We know that things show up on the island that are familiar to the characters. First there was the polar bear from Hugo's/Walter's comic book. There was Kate's horse. There was Sayid's Nadia the Cat. There was Locke's father. Well, we learned that the polar bears were brought there by DARMA and experimented on in the cages on Alcatraz. So is that just a coincidence. Then we learned that the Cat was brought by Mikhail, and was named Nadia because he was under the delusion that Nadia Cominici, who shared his birthday, was the greatest athelete who ever lived. Another coincidence? They can't be coincidences, so what can explain it?

I suggest that on this island, thought or imagination alters fate. When Walt read the comic book about the bears, his imagination created the bears on the island -- but instead of creating them out of nothing, it created them out of fate, by fating a DARMA researcher to have long before become involved in polar bear research and bringing them to the island. Similarly, it was Sayid's presence on the island and recollection of the cat, and of Nadia, that, as it were, reached back in time to change fate to cause a sequence of events that would make a cat named Nadia come to exist on the island, via Mikhail. I think the same will be the case with Locke's father. He will have arrived on the island by conventional means -- perhaps his yatch crashed en route to Fiji, several years before, but it was fated to do so because of Locke's presence now. This mechanism would be Ben's "magic box".

Come to think of it, this could also explain why all the 815ers were fated to come to the island. There is, or will be, someone on that island with connection to all the survivors and a powerful imagination. And by being there and thinking about them he caused fate to bring them all there.

This could also be why the Others "got more than they bargained for" with Walt. His active imagination was proving to be hazardous.

I like it.

If I read you right, the influence on causality occurs at a point earlier in time... Certainly before at least the polar bear research.


It seems like a manipulation of fate has to happen retroactively (well, put into motion in the past based on future events). As just one example, someone keeps track of the events that unfold, and then repositions the pieces, so to speak, when a temporal loop restarts. ("Here I am back in 1850, let me try THIS configuration instead... maybe it will play out better this time.")

I agree one hundred percent with what your last line says about "Walt's overactive imagination."

I am still trying to understand the rest of it though. =/

If I read you right, the influence on causality occurs at a point earlier in time... Certainly before at least the polar bear research.
Right, that's the idea. Someone's imagination in the present retroactively changes the past... I guess as far back as it needs to go into the past to bring the present in line with the person's thoughts.

I'm not necessarily thinking that time itself is looping back again to change it, but rather the person's thoughts are making it so the past will have ALWAYS BEEN in such a way that will manifest those thoughts. But maybe multiple iterations is a better variation of the theory, as it is more like what Desmond experienced... and what his physicist friend was talking about.

This phenomenon could also be the mechanism by which Ben is in a wheelchair and Locke isn't -- sort of an exagerated psychosymatic effect, where Locke's "I can do anything" attitude makes it true, and Ben's particular brand of evilness manifests itself in his cancer.

I dont know about the idea about fate 'reaching back' to create the polar bears and what not. I prefer to think of it as fate reaching forward, bringing a polar bear and a polar bear comic book to the same island, and so forth. Fate was already in motion to bring a cat named Nadia together with a man who saw a similar cat and knew a Nadia. The crash, i belevie, was always fated to happen. Just my opinion anyway.