill Jacob, as a loophole to accomplish their goals. Ben saw it as cheating, but still wouldn’t kill Widmore in his penthouse because, again, he wanted to prove he was the better man. Unfortunately for Widmore, his daughter was not an Other so Ben saw no problem in threatening to kill her.
Of course, in the end we saw that both Ben and Widmore frequently broke the rules, showing they weren’t as different from one another as they thought.
And all this makes me question whether or not the Man in Black was ever even confined to the island. Widmore and Ben were only following the rules that they were conditioned to believe, much like we don’t go around murdering our neighbours or stealing their stuff. Maybe Jacob and the MiB were doing the same, having grown up believing they could not harm one another and it eventually just becoming a truth for them. I have no answer to that mystery, and I think the writers kept it intentionally vague.
Anyway, skip ahead to 1992, and the Ben-Widmore feud has escalated to a boiling point. Ben accuses Widmore of having ties to the DI and brings up his frequent trips off-island, Widmore accuses Ben of not really being one of them. Widmore senses he's losing his hold on his people and feels he needs to do something about it, and soon. That's when he meets a stranger in the jungle who calls himself Jacob. Only, unlike Eloise, he isn't dealing with the real McCoy. It's in fact the Man in Black posing as him, and he plants the idea of the Purge in Widmore's mind. He reasons with him that by killing off the DI he shows that he has no sympathy for them and also weakens Ben by killing those he was close to. Widmore finds this logical and orders it done.
Only problem is he underestimates how heartless Ben is. His time with the DHARMA Initiative was not something he looked fondly on, so he goes through with it. It also leads his own people to view him as somebody they can't trust, somebody who'd turn on his allies and brutally murder them at the drop of a hat. Ben uses this change in public sentiment as well as all the other crimes Widmore has perpetrated to have him exiled, letting Ben become the undisputed leader of the Others.
1993-2004
Most of the above was just window dressing, filling in Widmore's back story to give his and Ben's characters the proper motivations for their actions in the series. It's interesting, but none of it is really based on anything we've seen in the show. This next era of Widmore's life is different, and therefore much more interesting, IMO.
I’ve previously discussed time travel on the show and how “whatever happened, happenedâ€. Jacob knows this, Eloise knows this, and eventually the characters discover it when their plan in The Incident fails. But what if you didn’t know this and had knowledge of the future? What if you saw that 10 years from now that you won the lottery even though you never buy tickets? You’d probably start buying lottery tickets. Keep that in mind.
Following his exile, Widmore immediately begins searching for the island again. He seeks out anything that can help him in his cause, whether that be purchasing the Black Rock ledger as we saw in The Constant or torturing Ben's lackeys as we saw in Eggtown. But he does have one key source of information at his disposal: Faraday's journal.
I said in an earlier post that I at one time theorized that Eloise had used Faraday's journal to gain her knowledge of future events, but that her knowledge was too perfect for that explanation to be possible. Widmore's knowledge, however, is definitely imperfect. But there is evidence in the show that he displayed as much knowledge as the journal could have provided.
In my estimation, aside from a bunch of scientific theorems, Faraday's journal could have easily contained (and certainly did, in some cases) the following information:
- The names of several passengers of Flight 815
- The name Desmond Hume
- The fact that Desmond caused the crash of Flight 815 and also turned the failsafe key at the Swan
And if you add in the fact that Faraday had memory issues while on the island, you could easily assume he left some pretty detailed notes for himself in that journal. Combine this with Widmore's visit from John Locke and he actually has a lot to work with. So what is Widmore's plan to get back to the island? How does the Kahana find it if it's constantly moving?
The first step is to find Desmond Hume and insert himself into his life.
He needs Desmond to maroon on the island in order to cause the plane crash. Anybody remember when Desmond met Penny in Catch-22? Who was Des delivering the monastery's wine to? Charles Widmore. We also see in that episode a picture of Eloise Hawking with Brother Campbell, involving herself in Desmond’s life on Jacob’s behalf.
Naturally, Widmore never planned to have his daughter fall in love with his pawn, but this can be taken as clear evidence that he involved himself in Desmond's life. Other evidence? The most obvious is that it was Widmore's race Desmond was on when his boat crashed. I've also always been partial to the theory that Widmore gave Libby the boat to give to Des, as it actually gives her character something to do.
Now that Desmond is on the island, Widmore must make sure Flight 815 and its passengers crash on there too.
Like I said before, Widmore isn't educated on the intricacies of the space-time continuum like some characters. He just knows certain events happened and he logically concludes that if he assures they do happen it'll be beneficial to him. He doesn't know that they'd occur regardless if he interfered or not. That said, we have clear evidence in the show that Widmore knew Flight 815 would crash on the island long before it did. For one, he had Matthew Abaddon encourage Locke to go to Australia in Cabin Fever. We didn't see him interfere in the lives of other Losties, but it's not hard to imagine that he did. We also know that he planted the fake plane in the Indian Ocean. A project of that magnitude would definitely take a lot of foresight on his behalf, so presumably he knew well in advance that he’d need a bunch of dead bodies and an airplane.
Flight 815 has now boarded, it's on a crash course with destiny, time for the final part of Widmore's plan: Sit back and wait.
Why, you ask? Because he knows what comes next: A giant electromagnetic anomaly. It's not a coincidence that this is how his daughter found the island in Live Together, Die Alone, she took the idea from daddy. Once he finds the electromagnetism, he finds the island, and he can send his freighter out.
And how did Penny know that this was the proper way to find the island? Presumably because she suspected correctly that her father had something to do with her boyfriend's disappearance. Snooping through his files, she found out way more than she expected: a vast operation, using countless funds to find an island that somehow involved Desmond. I imagine she then confronted her father about it, causing the rift between the two that we saw in seasons 5 and 6. This is why Penny contacted Charlie in Through the Looking Glass, and why she was constantly calling the freighter in season 5. She knew her father's history with the island and that he was actively looking for it.
With regards to Penny, that only leaves the question of why Naomi had her picture with Desmond on her when she crashed on the island? The simplest answer is the correct one: She was looking for Desmond. Naomi seemed rather redundant considering Widmore had a whole mercenary team on the boat, but that's because she was indeed on a rescue mission as she said. He may be a dick, but Widmore loves his daughter, and now that he no longer needed Desmond he saw no harm in rescuing him from the island. Didn't work out that way, though.
2004-2007
The Kahana mission failed, the ship blew up, and Widmore was left wondering what to do next. It's soon after that Ben visits him in his Penthouse apartment in The Shape of Things to Come where he claims he has been having nightmares. Presumably island-induced ones, punishing him for his misdeeds.
We next see him rescuing John Locke in the Tunisian desert, a seemingly changed man. What happened? Jacob. That's what. The man Widmore worshipped for decades on the island finally took the time to introduce himself.
How else would Widmore know where the exit point from the donkey wheel is? He had no cameras set up when Ben came out in 2005, but he did in 2007, indicating that he learned that fact some time between those periods. How else would he return to the island in season 6? He even claimed that he had talked to Jacob, though it's hard to take anything anybody says on this show at face value I trust him here.
Why did Jacob finally involve Widmore in all of this? He needed Locke to return to the island, Widmore had the resources to save him in Tunisia. Widmore wants redemption, Jacob can offer it to him. And when Desmond refuses to go along with Eloise's plan to return to the island, Jacob offers Widmore a passage back if he brings Des along with him. A chance to redeem himself and return to island? Hard to pass up.
Only thing is Widmore blew it. He returns to the island and sets up camp, wanting to help Jacob in his war with the MiB. He then, in my estimation, slaughters the surviving passengers of Ajira 316 to assure that things go smoothly. Some may think it was the Smoke Monster behind the massacre, but the time frame just doesn't sync up well enough to my liking. And because Widmore blew his chance at redemption, the island was done with him and gave him the death he deserved at the hands of Ben.
DeathFromAbove
Registered User
- Jul 17, 2006
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Randy Butternubs
Registered User
I get excited when the Lost thread gets bumped because that means Frogurt posted his next theory 
Amazing post, Frogurt! 
And yes, Widmore DID slaughter the remaining Ajira passengers. It was confirmed in the Lost Encyclopedia!
And yes, Widmore DID slaughter the remaining Ajira passengers. It was confirmed in the Lost Encyclopedia!
