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We’re dealing with at least THREE main groups: the idealist, leftist DI; the separationist, utopian Others; and the capitalist, utilitarian Widmore Industries.

— HappyAtheist

Here’s a long, macroscopic synthesis of the events surrounding Dharma, Ben, Kelvin, Desmond, Hanso, Widmore, and more. updated after the feb 7 episode of season 4.

Despite earning 31+ out of 33 positive reviews, this theory was debunked over the summer on no grounds whatsoever. See the original here. Some of you suggested explaining the situation to readers and re-posting as a new theory to bypass the glitch and get the theory out to a wider audience.

I’m re-posting this mainly because I’m curious to hear what newer users who’ve never seen it before think, so if you have any comments or questions, please post!

Update: After last night’s episode (4.2), I am thrilled to know that I was definitely on to something. I’ve gone through my theory, updating and adding new thoughts.

Update #2 After episode 4.3, I’d say that we must consider how BEN convinced Sayid to kill people connected to the megacorporation that sent Naomi’s team to the island before the shocking flash-forward we saw the other night. Sayid agreed because he realized that he and Ben were on the same side: they had both found Paradise, but an evil corporation that desperately wants to exploit the island for some as-yet-unrevealed nefarious purpose killed some of their friends in their attempt to gain (or re-gain) control of the island. In previous seasons, it was unclear whether the Others and the Losties could co-exist in Paradise. Ben seemed like a lunatic or self-serving con man ranting against contact with the outside. Now, both groups will suffer great losses and band together against the Man, trying anything and everything to recapture the Paradise that they didn’t always see that as such, and letting their differences go. Soon, the Losties and the Others will long for the good old days on the island. Miles, Daniel et al. were recruited for their special abilities, but their actual interests are at odds with the megacorp that hired them—quite probably a governmental organization if we take into consideration JJ Abrams’s other famed television creation “Alias”. Eventually, they too will join forces with the Losties/Others on (and off?) the island to fight the Man/Megacorporp/First World Government that wants so badly to get to the island and exploit it to evil ends.

I love this theory by Dharmacist. I think mine is my attempt to tell the story of what came before. I’m sure that I’m not giving credit to other theories I indirectly cite; I give my apologies in advance for my poor, poor memory.

It became clear to me during season 3 that the Losties on the island are caught within a bigger battle between warring groups. We know that there’s 1) our stranded survivors of flight 815 (who are strangely connected to one another—and that’s one thing my theory does not explain, your input would be appreciated here). 2) There’s Richard Alpert, the guy who doesn’t age, and the other “Hostiles” who tried to get rid of the DI 3) There’s the DI we see in the 60s/70s with their seemingly well-meaning experiments and 4) there’s Naomi’s team on a covert mission sent by the same man who poses as a lawyer from Oceanic in order to get information about who’s still on the island from Hurley and 5) there are some megacorporations (involving the mega wealthy Paik and/or Widmore) working on things behind the scenes, and the posing Oceanic lawyer is probably a part of them. Possibly, #5 includes the people behind the original 60s/70s DI we saw on the island, who have now possibly split into warring factions.

Around the time Ben joined with Richard (and the so-called “Hostiles”) to exterminate the DI, his team (known to the Losties as “the Others”) communicated with other sections of the real DI stationed off the island. Ben and his people convinced the mainland DI that they, the DI members still on the island, were dying from a mysterious illness (possibly related to their experiments).

They told the DI that they’d have to put themselves in quarantine to prevent the disease from spreading. Maybe they said that the disease came from the indigenous hostiles; or maybe the hostiles were diseased members of the DI that were quarantined/cast out of the community. Either way, Ben et al. assured the DI that those unexposed or immune would continue to live on the island while seeking a cure and fulfilling the all-important task of pushing the button. The island would be cut off from DI at this point because of “the incident”. But while Ben et al. asked that the DI’s support of them be kept secret, he also asked that reinforcements be sent in periodically to help them push the button and that the food drops continue. Mikhail himself probably faciliated this conversation between Ben posing as faithful DI and the DI on the mainlands from the Flame station. Under the terms of the quarantine, people could enter the island, but they couldn’t leave. The masks and specially marked gear that Jack found suggests that Naomi’s team was wary of there being some real illness on the island.

That’s how Kelvin and Radzinsky came to be recruited to the island. Still reeling from the horrible things he’d ordered done and done himself during the war, Kelvin was up for a suicide mission when he was recruited by the top-secret, private sector DI mission in the early 90s. During his tenure, he found out the secret from Radzinsky: the mystery illness was not real and all was not what it seemed to be. The DI thought they were indirectly in control of the quarantined island, but they weren’t. Of course, there was no way off the island, and if they stopped pressing the button, the world would end. So they were stuck. They took turns exploring the island while the other one pushed the button, but they knew it was dangerous, especially with the crazy Others and smoke monster around.

They tried to recreate from memory a map of the DI stations and everything they knew or had heard about the current state of the DI imposters. They filled it with their observations and hypotheses. For example, they wrote, “Road or other route of travel” because they know there’s a passageway there based on their time with their hosts/imposter employers and short forays into the jungle, but they haven’t seen the road. This is the “blast door map”. Of course, eventually, Radzinsky dies a death much like the one Kelvin will have in the future.

By the time Desmond gets there, Kelvin is completely demoralized by the death of Radinsky, and is in full survival mode. He sees a shipwreck survivor and he decides he needs to fool another human subject into sticking with the button, much like he was initially fooled, in order to have a real shot of getting off the island. He feeds Des the story about the illness, puts on a hazmat suit, and goes out to fix the sailing boat he’s found.

During all of these years, of course, the DI has still been dropping food. Their Hanso Foundation funding was NOT cut in 1987, as Hugh McIntyre claimed in his interview with Jimmy Kimmel as part of the Lost Experience (Lostpedia.com). The video of Mittlewerk saying in 2006 that the DI has failed also contradicts the idea that funding was actually cut off in 1987. Rather, 1987 is the date of Ben’s near-extermination of the DI on the island, and of his convincing the DI that the island be quarantined. In 1987, only a few high-ranking DIs knew (or thought) that the island was functioning as it was intended to but under quarantine.

The submarine has not gone actually anywhere since the Quarantine (although it did actually bring Ben to the island); it’s been disabled from the outside as part of the Quarantine. Only Ben and high-ranking Others know it’s a ruse, to convince the newer inhabitants that they arrived that way. The actual mode of transportation is top-secret (and sure, may involve anomalies in the space-time continuum). There’s a split here between high-rankers/old Others who’ve been on the island much longer, and have bonded with it, and relative newcomers, like Juliet, who can still feel homesick after 3 years and want to go back. As we know, the newer members of the others are part of the dissenters who are questioning Ben, and want Locke to lead them. Perhaps they want to re-initiate contact with the outside world, or change how things are done.

But, okay, the DI on the mainland think they’re still operating a top-secret thing on the island, whose goal is to save the world, even though it’s a quarantined mission. That is, until, of course, the explosion of the Swan hatch, and the release of all of the electromagnetic energy. For the first time, the DI has reason to doubt that they were getting the full story about what was going on inside their quarantined island. They sent out a team to investigate. or, in light of the last episode, they’re on a covert mission set up by one of the warring megacorporations—or the original DI. At this point, we don’t know exactly who’s who, and I’ll get to one possible version later. But these people are looking for Ben because they know he exterminated the original DI. The photo of Ben that the anthropologist shows our Losties shows Ben with a beige computer monitor in the background—more modern than anything we’ve seen on the island. Naomi’s team probably is working on orders given by group 5 to infiltrate the island and kill Ben.

Group 5 probably got wind of what Ben was up to when he and Richard Alpert went out into the world using the dummy corporation Mittelos to recruit people, like Juliet, to work on solving problems faced by those trying to live on the island.

what is the island? Think of it as some sort of Eden. It follows different rules. It’s not like the rest of the world, and seemingly supernatural things happen on it. This would partially explain why you need a headcase physicist who notices that the light is different and a ghost-hunter on a team trying to get to the island to kill Ben and regain control. But I digress. Sperm count increases five-fold; humans need only a day to heal from a punctured lung (as Mikhail reminds us). Cancer and paralysis are cured. Females who become pregnant on the island die because their bodies’ protective mechanisms are in overproduction and they attack the fetus as a foreign invader. The island slowly makes its inhabitants immortal—over time. This might also explain how Ben got cancer—he left the island to recruit Juliet and maybe others in an effort to make his community better—both immortal (or nearly immortal) and self-propagating. The different warring groups are willing to maim and kill to get or keep control of the island, but they want it for different reasons and purposes.

The island and its special properties were discovered long ago by someone who used it to create a mega fortune and megacorporation in the outside world but lost control of it when Ben killed the DI and sealed it off (Hanso? This would expalint eh Hanso/Black Rock connection). Or maybe they lost control of it when factions split it apart. One faction tried to use the island to understand mankind better and/or to save the world. This faction sent the DI there, but the other faction was bothered because they had wanted to use it for personal gain. So let’s assume that, off the island, there’s the DI corporation and the Widmore/Paik corporations, both trying to get back to the island for different purposes, purposes that are slowly, very slowly for us, unfolding on the island.

Anyway, Widmore Indsustries knows that Desmond washed up on the island because Penny was searching for Des. Her Dad was spying on her the whole time, because he’s the meddling father par excellance (cf. his bribery of Desmond). Mr. Widmore worried when she became distraught over Des’s disappearance in the race, broke up with the guy she was seeing, and used a huge amount of money to search for Des. Penny’s real Portuguese team is surprised and confused by the electromagnetic anomaly. Papa Widmore knows exactly what it is, because he and Paik have joined together and been been secretly funding the take-over of Hanso via Mittlewerk! So, in another example of synchronicity, Widmore finds the island he’s been searching for over the past several years through the coincidence that his daughter’s love has washed up there, and her expensive team has almost found them. Widmore, however, has more information than Penny. He understands how to locate the anomaly because he has another piece of the puzzly. So, old Mr. Widmore/Paik has really found them, not Penny.

The mainland DI also has all the pieces to the puzzle, and they keep an eye on the island through an old station. Or maybe they’re researching electromagnetism or seismicity on the mainland/Antartica, and their screens registered the blip also, and the high-rankers knew it was from their quarantined island.

The DI knows that the Old Widmore/Paik team is on its way to the island, but their team gets there first. Naomi pretends to work for Penny Widmore because she’s been briefed on the Des story. She knows Des might be there. She can’t afford to come out as an authentic DI because that could lead to danger on the island, depending on who she’s talking to. None of the island-dwellers, however, will have heard about Widmore Corp, a relatively newer enemy of the DI and it’s mission. Meanwhile, if the guy named Des thinks she’s rescuing him on behalf of Penny, she knows she’ll be greeted warmly by him. So, she poses as part of Penny’s team, and has the pic of Des as evidence. She knows, as we saw in Season 4’s second episode, that there might be survivors on the island. The connection to the corporations and Oceanic Flight 815 is important, but still nto even remotely revealed to us. When she asks Charlie for info about the different warring groups on the island, she’s trying to get info about the situation on the ground to bring back to the DI.

When Naomi tells Mikhail, “I am not alone” in Portugese, he’s wearing an official DI jumpsuit and being held captive by a bunch of raggedy-looking people and Desmond. She assumes that these people with Desmond might be the survivors OR the diseased hostiles who have been thrust out of the community (or, maybe pre-dated the DI). She recognizes Mikhail as a communications officer from his Flame jumpsuit and she thinks they’re on the same side. Given that Mikhail ultimately followed Ben’s orders re: blowing up the underwater communications station and killing people along the way, we know he’s still faithful to Ben. So, Naomi was probably mistaken in assuming he was on her side. But maybe she was right to assume that Mikhail knows about the bigger picture, in a way the Losties do not. what is strange: Why did the other members of her team respond that way to discovering Juliet was not an Other? Naomi’s team seems to think that, while the Losties are essentially harmless, Other people on the island are not on their side. Maybe they were suspecting the quarantine was not real, but weren’t 100% sure. Once Naomi died, the other members of her team became pretty sure that the natives were dangerous.

Here’s what Lospedia says about Naomi’s arrival on the island: “While flying the helicopter back to her ship, which was (anchored) 80 nautical miles from the Island, the clouds suddenly parted and she saw land. The instruments on the helicopter then began to malfunction, and Naomi parachuted out before the craft crashed into the ocean.”

So, Naomi was not planning on landing on the quarantined island, and that’s why she wasn’t wearing a hazmat suit.

Once Naomi got there, surrounded by the jabbering Losties, her quick-thinking self (she must be from the Special Ops branch of the DI—and Season 4 episodes confirm her background), realized that the inhabitants weren’t sick, confirming a suspicion the DI had begun to have after they saw the electromagnetic anomaly and heard of Widmore’s dastardly plans. So, she didn’t ask about the sickness because she intuited that they’d been right to suspect the need for the Quarantine in the first place.

Naomi was very cautious during her short time on the island. She gave very little information to the group as a whole, and that explains why we the viewers learned so little from her. Although, I do think that flashbacks might reveal that she did say things we never saw onscreen to other characters. Maybe she tried to warn some people—not Jack, because he was in cahoots with an “Other”—about what was really going on and future flashbacks will show Naomi giving important info to some people on the island.

At the end of the day, once we’ve seen just how thoroughly the season 3 finally “changed everything”, it’ll become clear that we’re not dealing with the Losties vs. the Others. We’re dealing with several main groups, including: the idealist, leftist DI; the separationist, utopian Others; and the capitalist, utilitarian Widmore Industries.

The Losties throw a major wrench into their plans.

the ideological breakdown: Widmore/Mittlewerk wants to use the island for personal gain. They’re want to use it to profit from the shittiness of the world. They don’t care about the fate of their offspring, so much as they care about themselves. They’re willing to release a virus that decimates the world’s population as long as they manufacture the only cure because they’ll be rich, and be able to extend their own lives on the island. Sawyer’s character tends to embrace this view, and other characters have passed through dark, selfish phases.

The Others want to live in harmony with the island, isolated from the ugly, incorrigible world that’s going to hell in a handbasket (and that’s if we do get out of Iraq). This attitude motivated their separation from the DI in 1987. They joined the supposed “hostiles” who were a mix of people who defected from the DI. Richard presumed Ben had been born on the island and not brought there as a child, and the rest of the group believes this also. (And Ben might just have supernatural powers, like Miles). They didn’t believe the Valenzetti equation could ever be solved, and they saw in the island the possibility for a new human race to survive after the demise of the rest of us. Coming to terms with your father is important to them, because inheritance is important to them. They see themselves as inheritors of Jacob, a wily second son of the human race, a new line conning everybody in order to inherit it all. Unlike the capitalists, they DO care about their line, alas, they can’t procreate! Obviously, most of the people on “Jacob’s list” who are living among the Others seem to be adapting just fine. Locke’s character subscribes to this view of the world—plus, he’s had experience living in a commune.

The Hanso DI is a holdover from the sixties. They are true idealists who believe they can save the world. The status of their mission is very much in question at this point. Jack’s character embodies this attitude.

As for the fourth group, our Losties, well, they’re all just struggling to find out what they want.

At the end of season 6, one group will have won out.

Key characters

Short Name	Full Name	Episodes	Theories
Charles	Charles Widmore		361
Desmond	Desmond David Hume	2.23, 3.17, 4.5	804
Dr.Mittelwerk	Dr. Thomas Werner Mittelwerk		106
Penny	Penny Widmore	3.8	239

Key episodes

#	Title	Aired	Central character	Theories
3.20	The Man Behind The Curtain	5-9-2007	Ben	386
3.19	The Brig	5-2-2007	John	128
3.18	D.O.C.	4-25-2007	Sun, Jin	90
3.17	Catch 22	4-18-2007	Desmond	117
3.16	One Of Us	4-11-2007	Juliet	78

Key locations

Theme	Relevant Episodes	Theories
The Flame Station	2.23, 3.5, 3.16, 3.11, 2.17	207

Similar theories

Title	Author	Cmnts	Votes	Rating
Dharma, Ben, Locke & Jack	delirium	1	1	+1

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