No more time travel, please: pre-finale predictions post

[COLETTA FACTOR: LOST-CURRENT]

First things first: let me plug a couple of my fellow bloggers. Jorge Garcia, aka Hurley, keeps a blog; it's called Dispatches From The Island, and it's good fun. Jorge seems like a regular guy, despite his international fame. Next up is Linda's Lost Blog, which is exactly what it sounds like. Linda is like me: she just wants to write down her ideas and hopes to start people thinking. Last, but not least, is themisfitishere. This guy, in his own words, is the world's greatest living or dead Lostigator and spoilergator. It's pretty indescribable, and pretty awesome; here's a sample: "J.A.C.O.B. = Just Another Chair Of Bens!!"

Anyway, enough of the time travel. It hurts my head. There are two ways a time travel story can happen: 1) Time travelers change something in the past and everything is different in the future or 2) Time travelers change nothing, because their actions are already part of history, despite their not having done it yet, relative to their own perceptions. The first, I feel, is pretty nihilistic; Donnie Darko, Yesterday's Enterprise, and The Butterfly Effect come to mind. These stories are characterized by chaos, and the time travelers don't usually fare well in the end. The second is far more interesting; we see the time travelers fulfilling their roles in history, exercising their free will all the way to the preordained outcome. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban comes to mind. At its best, this kind of time travel story comes together in the end like a jigsaw puzzle coming together piece by piece, which brings us to Jack Shepherd. Jack's got the wrong idea. He's like Locke in the season 2 finale: he's convinced it's his fate to change the future by changing the past, but he doesn't understand that fate never meant anything on the Island other than "what has already happened," and he can't change that anymore than Locke could deny that the Button must be pushed. I love that the Swan will be the focal point of the end of this season. I once had a theory that the Swan's implosion, when Desmond turned the key, was a singularity that sent ripples in time in both directions. I don't think it's that simple, but I think it's a safe bet that tomorrow night we'll see our characters, the ones who don't die, (Juliet, I'm looking at you,) sent forward in time to the point in 2008 where we've seen Locke, Sun, Ben, Frank, and those creepy shadow of the statue people. It will probably be some combination of the electromagnetic energy at the Swan and the radiation from Jughead. Will Jughead explode, or will it be buried under all that concrete? If it gets buried, does it blow up when Desmond turns the key? If it gets buried, you have the survivors of Flight 815 causing their plane to crash 30 years before it happens. Maybe one or two of them stay in 1977. Maybe they spend the next 30 years steering all the right people to Flight 815. I figure Jughead is about twice as likely to explode as not. The most likely death, given the state of the love quadrangle, is Juliet. Runner-up is Sayid, who's going to have a very hard time, in life or death, atoning for all the murders he committed for Ben Linus, the liar who lies.

What's up with those shadow of the statue people, anyway? What's in their crate? When is Frank gonna have something to do other than fly and get hit on the head with a wrench? And what about Jacob? Locke says he wants to kill Jacob. Will we see Jacob's face? Is he a man, or a spirit, or what? If he's a man, is he Horace Goodspeed, Walt, Christian, a 30 years older Jack?

Richard. Don't forget about Richard. He knows more than any other character, even Ben or Widmore, and he's always known. He's gotta know about 815 when it crashes, and he's gotta recognize Juliet when he recruits her to the Island via Mittelos. (Mittelos is an anagram for lost time.) Why would Richard leave the Island just to recruit a fertility specialist? I believe the only other time he was off the Island was when he was visiting John Locke.

Random predictions:

1. Marvin Candle will lose his arm.

2. Kate will kiss Sawyer first, probably right after Juliet dies, than Jack will get all pouty 'cause he still wants her.

3. Radzinsky will die and be replaced by an impostor, or else the Others and Dharma form some pact to keep the Swan running, the pact including telling Radzinsky there's a sickness and he can't leave.

Ok that's enough. I gotta go to bed.