Відео

Yes, that's correct. I didn’t have recording equipment back when the older videos were made so I used a text-to-speech voice. But as the channel grew, so too did the calls for me to get a mic and use my real voice. So, I did just that and remade all of the old videos using my own voice and better quality footage from the show, adding more detail and information as well. The Theory of Everything six-part series contains everything that was touched upon in those earlier, shorter videos.

Love it man! I think your voice fits really well with the vids, so I was a bit disappointed when I went back and noticed that ahaha

Have you got a discord at all?

I don’t have a Discord, mainly because I have no idea how to use the platform lol!

Whelp, question two was answered shortly after i wrote this comment. I appreciate how thorough you are!

Yes, I always try to anticipate the questions that will be kicked up from certain explanations ahead of time then try to integrate them into the videos, so people can track the logic behind the explanation. I'm glad these are hitting the spot for you!

That's very kind of you to say. Thank you! 🙏

Yes, this is the higher quality version. Definitely watch this. The Theory of Everything parts 1-6 contain all of the information presented in the older videos (plus a lot more). Basically, anything made from the video about the pregnancy crisis onwards uses my own voice and better quality footage from the show. This is a great place to start!

@LOSTEXPLAINED108 Thanks for the clarification! I just finished the series a couple of days ago for the first time, and am really looking forward to learning more about the stuff that confused me!

I cover almost every major question raised by the series and explore the mythology in depth, so hopefully you will find these videos useful and complimentary to the show. Let me know how you get on 🙏

​@LOSTEXPLAINED108 Thanks! This video has already provided a lot of clarity. I had felt like the heart and light of the island were very confusing, and not set up well, so I am glad this video has helped me better understand it ans the protector.

I am so pleased that someone noticed that haha!

They viewed the smoke monster as a separate entity to whatever forms the Man in Black took, just as we did for most of the show until we learned that the smoke monster and many of the ghostly apparitions of people were one in the same.

They always knew that Jack would survive until the last scene and the show would end with his death. I think they also always planned for Locke to eventually meet his demise and that to be the turning point in the show. But as for other characters who died and those who survived to the end, it was mostly down to what the writers felt worked best for the story/audience at the time. If we were to break down the logic behind those final choices... Jin and Sun's deaths were designed to help contextualise just how dangerous the Man in Black was to the group and to give us extra reason to hate him as the arch villain. We needed a tragic set of main characters deaths to help do that. I think Kate couldn't die because Jack's final fate was never in doubt, so the woman he loved had to live on so he could have a victory/comfort in his final moments. Whereas Sawyer and Hurley were both too wildly popular to kill off -- I think they knew that killing off the fan favourites would have left a bitter aftertaste. However, we could tinker with the show in our heads to come up with an alternative set of survivors. Example: Sawyer dies in the finale in a moment that redeems his actions on the submarine, while Jin survives the sub to go back to raise Ji Yeon.

Sounds like an awesome environment to rewatch the show in!

I would suggest one of two possibilities: 1. Literal infection. The spring was tainted with smoke monster juju. Basically, now Jacob was dead, the Man in Black could pollute his sacred spaces by spreading pieces of himself in the water. While Sayid wasn’t a smoke monster manifestation, Dogen believed he was still infected with this smoke monster essence in some way, making him easily influenced by MiB. Dogen never explains how he has come to this determination/diagnosis but it’s possible that the electroshock part of the test that he administers wasn’t actually set to a very high charge and, had a person without any infection been strapped down and shocked, it would have barely registered as pain at all. But the smoke monster is more sensitive to electromagnetic fields and sonic frequencies, therefore those he has tarnished with his essence will be more sensitive too. Dogen sees the amount of pain it causes Sayid, when really it should be nothing more than a static tickle. 2. Metaphorical infection. If you view the infection as being less literal then Dogen was left unsatisfied by the test results. Because while they confirmed that Sayid wasn’t a smoke monster manifestation, it did not answer the main question: how did Sayid come back to life? The waters of the temple are tainted. They shouldn’t work anymore. The Temple Others have never seen someone come back from the dead like this before who wasn’t in some way connected to the Man in Black. But Dogen has a very muddled view on the infection. He believes it is incurable. However, we later see that it can be resisted and reversed, purely through a person’s own will, perhaps helped by connecting with emotional ties to their humanity - Claire making peace with Kate, Sayid being reminded of his past love by Desmond, etc. MiB’s infection could be simply viewed as him manipulating and deceiving people into darkness. I like both of these interpretations, maybe it’s possible to blend them together into a hybrid answer. MiB infects the spring literally, which can enter a person’s wounds, but his hold over people is not unbreakable. Like most viruses, it can be treated and cured.

Yes, it’s interesting. I only really started to come across “Kate hate” in the postscript of the series. You are far more likely to encounter it now on Reddit and Facebook (and in a few comments under this very video!). But by no means do I think it is a majority held opinion.

@@LOSTEXPLAINED108 Interesting, I am getting back into this. I think I will do a rewatch and see what the Reddit commotion is about haha. thanks!

Thank you! I'm sort-of doing that now with the Episode Guide, going through it one episode at a time and pointing out all of the foreshadowing and connections, plus highlighting the questions and mysteries that were answered in some way. Only a few episodes into the show so far but you can check them out here: ua-cam.com/play/PL5iTj9psbPrNFZaiwhulGTzxdWG5qSeEe.html

I don't even know what Coursera is lol.

Wow, that is a very long message! I will do my best to address the points you have raised as succinctly as I possibly can, but it's a lot! So, I must break it into several parts again. PART 1 - The Mechanics of Fate You are asking me for the specific mechanics as to how The Island interferes with objects, such as with Claire’s pen in that adoption signing scene. This question is fair to ask yet weirdly pedantic lol. It can be explained in a number of ways. One way is that it comes down to causality, which always works in The Island’s favour. Where a series of seemingly disconnected events lead to a fated outcome. I recommend watching a sequence from The Curious Case of Benjamin Button where it shows a string of seemingly unrelated happenstances that lead to an accident, which changes the course of a main character's life. The idea being that fate is like a conductor of everyday events, getting everything moving to its tune, and our lives unknowingly become part of one big opera. So, The Island doesn’t have to physically stop the pens because the causality that led to this moment at the adoption agency were working in harmony. The pens had their own journey to get to that moment, as did the lawyer and the adoptive parents. For example, perhaps those pens had been all inked out weeks before, left in a drawer, and the lawyer just happened to choose those pens for this particular meeting because he was harried that morning and didn't have time to check them. The Island has created a wave of causality in the world in various ways which brought all of these people and objects together in a perfect moment of synchronicity, in order to specifically influence Claire’s decision. And Claire's decision will have its own causal effect on existence. Everything is connected. Another example is with Locke’s kidney getting stolen by Cooper. It happens a decade before he crashes on The Island, which feeds into his life, his behaviours, and his choices going forward. Which in turn feed into the causality of other things around him. But it is primarily an event designed to save his life later on The Island after Ben shoots him and leaves him for dead in the DHARMA pit. In our real world we understand causality in which A eventually leads to Z, only in LOST there is a prime mover who got the ball rolling between A and B. There is a design to existence. Alternatively, we also see The Island seemingly prevent guns from firing and killing key people who still have destinies to fulfil, so you can either read that as also being part of the causal chain of existence (and those guns failing due to a mechanical flaw baked into their manufacturing that have finally failed at the right intended moment), or that The Island is actually exerting supernatural influence over those objects to not work. If you’re asking me about the specific physics behind that then it's no different to the Man in Black's telekinesis influencing materials to move based on his own will. The light is an elemental force made up of electromagnetism. How do superpowers work in any fiction? We can just use our imaginations and suspend our disbelief, like we do when we watch other sci-fi and fantasy stories consistently break the laws of physics. And LOST asked us to suspend our disbelief from pretty much the Pilot. None of these characters could have survived that plane crash. Yet we suspended our disbelief to accept the premise… or not, as the case may be. There are those that refuse to accept it even to this day and continue to insist they all died on impact, simply because they cannot get past the initial premise or any of the supernatural stuff that comes after. Regardless, I don’t think it actually matters to break down the internal logic of how fate works to the micro detail level for the average viewer to enjoy the story. You either accept that this is a world where smoke monsters and ghosts and time travel exists, or you don't. However, the question you raise off the back end of this particular issue is worth exploring further, at least in terms of furthering our understanding of how fate operates on the show. You actually already know the answer to your question as you articulated it in your message quite succinctly as “It all happened this way because it all happened this way.” Or you could simply phrase it the way it was phrased in the show: *"Whatever happened, happened."* I know you meant this as a complaint. That such circular logic is ultimately a cop-out. I have discussed these paradoxes in my videos, but I appreciate I spew out A LOT of information and it’s easy to miss or forget what was covered. Happy to re-cover it a little bit here again. So, why does The Island let any of these things happen if it is so all-powerful? I think that’s a fair distillation of your question there, yes? Why allow the MiB to become the smoke monster in the first place? Why allow any of it? Just keep The Island free of people and none of this would be an issue, bruh! Well, The Island is basically trapped within a self-perpetuating cycle just like Locke's compass, hence the compass being introduced to the story to help us understand the paradox at the heart of the lore. Linear time does not exist within The Light, right? The Light also demonstrates will too. It needs, it chooses, it uses, etc. So, if we put those things together, what could that mean? It could mean that The Light, aka The Island, knows what is to come. Sort-of like Desmond and Eloise. It is a slave to its own future because of the bootstrap paradox at the core of its history, which involves time travellers from 2004 who go back in time to various periods in history (stretching as far back to the Egyptian period) and create waves of causality. *Unbreakable* waves of causality. Which in turn dictate the next 2,000 years of history. Our Losties future fates become tied to Jacob and the Man in Black as a result. Necessitating the creation of that wheel in the past because it will be the catalyst for the time travel in 2004. That wheel only exists because of the Man in Black, and will only get completed by the Egyptians under the instructions of the MiB as a smoke monster. Which means The Island must ensure that a smoke monster is created, with a motivation to want to escape. Sure, creating these things -- a smoke monster, a wheel, a cork, etc -- lead to The Light being put at risk. But you have to zoom out to see the bigger, bigger picture. Because all of these things will also lead to Team Jack time travelling and stopping The Incident from destroying the world in 1977 then saving the world again in 2007. Risking existence and “allowing” these things to happen on The Island are what will ensure its eternal survival. The Light will stay on for as long as humanity exists. The night is needed to guarantee the dawn. So, The Island does what it must to ensure its own existence (and ours) continues; to guarantor the future. That is its main goal. To do that, it must have people come to its shores to play out these key conflicts across time. In the process of doing that, humanity has a chance to evolve and grow. I could go much deeper into this concept of The Island's fourth dimensional POV but it leads into a much larger existential discussion that goes deeper than I am willing to go in this already super-long response lol. To be continued...

PART 2 - What kind of show is this? You asked me: "Is this all absurdly deflating for a mystery show?" Well, I think therein lies the disconnect between your analysis and my analysis. LOST *wasn’t just* a mystery show, and I think it is a mistake to make that the sole identifying genre. Like trying to put a square peg into a round hole -- of course it won't fit properly! LOST started as a survival adventure drama with cool supernatural mystery elements. It wasn't a mystery series like True Detective, where the mystery must conform to certain genre expectations, as there are with the whodunnit formula that promises we will find out who dunnit before the end. By Season Two, LOST evolved into a science-fiction show with an emerging, complex mythology. The story was rooted in themes that wrestle with destiny vs free will, good vs evil, life and death, and all of the existential questions that come with such ideas. It wasn’t just a mystery show that needed to be solved like a case-of-the-week in Murder She Wrote. It was a hybrid of genres, something new that no one had exactly seen before. And the series did actually give us an answer as to *how* destiny works, and *why* these people are important. Season Five introduces the time loop, which anyone familiar with the nature of stories about bootstrap paradoxes can tell you that they always come down to “whatever happened, happened.” The future influences the past to happen and creates a loop that cannot be broken - The Terminator is a classic example. John Connor is only conceived because Skynet rises in the future and goes to war with humanity. This creates the human resistance, which Kyle Reese joins and meets its leader, John Connor. Reese gets sent back in time to protect John's mother Sarah Connor, falls in love and sleeps with her, and creates John Connor, while Skynet sending a Terminator back in time is what creates the technological link to its own birth. Rinse, repeat. It's a closed loop... until T2 messes that up anyway. Same principle is true in LOST. This is a classic tenet of sci-fi. It is literally articulated in the show’s lexicon too. It’s part of the very fabric of the storytelling. Whatever happened, happened produces "destiny" because events in the past dictate the causality of the future, including the time travellers and their choices to come. “Destiny” is just another word used to describe fate, or predestination. The idea that something is guiding people and events to predetermined outcomes. The show gives us a legit sci-fi explanation for it all. And the word destiny is mentioned way back in Season One Episode Four, by a character who finds his broken spine healed after crashing on a magical island. Then one episode later he is telling our lead character, Jack, that everything that happened to them is happening for a reason. The weight and portent given to these moments is significant enough to tell the audience where this is headed. I knew, even back then in 2004/05, that the show was going to lean into these themes and concepts. So, no. It’s not deflating at all for "whatever happened, happened" to be an answer to the riddle. It's not only part of the genre, and was set-up from the beginning, but also because one of the biggest mysteries of the show was “why these people?” and “what is their purpose/destiny in this place?”, ergo “why did this all happen?”, and the show answers that in great detail, dedicating the entire fifth season to exploring it. Saying “The Island did it” is not the same as saying “God did it” because we don’t have any context for why a theoretical God does things in our real world other than “mysterious ways” or “it’s all a test”, etc. You can imply the existence of a God and give context to how that God's influence works within a story, e.g. M Night Shyamalan's alien invasion thriller Signs comes to mind, although that was similarly divisive! Anyway, the difference with LOST is that *we do* have this context. A whole history of it. What you are boiling it down to -- "The Island did it because The Island did it" -- works in the abstract to an extent but is ultimately a vast simplification. In the show, it goes deeper than that. As someone who has studied philosophy, surely you can appreciate that LOST was tackling really complicated philosophical and existential concepts at a time when almost no mainstream TV shows were? I mean, you won’t be having these kinds of conversations after finishing Murder She Wrote or CSI: Miami. LOST asked us to really debate, consider and grapple with complicated concepts and themes. Whether they successfully executed those concepts and themes is in the eye of the beholder, but there was certainly more consideration, nuance and exploration of those things than a "God did it" reveal, which is funnily enough how Battlestar Galactica chose to end with a similarly divisive finale! The vague intentions and powers of the God in the Battlestar universe was far more unsatisfying and nebulous than The Island in LOST. To be continued...

PART 3 - What was the point? Final part now! Phew. My fingers are bleeding ha! Locke’s journey is a cautionary tale about faith but it stands in stark contrast to Jack’s journey and rebirth as a man of faith in several ways. The main one being: they are totally different characters! In Season Five, Jack actually tries to be like Locke, making assumptions about his destiny which cause him to act impulsively. And he pays the price for that by leading his friends into a plan that fails and loses Juliet in the process (and Sayid to an extent). Season Six then sees him wrestling with how to navigate his new belief system and reconciling it with who he was and wants to be. Jack’s whole arc is ultimately about letting go, which we see him do. He relinquishes his obsessive need to control events and people. He doesn’t assume that every moment is about him or about what he needs and wants, which is a crucial mistake Locke made. And Jack makes better choices than Locke did. Rather than following known liars like Ben or being deceived by the MiB, Jack follows Hurley instead. He makes better choices. And that is the difference. Jack validates Locke in 'The End' because Locke *was* right in all of his assertions about The Island and fate, as far as Jack knew anyway (he didn’t hear everything Locke ever claimed nor witnessed every Locke-centric moment as we did). Basically, Locke deserved his due for telling everyone (including us) from the start of the show that this was all happening for a reason and they had been brought to The Island by fate to do something important. Locke was right in his beliefs, he just made poor choices in the name of those beliefs. You can be right in your thinking but go about expressing it in wrong, self-destructive ways. Jack doesn’t “confront” Jacob because he doesn't view Jacob as having wronged him by this point. He has accepted his role in the tapestry of time (as I call it). Anyway, Kate and Sawyer do the interrogating for him. Okay, they don’t lay into Jacob in the way that you wanted them to, but just because the show doesn’t satisfy your own personal beef against this island deity is not an inherent fault of the show. I know you are not alone thought; a lot of people hate Jacob and see him as the real bad guy of the series. But I personally never viewed Jacob as needing to be scolded. His biggest crime was being naïve, but he was hamstrung by fate just like everyone else, and he did what he had to do to make sure he played his part in saving the world. Going back to an old conversation of ours, even demi-gods are fallible. There is no purely good or purely bad people in LOST, only complicated, messed up humans trying to sort through their issues to varying degrees of success, constantly wrestling with problems from their pasts. Jacob was no different. If we can forgive Ben for his numerous horrible crimes then we can forgive Jacob. If you boil down elements that were presented with nuance and complexity to reductive simplifications then of course it will sound silly or poorly realised. LOST isn’t saying everything that happened to these people was “good”. The awful stuff: the death, the violence, the torture, the loss, the grief, the tragedy, etc, is never labelled as "good". I think I’ve already said this in another thread to you. What the messaging of LOST comes down to saying is that there was *a purpose and meaning* in everything that happened. Even the suffering was part of larger design. That doesn't make it "good". It just gives meaning to the suffering. This idea is articulated in the Season One finale BTW. Locke says as much to Jack about how Boone's death was a sacrifice The Island demanded in order to set off a chain reaction of events, which we later find out saved the entire world. That’s not the same as distorting it down to: “let’s all be dead together because that’s good for The Island” lol. Although I appreciate your commitment to your position there! I’m glad that these videos have managed to do something (presumably) positive for you in terms of how you view the show. Or maybe they have simply helped you to make peace with the fact that you didn’t like it! My suggestion going forward would be that you take everything from these videos and our conversations and, if you are so inclined, I think you should rewatch the series. I don’t know when you last saw it but I often find that people who go back to it after a long time away (knowing where it goes) are more likely to appreciate how much it gets right, and how cohesive it is when watched through on a binge setting. I would wager that you will enjoy it a lot more. Although I appreciate it's a lot of episodes! The fact that you love the final season of GoT and its series finale in general, when that has had even more blowback than LOST ever got, is actually a good thing. Because it means you make up your own mind rather than going with whatever the consensus is saying, and it also means that you can empathise about loving something that is considered divisive and gets a lot of hate. GoT's ending is more hated than LOST if we are going by the aggregates. At least a lot of people like me loved how LOST ended. I don't see any passionate defences out there for 'The Iron Throne' or those last two seasons. (I myself didn't mind the final run of the show, I just think it needed more room for the plot points to breathe with an extra season' or two's worth of build-up. I think the writers were hamstrung by actor contracts ending). The point of circling back to your brief mention of this is that GoT also followed the whole “there is a god controlling all of these events” with prophecies that were foretold that we see come true throughout, which indicates the whole show is essentially part of a predetermined universe. Even the Hodor -- hold the door -- stuff is a riff on the same time travel loop logic that LOST plays with. I don’t know if you hold that show’s feet to the fire over those aspects as well, or if you are more forgiving of them for whatever reasons. But I was amazed how much the latter seasons of GoT seemed influenced by LOST (especially once they began to depart from the books). As for your final question... How different would the show have been with lesser episodes? I don’t think the first three seasons would have existed the way that they did. Everything would have happened faster. A lot of meandering would have been cut out, but that also means we would have spent less time with the characters overall. I think we would have gotten The Others and DHARMA no matter what, and I think the time travel would have been worked in. It could have looked like this: Season One would have essentially combined itself with Season Two. Maybe fewer main characters. They crash, try to survive, find the hatch, discover DHARMA history and the button, The Others enter the story towards the end. Season Two would be the Oceanic camp fighting with The Others and discovering more stations/history. By the end of the season we would get the flashforward twist that they eventually get off the island. Season Three would do all of the “we have to go back” flashforward arcs mixed in with the time travelling stuff, effectively combining Seasons Four and Five. Season Four would be about them coming back to the island to help their friends and stop the smoke monster, and exploring the sideways. But it’s all impossible to say for sure because so much of where the show ended up was a result of how it began and what came first. One might say it was the result of unbreakable real world causality! What happened, happened. It was meant to be this way. I think what makes LOST special is the fact that *it is* imperfect and its charm lies in how the story evolved over time. Take that away - the exploratory nature of the storytelling - and it becomes any genre show that we see today. More cohesive and less divisive perhaps, but imminently forgettable. Think of all the LOST-like shows that have come and gone in the years since that tried to do what LOST did only with a supposedly clearer focus on answering mysteries definitively as they go along. Most of them were cancelled after one year and the shows that got a few seasons have been consigned to the dustbin of TV history. They all wanted to copy LOST and "improve" upon it. They all failed. Whereas you and I, and many others, are still debating about the merits and demerits of LOST twenty years after it first launched and fourteen years after it ended. That, to me, is a win.

@@LOSTEXPLAINED108 Thank you for your answer! I'm not going to respond to all of it, I just want to counter a few things that seem crucial to me: I heartily disagree that "whatever happened, happened" is the same as "it happened *because* it happened". The first explains that the past cannot be altered; it's a creative decision to establish a rule for a SciFi-adventure, and it doesn't really need a higher power or will to be at play beyond causality. For "whatever happened, happened" and time travel, I find it easy to suspend disbelief, if the story derived from it works and tells something interesting, as I thought and think Lost did in its fifth season: answering what the Incident was through time travel, and the Losties inadvertently causing their own problems, is a valid, interesting, in parts even brilliant mystery-resolution in my eyes. Of course from a perspective out of time, what's true for the past is true for the future, but to actually introduce that perspective, quasi-personified, into a story is a risky decision that requires outstanding finesse and better has a very good reason behind it, and I'm not sure that Lost proved the first or had the latter in its final season. Just like the show poses the question, "What was the Incident?", it poses questions such as, "Why were so many of the characters' lives 'coincidentally' intertwined before the crash?", "Why was Locke healed, but Ben wasn't?", "Why did the Island allow Claudia onto its shores, or Mother before that?", "Why did two pens happen to not work when Claire was about to sign the adoption papers?", etc etc. And the answers to some or even most of *those* and similar questions seems to be, "because the Island willed it". Aka, "because of destiny". Aka, "it happened because it happened". Which, well, you know: to an extent, of course things happen because they happen when simplified and boiled right down to it, in all stories and in real life. But to make it a plot point and a major draw to your story that weird things happen and that there's allegedly a reason for all of them - making viewers go, "Wow, I wonder how they're going to explain why it seems like there's fate at play here!" ... only to ultimately reveal that *fate was at play* here, and that the weird coincidences were weird coincidences except they were so "for a reason"/"because the Island wanted them to happen", which is to say, "they happened because they happened" ... that's what bothered me so. That's what made me dislike the finale at first sight (if not quite as much as the flash-sideways reveal did; to that I had such an immediate and total averse reaction, I honestly doubt I could ever overcome it even if I altered my mind about all the rest). That's why I don't like season six. Not any misunderstanding that they might have been dead the whole time (I have never met anyone who thought so), not any general dislike of fantasy (speculative fiction, both writing and reading it, is a huge part of my life), not a lack of brainpower or an inability to grapple with the concepts the show explores. They showed me all these strange fate-like contrivances, and told me they all happened for a reason and it would be explained (guess at the end of the day, I just shouldn't have read and watched interviews), and then they went ahead and "explained" it *with* fate, and by saying the strange things happened because they were supposed to. Yeah, well, no sh*t. As in philosophy - *moreso* than in philosophy, because this kind of philosophy will forever be speculation, whereas a story is written by someone who is responsible for the story - this kind of answer/thought only begs more and more questions, most prominently: why couldn't it have happened a different way? Which at least in the case of Lost is *not* pedantry! Because if the Light has a will and can influence things, it doesn't really make sense to me that it couldn't influence things to be different and more beneficial, i.e., nudge people away from it forever instead of, say, causing two pens to be dry at just the right moment. Why is the Source as much beholden to the timeline as our characters in some instances, but in other instances can magick useful weird coincidences into existence by appropriating causality? And if it's *always* beholden to the timeline, then it's neither a higher power nor a character (ie, a person whose struggles we can or cannot relate to), but simply existence unfolding - which I guess is what you're getting at, but how is that a proper answer or reveal? It's just the writers' intent inserting itself and masquerading as an in-universe contrivance. That's the kind of problem one runs into when one introduces such a vague, all-encompassing power - a conscious, will-equipped power according to your reading - into one's story. And I personally feel that it's not an elegant solution to say, "Well, the Island willed/wanted/needed it that way", because I *don't* see how that is inspiring or thought-provoking. Such self-referential, mystical, ultimate answers are rather more of a hindrance to thought-provoking exploration and debate, in my opinion. And yes, Lost bends genres, and genre-bending is great, no question. And Lost revolutionised TV, and opened up the way for many great things. And seasons 1 through 5 were/are amazing. I'm not denying any of that. On the contrary, all of that is why my dislike for season 6 stings even so many years later. I do think now that if they had tweaked a few lines of dialogue here and there, made a few more things a little more explicit (really explain, at least, why and how MiB's ability to transform was tied to Jacob being alive, whereas his other powers remain until the Light goes out ... I mean, how frickin convenient is that for the writers, right?), and others *less* explicit (the entire flash-sideways for example, if they really felt it necessary to include that plotline - have much less of them and leave it open whether they're an afterlife or a parallel life, or something) ... if some alterations were made, in short, then I think I would like the season more even in spite of "the answer to fate is fate". I think I might have considered it a well-done, stimulating, genre-blending mystery character drama adventure through to the end if, just for example, they had *discovered* the Heart, and wondered what it is, and later grappled with the decision to do something with it, and/or with the decision to kill the MiB (any single one of them could have seen themselves in him! they wanted off the Island *desperately* in the past!) ... or something. It all comes down to this: I just don't think the story of season 6 is well-told. I wonder how often I have to come to this realisation before I can finally LET GO and MOVE ON, hahaha. I rewatched the show last year, btw. Sadly, I couldn't enjoy the sixth season then. But yeah, part of me is coming around to it, if only because part of me very clearly still *wants* to. So thank you for posting your videos, and especially for engaging with my comments, and helping that process along! :) PS: By the way, in case you were wondering - and at the risk of being conceived of as nothing *but* unfair: there are stories that include destiny and such as a core aspect of their plot or mythology that I love very much. I don't think GoT or ASOIAF are good examples (for one because it's very debatable whether prophecies there are "actual" prophecies), but some of Stephen King's work comes to mind - especially The Dark Tower, which I think is brilliant and which of course seems to be one of many inspirations Lost drew from. I think it's really all in the way the story is told and the characters develop, and what is done with the concepts, what perspectives offered. Much of that hyper-theoretical discussion we're having, all of my apparent "nitpicking", is just dressing and play at the end of the day, I totally admit to that. We find that we can engage with a story, or we don't. And my opinion as of now is that Lost 6 did a bad job narratively, in plot progression and character development, which hinders my engagement and makes me extra (from your perspective perhaps: needlessly) critical of many details - which I tend to think is exactly what's happening to all those who so despise GoT's ending, too, and I absolutely don't blame them or think they're "wrong". And so, due to all that, I also *don't* actually think I'm being unfair or inconsistent or capricious or hypocriticial for loving, for example, Dark Tower but disliking Lost 6.

​@@SeamusLarren I'm not sure if I'm following you on some of this. Were you expecting an explanation for every single instance of fate demonstrated in the show? For example: that there would be a plot specific revelation about the pens in that scene from a Claire episode in Season One? Or were you just hoping for a unifying grand explanation that would make that moment (and others like it) have more context to them in retrospect? The way I look at it -- and how I believe the writers looked at it -- was that the story always had to maintain relevance to the characters and where they were at in any given season. The story was constantly wanting to move forward even when the network didn't want to let them and the characters wound up stuck in cages while an end date was negotiated behind the scenes. When it came to answering questions, they had to be relevant to the characters and the plot in terms of where they were in the arc of the narrative. By the time we were at time travel and Jacob vs MiB, there wasn't a lot of room to go back to explain every contrivance or connivance of fate. I think a lot of people brought unrealistic expectations to LOST, and those expectations were not always conducive to the story being told and its need to move forward. However, I don't discount all of those expectations. I think some criticisms of the show are very reasonable and fair game to call out. There were things I was let down by as well. Times when the writers messed up or dropped the ball or delivered an underwhelming answer to something, etc. With that said, I personally never expected that adoption signing moment to have its own specific explanation. The general abstract of fate guiding Claire to The Island was enough, which is the point of that scene. She isn't supposed to give Aaron up. She's supposed to give birth on The Island. We know what is happening in the moment when those pens don't work. Instinctively, we understood as an audience: "Ahh, it's fate!" Then we later find out *why* all of these people were brought to The Island; the reason for all these weird quirks of fate came down to nudging everyone along bit by bit. Who they are as people -- their experiences in their lives in the lead-up to The Island -- are all just as crucial as a pen not working or a fateful car accident or a stint in a mental institution. Those seeming coincidences serve a double purpose in getting characters to where they need to be physically, but also contributing to who they actually are and the choices that they make. Claire took the pens not working as a sign, which informed her choice, which played into The Island's design. The pen-thing doesn’t need a dissection in and of itself for us to understand what was happening there, although it’s fun to discuss the potential mechanics behind it! Your disambiguation between “whatever happened, happened” versus "it happened because it happened" feels like splitting hairs a tad. It is the same thing as far as I am concerned. The specific reason that our Losties from 2004 are on The Island is because of "whatever happened, happened", at least in the grand scheme. Because they go back in time from 2004 to become the instigators of foundational events in the timeline of the island across the centuries. Events that are part of historical record. Example: During the Egyptian period on the island, Team Sawyer suddenly "appear" in the past from a time jump. The rope Sawyer is holding (from when he lowered Locke into the well) is now stuck in the ground. Then they disappear again in a flash but leave the rope behind. The Egyptians find that rope in the ground and start to dig to find out where it leads. They discover one of the pockets they have been looking for. On instructions from the Man in Black, they build the wheel using his original design. This will eventually lead to DHARMA building The Orchid over this site a couple of thousand years later. Which leads to Ben pushing the wheel in 2004. Which leads Sawyer back in time. Which leads to him taking the rope through a time flash and getting it stuck in the ground. And thereby initiating this chain of events and perpetuating this causality into the future again. So, just spotlighting Sawyer as the focus here... because of this time flash event, everything that is going to happen in his life from childhood through to plane crash is predetermined before he is even born. Long before his great, great ancestors are even born. That's a lot of causality that needs to happen to get to Sawyer's birth. Then more causality shapes the man he needs to become. And he will need to become that very same man who appeared in the past timeline of The Island. Right down to the clothing he is wearing. And this is how destiny works in LOST. It is all predicated upon the time loop paradox. That is the answer, and we can apply it to all of the other characters too. The only reason that the world isn’t destroyed from the incident in 1977 is because our Oceanic time travellers come from the future to detonate Jughead. They stop the world from ending as a result. Their interactions with the timeline becomes baked into history and The Island’s fate (and indeed the world’s fate) becomes tied to these events too. This is all unchangeable causality and therefore The Island must ensure that everything happens the way that it does. It's the same thing we see happening on a micro scale with Eloise Hawking and what she does to her son Daniel Faraday; she raises him specifically to become the man who will travel back in time to be killed by her own hand. So, if these things don't happen (and The Island just sits it out as you suggest), it creates a paradox. And The Light will certainly go out without this loop sustaining it, and the world will end. It’s an ouroboros -- the snake eating its own tail. Hence Locke's compass being introduced to the show. That compass has no creation point nor a destruction point. It is not created by anyone, it just goes around and around this loop, sustaining its own existence and - by extension - the existence of all things. It’s a symbol for The Island, of "whatever happened, happened". As I said before, The Island, aka The Light, aka The Source, is a slave to itself in this way. So, I disagree that the answer is, as you put it, fate being the answer to fate. Because in this case fate has a prime mover and a purpose - a motivation, so to speak - to ensure particular events happen, and all of the contrivances in these people’s lives are the result of The Island’s causal effect on the world. But people are not automatons, they have feelings and thoughts of their own. They need to be nudged in the right directions to make the choices that will lead to salvation. I feel like I'm beating this drum into the ground now lol. I think you fundamentally disagree with this being a satisfying solution to the show's assertions of fate and destiny. I can only convey to you my experience that -- during my first watch of the series back in the day -- I never dreamed that the show would explain how fate works at all, let alone in such plot-relevant detail with all of the time travel shenanigans. That blew my mind. It took me a couple of rewatches to fully appreciate what the writers were doing there. Still, I respect your view on it all the same; that LOST didn't come together in a satisfying way. That's a fair reaction. It's a show that has provoked frustrations with many, and that cannot be denied. While I disagree with your particular read on a lot of these elements we have discussed, I recognise that you are not alone in those criticisms. If my videos and responses have not convinced you on the whole then at least we have had an interesting discussion in good faith, which is something I always appreciate and value, irrespective of whether or not anyone is swayed/convinced at the end. So thank you for being respectful whilst also challenging me and putting across your views so articulately. It keeps me sharp! 🙏

LOL, so does Ben!

@@LOSTEXPLAINED108 well yeah, but he’s a “bad guy”. I think Kate as a character is great. But she’s written to be flawed on purpose. Anyway, great analysis. Really liking your videos

I would actually disagree with the notion that the writers having a plan is irrelevant. Part of the fun of a mystery is the solution and being surprised at how the answer was there all along but it was well disguised, like famous twist endings in various iconic movies. Any mystery writer will tell you that the trick is for them to know where their story is going, but to keep the audience in the dark as to where the story is going. It's a balancing act. You need to have some idea of the answers to mysteries you are presenting because those mysteries are informing the direction of the plot itself. I agree that the charm of the show certainly lies more in its mysteries rather than in its answers, but it's still a fair question to ask of the LOST writersroom: were you making it up or was there a plan? And the showrunners have addressed this question many times throughout the show's run, always maintaining that they did have a road map for the mythology and overall story but their plans were changeable depending on the needs of the season. That's the point of this video really: to interrogate if their claims about planning things out hold up to scrutiny and to see if it's fair for critics to accuse them of not having a plan at all. For a long time, it's been a very binary argument between fans and detractors of the series and I wanted to make it clear in video-form exactly how the show came together, and why it's not a simple yes or no answer. Also, speaking to your other point, the show definitely *did* answer many of its questions, although there were notable ambiguities left over for us to discuss regarding certain core mythological elements. The idea that most questions were left unanswered is the real myth surrounding the series.

I recommend you watch the full six-part series here and see how you feel about the show in retrospect after digesting all of the information I present. I have converted many people who once felt like you did. It’s certainly an imperfect story but it got a lot right too, and there were many answers and clues given that unlock the deeper secrets of the series, more than some realise. If you still have even a cursory interest in the show and its mysteries then I hope these videos will appeal and be of use to you 🙏

@@LOSTEXPLAINED108 for sure, I am watching your series of videos, but you're curating the info, ignoring the wrong and explaining the inconsistencies as you see them. I think the main issue, other the the mystery box BS that JJ loves is that they were trying to to do too much, to make it both natural and supernatural and they bungled it.

As I said, it’s an imperfect narrative due to various factors. It was a 120+ episodes of story told by a revolving door of writers across six years on network television. There is going to be inconsistencies and issues there. The goal of these videos is to be able to take what the writers did (particularly with the last three seasons and the answers they settled on) and to use that as the decoder ring for the rest of it. That is what their final intentions were so that’s how I explain the show. That’s not to say everything was planned from the start, we know it wasn’t. There were many ideas that were retconned or changed later on. I’ve actually made a two-part video all about the “making it up” aspect of how the show was written that interrogates a lot of these common criticisms. However, there is a remarkable amount of the lore that does add up, but it’s easy to miss or overlook it without watching the show more than once. So much plot and mythology is thrown at us over six seasons. A lot of my videos draw from established narrative facts. I never simply make up my own headcanon without it having a root and basis in something said or seen in the show. That’s a really important distinction to make. Sometimes I use in-show exposition, other times I use deductive logic and connect plot points that might be seasons apart, but always using the text of the show first and foremost. The Theory of Everything videos are here to demonstrate that the show and its mythology adds up to more than its reputation would suggest. As for JJ Abrams, his name gets invoked a lot with LOST because of his co-creator credit. However, beyond co-writing and directing the Pilot, his involvement with the show was in name only. Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse were in charge of the story going forward. Abrams was not part of that process as he went on to make movies and focus on a film career. So, the show may have started off as a mystery box formula generated from Abrams’s initial ideas, but the writers very quickly had to plan out the mythology of the series without him, and they developed their ideas in more depth between Season One and Two.

@@LOSTEXPLAINED108 exactly, it was finished by people who didn't start it, it's very hard to finish someone's else's murder mystery

Damon Lindelof was there from the conception stage through to the very end, so he was shepherding the whole story from start to finish. He literally co-created the show with Abrams, while Carlton Cuse joined the show as a co-showrunner halfway through Season One.

But his involvement in LOST didn’t really go beyond the Pilot. He wasn’t the brains behind the show. The guys who were responsible for building the story and mythology were Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse. So, if you didn’t like where LOST went then you should pin it on their leadership. Abrams was essentially just a cheerleader for the show going forward. I think LOST had some really great answers to mysteries, many of which are delivered in an indirect way, and can be easy to miss, such as why pregnant women were dying for example. It is never articulated directly but the show answers the question by showing us that babies were being born up to and before the incident, then makes us feel smart for putting it together. To me, that’s clever writing. It’s not always going to be immediately obvious to the casual viewer, which is why some people missed many of the answers given. That’s a Lindelof way of telling stories, not an Abrams way. But I agree that Abrams’s mystery box method tends to create messy, unsatisfying narratives.

I didn’t have recording equipment back when these were made so had to use a text-to-speech voice. But I did remake all of the old videos using my real voice (which I’ve been using for two years now). You can find the updated, revoiced version of this video split into six parts with more detail and TLC here: LOST EXPLAINED - The Theory of Everything ua-cam.com/play/PL5iTj9psbPrNovFOg4pJJIyxiLAv2WAKB.html

Thank you for the very high praise! I'm extremely flattered 🙏🏻

@@LOSTEXPLAINED108 🫶🏻

Keep watching. There are six videos in this series that cover most of the questions in crazy detail.

I will concede that I have a blind spot when it comes to whatever Character terry o Quinn is playing. So from ny obviously right (tongue in cheek) point of view Kate was nasty to john and pushed him over the edge to kill himself -checkmark in Kate sux category, and Kate "i saved a bullet for you" she then killed the MIB who was the true heir ti the island (I'm special) and the righteous original "good guy" as he slayed the original evil (mother) and just wanted to go home. Jacob took up the cause of mother so since Jacob took up the cause of evil he is evil (he kidnaps people and sentences them to certain death on an island) and anyone who supports team Jacob is a trash POS bad guy. Much love for the discourse