Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Alternate Universes on LOST

I knew it! I said in an earlier post that I thought Juliet would both succeed and NOT succeed in blowing up the island attempting to reset the timeline, so we would have two alternate universes. I was right....

But it was clear from last night's episode that the "reset" universe was not exactly the same as the original from season 1. The internet is already full of postings about the differences, but the most obvious one is: no Shannon. (Also no Michael and Walt, but they could just have been out of camera range. And what was Desmond doing there??? Was he even really there?)

Anyway, it occurred to me today that the title of the episode is LA X, not LAX. (Cuse and Lindelof confirmed that that is significant, not a typo, on Kimmel last night.) So I'm theorizing that there are many alternate universes, or at least 10, with LA X meaning LA 10. In universe 10, Juliet succeeds in detonating the bomb in 1977, leaving the remnants of the island under the ocean, allowing Jack et al to land safely in 2004. This is different from the original universe in which Oceanic 815 never crashes, and the island remains undisturbed (LA I?). It is different yet from the universe we've been watching in seasons 1 - 5, in which Juliet fails to explode the bomb and our heroes remain (albeit somehow transferred back to 2007; LA II?).

In season 6, we will be watching universe 10, LA X, and also the familiar universe from seasons 1 - 5, LA II . Want to bet we'll see others?