League of Inveterate Poets

By Mark Traphagen on June 12, 2010

RE: Doc Jensen’s post “LOST: The Island’s Story?” at EW.com.

Popular LOST blogger Jeff “Doc” Jensen has posted part one of a two-part epic attempt at a “theory of everything” behind the LOST TV epic. His basic theses can be summed up in these points:

• The island was alive, conscious, and a prime actor in the events of the show.
• The island was really the show’s main character.
• The books referenced in the show (along with some of the character’s names) were far more important to interpreting what the show was really about than we ever realized.
• The time traveling–and in particular one brief jump to the very ancient past in the final season–was not just a typical science fiction plot trope, but was in fact essential to setting up the real conflict that drove the series.
• Desmond Hume was in some way the island’s agent, the special one chosen by the island to accomplish the island’s solution to its conflict/dilemma.
• 70s British science fiction TV shows never met a horrible font they didn’t like.

OK that last one wasn’t really one of his central theses, but just watch the very entertaining videos he sprinkled throughout his essay, and you’ll see what I mean.

So far I really think the Doc is on to something. If he’s even close to right, the creators of LOST had planted clues all along that would enable us to eventually realize the answers to most of the “unanswered mysteries” had been answered after all. And it also would mean that the LOST creators were even more ingenious than we ever suspected.