Update 5/29/08:
Originally posted on 2/19/08.
1. We now know John Locke was in the coffin. Since he was on the Isalnd at the end of Season 4, we can only surmise that he goes off-Island as Jeremy Bentham to try to convince the Oceanic Six to return. How he leaves the Island is not certain.
2. We now know who the Oceanic Six are.
3. We know Ben gets off the Island by using an ancient device deep below the Orchid Station. The mechanism is surrounded by rocks bearing primitive pertoglyphs. The device not only transports him to the desert and through time, it also moves the Island to somehwere else in space and time.
4. We know Juliette and Sawyer did not make it off the Island. Nor apparently do Rose and Bernard. Claire appears to be dead. Jin’s fate is uncertain, as he was on the stern of the freighter when it exploded. Michael is right next to the bomb when it goes off, so he’s probably dead. Walt is confirmed as being back in the States.
5. Dezz is reunited with Penny and gets off the Island, but goes into hiding to escape Widmore.
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Last episode, Sayid was added to the Oceanic Six. As Ben’s personal hit man! Given Jack, Hurley and Kate, that leaves only 2 more survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 left to claim a seat.
But Ben’s presence off-Island has resurrected a possibility my wife & I have been discussing: There may be more getting off the Island that the Oceanic Six! We know that there can only be six passengers of Flight 815 who greet the world, but others [and Others!] could blend in with the freighties or get off the Island by an as-yet-unrevealed method and slip back into the world largely unnoticed. This could solve Juliette’s dilemma: though she’d obviously stand out as not being on the passenger manifest if she tried to pose as an 815 survivor, she might be able to just blend in with the crowd as one of the freighties and get back to her sister. It could also solve Desmond’s dilemma. He isn’t on the passenger manifest either, but he too could blend in with the guys on the boat and return to his beloved Pennie. This is pretty much the only way these two are getting off the Island, unless Ben has a secret way off or Penelope comes to the rescue after all.
We know Ben gets off the Island. [I wonder which other Others and Losties might get to go?] He’s clearly using Sayid to bump off members of some as-yet-unnamed off-island conclave bent on world domination or suchnot. I suspect it’s members of the Hanso Foundation, Widmore Enterprises and their cronies.
The creepy Mr. Abbadon [the enhanced episode said that his name means “keeper of the abyss,” but it actually translates as Destroyer] is their representative. He seems bent on getting Ben, but why? Is he trying to stop Ben from having Sayid pop off his cronies one at a time in the future? Is it that simple? Abbadon also seems to have a clear grasp of how the Island works: He picks a specific team. Each chosen for a reason, possibly because of the same sort of prescience Dezz is afflicted with. In other words, he may have seen them all in a flash and so he chose them accordingly. While he told Naomi that everything depended on her getting the team in and out alive and then asked her if she could do it, I think it might’ve just been a red herring, a challenge to incite her to take the mission because he needed her there – to die. Like he’d seen in a flashforward ala Desmond.
It’s my theory anyway.
As for the other 2 members of the Oceanic Six, it could be someone on the Island. Or it could be Walt and Michael. They went off on a specific compass setting, which bearing likely led to one of the only access/egress points to the Island. Yes, I do think the Island can only be accessed at specific points. It’s possible that the Island is ambulatory in some fashion; how else does Yemmi’s short range plane from Nigeria end up on an Island where an airplane 1000 miles off course crash lands? I’ve seen a theory on mirror matter that might fit this theory. Since we know Michael is slated to return this season and we know he’s not on the Island now, it only seems logical that he’s Ben’s man on the boat.
Of course, it’s possible that Michael left Walt at home. If they made it back. I’m not sure they did. I think it more likely that they were intercepted by the freighter on their way out. If Walt AND Michael are on the freighter, I think they will make up the last two members of the Oceanic Six — and Michael will end up in that coffin! If only Michael is on that freighter, meaning he’s returned to rescue them and hooked up with the wrong bunch, then Sawyer seems like the only other candidate for one of the Six.
Other coffin candidates currently include one of the freighties or Bernard. If Bernard and Rose leave the Island and Roses’ cancer comes back and kills her, I can see NY native Bernard committing suicide.
It’s still possible that Claire and Aaron make it off as part of the Six, just like Dezz promised Charlie, but Desmond has lied about his flashforwards in the past.
— Sirius Knott
Defending Genesis 