Lost Thoughts

Comic fans are familiar with the strange, somewhat ill-defined powers of The Scarlet Witch. She has the ability to affect "probability fields," so, for example, she can make a gun misfire by messing with probability--if the gun has odds of misfiring in say 1 in a million, she makes them one in one.

I'm starting to wonder if the Lost writers aren't going to use the same device as their deus ex machina to explain away all of the pre-flight relationships that tie together the flight 815 survivors. After all, some kind of internally consistent, logical explanation for all of those coincidences (Locke inspecting Sayid's lovers' house, Sawyer being served coffee by Kate's Mom, Sayid being "taught to torture" by Kelvin, Jack not saving Shannon's Dad, etc.) is likely impossible at this point. Especially since the season finale last year - and this year's premiere - strongly imply that the plane's being pulled down to the island was an accident, not intentional. So the notion that all of these people were somehow manipulated to be on the plane so that they could be "collected" on the island falls apart.

But what if the "electro-magnetic" anomaly also had the power to warp probability? That would allow for an easy, no-muss, no-fuss explanation for all of the coincidences. And maybe even all of the reoccurring appearances of the numbers as well. Sure, it would be somewhat of a cheat, but one I could live with - it would make internal sense and it would tie directly into the whole Dharma experiments angle.

One thought on last night's stellar episode. When Hurley finds Desmond, Desmond says something about a speech Locke gave. Of course we hear that speech later on, and the question is raised - is Desmond - maybe as a result of being at the center of the "electro-magnetic" release that imploded the hatch and made the sky pretty last season - psychic? Or had he traveled into the future? I'm voting for the latter. One, it's more interesting. Two, one sci-fi trope involves the notion that when teleporting, only people themselves travel - clothes are left behind. What if the same hold for time travel?

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