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Copying my theory from the other thread. Feel free to shoot it full of holes if you can, but right now I'm running with it as my guess of the big show-changing revelation.



The concept that "it's all a dream" is widely considered to be one of the explanations that we just won't accept, along with "they're all dead" and "it's time travel". It's too corny, too much of a cop-out, and since we're dealing with a quality creative team we know that this idea would NEVER be the explanation for events.

So it would serve as a perfect explanation for events. It IS all a dream. The twist, though, is precisely WHAT is the dream. We'd think it was the island, but the island, with its voices, apparitions, smoke monsters, and coincidences, is the ONLY thing we know to be real.

The flashbacks are the dreams.

Nothing about these survivors' lives is real. Jack is not Jack. Perhaps his name is Jack, but he was not a California doctor. Kate was not a fugitive, Hurley was not a lottery winner, Locke was not a paraplegic, Rose was not a cancer victim (nor married to Bernard), Michael is not Walt's father. The memories they assume to be their lives are nothing more than implants placed in their heads by whatever experiment Dharma is running on them, to whatever end. Was it really a plane full of unwilling subjects? Or are the 48 castaways actually members of the Dharma Initiative?

Consider

a) people on the island, and events on the island, are constantly making appearances and references in the flashbacks. Most of the inconsistencies and discontinuities we've found involve the flashbacks, and the coincidences of the flashbacks can often be described as ridiculously improbable (Sayid meeting Kate's dad, Jack meeting Desmond, Hurley winning with the numbers)

b) a smoke monster that can display images from an individual's memories

c) a button that when not pressed says "cause to die" and triggers something to do with an electromagnetic force

Many of the characters are known to have "caused a death" in their "past"...Kate (her friend), Eko (his brother), Jack (Shannon's dad and likely many other patients), Hurley (numerous accidents), Sayid (his terrorist partner), and of course characters like Sawyer and AL who just up and shot people. It's a theme common to all of their "memories". If the button controls an electromagnet, perhaps that magnet is responsible in some way for the fake memories they are recalling. Perhaps not pushing the button will release those memories, and their "real" lives -- whatever those might be -- will come rushing back in. Perhaps only some of them have fake memories, while the rest are real (the good people?).

That would certainly change things. That would certainly take the show in a new direction. Imagine the same actors now playing what might essentially be entirely new characters. Imagine "starting over" with everyone's flashbacks, writing completely new histories for each castaway, rebuilding them from scratch.

Everyone gets a new life on this island.