I didn't see all of the shows last year, so I am not up to speed on all of the backgrounds. My theory, therefore, may be way off base.
All I kept thinking was that possibly each person's fear or insecurity was somehow being manifested on/by the island.
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. ... The piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.
~ Howard Phillips Lovecraft