'Lost' Unanswered Questions

[Dback Jon]

Similar to the 'Lost' Connections thread - mostly stolen from other sites Let me know of any others...

Setting Questions

Why did the plane crash?

Where is the island located?

What is the black smoke?

What is the machine noise/thing that tried to drag Locke underground? Is it the same thing that grabbed the pilot?

Why do trees explode/vanish?

Where did the food drop come from?

How does the island heal people? We have had hints that the electromagnetic fields of the island may have healing powers.

What is the story behind the skeletons (Adam and Eve) with the black/white rocks?

What is the sickness that infected Danielle's group?

What's up with the polar bears (and Kate's horse and Jack's dad and the squawking bird for that matter)? Are they a)out of their head or b)a Dharma project like what's on the hatch door or c)something else altogether?

How did an enormous slave ship get to the middle of an "island?"

Where does the power line coming from the sea originate?

Do the numbers mean anything beyond being an easter egg?

Now that they have electricity and Sayid has some report with Danielle, why haven't they created a new SOS transmission? They know the numbers tranmission was maing it's way out of the 'zone' successfully.

How did a plane from Nigeria and a plane from Australia
both end up on that island(if it is an island)?

Why is the dark territory the dark territory?

The Hatch

What was the original purpose of the hatches?

Has that purpose changed over time?

What happens if they don't press the button?

Who drew the map on the blast door? Why did they draw it the map on the blast door instead of just on a piece of paper?

What is the significance of Widmore?

Who was Michael communicating with on the computer?

What do the hieroglyphics on the countdown clock symbolize?

Is there any significance to the sulfur smell of the shower?

What is the (Pala?) ferry mentioned in the Pearl video?

What happened to Marvin Candle's hand?


Where does the information/ research that goes into the pneumatic tubes in the Pearl station go to?

The Others

How many groups of Others are there?

Who were the Others in the hatch with Claire?

Who is fake Henry Gale? He told Locke his mission was to bring back Locke and that he would be killed by the leader if he failed.

What do they consider a "good" person worth kidnapping? Note that Henry told Locke that he is considered good.

Why do The Others claim they can't go to the Losties camp themselves ?

The Losties

Why are they so sure they are on an island?

Why is there so much apathy and lack of communication among them?

Ana Lucia

Who was on the phone that interrupted her drink with Jack?

Bernard

Charlie

Christian

Is he really dead?

Who is the daughter he was trying to see in Australia?

Cindy

What happened to her?

Claire

Was told by a psychic that she must raise the baby. Then he backtracked and arranged to send her to America to give up the baby for adoption. Did the psychic foresee the crash?

Why did the psychic foresee that caused him to tell her she must raise the baby herself?

Why does Claire's baby daddy art work look so much like that "art" on the island?

Desmond

Where did he go?

Hurley

Will he figure out where he knew Libby from now?

Jack


Where or how did he become such a crackshot with a gun?

What happened to the body of Jack's dad?

How could Jack fall out of a breaking up airplane traveling hundreds of miles an hour and land unhurt in some trees?

How/why did he get the tattoos?

Who did Sarah leave him for? Was she really pregnant? Was she lying?

Why does it seem Jack was the only one thrown really far from the plane?

Jin

Kate


Where exactly did Kate end up after the plane crash? We first see her coming out of the jungle.

Libby

Was Libby stalking Hurley?

Why was Libby in the hospital with Hurley?

How was she released from the hospital?

Why was Libby in Australia and why was she on the flight?

Locke

How did Locke's legs get injured?

What was the secret he whispered to Walt in the pilot of the show? Was it the secret about his paralysis?

How the hell can Locke predict rain?

What was in that wacky paste he put on Boone's head?

Michael

Who ran him over, injuring him?

Why was that 2000 poster stuck on the file cabinet (with black tape) in Michael's hospital room, when it was 1996 when Michael broke his leg?

Why were Jack, Kate, Sawyer, and Hurley on "the list"?

Why did the Others take Michael's blood?

Mr. Eko

How did Eko end up in Australia and why was he going to America?

Was Eko really on flight 815 or did he just run out into the water after the crash? He was most definitely on the flight, as we saw in ?

Was Charlotte telling Eko the truth at the airport or was she doing as told by her "psychic" father?

Rose

Sawyer

Who conned Sawyer's parents? In other words, who is the original Sawyer?

Sayid

Sun
Did she have an affair?

Who is the baby's father?

Vincent

What is Vincent's true role and why does he seem to be in places right before/after something of importance occurs?


When Jack, Kate, and Charlie are going for the cockpit, why did Vincent just sit there in the bushes watching them? Wouldn't a normal dog go greet them?

Walt

Does Walt have powers over nature as has been implied?

Where is Walt? We know he is with Miss Klugh, but don't know exactly where they are holding him.

Why did Walt appear soaking wet and speak in reverse? Is this related to Ms. Klugh's question about Walt appearing where he doesn't belong?

What sort of tests did Ms. Klugh and her gang have Walt perform?

Other Losties

What happened to the children and "good" people taken from the tailies?

 

[Mike Olbinski]

Do we need a Lost subforum?

 

[Dback Jon]

Do we need a Lost subforum?

Could be.....

One of the other boards I read is devoted to reality shows - Survivor, AI, TAR, etc. They have a subforum for "Other Shows". The Lost thread was the biggest on the board, and the board admin's finally gave in and created a Lost subforum - first non-reality show to get it's own.

 

[bankybruce]

http://humpys.net/eegallery.php?season=2 some of these pictures help remember and see things you did not see before.

 

[Mike Olbinski]

http://humpys.net/eegallery.php?season=2 some of these pictures help remember and see things you did not see before.

THat site is amazing...

Love the shots the guy took from the Lost set of the Others' camp...

 

[Dback Jon]

What are the Losties looking at?

From the preview - something just offshore....

 

[abomb]

From EW;

Conspiracy Theory
The top five ''Lost'' theories. From purgatory to hallucination, EW explores it all by Jeff Jensen

Like no show since The X-Files, Lost has inspired its fan base to become conspiracy-hunting, code-cracking sleuths hoping to find the Big Answer that explains the show. (They're currently playing the summertime Internet game The Lost Experience, which producers say reveals even more secrets about the Hanso Foundation.) We sifted through dozens of theories and ran five popular possibilities past Lost's producers and cast.

THE ISLAND IS PURGATORY

SYNOPSIS Oceanic flight 815 crashed. Everyone died. Some went to heaven, others to hell. The rest wound up in a dangerous purgatory, where they must work toward paradise — or risk tumbling into the inferno.
EVIDENCE FOR Everyone seems to have something for which they need to atone. So why would purgatory look like a Tahitian resort? Well, in the famous afterlife cosmology sketched by Dante, purgatory's highest point is the Garden of Eden.
EVIDENCE AGAINST Lost doesn't conform cleanly to any conventional explanation of purgatory. As for a more generalized application of the concept...well, that would be lame.
WHAT THEY SAY Debunked! Says Lindelof: ''We have said that this is not purgatory, but people don't want to believe it.... These human beings have hearts, and when those hearts stop beating, they are dead.''

IT'S ALL A HALLUCINATION

SYNOPSIS Reality on the island isn't exactly ''real.'' To boot: All characters are aspects of one person (usually attributed to Jack or potentially supernatural characters like Hurley and Walt); or everyone is still on the plane trying to survive massive turbulence by escaping into a mass delusion.
EVIDENCE FOR Hallucinations would neatly explain many things, like Walt's comic book polar bear and appearances by Jack's dad and Kate's horse. Also, conspicuous lit references like An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge suggest that not everything is what it seems...
EVIDENCE AGAINST ...or they could be red herrings, or serve another curious purpose. Also, Hurley's imaginary-friend episode, ''Dave,'' seemed to actually disprove hallucination theories. Besides, ''It's all a dream'' would have to be done brilliantly not to be a total cliché. And is Lost really going to rip off Dallas?
WHAT THEY SAY Debunked! (Sorta.) Carlton Cuse says that any hallucination theory that denies life-and-death stakes on the island isn't valid: ''You can't invest in the show if you think it's bulls---.''

IT'S A MUTANT HOTHOUSE

SYNOPSIS The most famous Internet theory argues that psychics are influencing the castaways for mysterious and possibly good reasons. British fan Andrew Smith's hypothesis is that the Dharma Initiative, as part of a sci-fi scheme to engineer war-free utopia, cultivated a group of superhuman beings (which may include some of the castaways) capable of wielding the island's electromagnetic energy.
EVIDENCE FOR Check it out for yourself at 4815162342.com. There are even cool illustrations.
EVIDENCE AGAINST Smith's theory — while inspired and well-researched — leans heavily on details from the orientation film. And as the May 10 episode suggested, Lost-ologists should reconsider the truthfulness of said film. Heck: Is Alvar Hanso even a real dude?
WHAT THEY SAY ''Incredibly imaginative, and obviously written by someone who watches very carefully,'' says Lindelof. ''But like all great closing arguments, it doesn't incorporate any moments from the show that wildly contradict it.''

HUMANITY IS ALMOST EXTINCT

SYNOPSIS A worldwide calamity (pandemic? nuclear war? meteor?) has wiped out the rest of humanity. By either happenstance or design, the Oceanic castaways survived the apocalypse.
EVIDENCE FOR Various pieces of Lost arcana could be interpreted as clues planted by the producers. In science, the catastrophe that killed the dinosaurs is called the ''K-T event.'' Does ''K-T'' = Kate? One K-T scenario posits that a star dubbed ''Nemesis,'' which orbits our sun, created some celestial bad weather that ultimately caused the death of T. rex and friends. In ''The Long Con,'' the words nemesis and sun are linked in dialogue between Sawyer and Charlie.
EVIDENCE AGAINST Those ''clues''? Crazy talk.
WHAT THEY SAY Even Sawyer has doubts. ''If the rest of the world is extinct,'' says Josh Holloway, ''then where did those Dharma supplies that dropped from the sky come from? Then again, this could be a big government experiment, and you know as well as I do [that] if we blow this world up, they're going to be in their little bunkers down there sipping cocktails. So maybe Dharma is part of that, and they're using the island to rebuild society — but better.''

MAD SCIENTISTS ARE TO BLAME

SYNOPSIS Passengers were brought to the island as guinea pigs in a wide range of experiments, like studying the effects of electromagnetic energy on humans. The monster (a.k.a. ''Cerberus'') is a watchdog whose primary job is to keep test subjects from straying outside the EM section of the island. The Others could also be test subjects...the scientists themselves...or a faction of ex-scientists who now oppose the experiments.
EVIDENCE FOR Electromagnetic energy may have healed Locke's legs, Rose's cancer, and Jin's infertility. The map in the hatch suggests a Dharma-explains-everything solution (that's where we got the Cerberus thing). And even if the map is bogus, the hatches and the Dharma supply drop suggest that an ''initiative'' is (or was) at work on the island.
EVIDENCE AGAINST ''The Other 48 Days'' episode clearly showed the plane crashing. Doesn't that seem like a really risky way to recruit lab rats?
WHAT THEY SAY This is the view most commonly held by the actors. Daniel Dae Kim thinks the castaways are part of ''a human ant farm'' run by the Dharma Initiative. Harold Perrineau's take is more ironic: He thinks scientists are using the island to test a new one-world religion. And Holloway has a darker view. ''The island is like a working machine. It's mobile, like the Death Star. That one thing — the button — keeps it from becoming the ultimate weapon.'' Then, flashing that dimpled Sawyer grin, he adds: ''Or whatever.''

 

[abomb]

From Newsweek;

Island Fever
This season, 'Lost' had its share of setbacks and frayed nerves, but it's still the coolest show on TV. NEWSWEEK hits the beach for the wild finale.

By Marc Peyser
Newsweek
May 22, 2006 issue - To get to the set, you have to drive 45 minutes north of Honolulu, and you have to know where you're going. There's no sign—they don't call it "Lost" for nothing—just a red flare stuck in a dirt road past some pineapple and coffee fields, along with a note: BASE CAMP. It's 7:30 on a drizzly May morning, and the cast is rehearsing a funeral on the beach. There are five graves. The two most recent are open, and contain corpses of Ana Lucia and Libby, wrapped in gray flannel. As usual on any TV show, a two-minute scene takes forever to film. The rain doesn't help. In between takes, Josh Holloway (who plays Sawyer) does push-ups on a grave.

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Evangeline Lilly (Kate) goes "10-1"—set talk for a bathroom break—then reads a Christian self-help book. Daniel Dae Kim (Jin), Dominic Monaghan (Charlie) and Jorge Garcia (Hurley) trade stories about their most embarrassing childhood moments—Monaghan's concerns a dirty diaper at the zoo. When the rain stops around 9 a.m., the actors are in such a hurry to finish, they just throw their umbrellas onto Ana Lucia's corpse. No one seems to notice the rainbow glowing just over the ocean. Or the fact that, thanks to an earthquake in the South Pacific, the area is under a tsunami watch.

Then again, dodging big waves is nothing new for "Lost." Since its debut last season, the ABC drama has established itself as the most creative and daring show on network television. In an era of procedural dramas—the McMystery franchises "CSI" and "Law & Order" and their many clones—that are built to rake in cash through syndication, "Lost" dares to tell an intricate, sprawling story that mashes up religion, sci-fi and existentialism with more than a dozen flesh-and-blood characters. The show won an Emmy in its maiden season and has spawned the kind of rabid fandom not seen since the heyday of "The X-Files." But success has come with some risks—the tsunami lurking behind the rainbow.

Viewership is down 20 percent in the second half of this season—when are people going to realize how boring "American Idol" is this year?—despite a raft of tie-ins, including an online clue hunt, a novel "written" by a crash victim and free streaming video. The cast is battling its own strain of island fever, brought on by the paparazzi, the isolation and the pressure of living up to expectations—not to mention the occasional run-in with the cops. To a person, the actors all say they love living in Hawaii and acting in the coolest show on TV. But during NEWSWEEK's exclusive visit to the set during the filming of the finale, you could sense the other side of paradise. "It's been a taxing season, to be honest," says Monaghan. "We're not the new, big hit show now. We're not shocking people like we used to. The natural transition is to not be as big as we used to be. It's tough, man."

"Lost" started simply enough as a show about a plane crash and its survivors—it was actually conceived as a dramatized version of "Survivor." But this year it virtually reinvented itself. The castaways discovered more survivors who crashed on a different part of the island, a nasty band of bushmen called "the others" and an underground bunker with a computer that inexplicably requires six numbers (4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42) to be input every 108 minutes. "Lost" is chock-full of eerie, seemingly unexplained phenomena, and the finale will clear some of them up. "You'll be able to do a lot of speculating and theorizing about what exactly is going on," says executive producer Carlton Cuse. But it wouldn't be "Lost" if the show didn't stir up as many mysteries as it solves. The producers are so nervous about guarding their new secrets, they've given the very last scene a code name—"challah," as in the Jewish bread that's full of twists. They haven't even told the cast what's going to happen.

So, do you wanna know what we know about the finale? Skip this paragraph if you don't—though it's not as if we could solve the whole "Lost" riddle. But here are some tidbits. "We are going to tell you why the plane crashed," says Cuse. "We're going to explain what happens if you don't push the button. And we're going to resolve the Michael-and-Walt story." (Michael's son, Walt, was kidnapped by "the others" in last year's season finale and has been missing ever since.) Desmond, the enigmatic guy originally discovered in the hatch, also reappears, and he's not in good shape, though he gives the survivors fresh hope for escape. Just as last year's finale expanded our scope of the island's boundaries, this year's will expand its relevance. "There is something else that is reverberating on our planet that is directly linked to this island," says Monaghan. "You begin to understand that what is happening there has a significant butterfly effect in the rest of the world." One more thing: we think another character is going to die, or come close. It's just a hypothesis, based on the fact that when we asked Michelle Rodriguez (Ana Lucia) to guess which character would die after Libby, she said: "I can't do that, 'cause I know." Then she clammed up.

Some actors think they know even more than that. "A buddy of mine actually got a part in the 'challah,' so I got to know a little bit more," says Garcia. "I know," insists Matthew Fox, who plays doctor Jack. How? "I just know. I have my sources." But most of them don't, and they're not all crazy about being kept in the dark. "It's a little bit difficult," says Harold Perrineau (Michael). "I'm one of those actors who likes to give himself a running start on how to be in touch with this or that. Last year we didn't know the finale until the day it was shot—we went out on the raft and there were pages missing in the script. Suddenly, there's a lot to wrap your head around."

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But it's not just about the work. The actors are also fans of the show. Many of them have their own theories about the island (see interactive above). They often watch the show together—whichever character is featured in that week's flashback hosts the viewing party. "I've never watched a show as religiously as I've watched this, and I've never enjoyed one that I've been involved in as much," says Terry O'Quinn (Locke). O'Quinn is one of the few actors who don't like to speculate about the show, even about the most basic questions, like how Locke became a paraplegic. "When the question is answered, the answer will be disappointing—it's the question that's fun," he says. "He's a mysterious character, and that's what makes him compelling."

Besides, O'Quinn is just too damn busy to study anything beyond that week's script. As the season wound down, the cast was shooting three or four episodes simultaneously, sometimes working 20-hour days. They had to squeeze in our interviews during lunch or in the few minutes between scenes. Lilly stood on the side of a dirt supply road getting pushed farther and farther into the bush by equipment trucks. Fox—the cast calls him "Foxy"—grabbed a few minutes in a clearing behind the beach where the extras wait, next to the Porta Potti. They were all unfailingly nice and upbeat about their show. (Except for Naveen Andrews, who was said to be "not feeling well" and declined to be interviewed. Wait a minute. Surely they're not going to bump him off next!)

Still, you could tell that the cast was exhausted—Daniel Kim and Perrineau answered their trailer doors in their underwear because they had to sacrifice nap time to chat—and that they're starting to get on each other's nerves. "It's tough being involved in a shoot with a large cast," says Monaghan, sitting in his trailer, where the floor is piled with FedEx envelopes filled with fan mail. "Just the sheer politics can drag you down. So-and-so is not getting screen time. So-and-so is not showing up on time. So-and-so isn't behaving well on set. That's the toughest thing—coming home and going, Well, I behaved OK, but three or four people didn't." Despite mixed emotions, Monaghan brought a camera to the set to take pictures of his castmates, like a kid on the last day of school. "We're like brothers and sisters," says Lilly. "There are days when you want to thank them for being in your life, and there are days when you want to punch them in the face."

You'd better behave on "Lost"—no network TV show has ever killed off so many major characters so early in its run. For the record, the producers insist they didn't kill Ana Lucia and Libby because Rodriguez and Cynthia Watros, the actresses who play them, were arrested in December for DUI. "The truth is that we had this plan for Ana Lucia last year when Michelle met with us. She was, like, 'I want to do the show for one year,' so we put this plan in motion independent of her getting a DUI," says Cuse. "And the Libby thing was just a sort of twist that we felt elevated the scene to another level." Still, the actors know they're vulnerable—in an early version of the pilot, the producers had planned to kill Jack and changed their minds only when Stephen McPherson, now the president of ABC Entertainment, talked them out of it. Do the actors worry about their fates? "Sure, I'll be out of a good job," says O'Quinn. "I don't think there's any person on this show who is not expendable. If I said they didn't have the nerve to kill me, I'd be some kind of fool, wouldn't I?"

Forget about Locke or Jack or Ana Lucia—the really big question is, how will "Lost" end? Will we ever learn the secret to the island? The hatches. The numbers. The Dutch company that apparently ran a psychiatric experiment on the island 25 years earlier. The chance meetings so many characters had before the crash. Will all the pieces of the puzzle fit, or will "Lost" fall apart under the weight of its own mythology, like "Twin Peaks"? If the producers have their way, you'll get answers in the next three or four years, before the story lines and mysteries spin out of control. "This story is meant to end—people want to see the final chapter," says Cuse.

But in the meantime, they warn fans not to try to connect every plotlet. For instance, it was actor Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje's idea, not the writers', for Eko to write Scripture on his stick, so those entries probably aren't very significant. Ditto for some of the flashback crossovers. Some are clearly important, such as Jack's dad's relationship with Ana Lucia. But others—like the time Kate's mom waited on Sawyer in a diner—are merely a wink at the audience. "We never promised that there would be a unified-field theory of 'Lost'," says Damon Lindelof, who created the show with J. J. Abrams ("Alias," "M:i:III"). "You'll get many small answers along the way, and ultimately you will understand this island, but all those answers might not necessarily be reduced to a simple one-sentence explanation." Until then, all you conspiracy theorists—just enjoy the trip, and get lost.

 

[Dback Jon]

Questions answered:

What happened to Michael after he ran off after Walt? Why is he now killing people? Michael was captured by the Others that live in yurts and have a heavily guarded hatch. He spent a week there being questioned then they released him to orchestrate the release of Henry Gale and to bring back Jack, Kate, Hurley and Sawyer in return for Walt's freedom.

Was Michael's story about the primitive others and their hatch true? Partially - he probably believes that is how they live, but he knows he is bringing the four Losties back to a trap.

 

[Dback Jon]

New questions added under Michael:

Why were Jack, Kate, Sawyer, and Hurley on "the list"?

Why did the Others take Michael's blood?


Expanded/New questions under Walt:

Where is Walt? We know he is with Miss Klugh, but don't know exactly where they are holding him.


Why did Walt appear soaking wet and speak in reverse? Is this related to Ms. Klugh's question about Walt appearing where he doesn't belong?

What sort of tests did Ms. Klugh and her gang have Walt perform?

 

[Dback Jon]

From the preview - something just offshore....

A sailboat!

 

[Mike Olbinski]

A sailboat!

Which most think has Desmond on it!

 

[Dback Jon]

Which most think has Desmond on it!

Brutha!

Did he make a run for his old boat? Is he coming for Jack, or is he sick, etc?

 

[D-Dogg]

Brutha!

Did he make a run for his old boat? Is he coming for Jack, or is he sick, etc?

I think brutha was trying to leave the island, but the island doesn't let you leave, brutha. Just like the raft took them back to the island, I think Desmond's boat, brutha, was brought back to shore brutha.

Desmond's going to be pissed, brutha.


BTW, on the preview did you guys slow it down and view frame by frame? Some awesome stuff coming next week. Eko will see the blast door map I think, John tries to kill the computer, they see all the pnuematic tubes landing area, lots of "run through the jungle" and some good fighting.

 

[Pariah]

Pfft. People are still watching this show?
























j/k...Lost is like crack for me. I can't wait for my next score.

 

[Mike Olbinski]

I think brutha was trying to leave the island, but the island doesn't let you leave, brutha. Just like the raft took them back to the island, I think Desmond's boat, brutha, was brought back to shore brutha.

Desmond's going to be pissed, brutha.


BTW, on the preview did you guys slow it down and view frame by frame? Some awesome stuff coming next week. Eko will see the blast door map I think, John tries to kill the computer, they see all the pnuematic tubes landing area, lots of "run through the jungle" and some good fighting.

You are killing me here!

 

[Jersey Girl]

Lost is like crack for me. I can't wait for my next score.

I hear ya, brutha!

Interesting article. So I guess we'd rate the likelihood of someone dying tonight rather high, yes?

 

[abomb]

I hear ya, brutha!

Interesting article. So I guess we'd rate the likelihood of someone dying tonight rather high, yes?

Yes brutha! I am expecting some good stuff tonight.