Time

From Lostpedia

This is an article about the general theme pertaining to the show. For specific dates of events referenced on the show, see Timeline.

The Rolex watch

The passage of time is a recurring theme in Lost. Increasing evidence points towards the passage of time behaving differently on the Island compared to the outside world. In the episode "The Constant", it is revealed that a conscious mind can be transported through time.

Occurrences

Season 1

• Locke tells Walt: "Backgammon's the oldest game in the world. Archeologists found sets when they excavated the ancient ruins of Mesopotamia -- 5,000 years old. That's older than Jesus Christ." ("Pilot, Part 2")
• Sayid tells the group that the distress signal has been repeating for "16 years and 5 months, that's the count." ("Pilot, Part 2")
• Charlie updates the bandages to say LATE instead of FATE and the camera scans to Claire's belly. ("Tabula Rasa")
• Charlie says, "Really, last I heard we were positively made of time." ("Walkabout")
• Charlie tells Locke that he hasn't played his guitar in "Uh, 8 days, 11 hours, give or take." ("House of the Rising Sun")
• Jack remarks about Adam and Eve's tattered clothing: "It takes 40 or 50 years for clothing to degrade like this." ("House of the Rising Sun")
• When giving the Rolex watch back to Jin, Michael says: "...since time doesn't matter on a damn island." ("House of the Rising Sun")
• Charlie plans an 8-week tour for Drive Shaft. ("The Moth")
• Michael claims to have worked in construction for 8 years. ("The Moth")
• Boone asks Locke whether they will be working on the Hatch for 4 months like Michelangelo on the Statue of David. ("Hearts and Minds")
• Boone tells Shannon his flight to Sydney took 15 hours. ("Hearts and Minds")
• Jin was asked to deliver watches for Mr. Paik. ("...In Translation")
• Jin tells Sun on their wedding day that their honeymoon will have to wait 6 months until his management training is finished. ("...In Translation")
• Locke remarks about the clothing on the skeleton in the jungle: "Normally clothing would completely decompose within 2 years, but this is high quality polyester -- could be 2 years, could be 10." ("Deus Ex Machina")
• Sawyer is seen reading A Wrinkle in Time. ("Deus Ex Machina")
• Kate's time capsule is her driving purpose in several of her actions as a fugitive. ("Born to Run")
• The time in the hotel room when Walt wakes Michael up is 5:23. ("Exodus, Part 1")
• Hurley says, "Twinkies keep for, like, 8000 years, man." ("Exodus, Part 2")
• Hurley nearly missed the plane because the alarm clock in his hotel room stopped working. Explaining this to an Oceanic Airlines employee, Hurley says "I don't really get the whole time change thing."("Exodus, Part 2")

Season 2

• Jack says, "I've got time." ("Man of Science, Man of Faith")

Countdown timer in the Swan station

• The countdown timer repeatedly counts down, indicating when the Numbers need to be typed in. ("Adrift")
• Locke organizes shifts of 6 hours to stay in the Swan. ("Everybody Hates Hugo")
• The lottery announcer says it is the 16th week without a winner. ("Everybody Hates Hugo")
• The title of episode 7 is "The Other 48 Days".
• Ana Lucia tells Goodwin: "This knife's probably 20 years old. You don't see these anymore, yet here it is, on this island. Weird, huh?" ("The Other 48 Days")
• In The Other 48 Days Ana states, "We were in the air for two hours -- I didn't see him once -- not once" but days before-hand, the Pilot stated, "Six hours in, our radio went out. No one could see us. We turned back to land in Fiji." ("The Other 48 Days")
• After Eko kills some of the Others, he waits 40 days to talk. ("The Other 48 Days")
• Sam Austen gives Kate an hour before he calls the authorities. ("What Kate Did")
• Referring to a source of a radio transmission that consists of a Big Band recording from the 1940's, Sayid says, "It could be coming from anywhere." Hurley responds, "Or any time. Just kidding, dude." ("The Long Con")
• When Ana Lucia wakes up, her alarm clock reads 3:51. ("Two for the Road")
• Michael was given three minutes with Walt; this was also the title of the episode. ("Three Minutes")
• Desmond tells Claire: "You're wasting your time, sister. I shot myself with that stuff every 9 days for 3 years." ("Live Together, Die Alone")
• Desmond realizes the system failure occurred at 16:16, according to the Pearl's printout, on the day of the crash. ("Live Together, Die Alone")

Season 3

• Ben told Jack what happened off-the-island during the given timeline: "Your flight crashed on September 22nd, 2004. Today is November 29th. That means you've been on our island for 69 days. Yes, we do have contact with the outside world, Jack. That's how we know that during those 69 days your fellow Americans re-elected George W. Bush; Christopher Reeve has passed away; the Boston Red Sox won the World Series." ("The Glass Ballerina")
• Jack looked for a clock to announce the time of death for Colleen, but he couldn't find one. ("Every Man for Himself")
• Aldo was reading A Brief History of Time when he was guarding the building holding Karl. ("Not in Portland")
• Ben asked Jack for "3 minutes" since he had only "27 minutes to live". ("Not in Portland")
• Diana confirmed with Juliet that her appointment was at 2 o'clock. ("Not in Portland")
• Dr. Alpert showed Juliet a scan that according to her seems to be the womb lining of a 70 year old but is in fact a 20 year old. ("Not in Portland")
• Dr. Alpert asked Juliet to work for him for six months. ("Not in Portland")
• Juliet gives the exact length of her stay on the Island: 3 years, 2 months and 28 days. ("Not in Portland")
• The company name Mittelos is an anagram for "lost time". ("Not in Portland")

• This was confirmed as being the plot-significant anagram to look out for in the 2/12/07 podcast.

• The voice of a woman repeating "Only fools are enslaved by time and space" can be heard in the reversed version of the Room 23 brainwashing video. This hidden clue may be another Buddhist reference: "The wise know how to use time and space perfectly; they lead free and harmonious lives. Fools are enslaved by time and space; they are busy running around all day. Wise or foolish, the difference is obvious." ("Not in Portland")
• Desmond relives events that have happened in his past in his "Déjà vu" after being knocked out, and has a number of issues with time continuity until he is knocked out again. ("Flashes Before Your Eyes")

"Future" paint

• The company that made the red paint that Desmond was using to paint the walls of his flat with was called "FUTURE" paint. ("Flashes Before Your Eyes")
• Desmond fixes his tie and glances at the clock, which reads 108. ("Flashes Before Your Eyes")
• Ms. Hawking is surrounded by a huge number of clocks in her jewelry store. ("Flashes Before Your Eyes")
• Kronos is a fictional company shown in an Easter Egg as an ad in the TV soccer game Desmond is watching. Kronos is a titan in Greek mythology, generally regarded as the god of time. ("Flashes Before Your Eyes")
• Richard Alpert tells Juliet, "You're gonna be amazed at how time flies once you're there", referring to the Island. ("One of Us")
• Richard Alpert doesn't seem to age. Ben asks him if he even remembers what a birthday is. ("The Man Behind the Curtain")
• When Ben is in the van with Roger, he looks at his watch and it displays the time 4:00:15 and 4:00:16. He says goodbye to his father, puts on a gas mask, and the Purge occurs. ("The Man Behind the Curtain")
• Ben orders the deaths of Sayid, Jin and Bernard giving Jack a countdown before hand. ("Through the Looking Glass")
• In the season finale, "Through the Looking Glass", Jack's off-island events occur in the future, as a flashforward, rather than flashback. ("Through the Looking Glass")

Season 4

Daniel compares the clocks

• Daniel, a physicist, ordered Regina to fire a rocket from the freighter. A digital clock was planted inside the rocket as its payload. The payload arrived at Daniel's position 31 minutes after Regina said it reached the target. Daniel confirmed this by comparing the time on the clock inside the rocket with the time clock he had on the Island. ("The Economist")
• The helicopter appears to take two days to reach the freighter according to observers on the Island and freighter, however when seen from the helicopter perspective off the Island, it only takes a matter of minutes. ("The Constant")
• Desmond, Minkowski, Brandon and a lab rat all experience time-travel. ("The Constant")
• Not only does time appear to move differently, but the actual sequence of events varies between the perspective of those on the island and those on the freighter suggesting that the time difference between the island and the freighter is changing. Example:
  • On the island, the Losties pull the body of the ship's doctor Ray with his throat slit out of the water one morning. Later that evening, Jack and Bernard convince Daniel to contact the ship by Morse code and determine he is lying to them about the message. The next afternoon Frank gathers up Keamy and his crew and hustles them back to the helicopter so he can fly back during daylight. That night, Jack has his appendectomy.
  • The helicopter arrives on the freighter at night. The next day, during daylight, Omar pulls the sat phone out of his pocket as he is receiving the Morse code message. That night he tells Keamy that the message asked what happened to the doctor as his dead body washed up on shore, but the doctor is still alive and on the boat. Shortly, Keamy slits the doctor's throat and throws him overboard.
    • The helicopter returns to the island on the third night after the doctor's body washed up on shore on the island, but just moments after his death on the freighter. Jack had his appendectomy the night before the helicopter flew overhead and dropped the sat phone in either perspective.
    • Order of events on the freighter: Jack's appendectomy, Morse code communication, Ray murdered.
    • Order of events on the island: Ray's body found, Morse code communication, Jack's appendectomy.
• The wheel is frozen when Ben goes to move it and we learn in season 5 there is a correspondence between and the movement of Time on the Island - at least for the Losties.("There's No Place Like Home, Parts 2 & 3")

Season 5

• The people on the Island are skipping through time. According to Daniel time is like a street. People can move forward on that street, they can move in reverse, but they can not ever create a new street. If they try to do anything different, they will fail every time. Whatever happened, happened. ("Because You Left")
• The wheel is off its axis and is skipping back and forth just like time is in Season 5.("This Place Is Death")
• When Locke sets the wheel, the island is in 1974, and time begins progressing from that point forward. Sawyer, Juliet, Jin and Miles have been living as DHARMA members for three years in parallel to the amount of time it took Jack, Kate, and Hurley to return the island. When they arrive, it is 1977 on the island while time had moved from 2004 to 2007 off the island. ("LaFleur")

Lost: Missing Pieces

• The title and major prop in the first mobisode is "The Watch".

Recurring themes

Literary works

Main article: Literary works

• A Brief History of Time - Non-fiction book about astrophysics and theories on how the universe began (seen in Lost)
• Watchmen - Graphic novel/comic book series that features a character who experiences time in a non-linear fashion (confirmed influence on Lost)
• A Wrinkle in Time - Fictional book on time travel through tessaracts (seen in Lost)
• Slaughterhouse-Five - Fictional book with a protagonist 'unstuck' in time
• The Chronicles of Narnia - Fictional book where there is a time difference between Narnia and the real world

Premonitions

Main article: Premonitions

There have been multiple instances of characters in Lost foreseeing future events.

Lost Time

Producers' commentary

At Comic Con in '06, the following fan question was asked and answered, somewhat obliquely:

In an interview, Cuse also dropped additional hints about the significance of timelines (Entertainment Weekly):

Life Extension

Main article: Life Extension Project

• Joop, Alvar Hanso and Richard Alpert all seem to have to a longer life-span than might be expected. This could potentially be related to consequences of time travelling.

See also

• Timeline
• "Debunked" theory - Time travel
• Time on the island (theory)
• Time dilation
• Time travel