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Main Article Theories about
Juliet Burke
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Intentions[]

  • We have seen Juliet ask Ben to leave the Island several times, and this is the primary reason Jack gives for why he trusts her. However, this "truth" also seemed to be exploited by Ben (and Juliet) to gain the trust of the Losties. When Juliet is handcuffed to Kate and "punished" by the Others, these actions play off of her real or ficticious "outsider status" among the Others and build her credibility with the Losties so she can infiltrate their ranks and pass on information about them to Ben. However, it is unclear whether Juliet has any true allegiance to anyone beyond herself - siding with whoever gets her the best chance of leaving the island.
  • When Juliet was handcuffed to Kate and they ran from the monster to the pylons, Juliet entered the code 1623. This was the method to send a silent 14-J alarm to the barracks, as seen in the Security Team Manual and with Alex/Keamy. But during the time when Juliet entered the 14-J code, the barracks had already been evacuated by Ben and the others (which was known by Juliet). As soon as she entered the code and turned the switch (remember a similar one in the hatch?), a magnetic humming could be heard and two smoke monsters shot out of (the vents?) in the earth and joined or fought the third one that had been chasing her and Kate. Watch the scene again having the 14-J context in mind and you will see.
  • She knows A LOT more than she is letting on in regards to the Island time shifting. Consider that Richard encountered her in 1954 and Ethan encountered Locke in 1999. It was those two that recruited Juliet to the Island. Perhaps by gaining foreknowledge of the future, Richard and Ethan initiated a covert operation among the Others, a kind of "Time Police" who are acting to ensure Island History is maintained. Remembering Juliet from his '54 encounter, he realized she was destined to travel into the past. Richard could have brought Juliet into the Time Police making her a double-triple agent. Working for Ben, then siding with the Others as a mole but all the while secretly working for Richard.
    • Do we know for sure that Richard saw Juliet in 1954?
      • It's safe to assume that after Locke and the others vanished, Widmore related to Richard that he encounterd a tall blonde who knew of Richard, the Others and spoke Latin. Richard's smart enough to keep an eye out for someone that meets the description and eventually would realize Juliet is destined to be in 1954.
      • We need to know more, but it is likely that Sawyer and party will encounter Richard in the "DHARMA Time" and he will make the connection.
        • (I have no idea if this is the correct place to post this) In Juliet's second flashback, which appears in Season 4, we see Harper and Juliet having her first session. Later on in the flashback we know of her and Goodwin's relationship. Goodwin comes to visit her while she is explaining some of her research to Ben, and she is off to have another session with Harper. As listed in Juilet's main "unanswered" questions section on her Lostpedia profile, Harper asks what Juliet thinks of Ben. And then says "you look just like her" in reference to Ben's feelings towards Juliet. I believe Juliet is strikingly similar in appearance to Ben's Mother. It should be interesting if this question is ever answered - arendsduo 12/28/09

Actions[]

  • What Juliet meant when she said that she's not used to death, was that unlike Jack who is a surgeon and deals with death on a daily basis, she was a fertility specialist who dealt with birth. Despite the deaths of all the women she has treated on the island, she still cannot get used to the idea of seeing someone die. Although she shot Picket three times with little remorse because she perceived him to be a threat, she was appalled when Sawyer shot Tom because Tom had been disarmed and was "helpless."
  • Juliet was hesitant to help the survivors until Sun trusted her with her secrets. After that, Juliet decided to help them because she knows that if Sun stays on the island during her pregnancy, she will die.
  • She is there to find a way for the Others to procreate, evidenced by their interest in children (such as baby Alex, Claire's baby Aaron, and Walt) and the lack of children at the Barracks, as well as Richard Alpert recruiting her to research a patient with an abnormal womb in "Not in Portland".
  • She was present in the Staff station when Claire was being held.
    • She was preparing to "cut out" the baby from Claire's womb, as Alex told Claire in "Maternity Leave".
    • She was not actually planning to perform a Cesarean section (at least, as a first resort), but was going to try to save Claire just as with the past pregnancies.
      • She is not a surgeon, so it's very unlikely that she would be able to "cut out" the baby from Claire's womb.
        • Although not general surgeons, OBs are qualified to perform Ceseareans and other reproduction-related surgery.
  • She has been trained in basic combat and weapons, as she shot Danny, knocked out Jack, and overpowered Kate with a martial arts move.
    • All the others receive combat training to protect the island in case of an attack its part of their initiation course.
  • She has long since passed caring about the group hierarchy of the Others; all she wants, more than anything, is to escape from the Island.
    • In Tale of two Cities and The Cost of Living Juliet comments on free will and how it has disappeared on the Island.
    • Her desperation to escape from the Island has unhinged her. This explains her coldness and unpredictability.
    • She is cold and doesn't trust anyone because on the island all the people she has trusted have betrayed her or died. Her agenda is to get off the island at any cost.
      • She chose to be the last one off the island.
  • Juliet is working to fix the fertilization problems of the women of the island.
  • She may have been threatened by Ben with Rachel again—he may have forced her to try to be a mole against her will.
    • She may have her own plan within this—to go along with Ben's wishes, but actually work against him.

Ben and Juliet[]

  • Juliet really hates Ben, that is confirmed by the end of "D.O.C.". But it is not clear if she is actually sympathetic to the Losties, or merely interested in leaving the island herself.
    • The fact that she waited to put herself on a rescue raft until last may imply that she is in fact concerned about the other Losties.
    • Ben let Goodwin die because he interfered with his plans, he's treating Juliet like his property and forces her to stay on the island. She had a lot of reasons to hate him even before the whole losties story. Now she just hates him even more.
    • She really cares about the Losties but she's being forced to go along with the Others or she'll never get off the island.
  • Juliet ultimately wanted to save everyone by having Ben be killed by Jack. Assuming that Jacob resides somewhere on the mainland (or at least off of the island), killing Ben would effectively release Jacob's grasp on the Others and give them free access to the submarine. In this respect, Juliet could very well have rescued everyone, assuming that Jacob doesn't have some kind of failsafe in place for just this kind of situation (he more than likely does).
  • In "The Other Woman", Juliet is said to look like "her". Now that we know Juliet was living with the DHARMA Initiative, we may assume that Juliet looks like a version of herself with whom young Ben became infatuated and with whom adult Ben, unaware of her time travel, becomes infatuated.
    • Young Ben had seen his mother at 1973 and when he saw Juliet (which had a striking resemblance to his mother) in 1974, he may felt "mother-love" for the first time from Juliet.

Juliet's video tape[]

See main article at: Juliet's tape/Theories

Name references[]

  • Juliet's name may contain a number of allusions to the play Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare.
    • Like Juliet in the play, Juliet has had a romantic interest in a man from an enemy clan (Jack), and vice versa.
    • Moreover, Juliet could be the second love interest after the first was frustrated—Kate being akin to Rosaline, Romeo's first love interest.
      • Ben could also reference Paris; Juliet was supposed to marry Paris in the play and Ben brought Juliet to the island because he wanted her to be his.
    • In Romeo and Juliet, Juliet's mother became pregnant several times after she had Juliet. However, all these pregnancies ended in the child's death. This possibly explains why Juliet is a fertility doctor, and the difficulty for women on the island to maintain a healthy pregnancy.

Who does Harper think Juliet looks like?[]

  • Juliet ends up on the island in 1977, when young Ben is there. She may have made some sort of impact on young Ben and became his friend. She also operated on young Ben when he was shot, and nursed him when he woke up. He could remember her as someone who helped save his life. Then in 2001, when Ben has the opportunity to bring people to the island, he could bring someone who reminded him of his childhood friend. It is debatable if Ben knew whether it was the same woman or not. This could give further meaning to the title of the episode, 'The Other Woman'
    • Richard said that Ben would forget being shot and the following events after he was healed in the temple. Therefore, he wouldn't remember that Juliet saved his life,
  • Juliet might remind Ben of his childhood friend, Annie.
  • Juliet bears a resemblance to Ben's mother Emily. She and Juliet have similar features and long blonde hair. Ben never knew his mother, yet knew what she looked like well enough to follow an appearance of her blindly into the jungle as a boy. Naturally, Ben would have a strong attachment to Juliet if she reminded him of his mother that he never met but desperately wanted to know.

Juliet and Sawyer[]

  • A real possibility exists that Sawyer and Juliet die during the Purge. Theory or Talk has been offered elsewhere that the "her" Juliet was described as resembing in "The Other Woman" is herself. If young Benjamin Linus is due to arrive on the Island in "Namaste" or after, he will see Juliet, using whatever name, at the Barracks. Juliet will see him and know his name and will avoid him, not because of any time paradoxes but because she will realize that he is the future Ben whom she came to hate and who told her, "You're mine." Her remoteness will cause Ben to become infatuated; he will outgrow his infatuation, but it will return after Juliet dies. When he has need for a fertility specialist in the early 21st century and the search turns up Juliet in Miami, he will demand that she be recruited. In passing, Ben also sees his mother in the jungle outside the fence.
    • Whe are still over a decade behind the Purge, something will happen in the Incident and the losties will no longer be stuck with the dharma initiative.
    • Juliet helped to save young Ben's life. This might be the basis of his infatuation. Ben saw Juliet living and young when he was an adult and saw it as fate giving her to him.
      • Ben has lost all memory of Juliet and the other Losties in Dharma time. When Kate took him to the Others in Whatever Happened, Happened, Richard said that the effect would be for Ben to forget about what had happened and for him to "always be one of us." So he cannot be basing his infatuations off of conscious memories, if he is indeed doing so.

Reasons for being on the island[]

  • Jacob is responsible for leading her to the island due to her being a candidate, including organizing Edmund's 'accident', and fathering Rachel's child Julian.
  • She was recruited by the Others because she is the first person to ever succesfully deliver a child on the island.
  • She was actually brought to the island by Jacob's Enemy. He caused the fertility issues on the island that results in her coming to the island. Nemesis's objective by bringing her to the island is making sure that Jughead is detonated.

The Incident[]

  • Right, firstly, Juliet didn't die in the detonation of the Plutonium. She CAN'T have, because if it does actually work, and everything is reset, then Flight 815 would never crash, she'd be a fertility specialist on the Island struggling to uncover why women cant give birth. She'd just go back to that, never knowing Jack or James or Kate or all that lot.
    • The thing is it can't be reset through her actions. Doing this would violate causality. For her to ever go back in time and detonate the bomb the island would have to have moved. In order for the island to move Locke must move it. If the plane doesn't crash then Locke can never be there to start the time jumps. Dan was right at first when he said they can't change anything. He proved this right when he went and spoke to Charlotte in 77. He knew that talking to her would start the chain to her death, but did it anyway. No one was holding him at gun point or anything to make him do it, it was his own freewill that took him over to her.
    • There was a point to that one flash. It was about a couple breaking up even though they still loved each other. It mirrored what was going on between her and Sawyer. It explained why her stance on things suddenly changed.
        • Juliet's sacrifice mirrors Jacob's sacrifice - a choice to die for the greater good. Therefore, as Locke has become an avatar of Jacob's nemesis, Juliet will become Jacob's avatar.
  • Our Juliet (original timeline) isn't dead; her consciousness was flipping back and forth between timelines with "Juliet X" (evidence: she was talking nonsense about getting coffee). When Juliet's body died, it was with "Juliet X"'s consciousness. This could setup Juliet to be an agent for reuniting timelines if that needs to happen in the future. PS: Why would this happen to Juliet and not the others? Her proximity to the core.

Proximity to the core[]

If in fact close proximity to the electromagnetic field gives person(s) ie. Desmond (Flashes before Your Eyes and The Constant) certain abilities to move through time then we will see Juliet move through time as well. At the very least it will keep a certain level of consistency in ideas.

Deeper Reason for Changing her Mind[]

  • Juliet changing her mind is the perfect example of free will, also known as the variable within the equation. One could even say that Juliet is The Variable. Note that Jacob did not pay a visit to her the way he did with others and the season five finale flashbacks seemed to be all about Jacob checking on people or leading them to something.
    • Jacob paid visits only to the people who arrived on the island via plane crash (most were on Flight 815, and several more were on Flight 316 as well). He visited them to set into motion the events that would lead them to take those flights. Juliet, however, did not need to be visited by Jacob because she was recruited directly by Richard/Ben (and thus we can infer, Jacob, indirectly). So she is no less entwined in the equation than the other survivors.
      • Doesn't seem likely, for the flashbacks indicated that it was Jacob's touch that "lead" them to the island.
        • Eloise has already experienced the exploding of the Hydrogen bomb and knows this is the only way to save the Island. she infact wants the losties to go back, otherwise "God help us all"

Juliet's Dying Words[]

  • When Juliet told Sawyer she needed to tell him something important, she was confused and asked where they were. After she died Sawyer asked Miles to listen to her body to get the message, Miles said the message was "it worked". That may have been what her dead self realized, but while alive she was confused. Unless Juliet figured everything out int he span of one second before dying, the original message was a different message.
    • Juliet probably was aware of the other existence of herself in the alternate dimension as she was dying in the dimension we see her in
    • Miles has said that when someone's dead, they're dead - their brain stops working, so there's nothing to communicate with (hence his skepticism about Hurley's abilities). He can only hear their memories, which include what caused their death and their thoughts just before. Juliet must have though "It worked" before she died.
    • This was Juliet experiencing the same kind of flashes that Desmond experienced after triggering the Swan fail safe. In both case (Juliet and Desmond) they weren't having their life flash before their eyes - they were experiencing periods of the alt. universe.
  • Before she died, Juliet also appeared to be talking to someone else (maybe her sister), which prompted Sawyer to be a bit confused and say: "it's me". I think that because of the state that Juliet was in, it allowed her to see both the outcomes of the 'paradoxical box', she saw herself off the island as well as she saw Sawyer holding her dying body on the island. That's what prompted her to say: It worked. She really saw that it did work.
    • This works in regards to the theory that the flash-sideways are actually flash-forwards to a different, succesful reboot of the island and Juliet is simply having flashes of different times ala Desmond.
  • Juliet was invited to the island. Upon her death, she was allowed to go home. Her life continues in the "real" world, as if she had never left to the island. Miles was able to hear her message because she was still going through the transition of leaving the island.
  • The Juliet we see in the last scene of Season 5 and the beginning of Season 6 is actually a substitute from the alternate time line who crossed dimensions in order for the universe to course correct. The "whatever happened, happened" theory is still correct, and extends into the use of alternate timelines. The core detonation is the "incident" which never would have happened if Juliet didn't cross dimensions. She's visibly confused because when she crossed into the "erased" dimension, she took on the memories of the Juliet we know and love, but the Juliet we're seeing is one who was most likely never on the Island before that moment and only came there to sacrifice herself to save her sister.
  • Juliet was flashing between both 'worlds', which is why she said 'Where am I?' Before she died she worked out what was happening and got ready to tell Sawyer that it worked, as that would be her perception of her experiences.
    • In a later episode we will see Sawyer and Juliet meet for coffee (three years after the safe plane trip) and she will repeat the same dialogue (in a similar fashion to Charlotte's death).
      • This is absolutely the case. Her consciousness is bipbopping between worlds, much like Desmond's in the Constant, but instead of time, it is DIMENSIONS.
        • Juliet is presumably moving back and forth between alternate timelines at the cusp of her death. This could explain the fragmented dialog. She becomes aware in these travels just before death that the post white flash survivors on the island are in the same "alternate" 2007 timeline in which the Ajira flight landed and Jacob have just been murdered. Theoretically it is alternate because when the Ajira flight is making it's emergency landing and calls for mayday over the radio the only response heard is the number loop. This would mean that Danielle Rousseau never changed the numbers to her distress call in this timeline.
        • The line about the coffee is flash-sideways, but not to Juliet's life. In her dying moments, she becomes aware of Desmond's meeting with Penny in the FST. This leads Juliet to change her mind from "it didn't work" to "it worked."
  • This entire time Miles has always assumed he is communicating with "the dead" but is actually communicating with living versions of the people in alternate realities. From Juliet's perspective it did work. She was slipping between universes as she died. If this proves true, Miles could prove very useful at communicating with the Losties within the alternate reality. The idea meshes with the concept of "Quantum Immortality" in a sense.
    • It could also explain why Hurley sees dead people different than Miles. Hurley sees the dead within the current universe, Miles talks to those in other universes.
      • The exact opposite may be true. Juliet wanted to say to Sawyer "it worked" and that's what Miles heard. Miles seems to be aware of things that are true right up until the person died. Hurley, on the other hand, sees people who should be dead and those people seem to know more than they did when they were still alive. Dead-Charlie told him explicitly "I'm dead, but I'm here." Ana Lucia may have also been a manifestation from a dimension where she was still alive.
  • I think her dying words about the coffee was her in the flash sideways taking to sawyer at the vending machine then it worked refered to his candy bar dropping when he unplugged the machine. Time is irrevant in the sideways world.
  • It could be that the bomb didn't actually explode. The sound we heard in the last scene of season 5 is actually the sound of the electromagnetic from the site go off. It caused Juliet to experience her alternate life in the Purgatory (hence the word Juliet told Sawyer before she died) and at the same time, sent her back to 2007.

"It worked"[]

  • "It worked" were supposed to be Juliet's last words, told to Sawyer. Sawyer never understood what it meant and he probably never will. As Juliet was close to death, she glimpsed her "side-ways life" and saw that she and Sawyer never met. However, she died before she could tell him what she saw.
    • Now that we know that the Sideways world was the afterlife, this makes a lot of sense. The last thing Juliet saw was the "other side", but she mistook it for the "reset" of the timeline that they were trying (but failed) to accomplish.
  • Actually I believe that when she said it worked she was talking about Sawyer's candy bar falling out of the machine after he unplugs it in the last episode, before she died she asks him to go out for coffee just like she does in the flashsides, so I think she was seeing all that because she was dead/dying and time is irrelevant in the sideways world.


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