The Ten Greatest Lost WTF-isms

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I wanted to take a look back at the long road of WTF that it took to get to where we are. Some of these moments’ mysteries have been resolved, while others we might be waiting until the final episode for an answer. Here are the ten most Lost-ish moments in this history of Lost.

10) “I don’t know what is more disquieting; the fact that the rest of the statue is missing, or that it has four toes.” – Sayid

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Context: Jin, Sun and Sayid are sailing across the island’s coast in Desmond’s boat when they see a giant broken foot statue.

Scale from Zero to Solved: Zero. We’ve seen ancient writing in a few places on the island, but we have no clue whatsoever about the island’s ancient inhabitants, besides a possible hint that the modern ‘Others’ are descended from them.

9) “I said all of you, he’s coming too.” – Ben

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Context: In the season four finale Ben shows up on the mainland and tells Jack that everyone who left has to go back to the island, including corpse-ified Locke who we find out has been contacting all of them and calling himself Jeremy Bentham.

Scale from Zero to Solved: About a three. We don’t know why Locke dies in the future, but it’s not too hard to imagine any number of ways it could have happened. Presumably this season will explain much of that.

8 ) “Do you ever think that maybe they put you down here to push a button every 100 minutes just to see if you would?” – Jack

“Every…single…day.” -Desmond

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Context: Upon breaking into the hatch, the survivors discover Desmond living down there typing in a code, and pressing a button every 108 minutes “in order to save the world.”

Scale from Zero to Solved: Solved. The button might actually be one of Lost’s most successful and satisfying explanations. It actually did do something (releasing electromagnetic energy), and because it wasn’t pressed one time it crashed the survivor’s plane. Bad Desmond!

7) “You found a what?” -Jack

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Context: Boone and Locke discover a metal hatch in the jungle, one of the first signs that they are not on a completely deserted island after all.

Scale from Zero to Solved: Solved. Finding a hatch in the tropic jungle way back in season one was one of the show’s initial WTF moments. Since then we’ve explored the thing inside and out, discovered it was a research station, and blew it up.

6) “Don’t tell me what I can’t do!” -Locke

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Context: We find out through a flashback that before the flight Locke had been confined to a wheelchair, but after the crash was fully able to walk again.

Scale from Zero to Solved: About a seven. It’s quite clear that the island has magical healing powers for those it likes (Locke, Rose) and scorn for those it doesn’t (Ben, pregnant women). We don’t know why exactly, but it’s not one of the most pressing mysteries.

5) “Where did that come from?” -Kate

“Probably Bear Village, how the hell would I know?” – Sawyer

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Context: Sawyer shoots something making its way through the grass towards the group, assuming it’s a large boar. It’s a  ****ing polar bear.

Scale from Zero to Solved: Pretty much solved. We know Dharma brought polar bears as some sort of “animals out of their natural habitat” experiment (check Lostpedia for a more detailed analysis). What we don’t know is the context as to why one of them got teleported to the Tunisian desert. Hmm.

4) “One of them isn’t in the manifest. He wasn’t on the plane!” -Hurley

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Context: After Hurley finds the manifest and takes a census, he discovers that one passenger, Ethan, wasn’t on the list, and at that moment he’s off kidnapping Claire and hanging Charlie from a tree. It’s the first time we figure out that there are other people on the island and hence the term “Others” is born.

Scale from one to Solved: About a two. The Others are still one of the show’s greatest mysteries. We found a lot out about Ben, but he wasn’t exactly a true Other since he came over with Dharma. The “native” Others are still perplexing, as one appears to be immortal and a few others appear to be ghosts or teleporters.

3) “I’m sorry.” -Michael

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Context: Michael takes a gun from Ana Lucia to shoot Ben, but instead shoots her, Libby and himself.

Scale from Zero to Solved: Solved. At the time this was probably one of the most shocking moments of the show to date, and it still retains that title today. What would prompt Michael to kill two survivors and shoot himself? Well, we found out later he made a deal for his son with the Others.

2) (Unpronounceable)

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Context: Pick your poison. The first time the noise is heard in the jungle is the very beginning of Lost‘s mysteries, letting the audience know that this just isn’t some Robinson Crusoe knock off about surviving on an island. Also, two more WTF moments are when we first catch a glimpse of the monster, which turns out to be a pillar of smoke, and the time when the smoke monster gets right up in Mr. Eko’s grill and we can hear mechanical noises and see images flashing inside of it.

Scale from Zero to Solved: Negative ten. Alright, not really, let’s say one. The Smoke Monster is probably the one of the greatest remaining mysteries on the show, and no explanation seems to make sense. We know it’s a security system, it’s controllable, and it’s named after Cerebrus, the guard dog of hell. Awesome.

1) “We have to go back!” –Jack

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Context: In the last scene of the season three finale, Jack meets Kate and an airport and says they have to go back to the island. This turned everyone’s worlds upside down since until now, all flashbacks had been well, in the past. It threw the show for a loop to know that they actually do get off the island at some point, but even more so, that they weren’t supposed to.

Scale from Zero to Solved: Five. We now know how they got off the island, but we’re waiting until this season starts until we can fully grasp the reasons why everything turned to sh*t.

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30 Comments

  1. One can make the assumption that the polar bear found in Tunsia, the collar and chain found in the Orchids’ chilly pit, and Ben’s appearance in Tunisia all have a correlation. The polar bear was used in the past to move the island. If what Ben said is true: that one who moves the island cannot return, then it makes sense to use a trained animal to perform the task.

    Themes: animal and human sacrifice. teleportation. wormholes. foreign fauna.

  2. What about Hurley possibly hallucinating the whole experience? Libby “proved” to Hurley that she wasn’t a hallucination by telling him she hadn’t met him before the crash, but we saw at the end of that episode that Libby was a patient in Hurley’s mental hospital. I don’t think we’ve seen anything to disprove the possibility of the whole show taking place in Hurley’s head – but I hope we get it this season. If all of Lost turns out to be “just a dream” I’m going to throw my TV off an overpass.

  3. What about Jacob?

    When Locke and Ben were brought to the cabin and Ben was talking to a rocking chair then all hell broke loose. That was a WTF moment in Lost for sure.

  4. If this whole show turns out to be a hallucinating fat dude, I will kill every writer, actor, producer, and anyone else involved with the making of this show!

  5. Season one, Walters comic book with the black smoke and the polar bears written all in spanish has never been explained. Where did it come from and what else was in it? WTF!

  6. Ben appeared in the Tunisian desert wearing a heavy parka. Is it possible that the route between the Island and Tunisia passes through a waypoint in the arctic? And a polar bear blundered into it by mistake?

  7. What about Michael’s son Walt? He randomly appears in front of Shannon in the woods after being kidnapped from the boat and has “strange powers.” Could this all be his little game? What if Walt is Jacob?

  8. For me without a doubt the greatest WTF moment has to be the opening sequence of season 2. Hooked after 24 episodes of a story about a group of plane crash survivors on an (almost) deserted island in the middle of nowhere, I sat down to watch season 2 with huge anticipation and after a few moments I became worried that I was watching the wrong channel and missing the beginning. I was about to flip when the explosion caused Mama Cass to jump and we followed the light though the mirrors to look up at Jack & Locke staring down into the hatch.

    Brilliant! Completely tuen everything on it’s head. I think that has to be one of the best WTF moments in TV history, not just in Lost.

  9. I don’t know if I’d go so far as to say that the 108 minutes/button pushing thing is completely solved. As we saw in the most recent episode (Jughead) with the nuclear bomb, I’d be willing to bet that that bomb has a lot to do with the button pushing. Remember all of the concrete poured in the hatch that sealed off a part of it? And in Jughead, Daniel Faraday says the only thing they can do is seal it in concrete.

    So yes, we know that it was releasing elctro-magnetism, but we don’t know why, nor where that electro-magnetism was coming from.

  10. the worst theory i heard (in sense of “if it does happen i will scream and destroy every person who has ever thought of the show)was the one i which they are contestan in a reality show

    that would be fucked up

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