What is The Flash Sideways?

One of the biggest areas of post-finale discussion involves the Flash Sideways.  Let me say first and foremost that the flash sideways are primarily a literary technique.  The Show Runners wanted the final season to mirror the first season in many ways.  They had already employed the flash-back and flash-forward techniques; they did not want to reuse either one.  So the writers conceived of the flash-sideways, a way to show a different time frame in a new and creative way.  Whether they succeeded in that or not remains up for debate.  I am not sure if they had it planned out from the start, or whether they thought it would take on a life of its own and start to write itself, as many great storylines seem to do.  Nevertheless, they ended it with an explanation that can make sense in the overall storyline.

I must say, I was initially disappointed with the ending to the flash-sideways.  Early on in the finale, I commented that it took until the last episode of the season for me to become engaged with the flash-sideways.  Then, as the credits rolled, I said I LOVED the finale up to about the last fifteen minutes.  However, as I chatted, read, and discussed, the ending started growing on me.

Ideally, this explanation would occur later in my chronology, once I've had a chance to express my take on “Across the Sea.”  However, being that this is one of the questions that's being repeated over and over in comments sections throughout the Lost Community, I thought I'd tackle it right sooner, rather than later.

First of all, the Flash Sideways was not “real”, but the events on the Island were.  Neither was it purgatory, a purely Christian concept.  The stained glass window in the church made it clear that this was a place that defied a single religious belief.  Rather, it was a place that represented  spirituality transcending religion.  In a nutshell, the sideways time represented the spirituality awakened in Jack Shepherd during his brief tenure as “Protector,” his ultimate reward and redemption.


As I'll discuss later in this series, the job of “Protector” comes with several perquisites.  Many of these are spiritual in nature, and they defy traditional scientific explanation.  We learned the Island was the way it was “because Jacob made it that way;” in other words, the protector made the rules.  We also learned through Jacob that the “Protector” could grant spiritual gifts, within limits.  He could make it so that you never died, but he could not absolve you from going to Hell.  Agreeing to protect the source allowed you to direct its force, within limitations.  So the Protector both makes the rules and guides the Island Reality.

Back to Jack Shepherd, the ultimate fixer.  He had spent his entire life avoiding seeing his own defects, preferring instead to try to fix those of others.  Then his plane crashed, and he stepped up to take charge and fix what was wrong for all of the other passengers.  He organized the masses and set out to make things right.  But as much as he tried to be the leader who would make everything better, his own limitations seemed to smack him in the face at every corner. 

Then, the freighter showed up.  Jack viewed it as the group's salvation, at last.  It turned out to be their demise.  Jack could no longer live in denial about himself, and his life began a dark spiral downwards. 

Along the way, Jack faced several spiritual crises.  He was a doctor, a man who believed in scientific principles.  Yet slowly, he was beginning to see the importance of fate, destiny, and faith.  He felt broken during his time away from the island, and spent many hours stewing about all the lives he'd ruined in his quest to sail off into the sunset.  He'd returned home.  He was living the life he had always dreamed of.  Still, it didn't feel like home.  It was only when Jack returned to the island that he truly felt like he was home.  Despite the fact he returned to a time 30 years in the past, Jack began to let go, allowing faith and destiny to be his guide.  (He kind of had to.  Landing in the jungle during t he Dharma era pretty much defied every scientific principle Jack had ever learned.)

So Jack returned to the Island.  And when he got there, thirty years earlier than he left, he found out the people he came to rescue didn't want or need rescuing.  Again, instead of fixing things, Jack pretty much just made things worse.  So he imploded a hydrogen bomb to try to correct his mistakes, propelling them forward to the time they had left.  And Jack was left never knowing if he helped at all or only destroyed about everything he touched.

And then Jack met Jacob.  Jacob offered Jack a purpose, a job, and a path to spiritual redemption.  As he said in The End: “I took it [the job] because the island's all I got left. It's the only thing in my life I haven't managed to ruin."

Then Jack faced “the Source”, in an attempt to right all of the wrongs that had consumed his mind.  His final wish for all of his comrades was for them to be propelled back to the time their paths had first crossed.  Maybe if he could fix the errors of powerful, mystic beings, he could fix the pain he'd wrought on all those dear people who had helped him through his spiritual journey.

Jack's final act involved righting the wrongs Jacob had set in place, and finally, successfully doing what he'd been trying to do his whole life.  Jack symbolically passed the Protector Torch on to a successor and allowed the dark matter to consume the light for long enough that Smokey released Brother's animus.  The dark matter released Brother's animus into John Locke's body, allowing the mortal form to be extinguished.  Then Jack re-contained the dark matter that was imploding all around the island, containing it once again to scientifically control it's trickling expansion.  The light matter was once again allowed to flow, and Jack laid down to peacefully die as what was left of his friends flew away.  Jack's eye closed, and the Flash Sideways began.

For all intents and purposes, the flash-sideways was a creation of Jack's mind, the final leg of his spiritual journey.  Jack, in many ways, blamed himself for everything that transpired after 815 broke up, mid-air.  His greatest desire in life was to give everyone back what he had taken away after 815, and to restore all of their lives to a pre-crash state.  Like Jacob,Jack had invented his own “game” during his brief tenure as Island Protector; being able to do so is merely one of the perqs that comes with the job.

Like Christian said to Jack, there is no “now” in the flash-sideways.  It was an existence created solely by Jack to give his friends back what he felt he'd taken from them.  That is why we only saw folks that were a part of Jack's community in the sideways world, people for whom Jack felt he had negatively impacted their lives.  That is also why people appeared exactly as Jack had remembered them in the sideways world: Claire was pregnant, Chang was still middle-aged, and Jin still spoke only Korean.  David represented both what Jack felt he had deprived Juliet of, as well as what he agreed to give up when he assumed the guardian role.

As science has taught us, time is relative.  It is based on perception.  However, what happens after death is completely and totally spiritual.  By choosing to end with Jack's journey to what came next, the Show Runners were reinforcing one of Lost's most prevalent themes: no understanding of our existence is complete without both science and spirituality.  Understanding one can only enhance our understanding of the other.

Lost's creators were also reinforcing the themes related to trauma building connections, and community being an important part of anyone's world.  It is often said that the strongest bonds are formed during the times of the greatest adversity.  The sideways timeline gave Jack an opportunity to process all of those connections he'd forged during his time on the Island.  It gave Jack the opportunity to give his community their happy ever after.  And it gave Jack an opportunity to move on with those he could not have completed his journey without.

Now I have read interpretations similar to my own, with the exception that they think Hurley gave the Losties the flash sideways timeline.  They contend it was the gift Hurley bestowed upon assuming the protector crown.  My exception with that view is the absence of Hurley's parents in the church at the end, as well as the inclusion of Christian Shepherd as guide.  Christian was dead before Hurley and Jack ever connected, and with the exception of a possible Ghost Christian sighting in the cabin, I don't think Hurley has ever seen Christian.  Supposedly, science tells us that you cannot “invent” a face, so it makes sense that the sideways time was filled with faces pulled somewhere from the recesses of the creator's brain.  So the very  importance of Christian makes me think the sideways represents Jack's spiritual journey coming fill circle, and not Hurley's.

So if were to fit the flash sideways into Lost's chronological timeline, it would fall in between the time Jack closed his eye for that last time and the time he “crossed over”.  It was meant to represent Jack's journey coming full circle.  In a way, it was Jack's spiritual gift to the people who made his journey with him, it was his amends for the casualties he'd left along the way, and his chance to give everyone the ending he or she deserved.  It is a place where there is no time, so that people are able to join the show in progress when their own time has come.  It is neither meant to infer they all died when 815 first crashed, nor meant to infer all the featured players died at the same time as Jack.  It was merely the end of Jack's spiritual journey and his symbolic manifestation of finally letting go.

I am sure there are many different interpretations of the flash-sideways, and I look forward to hearing all of yours, and especially how they relate to mine.  Also, let me know what burning questions you'd like to see answered in future posts.

As always, Namaste.