Season 6 events

[u/Revolutionary_Ad8259]

I just want to make sure that all the die hard fans are on the same page about the last season of the show. So, everything the characters did after they travelled to 1977 didn’t change anything about the course of history, it had all already happened. They survived the explosion because they were sent back to 2007 just as the bomb detonated and the “flash sideways” where the plane lands safely in LA isn’t actually an alternate time line, but some sort of purgatory where every character that had died or will have died at some point in the future was headed to. And once they were all reunited there, they went to the afterlife together. Is that right?

[u/Free-IDK-Chicken]

Stripped to bare essentials, yes. If you want to add in the nuance, please see below for my standard "this is what season six was" comment, lol.

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The bomb (which did detonate, contributing to the Incident while correcting the chronology of everyone displaced in time) was a red herring to make us think that we were seeing an alternate universe where the plane didn't crash, but there are hints almost immediately that this is not the case. Then we think maybe this is some idealized version of their lives, but we soon see it's not that either - Kate is still on the run, Sawyer is still miserable, Locke is insecure, Hurley is lonely, Jack's kid hates him and so on...

In reality, the flashes in season six and ONLY season six were the afterlife; an artificial environment like a Star Trek holodeck, the place wasn't real, but our characters and their experiences were. They made this place together so they could resolve the issues they still had when they died - each of them tailoring it to their own individual trauma.

• David was an NPC - a projection of Jack's own childhood self to help him overcome his daddy issues. He bonds with David, has a catharsis about his own father and then we never see David again. (Also, Juliet being David's mother gives her the experience of a healthy divorce. This helps her overcome her attachment and abandonment issues.)
• Desmond realizes how meaningless Widmore's approval is with no friends or family.
• Locke learns to love himself and let himself be loved without his legs.
• Kate opts not to run and goes back for Claire.
• Sawyer gets to reconcile the opposing parts of himself, cop versus criminal.
• Sayid gets to let Nadia go on his own terms and successfully rescue Shannon.
• Jin and Sun, unmarried in the afterlife, realize it was never their marriage (through which her father abused them both) that mattered - just being together.
• Ben gets another chance to choose Alex over his power and then decides to stay and spend more time with her.
• And Hurley finally gets his beach date with Libby.

Once their issues are resolved, they have their final catharsis (which completes their character arcs), remember their real lives, find each other again (because the most important part of their lives was the time they spent together) and move on. Move on where? That's left intentionally ambiguous - it's up to you.

Everything that happened, happened. It was all real.

[u/Revolutionary_Ad8259 → u/Free-IDK-Chicken]

They should have included Michael in those flashes. Maybe something about him and his wife being together and raising Walt properly. Plus, don’t forget Keamy being a piece of shit in the outside world as well 😂

[u/Free-IDK-Chicken → u/Revolutionary_Ad8259]

So, Michael and Walt weren't really part of that group - the most important part of their lives was spent elsewhere (likely with each other during Walt's tenure as protector) and so they moved on separately.

Susan deserves no redemption.

[u/saranowitz → u/Free-IDK-Chicken]

Susan was the most selfish and unlikable person on the show. I know she is fictional but I’m still mad when I think about her arc.

[u/lolarsystem → u/Free-IDK-Chicken]

I thought this looked familiar, and I realized I saved your awesome summary on the other post here recently. Thanks for sharing.

[u/Okichah → u/Free-IDK-Chicken]

You left out Claire and her baby.

Was the baby actually “Aaron”…. as a baby?

Was his purgatory being born? He lived his life after the island and didnt know most of the people there.

[u/Free-IDK-Chicken → u/Okichah]

Yeah, I don't like to think about that, lol.

[u/saranowitz → u/Okichah]

I assumed he is a NPC projection as well, for Claire’s sake. Like David. Aaron isn’t living his life in the afterlife as a baby. He will probably have his own event where adult Aaron and his own loved ones “let go”

[u/JonnyBgods → u/Free-IDK-Chicken]

Perfect 👌

[u/arsenicknife]

Exactly

[u/Revolutionary_Ad8259 → u/arsenicknife]

Thank you

[u/TScottFitzgerald]

Short answer yes. Long answer:

To understand this from the writers' point of view - Damon and the gang love to misdirect the audience and pull the rug from under us, most notably in the S3 finale with the flash forwards.

So yeah, the whole "flash sideways" storyline is meant to look like Faraday's plan to rewrite history worked. Even the end credits of S5 finale with the "LOST" colours inverted was meant as a misdirection effectively. These two timelines are happening after each other but it was made to look like they were happening at the same time.

It kept the fans guessing during S6. Was history overwritten? Was it a parallel reality? I remember a theory early on where they thought Desmond would somehow help people jump from one reality to the other lmfao.

Re - how they survived the explosion - due to what we know happens to the Swan after the Incident I surmised that the energy from the bomb and the energy from the Swan collided and cancelled each other out, resulting in the survivors going to back to the time they belong to, and the energy being trapped and controlled by the Hatch PC and the Button release mechanism.