Lostpediapoetry: The Little Prince

The following are taken from theories posted to Lostpedia for the episode "The Little Prince." Note that the page will probably be cleaned up soon.

I.

Jin and Time Traveling

• There is the link between the time traveling and 4-8-15-16-23-42. If you consider the Island's time was 1996, when you subtract number '42' from the island's year, than the year changes to 1954, which was the exact year Locke met Richard. And when you subtract '4', the year changes to 1992, which was the year Ben annihilated the DHARMA Initiative. I kept doing this and found significant coincidence. Here's what I found out: 1996 - 42 = 1954 'Locke meet Richard in S5E03', 1996 - 4 = 1992 'Ben killed the DHARMA Initiative, 1996 - 8 = 1988 'Jin meet Danielle Rousseau', 1996 + 8 = 2004 'The Losties arrive on the Island', 1996 - 15 = 1981 'The Year the Swan(Or Pearl) DHARMA Video was filmed', 1996 - 16 = 1980 'The Year the Pearl(Or Swan - Sorry Iam confused here) DHARMA video was filmed'. I will try to keep the other relationships Up-To-Date
• I Is very frustrating hearing people repeatedly make the mistake of comparing Jin's interaction with Danielle with Daniel's interaction with Desmond. it was EXPLICITLY stated that Desmond's case is unique and that in all other cases the memory of the person in the past would not be altered. Please stop making this comparison as a theory because it has already been dismantled in the canon of the show
  • No, Faraday did not EXPLICITLY state that Desmond's case is unique and that in all other cases the memory of the person in the past would not be altered. He simply told Sawyer that 2001 Desmond wouldn't recognize 2004 Sawyer because they hadn't met yet.
  • No, it hasn't. The only thing we heard was Daniel calling Desmond 'special', but Daniel himself might be far from understanding everything that's going on on the Island. Or even simpler - he might have told that to Des just to emphasize his point. Daniel has lied before - e.g., telling Jack they came to the Island to rescue everybody.
  • We heard Daniel tell Desmond explicitly that the rules don't apply to him:

DESMOND: Do I know you?

FARADAY: Yeah... in a way. But listen, that's not important. What is important, Desmond, is what I'm about to say to you. I need you to listen. You're the only person who can help us because, Desmond... the rules... the rules don't apply to you. You're special. You're uniquely and miraculously special.

DESMOND: What are you talking about?

II.

Not-so-random Time Shifts

• The Island is "remembering" its greatest hits and Locke & friends are just along for the ride.
• The jumps are CAUSING the greatest hits . . .French science team wouldn't have been shipwrecked if the island had not show up when it did. Island is "re-appearing" in each jump on an ocean that was empty beforehand . . .
  • So is the time travel causing the storm? Because if the island was not there, wouldn't the storm have just drowned them all? If that is the case, how are they traveling to calm, sunny days?
  • Not sure what the point is about the storm...but I completely agree that the island jumping around is causing these collisions. The beachcraft, the French science explorers, even 815 all were merrily traveling along when the island more or less hit THEM. The Blackrock is the next obvious "hit."
  • Yes, they appear to move to times other people crashed on the island or incidents occurred. This may correspond to times when the island moved in space. The Beechcraft left from Africa, and the Black Rock wasn't in the Pacific.
  • Or it would make for boring television if they went to a time when nothing happened

III.

People shooting at Sawyer, Daniel, Charlotte, Juliet, and Miles

The Oceanic Six who are returning to the island. They were aboard an Ajira flight when it crashed.

• Why would the returning Oceanic 6 be firing on random strangers that they can't identify? Because obviously if they could identify them they wouldn't be shooting.
  • Why does Ben do any of the things he does. I assume even in the future he has his reasons.
  • Lost characters are rather notorious for aiming at and firing upon people they barely know or can't see. This would be no different.
  • Maybe they were shooting at them because their boat was stolen.
  • Why would the returning O6 be so caring of a stolen boat instead of being interested if the people who took the boat were their friends?

If it was the O6 who was firing on USS Locke maybe they thought they were an as yet unseen threatening group. From that distance you couldn't make out faces

First thought while watching: it's the same canoe, with Juliet, Sawyer et al., after a later "flash" that brings them further into the past. So you end up with the future canoe crew coming up on a distant canoe from the past, but they assume it's simply another group that had been firing on them earlier, and Juliet begins firing at herself. But in hindsight that seems too convoluted.

• No, it can't be so. If the present Juliet shot someone from the same canoe in the past, then this person should be dead by now.
• How many canoes were on the beach?

The theory that the canoe 'others' as well as the Ajira castaways are the O6 has merit. If they were firing blindly at the boat thieves, it is safe to assume that the O6 still have enemies in pursuit and would have assumed the boat thieves were these enemies. That's why they fired at them. Widmore follows them...that rascal!

• Yes, but the Others mainly have bows and arrows, right? I thought that they only had the few guns they got from the soldiers.

Maybe the people firing at the survivors all had only four toes! Maybe they built the ruins, or are from the Black Rock. This does not explain how the Ajira bottle was in the canoe, but it's a good theory!

• I have to discredit this. The statue was old looking, and the Black Rock was a ship pre-modern weaponry. How can you explain people pre-modern weaponry having guns?



IV.



The Sickness

Daniel's not English. He doesn't even have a trace of an English accent. France is closer to half-dozen other countires than it is to England.
• 
  
  • France is a large country - if you are in NW France you are closer to England than any other country. Also, factor in communities - expat areas of either country or 'muddled' islands (Jersey etc.). Finally, don't dismiss a French person learning English - I think you'd be rather suprised how many French people speak excellent English (often far better than the English spoken by some of us Brits!), so I don't think this criticism is justified. As to Daniel's accent - Daniel moved to America with his Father....??! And not all English people have 'English' accents - e.g. Greg Rusedski plays tennis for Britain, yet has a strong Canadian accent. Any number of possibilities here.

• OIt does seem odd that 1988 [corrected] Rousseau speaks better, unaccented English than 2004 Rousseau.
• different actress...there's nothing more to it. Plus, older Danilelle is played by a hungarian anyway!

• It was actually 1988 and I would guess that not practicing a foreign language for 16 years would make your rusty. I had two years of German in high school, can't speak a word of it now.

• If you didn't used to have an accent, you probably wouldn't acquire one, even if you'd forgotten German vocabulary.

• Good point

• I am going to stick with the 'different actress' theory. As good at casting as the producers are, they can't do everything perfectly everytime.

V.

Not-so-random Time Shifts

• The time-jumping Survivors are shifting to specific points of time in the Island's history when important events occurred. These events are often an arrival to the Island.
• The Black Rock's arrival has not yet been presented.
• The origin of the four-toed statue has not yet been presented.
• The Island, if in fact it is conscious, is remembering its most significant events hits: Locke and the others in his party are along for the ride.
• The jumps cause the events.
• The jumps do not necessarily occur at the instant of the event; the Island go to the next point and waits. It may do things, such as broadcast a radio signal with six seemingly unrelated numbers.

VI.

Rose and Bernard

• The couple has not been seen since "The Lie".
• Rose & Bernard, unlike the other Survivors who ran into the tree line to rendezvous at the creek, took the Zodiac and left for an undetermined destination.

• They're not young and hot, so TPTB are ignoring them, and not many watching care.

• After the flaming arrow attack, they went to hide in the caves (this was previously an ideal, safe place to live). There, they live together happily, oblivious to the time jumping and other things going on, and become Adam & Eve.
  • Assuming they're still jumping in tandem with everyone else, this isn't possible. They would've jumped to a time when the survivors were living in the caves. Awkward!

VII.

Canoes

• The canoes with the Ajira water bottles were left there by the Oceanic 6 upon their return.

• Then shouldn't that stop the time skipping? It is the theme of this season that the return of the 6 will "normalize things".

Ms. Hawkings says there is only 70 hours left or else they cant reach the Island, do you really think they got the time to travel to the island by sea, BY HAND!? no way. They got their either by another plane or 10 times faster boat, or another timetraveling machine of some sort. Maby the machine mrs. hawkings is using!? we still dont know that her machine does entierly?

• A second plane crash.
  • The Oceanic 6, plus Ben, plus dead Locke - return via an Ajira flight; once they are there, they build the canoes to travel the island more quickly (or between the two islands).
    • Or the Others were expecting their return and had these boats ready and waiting.
    • Build the canoes?
    • Once they are where?
• It's after the Oceanic 6 return, along with Ben. Charles Widmore has now discovered that Ben and/or the other survivors are on the island again/still, and has sent a larger team in, instructing them to kill everyone on the island.
• The Ajira water bottle does not mean an Ajira plane is anywhere in the vicinity of the Island. The bottle means that someone who knew there was a need for drinking water used an available resource to carry it.

• Yes. ABC has created a front website, created TV Ads, inserted a water bottle into an episode all because an Ajira water bottle was the nearest available container.

VIII.

Why are Charlotte, Miles, and Juliet the only ones affected by "the sickness" so far

• Miles and Charlotte have not found constants due to the short stay, Juliet has only connected with her sister, and Goodwin who is dead. Save conversation for discussion pages.
• Now that they are all unstuck in time the people who have lived on the island the longest are affected most by the temporal displacement. Charlotte and Miles were both presumably born on the island. Charlotte lived there the longest then Miles (who is Marvin Candle's son) and then Juliet who has only been on the island three years. It's easier for the people from 815 to cope with the temporal displacement because they haven't spent large stretches of time on the island only being there for a few months. It's harder and harder to deal with the displacement the longer you have been on the island.
• I guess Charlotte could be the daughter of Horace Goodspeed, who brought her to the island when the Dharma Initiative settled there. She also looks quite similar to him! That's the reason why she's the first of them who gets the sickness. Miles arrived/was born on the island a few years later when his father (Marvin Candle) starts his work there. Juliet should be the next...
  • Charlotte is younger than Miles. Miles would have had to have been born first considering Marvin Candle was filming the Dharma video and some of the Dharma Stations were not built yet. This is at least a few years before the Initiative begins.
    • Miles could have left the island sooner than Charlotte, despite being older. There definitely seems to be something to Daniel's theory that the longer you've spent on the island, the faster it effects you. It's also possible that Charlotte was born on the island some time in the future, and spent a great deal of time there during a period we're not even aware of yet.
  • Juliet is next; her nose started bleeding in last night's episode. If Charlotte and Miles were on the island with DHARMA, how/why did they get off it before the purge? And how exactly does Charlotte look anything like Horace?

IX.

Reincarnation

• "CANTON-RAINIER" (on the side of the carpet-cleaning van that Ben and Jack were driving in) is an anagram for "reincarnation." The immediate assumption is that this is a reference to Locke coming back to life, but technically, that is re-animation, not reincarnation. Note that when the time-travelers flashed to their own time on the island, Locke pointed out that it was "the day that Boone died," and Sawyer witnessed Claire giving birth to Aaron, happening at pretty much the exact same time. I have no idea WHY we have any reason for Boone to be reincarnated into Aaron, but it's awfully curious that those were the specific two (and ONLY two) events referenced. (Locke once said he believed Boone was a "sacrifice the island demanded" -- perhaps to allow Claire to give birth?) (And to bring this into the realm of the completely absurd, "Aaron Boone" happens to be the New York Yankee who broke Red Sox' fans hearts in the 2003 post-season -- and we do know that the producers like to throw around Red Sox references.)

• You had me until the Aaron Boone reference. But I do think there is a possible link between the life-extension project and the fertility problem. Maybe someone does, in fact, have to die in order to open up a spot for another to be born on the island. May also explain why people are so eager to kill newcomers to the island. Maybe the island has a maximum occupancy?
• You forgot Aaron Boone's middle name.