Lost in Thought (Wordplay is fun!)

I wanna sit and breakdown Lost, while it's still fresh in my head.

Originally, I really did think the Island was Purgatory. I thought that was the Big Twist all along. I had this whole idea that the Others were people who refused to move on, that the Dharma Initiative was a bunch of living people who had found their way in and were mucking with it. The theory started to fall apart a bit, as more interaction with the outside world began to take place, and I could never reconcile the concept I had that "dying" on the Island meant you were moving on with the concept that the Others were people who refused to do so.

Really, even as I write it, the idea still seems pretty valid. The Island was Purgatory, and they were all dead all along. I dunno. Maybe, maybe not. It really tosses up into the air the idea of where people went when they left. I don't think I like the idea of it being Purgatory. I think I like the idea of it being a mystery better.

It's an Island. And on this Island, there's this energy. Maybe the energy is natural, maybe the energy is created by that artifact at the heart of the Island, maybe the energy is natural and the artifact tempers it in some way. I don't know what the power might be, but it was ancient and respected and protected by people forgotten since time forgotten for reasons forgotten. That statue, before it was broken, was an Egyptian goddess of fertility, as I hear it. I've also heard it was originally supposed to be a Gibborrim. Either way lends credit to the idea that the Island is a source of holy energy, maybe life energy.

And people come and maybe go from the Island, and there's this woman protecting and watching over the Island, who knows how long she's been there. One day some other woman washes up on the Island, and this other woman has kids, and the first woman kills her and raises the kids, but never bothers to give one of them a name. What a bitch. She rigs it so they can't hurt each other, but she does that wrong. And the one kid without a name runs off and joins some people looking to fuck with the Island's energies, and for some reason the woman protecting the Island isn't really doing everything she should to stop them. When she does, it gets her killed, which pisses off the named son, Jacob, and on his first day on the job protecting the Island, he REALLY fucks up, and puts it in greater danger than ever. He creates a force of darkness and death and selfishness. Smokey. I prefer calling him Isaac.

Isaac and Jacob end up in their little feud, Jacob using his gifts to protect the Island and keep Isaac imprisoned there, while Isaac works to find some way off it. A bad idea, since he's evil as fuck. I don't think he's even Jacob's brother at this point, I think he just wears his face to piss Jacob off. Jacob, for his part, never recovers from fucking things up in the first place, becomes a total recluse in how he deals with protecting the Island, and begins working with intermediaries to manipulate people into protecting it for him. One such intermediary is Alpert. One such mortal guardian is a descendant of one bloodline tied by destiny to the Island, Whitmore.

Meanwhile, the descendant of another bloodline tied to the island, Hanzo, starts funding this Dharma Initiative - silly hippy scum - to track down the Island and find some way to use its energies. Some manipulations on the part of Isaac, combined with Jacob's inattentiveness, puts a Dharma kid named Ben in charge, but without Jacob's guidance, and Dharma ends up largely abandoning the Island. Dharma's experiments are not shut down before Dharma and a group of time travelers really fuck things up, however.

An incident involving the Island's energies, a nuclear weapon, time travel, and a healthy dose of what must be destiny (or Jacob's unseen hand, which might be the same thing, in this case) results in an accident that would, years later, result in another accident that brings a plane full of people Jacob has interest in crashing down on the Island. Jacob's looking for someone to take his job, should the need arise.

A few dozen wacky misadventures later, a few of these people escape the Island, but they super regret it, and end up finding their way back. And through all this, I think Jacob is preventing women on the Island from having kids. Or at least he's doing that after Dharma folds, but before his replacements show up. Still, considering what happened to him, his brother, and his mother, it would make sense he'd put a cap on reproduction, as he's clearly unstable to begin with.

So then some more shit goes down. A final battle takes place, and Isaac is, in the end, killed. The evil is stopped from being unleashed on the world. But Jack, the big hero of the whole damned thing, dies in the process, and there ends up being a happy reunion in what is either Purgatory, a the equivalent as manufactured by the people united by the Island. And they all meet up at last and move on.

Six years I watched this, and the one big thing I carry away from it (would be two big things, if I wasn't already such a fan of the concept of destiny) is this:

I am not ready to die. Like, I'm still as fine with the idea and possibility of it as I was a week ago. But I'm not as accepting of it, suddenly. Suddenly, I feel like there is something I want to do before I die. I'm have no more or fewer regrets than I did a week ago (three, for those keeping score), but I'm suddenly realizing that, if I died right now, that number, in my final moments, would jump right the fuck up there.

Plus, I've always really expected that I'm gonna end up dying alone. Suddenly, I don't want that, either.