LOST’s 17 Most Enduring Mysteries?
Mysteries/theories, Recaps/Reviews/Opinion, Season 1, Season 2, Season 3, Season 4 Jump to comments 
Entertainment Weekly enjoys making lists. Today they have released a list of Lost’s 17 enduring mysteries. Will some of them be revealed tonight?
WHAT IS THE MONSTER?
WHAT WE KNOW: It lives underground. It reads minds. It’s very smoky. The Dharma Initiative may have called it Cerberus, named after the three-headed guard dog of Hell. And Ben may be able to control it.
WHAT ARE THE NUMBERS?
WHAT WE KNOW: 4 8 15 16 23 42. They won Hurley a lotto jackpot and kept the Island from going gonzo when the Hatch guys inputted them into a computer. Lost ancillary media has stated that the Numbers are values in an equation that was formulated to determine the end of the world — but that bit of business has never been presented on the show itself.
WHAT IS THE FOUR-TOED STATUE?
WHAT WE KNOW: While sailing back to camp in the finale of season 2, Sayid, Jin, and Sun spotted a giant, column-like statue of a four-toed foot. It appears among many ruins scattered across the Island, suggesting evidence of an ancient civilization. A larger body may have once been attached. Or maybe the thing was simply never finished. Theories abound. An allusion to the Statue of Liberty? The Colossus of Rhodes? Egyptian cat goddesses? Hoax?
WILL JACK EVER LEARN THAT CLAIRE IS HIS HALF-SISTER?
WHAT WE KNOW: During a boozy bender in the land down under with the late Ana Lucia, Jack’s father paid a visit to someone, demanding to see his daughter. Last season, that daughter was revealed to be Claire; apparently, Christian had an affair with her mother. Claire met Christian in the wake of a car accident that nearly killed her mother, but she pointedly asked him to not even disclose his name.
WHAT’S THE REAL CONNECTION BETWEEN BEN AND WIDMORE?
WHAT WE KNOW: Charles Widmore — the father of Desmond’s true love, Penelope — has been desperately searching for the Island. Ben has been desperately trying to keep him away from it. This mysterious conflict reached a crisis point recently when Widmore’s mercenaries invaded the Island and killed Ben’s daughter after he refused to surrender himself. In a scene set in the flash-forward future, Widmore told Ben: ”I know who you really are, boy.” He also said: ”Everything you have you took from me.” Oh, it’s so ON.
IS JIN DEAD, OR IS HE STILL ON THE ISLAND?
WHAT WE KNOW: Sun is one of the Oceanic 6. Jin isn’t. There’s a grave with his name on it in Korea, though the date of death is September of 2004 — which is when the plane crashed. And we know Jin survived that. Unless they’re all ghosts or something.
WHO’S IN THE COFFIN?
WHAT WE KNOW: In the flash-forward future, a despairing Jack saw an obituary in a newspaper and attended a closed-casket funeral in an out-of-the-way mortuary in Los Angeles. No one else attended. When Jack asked Kate why she didn’t go, Kate seemed surprised he’d even ask the question, suggesting the possibility that the coffin dweller is someone she really, really didn’t like.
WHAT HAPPENS TO EVERYONE WHO’S NOT AMONG THE OCEANIC 6?
WHAT WE KNOW: The Oceanic 6 are Jack, Kate, Sun, Sayid, Hurley, and Aaron. Ben is also at large in the flash-forward future. Everyone else: TBD.
POLAR BEARS? WTH?
WHAT WE KNOW: The Dharma Initiative had polar bears at its zoology facility, known as the Hydra. Their cages were wired for intelligence testing. A polar bear skeleton with a Hydra collar was found in the Sahara desert by Charlotte Lewis. Were the bears guinea pigs in time travel/teleportation experiments?
DOES THE ISLAND REALLY HAVE HEALING POWERS?
WHAT WE KNOW: Locke was paralyzed — and now he can walk. Rose had cancer — and now she doesn’t. Jin was sterile — and now he’s a father-to-be. And yet, Jack got appendicitis and Ben got a tumor on his spine. Like that fickle bitch of fate, the Island giveth health — and taketh it away.
WHY DO PREGNANT WOMEN ON THE ISLAND DIE BEFORE THEIR THIRD TRIMESTER?
WHAT WE KNOW: The Others had a baby-making problem on the Island. Women could conceive and carry a child into the second trimester. Then, something icky happened inside them, killing baby and mother. The Others recruited fertility doctor Juliet to the Island to solve the problem. She couldn’t. Juliet wanted to take pregnant women off the Island to see if they could carry to full term away from its weird environment. Ben said no. Jerk.
WHO’S THE MYSTERY MAN PESTERING HURLEY IN THE FUTURE, AND LOCKE IN THE PAST?
WHAT WE KNOW: His name is Matthew Abbaddon. He told Hurley that he was a representative of Oceanic Airlines, but Hurley began to doubt him when the well-dressed dude asked if the non-Oceanic 6 castaways were still alive. Abbaddon also recruited Faraday, Charlotte, Miles, and Lapidus for Widmore’s freighter mission. We recently learned that it was Abbaddon who suggested to Locke that he go on his Australian walkabout. Popular fan theory: Matthew is Walt, all grown up.
WHAT’S UP WITH THE APPARENTLY AGELESS MR. ALPERT?
WHAT WE KNOW: Richard Alpert — the apparent No. 2 man among the Others — doesn’t really age. He looks almost the same now as he did when teenage Ben first met him in the jungle…and when Locke met him as a little boy.
WHY DO JACK AND BEN SEE THEIR DEAD PARENTS?
WHAT WE KNOW: In season 1, Jack spotted Christian (pictured) in his coffin attire walking through the jungle. He hasn’t seen him since — but Claire and Locke have. And once in his early Dharma days, Ben was visited by his dead mother. He chased after her, but she told him to turn back — that it wasn’t yet time for them to be together.
WHAT’S THE SIGNIFICANCE OF AARON, CLAIRE’S BABY?
WHAT WE KNOW: During her pre-crash pregnancy, a psychic explicitly warned Claire that she shouldn’t give up her child up for adoption as she intended. ”Don’t let another raise your baby,” she was told. (Or was that ”an Other”?) But then the psychic reversed his position, and even hooked her up with a plane ticket so she and gestating Aaron could meet with prospective parents in Los Angeles.
WHAT’S THE DEAL WITH ALL THE WHISPERING NOISES PEOPLE HEAR IN THE JUNGLE?
WHAT WE KNOW: Sometimes, a chorus of whispering voices can be heard in the jungle. They usually start up right when something really, really bad is about to happen.
WILL J.J. ABRAMS AND CO. MANAGE TO WRITE A SATISFACTORY ENDING TO THE MYTHOLOGY?
Magic 8-Ball says: Time will tell.
Related posts
One Response to “LOST’s 17 Most Enduring Mysteries?”
Leave a Reply
August 7th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
This list isn’t that up to date if it can ask if Jin is alive right next to if Jack will find out Claire is his sister and who’s in the coffin. The last questions have been answered already.