Flash-forward/Theories

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Theories about Flash-forward

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Stated as questions or possibilities (avoid question marks, "Maybe", "I think", etc). More appropriate for another article. Illogical or previously disproven. Proven by canon source, and moved to main article. Speculative and lacking any evidence to support arguments. Responding to another theory (use discussion page instead). This does not include responses that can stand alone as its own theory. Usage of an indented bullet does not imply the statement is a response. See the Lostpedia theory policy for more details.

Flash forwards Looking at the structure of the show we see that Lost has a specific timeline and is constantly playing your perspective of what time is. The show is from the beginning build up from flashbacks and on-island realtime events. The flashbacks learn us a little about the backgrounds of each character, but only from some parts of their pre-island lives. But that is not all! If you watch more closely you might notice a resemblance of the experiences of a character in the flasback and the on-island realtime events. There are a lot of the same issues a character goes through in the flashback as well as the realtime events. A sort of analogy if you will. This would mean the flashbacks are a sort of prediction of how realtime events take place. This structure goes on for three seasons. From that point on we see a shift in structure! Suddenly there almost aren't any flashbacks anymore. Instead we see flashforwards. The producers made a very interesting change with this. The timeline is broken in the realtime on-island events and the flashforwards. The flashforwards actually take place beginning from the end of season 4 realtime on-island events. From that point on there's a period of three years in which the flashforwards took place and the season five on-island events take place. Those two timelines join almost halfway season 5. Knowing that we only saw a small portion of the three year period of the events the Oceanic six go through, they are now actually the same as the original flashbacks from season 1 to 3. You see only small parts of their lives. If the flasbacks show the same struggles the characters go through as the struggles on-island, then this could postulate that the flashforwards (now flashbacks) also predict events in on-island time in season 5.