Examples of Backwards Causality
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By karmavore
- Examples of Backwards Causality
- Created: Aug 1, 2008
- Last updated: Aug 14, 2008
- After episode: 4.13: There’s No Place Like Home, Parts 2 & 3
- Status: Current
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Jack doesn’t yet realize that “We have to go back” is, in fact, a pun.
— karmavore
The one that called this issue to the fore for me was in “The Beginning of the End”, when dead Charlie visits Hurley at Santa Rosa. Another patient can see Charlie, who casually notes “I am dead, but I’m also here”. He also tells Hurley that his friends need his help. Hurley squeezes his eyes tight and says “you’re not real”, and when he opens them, Charlie has disappeared.
Here’s how I interpret that scene. At some point going forward, Hurley will travel back in time and take some action that saves Charlie’s life. Hurley’s trip to the past, however, is not guaranteed. While Charlie is motivating him, Hurley is on a “path” to save Charlie. When Hurley convinces himself that he’s crazy, he takes himself off that path. Charlie stays dead, and can’t be around to convince Hurley to save his friends. He disappears.
Thinking in this fashion, consider Boone’s death in Season 1. Locke and Boone find the beachcraft in the canopy. Locke’s legs re-paralyze, and Boone climbs up into the plane, which falls. Locke now has the strength to carry Boone on his back back to camp, where Boone dies. Locke notes, (paraphrasing) “I was going to go up there myself, but I hurt my leg.” He describes this as a “sacrifice the Island demanded.”
Again, here’s my take. John Locke is on a path to go back in time and stop himself from ever being paralyzed. Whenever he is on this path, he can walk, and whenever he is off this path he cannot. When the plane is found, John wants to climb up and look around, which would likely kill him instead of Boone. If John dies, he can’t go back and stop his eight-story fall, so his legs give out. Boone climbs up, and Boone falls. The risk to John is gone, and his leg function returns.
I leave as an exercise for the reader the loss of John’s leg function while he was laying in a pit pointing a gun to his own head.
Jack doesn’t yet realize that “We have to go back” is, in fact, a pun. For these, and other, events to make sense, something needs to happen before the event we see, and it’s clear that current decisions still have influence over the past. Some people will have to go back in time, in some fashion to do it.
Please post other instances of this reverse causality in the comments!
Love the theory karmavore, although it does imply a do over and the writers have stated there will be no do overs and events that have happened will stand.(who can believe them any way?!) So, yeah, awesome theory.
exactly. “there is no time travel involved”. hmm…so what is happening now then! The producers seem to lie without realising it sometimes.
Love this theory by the way.
Can’t say I buy it… but I DO like it. You’re a clever one, my karma eating friend. ;-)
Elouise, perfect example - the intent to do something in the future makes it a reality.
+1
But MidnightDraven, if everything happens at the same moment (a la Brief History of Time) then, strictly, there is no time travel and there is no ‘lie’. Hmmmm. +1.
Your take on Charlie’s appearance and disappearance to Hurley was compelling. I don’t think it’s right, really, but in the same breath I don’t have a particularly better idea so I’m in a glass house here to be throwing those kinds of stones!
Like some other noters, I am wary of the show having to retread old ground in a different manner to complete the story, though.
@wtf: I agree with you, there will be no “do overs”. The consequences for the characters are real. But that’s not to say things can’t be temporarily changed. Consider Desmond saving Charlie over and over. Or the changing picture frames in Confirmed Dead. Eventually, everything course-corrects back to dead Charlie, but not before “zombie Charlie” has a chance to project some information into the future.
I don’t think this is going to be like Back to the Future 2, where the characters see themselves doing things in the past. I don’t know what it is going to be, though. I do think course-correction as a concept could save this theory from the do-over bin.