This came to me while I was on the train this morning, listening to the latest Lost podcast, in which it was pointed out that it was significant that Charlotte has a PhD in cultural anthropology from Oxford.
What if…
…they’re not in Hell or purgatory, which has already been denied by the producers, but they’re in Hades?
Not actual “they’re dead” Hades, but what the ancient Greeks might have discovered and modelled Hades on in their myths.
Consider the evidence:
- The four-toed statue of a giant that looked a bit Greek (the Titans imprisoned in Tartarus)
- The Hydra station, the Hydra being a beastie that Herakles killed in one of his labours. An allusion by the Dharma Initiative to the island’s history?
- The fact you have to cross a body of water to get to the island (à la the River Styx)
- There are dead people walking around on the island
- There’s only one way onto the island and one way off (bearing 315), much like the hidden passage to Hades. And you mustn’t look back (ie change course) or else everything goes pear-shaped
- There’s a monster with many heads and a snake like tail (Cerebus/the smoke monster) that guards parts of the island
- The island cures ills (cf the Styx making you invulnerable)
- You can’t have a baby on the island (no new life in Hades)
- There are different regions on the island, some good, some bad (Elysium, Tartarus, etc)
- The original others who appear never to age (the Olympian gods, etc)
Anyway, someone’s probably already come up with the theory before, and I’ve yet to work obols and pomegranates into it. But I thought it was an interesting possibility all the same.
