'Lost' Recap: Rewriting His Story

''You need a story to displace a story. Metaphors and stories are far more potent (alas) than ideas; they are also easier to remember and more fun to read.'' — Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

''That was Luke's attitude, too. In 'Empire', when he found out Vader was his father, instead of putting away his light saber and talking about it, he overreacted and got his hand cut off. I mean, they worked it out eventually. But at what cost? The Death Star was destroyed, Boba Fett got eaten by the Sarlacc, and everyone got The Ewoks. It all could have been avoided if they had just, you know, communicated. Because let's face it: Ewoks suck, dude.'' — Hurley

We can talk about the deep ideas in ''Some Like It Hoth'' — the theme of regret; the logic of causality; the legalities of time travel screenwriting — but it's so much easier and certainly far more fun to let Hurley's vision of an enhanced, common sense Star Wars do the work for us. (See above quote — the fun, not-pretentious one.) The hairy geek-hero of Lost was flicking at a certain subset of irrational Star Wars zealotry that regards the cutesy teddy bears of Return of the Jedi the way the Others view Dharma: A heretical corrupting element that needs to be purged. Still, let's think through the reasoning behind Hurley's idealistic revisionism, because it leads to some interesting implications. Let's say Hurley really could leap back in time and change The Empire Strikes Back so that Luke and Vader hugged their s--- out, thus sparing us that abomination of Endor in the weak-sauce third chapter. (Sorry: ''Chapter VI'') Can we be certain that his replacement story would really be all that better? Might we lose much more than what would be gained? After all, the Star Wars that we know — warts and Ewoks and all — was the veritable big bang of our current Geek Pop Golden Age. If you mess with Mr. Lucas' Opus, you risk collapsing a long line of aint-it-cool dominos influenced by Star Wars...including Lost itself. And if you wipe out Lost, you wipe out...me! Doc Jensen! And is that really a price worth paying for a world without Ewoks? As Luke Skywalker said upon seeing Obi-Won POOF! into the Force: Nooooooooooooooooo!

To the point: For most of Lost's quantum leaping fifth season, the show has meditated on the idea of changing the past for the sake of a better future. And for the past several episodes, we've gotten stories that have dealt with the notion that personal and collective histories can be boiled down to defining moments — Sayid shooting Ben; Kate and Sawyer bringing Ben to the Others; Ben defying Charles Widmore and swiping Baby Alex. These stories have invited both the characters and the audience to wonder: What might happen if those defining moments were tweaked, altered, or removed altogether? Lost has given us two possible answers. Option A: The question is irrelevant. History is fixed. ''Whatever happened, happened,'' in the words of Daniel Faraday, back on the scene as of last night, now a member of Dharma's ominously clad Black Swan inner circle. (''Long time no see,'' he quipped in the closing moment of 'Hoth', speaking also to legions of Faradasiacs who've been missing him since ''LaFleur.'') Option B: History is being altered. The castaways' presence in the Dharma past is creating new history that is displacing and replacing old history. A few episodes ago, Hurley firmly adopted the latter position, and last night, we may have seen that perspective inspire a big, bold idea. No, not rewriting The Empire Strikes Back. I'm talking about the idea that I saw flickering behind his eyes as he beheld the Dharma drones building the Swan for the Dharma Alphas. ''They're building our hatch — the one that crashed our plane,'' he said to Miles, Translation: If only someone would stop those Dharma dudes from finishing that thing, we'd create a time paradox that will change everything. Yeah! It's like 'Star Wars'! The Hatch is our Death Star, and if we castaway rebels can just find a way to fire two photon torpedoes into its ventilation shaft — figuratively speaking — we'll be liberated from the tyranny of the Island, and me and my friends (who won't be friends anymore because in the subsequent time reboot I probably won't know them) will live happily ever after....

Unless they don't. Because after all, who's to say Fate's replacement story would really be any better? What gaineth a man if he changes his crappy world, only to make a crappier one in the process?

NEXT: Miles = Han or Luke

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