Thoughts On The Oceanic Six
If you’re not up to date on Lost, don’t read the rest of this, because I’m going to work through some the stuff that’s come up so far in the course of Season Four. In order words, if you don’t want to be spoiled for what’s already aired, this is your spoiler warning. What follows does not contain any spoilers for what’s still to come, although it does contain speculation on that point based upon what we’ve seen thus far.
So it would seem that the Oceanic Six is comprised of Jack, Hurley, Kate, Aaron, Sayid, and Sun. While we don’t yet know why these are the only survivors of Flight 815 eventually to leave the island, I’ve been thinking about the reasons these particular six would.
Jack and Hurley pretty much have wanted to leave all along, so I don’t think there’s any great or particular mystery there.
Sayid appears to have left in order to do Ben’s dirty work, namely the assassination of people presumably in the employ of Charles Widmore, who allegedly wants to find and exploit the island.
Sun had to leave the island in order to avoid the fact that any woman who becomes pregnant on the island dies in the second trimester.
It’s the matter of Kate and Aaron that I find the most interesting. Clearly, in the Oceanic Six cover story, Claire died. I suspect that within the cover story, she is one of the other two passengers said to have survived the crash only to die at some point afterward. That would be the only way to explain to the world how Aaron was able to be born.
The question is whether Claire for some reason chose to stay behind on the island despite Aaron leaving, or if she dies sometime between the events of the current season and the eventual departure of the Oceanic Six.
My suspicion is that it is the latter, because that possibility would explain why Kate, who has no reason to want to leave the island given that she’s a fugitive and wanted for murder, goes on to become one of the Oceanic Six.
What I suspect is that when Claire dies, she makes Kate promise to get Aaron off the island. It’s the only thing I can think of powerful enough to make Kate go back to what awaits her in her normal life.
Meanwhile, there’s much discussion about Jin’s death, mostly centered around the dates on his tombstone, which indicate that he died on the day of the crash of Flight 815. We know that didn’t happen, so there are only two other options.
Either he stays behind on the island when Sun leaves, or he dies sometime between the current events of this season and the departure of the Oceanic Six. That’s all the tombstone date tells us. They don’t tell us anything at all about which option might be the truth.
Lastly, I do still believe that the person in the coffin at the end of Season Three was Ben. It cannot be one of the Oceanic Six, because there’s no way the funeral of one of the Oceanic Six would not have drawn at least some sort of crowd. And, of course, Ben certainly would qualify as being someone Jack would describe as being neither friend nor family.
But if Jack grows to become obsessed with re-locating the island and returning to it, the death of the man who was neither friend nor family but might have been right all along about the need to protect the island — and, in fact, knew where it was — would seem to be something that would make Jack take notice.