Follow the Leader/Theories

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Theories about Follow the Leader

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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.

Eloise & Faraday's Journal

• Faraday's notebook also contains notes on his own life. This is the source of everything Eloise knows, how she is able to predict the future and the reason she is not able to predict anything beyond 2008. She knows about Jack having to go back to the island from Jack himself.
  • Eloise will try to save her son many times but will come to realize she can't and he must fulfill his destiny.
• Younger Eloise sees her handwriting in the front of Daniel's Journal, but as Jack says, she hasn't written it yet. But now she knows she will do it at some point. When later in life it does become clear that she is to give him the Journal, she knows that she is also writing the note to herself (to see in the past), stating that what she did was for Love. Nothing short of that "love" would steal your resolve to do what your dying son wanted, especially if you've shot and killed him, yet also are pregnant with him a the same time.
• Young Ellie Hawking believes (hopes) the past can be changed, while old Eloise Hawking sent her son to the island, knowing he would be killed. Jack and Sayid will try to change the past, but fail horribly, or even make the Incident happen. Ellie will see this and realize you can't change the past.

Richard: "I saw them die."

• From Richard's standpoint in 2008, he saw them "die" during the Incident (which happened, so it won't be prevented with an H-bomb or any other means). What he really saw was the Incident happen, and the '77s disappear. The Incident actually provides the '77s with the means to time jump one last time and return to "present day." Richard will be very surprised when he finds that they survived and were transported forward to their correct time period.
  • Richard is gonna see a lot of people die because of the Incident but he's not gonna see all losties die. When John and Ben turned the wheel they released some kind of energy which caused specific people to jump in time(probably chosen by the Island). When the Incident occurs, a similar kind of energy will be released and considering the H-Bomb did not explode, that energy will send Losties to another time.
• They fail to stop the incident but are transported to the future, so that Richard thinks that they die, but they actually don't.

• Richard could have been lying. While we know of no reason for him to lie about something like that, there could be an important reason (perahps preventing some kind of time paradox, preserving a time-line, or just keeping the losties safe) for keeping them all off the radar for a while.
• Richard may have seen the explosion, with O6 being within the blast radius. That gives him more than enough ground to believe they have all perished. Ellie and Richard both mentioned that the time-travelers simply "vanish" in space. O6 will be saved in the very last second during the blast by the last time-travel witnessed on the show.

• Richard tells Jack and Sayid that Eloise will be angry when she wakes up after being knocked unconscious by him, but that being angry is better than being dead, in The Incident, Parts 1 & 2. This may indicate that he strongly believes that they will all die, and that something will happen at the Swan to confirm his suspicions. This may have resulted in him believing that he "saw them all die".
• In the current time-line, losties would have gone back in 1977 but would have not tried to detonate the hydrogen bomb, so they possibly would have stayed there as members of the DHARMA and would have died in the Purge.

Ben and Richard

• Richard, like Ben, has been told to follow the leader; for just a longer time than any of us might imagine. It is because of this duration, that he is a little less likely to react like Ben does to others controlling the situation. Richard just knows that (and/or has tried) and knows the outcome never changes.

Locke created his own destiny

See John Locke/Theories.

The Leader

For debate on who the episode title is referring too, please see Talk:Follow the Leader.

The Hydrogen Bomb

• The explosion will just push its own tremendous energy (Nuclear energy) into incoming tremendous energy (from the swan site) thus allowing Dharma Initiative to continue the Swan purpose of Containment and thus Whatever happen, will also happen.
• The explosion will delay the Incident, allowing the Swan will still be built based on Radzinsky's orders. The reason the Incident will still occur is course correction.
• The bomb never detonates, yet is still deemed dangerous, and ends up encased in the cement wall Sayid refers to in the Swan. This is what detonates when Desmond turns the fail-safe at a later date.
• Without the bomb, the 'Incident', would have wiped the island out. The bomb will stop the Incident from being worse.... but it will still be bad. The O6 will be sent back to 2008, the others will be infertile and the Swan will be built, etc.
• Jack will indeed blow up the hydrogen bomb, however, nothing will have changed in the future as it was always meant to happen - course correction will kick in and flash the Losties back to their original time line (2007), and send Eloise off the island.
• According to the Swan orientation film, The Incident involves the release of a huge amount of energy. The hydrogen bomb is the source of this energy.
• LOST: Via Domus (semi-canon), the video game, also allows the character go into The Incident Room and apparently it was the makers of LOST that actually gave outlining plans of what the room was to be like and there isn't a bomb in there.
• Even if Jughead is detonated it will negate the energy of the island as Faraday explained, so there won't be any catastrophic event, it just causes a new electro-magnetic being to be created namely Smokey. As far as I can remember Smokey never appeared before 1977, its oldest appearence is when it first met young Danielle and her French buddies, and people who lives inside hatch is afraid of a sickness which is probably the same sickness Danielle's friends got when they went under the temple following Black Smoke. So, Black Smoke may be the result of the incident.(except that Alpert references the smoke monster in his conversation with Horace, thats why they have the sonic fence.)
  • We haven't been physicaly shown the smoke monster before the year 1977 on the show, but it has existed as far back as ancient times on the island. The evidence is the cerberus vents, and the pool in the temple suggests that it was created to manipulate/summon the smoke monster. There are also heiroglyphics that portray the smoke monster interacting with an Egyptian diety.

Kate

• Kate does not want time to change because if the plane does not crash she will go to jail. The very reason she was on the plane was to be transported back to the US by the marshall. Just because 2007 Kate is now in 1977, doesn't mean 2004 Kate hasn't already committed those crimes.
  • Kate insists to Jack that not everything that happened on the island was bad. She is concerned with the idea of suddenly landing in LAX never having known Jack, Sawyer, Hurley, Claire, and all the rest.
  • She also believes that she is a better person now, as compared with before the island. She has learned and grown in addition to making new friends and being a mother for a short time. She doesn't want that to change.
  • Kate doesn't care; it should be obvious by now that she has extremely selfish tendencies. Even when she saved Ben it was more for her than him, because she had abandoned Aaron and wanted to make up for it.
• We have seen the end of Jack & Kate as a couple. When Jack replies that the bad experiences outweigh the good, he's essentially rejecting his love for Kate, saying that it wasn't worth all the hardship that came along with it. For Kate, this hurt.
• Kate has several motivations for doing this. The most obvious is Jack and Sawyer and the thought that she would have never met them if this were to occur. Another is that she came back to the Island to "find" Claire and bring her back, like she promised Claire's mother. Lastly, she realizes that if this chain events erases the past, she will have never met Aaron and never had him.