The Big Debate About The Empty Space

Congratulations to Michael Emerson for winning the Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series!



Several weeks ago, the producers of Lost released the episode title for the first episode of Season 6. I know several of you will already have heard about it and so I apologize for taking so long to blog about it. The reason I've waited this long was not because of laziness, I've been compiling theories that go with it. Some people consider episode titles to be spoilerish, but I really don't think you have anything to worry about with this one. But if you don't want to know the episode title stop reading now.

Even those of us who work hard to stay spoiler-free find it hard to resist a tiny morsel during the long hiatus. Well here it is, Season 6 Episode 1 will be titled "LA X" That is not a type-o. There is an intentional space between the A and the X. And that is where all the debate lies. LAX is the code name for Los Angeles International Airport, the destination of the original Oceanic flight. But by adding a break in between the letters we have to assume it means something different. Here are some of the more popular theories I've heard:

X marks the spot. LA could be some sort of important location. I feel this theory is kind of obvious and too simple so I will quickly move on to better ones.

The X represents "no" or "not" In the same way we see no-smoking signs with the cigarette crossed out, the X crosses out the LA part. This would mean that they are not in Los Angeles or it's not the Los Angeles they were expecting. Things may be "altered." The videos they showed at comic con would support this theory since they depicted a world where Hurley has good luck and Kate didn't kill her father. (To watch these videos scroll down to my Comic Con post on July 28.)

The X represents the Roman numeral 10. This theory splits off in many directions. So I must sub-divide:
10 represents the year 2010. This is one of my favorite theories. Maybe the group lands in LA but it is not the right year for the losties. Lost started in sync with our date (Sept. 22, 2004) but quickly fell behind our current time. It jumped ahead in Season 3 to a date very close to our own. So it seems fitting that the characters would end up in the the same year as us by the finale in 2010.
10 represents 10 years later. The whole group could land in LA to discoverer 10 years have past. My question would be 10 years since what? The crash date? The 1977 date? The date John Locke's body was rolled onto the beach?
10 represents 10 people This could also go many different directions: 10 people make it to LA. Remember they named the other group "The Oceanic 6." The 10 who make it could be 10 of the main characters who were working on changing the past or it could be 10 of the characters who we have seen die on the show. There have been many hints from the show's producers that we would be seeing many characters we have not seen since Season 1. Many people like the idea of seeing the Oceanic flight land delivering Charlie, Boone, Shannon, Ana Lucia, Libby, Michael, and Mr. Eko safely to LA. You could throw in Frogurt, Nikki and Paulo to make it equal 10.
10 Characters end up in 10 different locations. This sounds like an exciting storyline, 10 people trying to figure out where each other is and then trying to get back to the island. But the problem is there are only 17 hours left for them to wrap up everything. I just don't think we have time to find everyone and convince them to "go back" again. We did that last season.

The X represents a crossroads. Well duh! All the characters have been at a crossroad in just about every episode!

My own personal theory is they all wake up the day of the crash having retained all their memories of the past 5 seasons. I can't explain how that would tie in with LA X. And my husband insists this would not be possible since Walt is now too old and it would be too difficult to recreate the crash. So it probably won't happen but that is how I would write it. Imagine what each character would do differently. Sawyer would immediately head to Othersville to find Juliet. Locke would go after Ben right away. Someone would run to the hatch to relieve Desmond. Charlie would tie up Mikkail to keep him from detonating the hand grenade. It would still be a battle between destiny and freewill.

I'd love to hear what you all think. Use the comment section below to tell your theory or disprove the theories above.

Namaste!