bones weep tedium Wrote:What if the programme's flashback gimmick is more than just a narrative techique? What if it was part of the unifying theory behind the Island?
During Season 1 I always assumed the flashbacks were just a cool way of describing the character's past before the crash. It was a cheap way of making the narrative a little bit non-linear in a trendy Pulp Fiction kinda way, and it helped to create a brand identity for the series.
But following the Incident in The Swan when Desmond used the failsafe, Desmond's conciousness travels through time. The programme's flashback narrative structure remains the same, it's just that Desmond is aware of it. Obvioulsy the fail-safe incident has altered Desmond somehow, but what if the alteration isnt that Desmond can travel through time, but that the alteration is that Desmond is aware of it. All the other characters travel through time too, they just don't realise it.
The following post contains SPOILERS for both LOST: VIA DOMUS (video game) and Stephen King's THE DARK TOWER series of novels. Please press CTRL+A to highlight the text if you wish to read it.
[COLOR="White"]At the end of the Via Domus game the protagonist takes the Others' boat (the same one that Michael used) and leaves the Island. However once at sea he witnesses a plane crash . . . and then he wakes up on the beach again, right back at the beginning. This time around his girlfriend is amongst the survivors. In flashbacks during the game, we saw the protagonist betray his girlfriend, and we saw her being murdered becasue of it.
This massive RESET button style ending is very similar to the ending of the Dark Tower series, where Roland is forced to repeat his quest time and time again until he gets it right. The writers have stated in the past that Stephen King is a major influence over their work, and JJ Abrams recently bought the rights to film The Dark Tower. There are numerous suggested references to The Dark Tower throughout Lost, so it isnt unreasonable to make this connection. I don't know how much significance can be taken from the ending of te video game, as the show's writers were quite dismissive of it in their podcast the other day.
But it does seem to be connected to what I mentioned in my last post about the way the flachbacks might work. [/COLOR]