12 Lost Theories That Are Better Than Lost

It’s not much of a spoiler to say that the Lost finale didn’t exactly go over well with critics. Except Entertainment Weekly’s Jeff “Doc” Jensen, who loved it…even though he had been advancing “theories that were cooler than the real answers” the entire time, writes Charlie Jane Anders on io9. Anders rounds up a dozen of Jensen’s best:

• The island is a “human recycling plant”: Messed-up people are brought to the island and either rehabilitated or tossed, courtesy of the Dharma Initiative, and the Smoke Monster is a sort of quality control mechanism to ensure the worthy ones survive.

• It takes place in the future: The passengers of Oceanic 815 died in the crash, but their brains were preserved—and then implanted into clones in the future. All that stuff they went through? Conditioning to help them live in the new world.
• Aaron is an evil psychic being who took over Claire’s baby: The Dharma Initiative created this being, and though it died, it imprinted its consciousness on the island, summoned the Oceanic 815 passengers, and took over Claire’s baby’s body.
• Locke was supposed to be Ben: Locke missed his destiny, to come to the island as a child and lead the Others, so Ben did it instead. Charles Widmore brought Locke back as an adult to fix what Ben messed up.

For the complete list, click here. If you’d rather watch the Target ads spoofing Lost, click here. (More Lost stories.)