The Haphazard Blog

Lost seems to be heading down a path where there are two realities. I think to tie all this back to when the series started, you had the struggle between Jack (the man of science, choice/free will) and Locke (the man of faith, destiny). Were the survivors destined to end up there or was it just an accident? Now we are seeing certain common elements between the two realities in addition to some people seeing glimpses of what is/was/did happen on the island despite not being there. It seems as if some things are destined to happen, but there is also some freedom around those things. So Hurley wins the lottery and meets Libby regardless of the reality. In one he is a psychiatric patient, gets the lottery numbers from another patient, believes he is cursed and crashes on the island. In the other, he isn’t cursed or crazy.

FlashForward seems to have a similar element going with their show. It was recently revealed that Dyson Frost has had many FlashFowards and he said in most, Demetri dies. The FBI agent already showed that the FlashForward was not an absolute when he committed suicide, but now it appears that what it actually is is a possibility. Some have higher likelihoods than others. Then there are characters who absolutely believe what they saw will come to fruition and others who believe that anything can be changed (and a whole spectrum in between).

Another show has some similarities to both of these as well, Fringe. They established there is another universe where the majority of things are the same, but there are differences between the universes.  So it makes you wonder if again, some things are simply destined with some minor allowances for free will.

You can probably tell I have a fascination with the free will vs. destiny discussion (long before I knew what existentialism was). It seems to have intrigued me my entire life. So I end up enjoying all of these shows and movies like The Matrix.