I can understand people having a problem connecting emotionally to the Sideways timeline characters and therefore have a tendency to think of it as "less real". I have a theory that (if it is true) can help explain why the Sideways Jack is just as "real" as the island Jack.
A lot of people seem to have a problem understanding the sideways universe because they think it only diverged from the original one when flight 815 landed in LA, or they think it is a parallel one that never connects to the original. Juliet's cryptic "it worked" gives us a clue to what created the sideways universe. The sideways universe is a divergent reality that was created by Jack and co. successfully preventing "the incident".
My current theory is as follows:
Faraday was right when he says "what happened, happened". There is one timestream that can get split into two realities, but these separate realities always "course correct" back to the main timestream. We saw some examples of this when Desmond kept saving Charlie's life. But Desmond's interference only delayed Charlies death by several days. The timestream only took about a week to course correct.
Now when Faraday came up with his new "variables" theory, he used the metaphor of throwing pebbles into a river. You can cause a small disturbance in the flow of the river, but it quickly returns to normal. This is the metaphor for Desmond's diverting Charlie's death for a few days. Then Faraday said if you could get a big enough boulder you could actually divert the flow of the stream permanently. This was a metaphor for his theory that preventing the incident would mean no "button pushing" etc. and therefore no 815 plane crash.
I think Faraday's reasoning here was all correct, but failed to take into account the paradox of time travel being the mechanism which put them in a place to prevent the Incident. If they prevent the 815 crash, then no one is there to prevent the incident.
So when Juliet set off the bomb (and I believe she did) that energy, plus the energy being released by the drill hole was enough to create a new reality where the incident did not happen, but instead of "diverting" the timestream into the new course, it "split it in two" so now we have two equally valid timestreams running "side by side".
So the sideway timestream and the original timestream are identical up until 1977, then they split and different things start happening in each. This allows plenty of time for Jack to have a teenage son that he didn't have in the original timestream. I think this is why the producers are adamant that the sideways timeline is not a dream or "what-if" story, but is just as real as the original timeline.
Another part of this theory is that both the bomb energy and the "time/electromagnetic" energy under the Swan were used up in creating the Sideways timestream, so there was no immediate devastation on the island. This allows for Ethan, Ben, plus both Others and Dahrma people to leave the Island and become doctors, teachers, etc. (I don't think the bomb sunk the island. I think that something else caused it at least a little bit later, otherwise Ben would not have had time to leave the island).
So the combined energy of the bomb and the time/electromagnetic energy under the island was a big enough "boulder" to create a new timestream, but in a universe where "whatever happened, happened' and there are no paradoxes, the original timeline is preserved because the original circumstances are needed to create the opportunity to set off the bomb.
Now the timestream is still going to course-correct back into one timeline, but it's taking 30+ years rather than the week or so that we saw in Desmond/Charlie's case. I think the two timelines will merge/course correct back into one shortly before the series finale (maybe during the series finale). The interesting thing will be if the charaters who are still alive after the merge will remember both realities or not. (I don't think there will be two Jacks, Sawyers, etc because the course corrections on Charlie's death didn't create multiple Charlies.)
Anyway, this was pretty much the view I've had since watching the season premiere and so far the new revelations have only supported it. I may be entirely wrong, but so far it matches the evidence we've been shown.
Mo here: Interesting theory!! Thanks, Greg.
Posted by: Greg S. | February 25, 2010 at 03:30 PM
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