LOST Autopsy: 8 Questions We Want Answered
by Tom Burns

3. Who was the "him" that Kate needed to get back to in the flash-forward?

When drunk doctor Jack confronted Kate in the finale, the ex-con cutie told him "I have to go. He's going to be wondering where I am." Who exactly was Kate talking about? Her parole officer (remember - she’s a wanted woman)? Her ex-flame Nathan Fillion? A new beau? Sayid? Michael Ausiello of TV Guide intimated that Kate and Claire were going to be roommates in their post-island lives. If Claire took the devil’s bargain to get her son Aaron off the island - her son who supposedly has a dark, dark destiny - maybe Kate was talking about him. Maybe Aaron is now a super-intelligent demon baby just like Baby Bob and that Bruce Willis kid from Look Who’s Talking. It’s insane, but this IS Lost we’re talking about.

4. What’s the deal with Aaron anyway?

This is one of the show’s greatest mysteries that really hasn’t gone anywhere in a while. In the fantastic first season-episode "Raised by Another," the pregnant Claire visits a psychic who congratulates her on being with child and then FREAKS OUT while reading the child’s future. He later insists that Claire raise the baby herself, so her "goodness" can influence the kid (can you say "anti-Christ"?) and, when she refuses, he sets up an adoption in Los Angeles, which puts Claire on Flight 815 and it totally seems like he picked that doomed flight on purpose. Did he want Claire to be stranded with the baby so she couldn’t leave him? Did he want them both dead? Did he want to get the baby to the island for some grand purpose?

We predict that Aaron is going to play a HUGE role in how the series ultimately plays out, and here’s a quick nugget to chew on - Aaron is a Biblical name, a prophet descended from the line of Jacob. Hey, what’s the name of that creepy all-powerful hermit living in the shack that Locke met in last season’s finale? That’s right... Jacob. Our wild, unfounded prediction - Jacob IS Aaron. Now that the producers let time travel out of the box, we can’t write off the possibility that the island’s big bad is a time-looped Claire’s baby. (Of course, that was also the plot twist in Matt LeBlanc’s Lost in Space, so maybe it’s better that that doesn’t occur.)

Since that also offers a pretty ridiculous answer for "Who is Jacob?" (two for the price of one), let’s move onto the next logical (or illogical) question...

5. What is the "magic box"?

In the late Season 3 episode, "The Man from Tallahassee," Ben makes Locke’s estranged con-man father appear on the island, seemingly from out of nowhere. When asked how he accomplished that, Ben answered: "Let me put it so you'll understand. Picture a box. You know something about boxes, don't you John? What if I told you that, somewhere on this island, there is a very large box and whatever you imagined, whatever you wanted to be in it when you opened that box, there it would be? What would you say about that, John?" When asked later about the box, Ben snipped back that it was a metaphor, and the Lost producers have pretty much echoed the same sentiment, cutting down the idea that there’s some magical Pee-Wee’s Playhouse on the island with Jambi’s head in a box granting wishes.

But what is the box a metaphor for? Is it referring to the island itself? Possible - since all sorts of spectres, horses, and other weird hallucinations have been seen by the Losties, and perhaps they were temporary manifestations created by a mix of the castaways’ subconscious and the island’s reality-warping properties. Or is it referring to something more specific on the island? When the Others kidnapped Walt, they put him in Room 23 in the Hydra compound (the same room where they were doing Karl’s Clockwork Orange-brainwashing in the Season 3 episode "Not in Portland"). Something happened in that room that frightened both Walt (he didn’t want to go back in) and the Others (they mentioned getting more than they bargained for with Walt).

Is Room 23 an amplifier for the island’s strange powers and, if someone with the right brain/psychic ability gets plugged into the room, does it turn into a "magic box"? Or are we completely talking out of our asses? (The more likely scenario.)

6. Did Desmond really time travel?

Last season, we learned that Desmond, the Penny-loving former resident of the Hatch, allegedly traveled back in time after the Hatch went kablooey at the end of Season Two. (Sigh, remember when the Hatch was like the show’s biggest mystery? We long for those simpler days of old.) But Desmond didn’t go back in time in a linear flux capacitor kind of way. He woke up naked on the island, with memories of future events (mostly, bad things happening to Charlie) and memories of his past life, but an alternate version of his past life, where he psychically traveled back through his own time-line and tried to change events to keep himself off the island. Of course, that didn’t work, but it made fans ask themselves - was that "really" time travel or just a series of weird visions?

Turns out it probably was time travel. In his recent interview with EW, spoiler-spilling Matthew Fox also confirmed that both "time travel" and "supernatural elements" would be part of Lost Season 4, further commenting that: "you're going to get into questions about the show that the audience is just dying to start finding out. What is this island? Where is this island? When is this island?"

For the life of us, we can’t even begin to describe how Desmond’s excursion to the past occurred - maybe he was thrown from the Hatch at a speed of 88 mph... - but the existence of time travel opens up a HUGE new avenue for Lost conspiracy theories. We already mentioned our Aaron is Jacob theory, but heck, now ANYTHING is possible. Hell, that crazy four-toed statue could be Sayid, thrown back into pre-history where he becomes a conqueror and pharaoh. (Has anyone ever counted Naveen Andrews’ toes? Have they?)

Let’s just hope that J.J. Abrams and crew use time travel wisely, for the benefit of all Lost-kind, instead of as a catch-all, explain-everything plot device and a license to be surreal for surreal’s sake. (A lesson familiar to anyone who had to slog through Richard Kelly’s beyond-frustrating Southland Tales.)

LOST Autopsy: 8 Questions We Want Answered Page 3