WHAT WAS OR IS THE ISLAND?

[danieladamsmith]

So, while I really was taken with the emotional aspects of the finale, I do have one question.
WHAT WAS OR IS THE ISLAND?

I felt that emotion won over mythology in the finale and I'm a bit disappointed in that. Why the button? What was the light?.....I guess we'll ruminate on many of the questions for years.

[jacksloststepkid]

So, to take a cut at this. Clearly we were shown that there is some fundamental power that is related to magnetism all over the world, with focal points in special places. The island seems to be the ultimate example of this and perhaps even the source. We also know the island moves through space and time, meaning to some extent it sits outside the normal world, but intersects with it in many different places at many different times. The plug to me looked to be some sort of ancient "plug" that was almost more like a lightbulb, that took the raw source of power and focused it in a controlled way that benefited and sustained the island.

The island also was clearly connected with other places like the spot in Tunesia where Ben and Locke appeared. To me this means that these energy lines running over the earth are similar to the field around the island as well - shifting things along them in time and space.

I think the only other aspect of this is the long life and special abilities that the Jacob or Smokey seemed to have. I think if you subscribe to the whole idea of earth as a source of life power, or the whole Gaia type of philosophy you could potentially see how they could tie the island power to healing, sustaining agelessness, or even binding a soul to magnetic essence/ash -

The whole rules thing still doesn't fit so much for me - that Jacob could have a set of rules that everyone had to follow - not sure what drives that whole thing - that still didn't really have a clear connection to much of anything else...

Ok, that's my brain dump... curious what others think.

JLSK

[spinaltumor]

I'm pretty much with JLSK is terms of what the Island is.

The button was needed to release a small pocket of energy every 108 minutes or else it'd get all implode-y again like we saw in the Incident. Desmond's eventually turning the failsafe probably had the same effect as Juliet hitting jughead. Except instead of everyone time traveling, Desmond just shifted consciously. The Swan was over a pocket of the same energy centralized at the Source.

[channingd]

I wonder if Jacob somehow with his rules, controlled the accessibility of the Island? Did those rules get changed with Hugo and Ben at the helm? Still never got the answer as to how the others really moved from mainland to Island. I still don't buy the sub explanation. Richard seeing Juliet. Ben moving back and forth. Video of Juliets sister and nephew and a paper with current date. Still don't get that and I'm sure there was going to be a cool reason just never transpired.

[David]

I tend to agree with the above. The Dharma initiative was an attempt to harness and control the energy (power) of the island. The station was built and the hatch in place to control the energy (controlled release/dispersion) every 108 minutes (stil, it was the 1970's and that was cutting edge technology. Control of the energy minimized movement allowing more frequent to and from travel to the island.

Destruction of the hatch caused the island to return to it's pre-hatch ways of moving around more frequently. Ben turning the wheel (incorrectly) caused the skipping. Locke fixed that.

The rules where a game Jocob was playing to amuse himself and try to teach his brother a lesson. (recall conversation with brothers about games and rules) . They needed people to come to the island so Jacob could find a replacement.

Yes, I believe failsafe had same consequence as Jughead, but I believe we also saw that "what ever happened... happened"... The insurection of the hostiles was 815-ers. The indicent was Juliet exploding Jughead... it all played out on schedule. There was no loop, there was no changing what happened.

Jack was destined not to treat young Ben, and to lead the insurection that caused poor Phil to be shis-ka-bobbed.

We can believe that Hugo as #1 and Ben as #2 were very different than Jacob. They were happy and it's what ultimately gave Ben his redemption!

I am looking forward to watching it all again.