Remember That Time On LOST When: Jack Decided To Detonate the Hydrogen Bomb?
[Remember That Time On LOST is a daily post running the entire month up until the season premiere of LOST on February 2nd. I’m going to just pick something awesome, noteworthy, or ludicrous about LOST when I wake up that morning, and hopefully get you geeks talking about it with me.]
At the end of Season Five, Jack Shephard decides that the best course of action in righting the misery of everyone on the Island is to detonate a nuclear bomb. It seems like an innovative, and creative way to advert suffering. How many people contemplate atomic vaporization as a salve to their ailments?
Jack Shephard, that’s who.
It seems a bit risky even pontificating at this point regarding what exactly happens at the end of Season Five, since the season premiere has inevitably leaked and people actually know. It seems like predicting the Red Coats to take the Rebels in the American Revolution after George Washington is already rocking out as the president.
But whatever, what can you do.
The idea is simple:
Dharma unleashes a pocket of eletctromagnetism-stuff sometime in 1977, and the result is the building of the Hatch, the failure of Desmond to push the buttons in the Hatch to disperse the energy, and Oceanic 815 crashing onto the Island. To prevent this, Jack decides he’s going to tell everyone to stop drilling, and that they’re treading on dangerous ground. Just like Faraday convinces Pierre Chang that he is from the future and has important shit in his head and should be listened to, Jack is like “Listen up, I have to tell you guys something serious, you’re all about to done fuck shit up.”
Oh wait, that would make sense.
So instead, Jack decides the only way to prevent all of this awful shit from happening is to detonate a hydrogen bomb near the pocket of energy, destroying it, and preventing them from ever unleashing the unstable energy source, and uh stuff. It’s a lot less subtle than the plan I proposed, but it’s epic as fuck and it excites us all a lot more.
The idea comes from a conversation that Jack has with Faraday. After blathering for an entire fucking season that the past is the past, and nothing can be changed, Faraday eventually comes across a brilliant realization: people are variables! I have to admit, that this is one of the few times during Season Five where I actively groaned internally. The entire speech came off like a an enormous diarrhea-barf of existential verbiage. As both a furious masturbator of existential philosophy, and fan of the erratic nature of human nature, it wasn’t the concept that bothered it.
It was how it was injected into the middle of a season where all we were told is whatever happened, happens.
Faraday: We’re like, people man. They’re the rogue elements, who like, do stuff, who are unpredictable. I read Dostoyevsky man, I know about shit!
I’m done complaining. I promise. I’m all for alternate realities, splitting from destined paths, and everything like that. I actually like the idea, which makes the last fourteen sentences irrelevant. Moving on.
What I want to happen:
So Jack has the idea that he can prevent the future from happening, acting as a variable in past events. What I’d like to happen is for this ideal to fail, and the show continues on the idea that the members of the Island are, in fact, the sources of their own misery. It would seem poetic that Jack is on the Island because his desire to detonate a nuclear bomb unleashed the pocket of energy which then had to be contained and dispersed every twenty-eight minutes or whatever.
However, that would result in half the cast dying, and we know that isn’t going to happen. Unless Jack has some sort of biotic barrier that prevent nuclear blasts from wiping him and the rest of the Island out, my theory isn’t going to happen.
What probably happened:
Reboot! Somehow, to some effect, Jack is correct. Their detonation of the bomb results in…something? Yeah, I guess I actually have no idea. There’s a lot of destiny being flung around like tits at Mardi Gras throughout the show. And I have to believe that all of these characters were called to the Island, by Jacob, for a reason. And even if they skirted being brought down on Oceanic 815, they’re going to be dragged their somehow. Eventually.
As well, I wouldn’t be surprised if the opening episode, titled LA X, starts with them at the crash of the plane. Maybe it isn’t Oceanic 815, but it’s them, crashed on the Island, again. They’re there for a reason, and they have to accomplish it. Jacob spits something like a circular notion at the end of Season 5, stating “It only ends once. Everything before that is progress.”
What if Oceanic 815 has been called to the Island over, and over, and over again? Groundhog’s Day type shit! Who the hell knows.
Jack’s bomb, did it solve anything, or did it just blow their crazy asses up?
Two days.