Dead Is Dead/Theories

Main Article

Theories about Dead Is Dead

Main Discussion

Theories may be removed if ...

Stated as questions or possibilities (avoid question marks, "Maybe", "I think", etc). More appropriate for another article. Illogical or previously disproven. Proven by canon source, and moved to main article. Speculative and lacking any evidence to support arguments. Responding to another theory (use discussion page instead). This does not include responses that can stand alone as its own theory. Usage of an indented bullet does not imply the statement is a response. See the Lostpedia theory policy for more details.

Please do not discuss theories here; use this page.
Please spell and capitalize proper names correctly.

Smoke Monster

• Cerberus is partially made up of souls of those who have died on the Island. That's why Ben wasn't freaked out or that surprised when he saw Alex; he knew that she could be channeled, although it's not "totally" Alex. This explains Christian, Charlie, and Eko's brother showing up and being the smoke monster but retaining memories.
  • Anubis (the Jackal-headed God in the hieroglyph) is the protector of the dead and the protector of the deceased and their tombs, and also seen as the shepherd bringing souls to the afterlife. Anubis giving homage and sacrifice to Cerberus makes an interesting connection if Cerberus is a collection of souls.
  • Cerberus is associated with Ammit (the creature who waits to devour the hearts/souls of those judged unworthy in Egyptian myth). Their souls are judged and devoured to become part of the monster. It "judges" people based on intention and genuine regret for wrongdoing. If they show no regret (Eko), they are devoured. If the regret is genuine (Ben), they are left.
    • Cerberus is Ammit; Alex/monster specifically said to Ben that if he touched Locke, she would "hunt you down and DESTROY you" (not kill, stop - but very specifically "destroy," this carefully chosen word suggests she is the Destroyer/Devourer.
    • The Monster assumes an Avatar of someone who has died to either put its target at ease or to convey importance of the message it's trying to give. Christian (as apposed to Alex) telling Ben to follow Locke's orders would not have convinced Ben to listen.

Hieroglyphs

• Anubis appears to be the one who summons the monster, as portrayed by the hieroglyphs. It surely means that Anubis is on the Island and is the one who can really control the smoke monster. Richard Alpert comes to mind, as he appears ageless.
  • Or Jacob, protected by ash ring, and has a name that IMPLIES a connection: Jacob/Jackal = Anubis.
• In Egyptian art the most powerful entity is always depicted as physically larger then all others in the frame. In this picture Anubis is the same size of a figure that appears to be the smoke monster. This equalness of size suggests that they are two separate forces. Anubis controlling the dead through the whispers and the resurrection of Locke, and the creature acting as a reaper and guardian of the island by killing or sparing those that can serve the island. Anubis is also kneeling in judgment before the creature which might even mean that the monster is a superior force to Anubis, which suggests that the monster predated the Egyptian settlers and the settlers only inserted the monster into their preexisting belief system.
  • There is also a possible depiction of a human between the monster and Anubis on the picture. Given the scene of Ben's judgment, we see this same process of judgment on the picture, which should lead to the idea that while the smoke monster surrounds the one who is being judged from one side, Anubis sits at the other side. And since we saw only the monster doing all the judging, Anubis is somewhat intangible but somewhat able to telepathically communicate with the monster.
  • Anubis has weighed the heart of the human being judged against a feather from Maat's headdress and is now handing it to Ammit (smoke monster) for her to devour (as legend goes).
    • The image on the left Anubis glyph could be a "Hydra" opposed to Cerberus and they appear to be fighting. Considering Bram and Ilana are asking about shadows of a statue that we have not seen yet and talked to Miles about winning and losing sides we probably will see a statue of a serpent with many heads like the Hydra station logo. Also consider in the future there is only a foot left in the Anubis statue, "Hydra" statue is the winning side bram refers to.
• The picture of Anubis and Cerberus is a reference to Ancient Astronaut Theory. The depiction of Cerberus is similar to the way someone might depict electricity. Cerberus is not a "spiritual" entity but a feat of technology so in advance of anything that we understand as to be almost god like to our eyes. This is what is hinted at by the mechanical nature of the noises it makes. The original natives were those chosen by the gods (small g) to protect the island and keep it hidden from the humans that rebelled against them. That is why they have strict rules about leaving the island. Cerberus is what enforces those rules.
• The Temple and Monster are a mixture of Greek and Egyptian mythology on the creator's parts. Cerberus was the three-headed guard dog of the Underworld in Greek mythology, and Anubis is the god of the Underworld in Egyptian mythology. The creators have essentially made it clear to us that they see these two different culture's Underworlds to be one and the same, each holding some form of truth. Anubis is the Four-Toed Statue, and is idolized by the Others. Cerberus is the smoke monster, who passes judgment of who is fit to roam the Gate Before the Underworld. Those who do not pass his judgment, or those who do not seek remorse or regret, are killed, and Cerberus may also act on Anubis's part, who may or may not be able to act on his own.
• In the same way we see two entities, associated, but different one of each other in the mural, there are two entities in the Island with similar purpose but different tasks and powers: The "monster" can inflict judgment and can execute it by physically causing harm; it can use the form of people deceased in the island. The other entity would be the "jackal" or Anubis. His function is to guide and to declare the will of the Island. He uses the actual bodies of dead people he brings back to life, though they still retain their personality and memories.
• Aside above ancient/mythological interpretations of The Monster, this episode clearly indicates that in more contemporary sense The Monster is an artistic representation of a one person's self-conscience and feelings of remorse. This self-conscience "evolved" to a point where it became an interchangable term with The Island's "will", or, again, on a more ground-level terms, The Island and it's life well being.
• The hieroglyph depicts the smoke monster on one side and Anubis on the other, with some hieroglyphs depicting a human in between. When the smoke monster appears out of the grate Ben's torch goes out. The smoke monster then surrounds and judges him. It lets him live. The torch then ignites. Ben turns around and Alex is there. This scenario depicts exactly what the hieroglyph depicts: Ben takes the place of the human in the hieroglyph. The smoke monster appears on one side of him and judges him. His torch goes out immediately before, symbolising the arrival of the smoke monster. Once the smoke monster leaves Ben's torch reignites indicating that the smoke monster has completely gone. Alex appears on his other side. She is NOT the smoke monster but a personification of Anubis himself. This analysis implies that the smoke monster and Anubis have different roles. The smoke monster is cast as the judge. Anubis as the guide - Anubis (in the guise of Alex) tells Ben what to do.
• Keep this in mind about Smokey and Richard...Smokey can't penetrate the sonic security fence as demonstrated by Juliet and Kate last season. Therefore, "he" is fallible in some regards to sound or physical affects. Richard can pass thru the sonic fence without effect, and so far, has not been stopped by any man or man made device.

Ben

What he believed about Locke being ressurected

• While Ben was likely trying to hide the supernatural abilities of the Island from Sun, he was telling Sun the truth that he didn't know Locke would be alive when they returned to the Island. He is in an unfamiliar place of not knowing what the Island is doing.

Ben's judgment

• Because he was left alive, Ben was forgiven. At the same time, he is no longer in the favor of the island as the leader of the Others.
• Ben put a photo of his daughter and himself in his pocket at the start of the episode. This seemed calculated and perhaps intentional in order to either focus Smokey on this particular crime or he knew this crime was the one thing he felt guilty about.
• Despite his many other crimes, including just now needlessly murdering Caeser after first setting him up to be used to help Ben regain a bit of Locke's trust, Ben is not being judged on any of those grounds. He is only being judged for Alex's death, for which he is only partially, indirectly, unwillingly responsible. That's because of all Ben's actions it's the only one he feels any regret and guilt for. He could gun down a planeload of kindergartners and the Island wouldn't call him to account for it if he didn't feel he'd done anything wrong.
  • Eko did not feel he had done anything wrong when he did what he did to raise his brother, but the smoke monster seems to have judged otherwise. Eko didn't feel guilty or repent for what he did. Ben was clearly filled with guilt and repenting. So the monster let him live.

Ben speaks of friends

• At the dock, Ben tells Locke, "Sometimes I have found friends are significantly more dangerous than enemies." What intrigues me is surely he must have past friends who have in some way betrayed him at some point, because it sounded as though he was speaking from past experiences when he said that. The only person that springs to mind is Annie, since we still do not know much about her and we do not know why Ben is presumably, not in contact with her anymore.
  • Could be Sayid, however as it stands Ben appears to be unaware of being shot by him, as he struggles to remember what happened when speaking with Widmore, and Richard in Whatever Happened, Happened telling Kate he won't remember what has happened.

Why Ben couldn't kill Charlie Hume

The reason why Ben could not kill Penny when he saw she had a child was the same reason why he could not kill Danielle when he saw that she had a child: Ben's own mother died giving birth to Ben. Ben may be able to kill a random person if it suits his or the island's purposes, but if he sees a woman as a mother, and realizes that he would be putting that child through the same motherless life he lived through. He is unable to inflict the suffering he felt from not having a mother his whole life onto another innocent child. Evidence: Ben was fully prepared to kill Penny until the moment he saw little Charlie and realized she was a mother. To claim that he coincidentally had an epiphany about (insert first theory, above, here) would diminish the intentional impact the writers made of Ben seeing little Charlie and only then deciding his course of action was wrong. There was a too strong of a parallelism/foreshadowing between Ben not killing Danielle because she was a mother and then not killing Penny because she is a mother. Both incidents were seen in the same episode, making the connection between the two events even stronger.

• Furthermore, Ben's decision to "take" children from island newcomers differs sharply from the Widmore policy of extermination and is also a direct result of his seizure of power - Ben cannot carry out such cold extermination, and this is why Ben believes he is such a better leader than Widmore.

The Others

• The people (Egyptians) who built the temple and the statue are not necessarily native to the island. In fact, if they know Egyptian Hieroglyphs, then they originated off the island. They were caught on the island by the same type of temporal displacement that brought the Black Rock so far inland.
• The Others speak Latin in front of outsiders because it is a dead language and as such does not change with time.
• The Others are cultural, but not genetic, descendants of the natives. Their cause extends back to ancient times, but over the centuries they have admitted new members whom Jacob brought to the island. In the last few hundred years most of those new members have been English and American so they have taken to speaking English day-to-day. Latin was the group's previous lingua franca and still their "official" language. Though the Island is "currently" in the Pacific, it appeared more often in the north Atlantic during the last thousand years. The Others may originate with the Egyptians, or there may just have been an era when there were many Egyptian recruits who Egyptified their culture.

Anubis and The Monster

• Even though we see Anubis venerated in the architecture we see in LOST, Anubis isn't part of the actual LOST mythology. If the Hindus had been there, it would have been Cali. The whole Egyptian thing is the final "false curtain" lying between we the viewer and the truth of LOST.
  • The Egyptians conceived of the Anubis deity after encountering Richard Alpert or the Others.
• We must also pay attention to the painting on the wall above the grate. It seems like the monster is somewhat a pet of the god pictured there. So the monster implicates the will of the god to the real life. It is pretty clear after seeing this picture that the monster reports to this god, or at least that people who built the temple and the statue believed it to be that way, which in any way means that the monster carries out the will of the island.
• The picture depicting the monster and Anubis is showing a war between the two with the human stuck in the middle. The monster appears to be angry and also the same size as Anubis. The monster wins this battle because Anubis is almost bowing and giving praise to the monster and the monster is present now instead of Anubis. The humans built the temple and depicted the story in the hieroglyphs on the wall. This would answer what happened to the statue; either the humans destroyed it in a effort to please the monster/god, or it was destroyed in the battle.

The whispers

• The whispers are associated with the Others. Based on Ben's conversation with Rousseau when stealing Alex, he seems to have an understanding of what the whispers are. He says, "If you want your daughter to live, whenever you hear whispers, run in the other direction." There is no other reasoning for how Rousseau's actions would impact Alex unless she came in contact with the Others at some point.
  • When Harper Stanhope appeared to Juliet, we heard the whispers just before she appeared then again just before she disappeared. It was confirmed that she was not an apparition of the smoke monster here. Therefore, the whispers are associated with the Others and not the Monster. The podcast went as follows:

Q: Was Harper's appearance to Juliet in The Other Woman really her or was it the monster?

It was really Harper. (The whispers often seem to herald the appearance of the Others)

• The whispers are used as a method to disorient their target and probably convey they are "in position".

• This is why the Others take the children from the survivors. Ben can not bring himself to allow children to suffer. This also may explain why he moved the Others to the Barracks, he wanted a "good/normal life" for his daughter, not to see her toiling and foraging in the woods like a survivalist.

Ethan

• Is taken by Ben once the DI and Others realize that there are now problems giving birth. They won't suspect Ben since he is still a kid himself around that time.