I agree that Locke will help free Jacob and that free will will win the day. I have to go out on a limb and say that Daniel is wrong; you can change the past and future. Why else is Hawking and Ben trying so desperately to get the O6 back? They didn't seem very hopeful at accomplishing their goal at their meeting, so why assume everything is pre-ordained?

Something else about Locke and time skipping has always bothered me. Will we see Locke bring his father to the island? This is what Ben told Locke when he presents his father to him as a prisoner, "You brought him here, John." Or was this just another of Ben's lies?

The time travel aspect that is being worked out dramatically is to evoke how our minds work psychologically: Deja vu, the "do I know you from somewhere" sense that we have even when we meet someone we've never met before, or do something that is totally unfamiliar. What they are showing us (drama) is what motivates us (psychology). We know the actors have been told things like, "Act like you've seen him somewhere before," "Ben will act like he knows the purple sky phenome, and no one else does," etc. etc. Time travel is furthering the story, but it's also justifying why people are doing what they are doing. The best example I can think of is Locke's response to the island within hours of landing there. He worships the island that gave him his ability to walk - but he also worships what he has been looking for his whole life and can never find. He is the man of faith, not just blindly, but because he knows he is known.

I am beginning to think that what is at stake is the true destruction of the island. If the Orchid release wheel has the island spinning uncontrollably, and Jughead hasn't exploded, then Locke and crew are really in the most dangerous situation that has ever presented itself in the island's history. Why do the O6 need to all go back together? To die like Charlie going to the Looking Glass? Or, in my best dream of this story, they free Jacob, who has been imprisoned since before the Black Rock and he saves the island.

Astro's summary of the fact that it appears in the story that Determinism is how people's fates are decided but Free Will will win the day -- is not just a summary of Lost, but of all great sci fi. Watch for it Jugdish, you're going to love it.

Thank you for these articles. They are awesome, and the responses are spot on. So much to think about - so happy to be a Lost watcher.

Of course not.

I hope you're not saying I'M the wise guy!!!

This is a great conversation (except for one wise guy!). Just what I wanted to start. The discussion is really helping me understand time travel and the thinking behind it and the rules.

It is never wrong to admit you are weak at something and then learn from this weakness. Thanks for enlightening me.

I posted this is Astro's article. Time traveling is not taking away from my enjoyement of watching the show. It is interfering with my ability to figure out the show and predict where we are going.

I dont think the rules are changing at all. I see it as since the OTHERS are not traveling back in time like our Losties are then we are not creating two different time lines.

I will base my example on the one where Locke is talking to Richard in 1954.

To Locke it is 2005 because he is still living in a linear path with the world around him changing in time. So he is still 52 years of age even though the island time that he is in at the moment is 2 years before he is born.

To Richard it is 1954. This is the first and only time that he has experienced 1954 and in this time he meets some strange bald man that says he is from the future, telling him he is there leader and he needs to go visit him at his birth in two years.

So to me there is no paradox or time loop or even two time lines. Its just looking at two different peoples or people/islands perspective of there own individual time line.

I'll clarify one thing GTito. The Ethan one. For all we know, Ethan DID recognize Locke. Perhaps he went back to Ben and said, "that bald guy, I saw him in the jungle years ago and he knew me, and he told me that you'd sent him to me, and then he disappeared before my eyes." To which Ben might have thought, wow, I've got to go get this guy when I'm trying to convince Jack to save my life and pretending to be Henry Gale. I mean, since we haven't seen much on the Other's side of things we just don't know what happened.

I agree that 'the rules', while seeming somewhat arbitrary, make for a great storytelling device while not causing us to worry that everything we've seen to this point can be undone. I don't necessarily think the rules are violated in some of the instances that you mentioned. For example, I don't think Locke is 'changing' anything by telling Richard to go to see him being born - as we have already seen, Richard 'already' will go see Locke being born. I agree that the causality is circular - Richard might not have gone to witness the birth if Locke hadn't gone back in time and told him to - but the events themselves are set - Locke tells Richard, then Richard goes to see, and no traveling in the past can change that. To follow your analogy, if we checked in the present, those blades of grass had already been stepped on, and that food had already been eaten. If we found an apple on a tree in the present, 'the rules' would (somehow) prevent us from going back and eating it in the past.
Also, with Frogurt, there's no violation - Frogurt always had gotten shot with the flaming arrow at the time he did. We would expect then that if the Losties visited that particular spot in 2004, they would have found Frogurt's corpse. I don't think there's a problem with your 'future self' coming back to a time before you were born and dying - the one event doesn't affect the other.
Same thing with Daniel and the H-bomb - Daniel knows/assumes that nothing he can do in the past will change the future, so he is confident that the H-bomb will not have been detonated in 2004. The rules prevent Daniel himself telling Ellie how to contain it being the reason the bomb was ultimately contained. The rules may be 'made up' and aribitrary for the purpose of storytelling in the show, but I think in those instances they are consistent.
Where they lose me a bit is with the memories of some of the people the 'time travellers' encounter. When Richard gives Locke the compass in the 'present', does he actively remember when Locke first went to visit him in 1954. The rules would suggest that yes he must remember him. If so though, what about Ethan? Doesn't he remember shooting Locke and then watching him flash out of existence? Shouldn't he recognize Locke when they meet again in 2004?
It's worse with Desmond (who I realize is somehow special in regards to time, but I still don't quite get it.) The series of events we've seen in regards to Desmond's past, including his 'flashes back', don't seem to add up to a series of coherent events. For example, would Desmond in the past, having met with Daniel Faraday at Oxford and knowing he was supposed to leave Penny alone until she called him in 2004, still go through with the sailing boat race and get himself stuck on the island? Did Penny still go see Desmond at the stadium before he went running and met Jack? Would Desmond, having promised Penny he would leave her alone until she called in 2004, still have written all of those letters to Penny from prison and still been upset that Widmore intercepted them? I hope they clarify some of these things.

I agree with you BadRobot, but I think RIGHT NOW the writers are trying to convince us that in fact there is no free will. Everything is predetermined. I think they really want us to believe that is part of the rules, so they can yank the rug out from under us in the end and say "HA! FOOLED YA! Free will exists afterall!! Neenerneener Neeener." Or something to that effect.

jsmart i agree with you... but i dont. i agree with you that when locke said hi to widmore.. yes that has already happened in time,, also like how locke could have shot widmore in the back as he was running away, but didnt... BUT i thnk that the idea that the past has already happened and cannot be changed cheapens LOST. if the very last scene of LOST is jacks eye opening... ill be very disappointed. itll show me that everyone involved with lost is lazy and not as brilliant as i woudl have hoped. but which brings me to where i disagree wih you... i think des IS soemthig special.. thats why he didnt have that memory til it happened in relation to his timeline.

i think you may have to look at it like this, and i may be wrong, but i probably am wrong. what?!

they are no changing the past when they walk through the grass or eat food or snap necks or stab people because that was the way it was always supposed to happen.

the wheel was always supposed to be turned in 2005, making those people go to that time and do those things. So when faraday talks to desmond, he had always talked to desmond. When locke said nice to meet you to widmore, he was always supposed to do that.

"If you time travel to a year before you were born and are killed, did you ever live?"

Maybe you should stick to Grey's Anatomy.

Juggy, you need to "go with the flow" of time when it comes to Lost. I agree with Westy185, time has always been an element on the show - whether used as flashbacks, flash forwards, mentally jumping between two times, being told you can't change things from happening (i.e. Mrs Hawkins and the ring)...

It might help if we all keep in mind that old 60's classic "Time Has Come Today"..

Time has come today
Young hearts can go their way
Can't put it off another day
I don't care what others say
They say we don't listen anyway
Time has come today
(Hey)

Oh
The rules have changed today (Hey)
I have no place to stay (Hey)
I'm thinking about the subway (Hey)
My love has flown away (Hey)
My tears have come and gone (Hey)
Oh my Lord, I have to roam (Hey)
I have no home (Hey)
I have no home (Hey)

Now the time has come (Time)
There's no place to run (Time)
I might get burned up by the sun (Time)
But I had my fun (Time)
I've been loved and put aside (Time)
I've been crushed by the tumbling tide (Time)
And my soul has been psychedelicized (Time)

(Time)
Now the time has come (Time)
There are things to realize (Time)
Time has come today (Time)
Time has come today (Time)

Did you catch the line "the rules have changed today?" Yes they have, and I hope we get to hear this classic song on an upcoming epi.

Time tripping is not just an element of the show - it IS the show. From the very first episode's flashback, the writers showed how TIME would be getting a different treatment than from most other series.

Of course, in the beginning, we thought the flashbacks were just a very effective way to introduce characters and their motivations into the narrative. Now we know they were also a foreshadowing of the true story, still being told to us in bits and pieces, of the nature of the Island and how the Losties are connected to it.

Mainly, were the Losties meant to crash on the island? Did they disrupt time when they crashed, or are they there to set things right?

Interesting point you make about the significance, or lack thereof, of the "redshirts." Having read these and other Lost websites for many years I can attest to many fans' frustration about the lack of attention paid to these people. But maybe the writers have been hinting at their insignificance to the island, to time, to destiny all along by not focusing on them.

As others have said, this isn't necessarily a paradox. They are NOT changing the past, we are simply SEEING the past. Frogurt dieing does not mean that the future is changed. You seem to be thinking that Frogurt dieing means that he will not be born (as the scene happened before his birth) and therefore never crash, and therefore never travel back to die.

Not true. He dies AFTER time traveling. It's not his "younger" self being killed. This is obvious when you consider that, since it is indeed 1954 and prior to his birth, if it was his younger self that we were seeing, he wouldn't even be there at all.

I understand the dismay that you and many other viewers have regarding the inclusion of this facet of sci-fi...based of the vociferous denials of its existence when it was first hinted at with Desmond's mind-tripping (or even as far back as Locke predicting rain or Eko being sure that the kids were alright). I'm sure you would've preferred to believe that Rose KNEW Bernard wasn't dead because of some wifely intuition rather than some kind of time-traveling memory.

I can't argue that someone should like something that they don't like. I also can't deny that paradox is necessarily created when ANYthing is done differently. In defense of the show, I'll only say that "The Rules" only seem to apply to important things (see my topic in Theories). People who die while tripping into the past probably become Christian Shepherd-type ghosts. When the O6 return to The Island and the show wraps, it will probably somehow revert to the start of S1E1 with Jack's eyeball and everything will be back to the way it was "supposed" to be.

Great article.

Such are the paradoxes inherent in time travel! this will give you a headache: In our original time, the events of the past had already happened. The Losties had ALREADY been back in time, and they had not changed events, because events unfolded exactly how they were meant to. That is to say that the Losties were already a fabric of the times. Neil died in the paast, and did not exist paast the original time in the future, because he left the future. The Losties did not change time, because they were part of it originally. I am going to go out on a limb here, and posit that the whisperings heard on the island were from when the Losties went back in time, and they were actually hearing themselves.

Isn't time travel fun!!!!