The Captain was Hanso.

The high up officer's name was "Whitfield", not Widmore unless there is a 3rd person I missed.

Ah, right.

Oh. Thanks.


(Good, because Lost is already quite gayly Dickensian and StarWarsian enough in that regard.)

We were told about the Hanso Foundation a few seasons ago.

Maybe those viral campaigns were important. I can't check to see if thehansofoundation.org is still live.

I have a glimmer of an idea forming about the sideways timeline....

Maybe the sideways timeline is life reset for all of the candidates who choose to eventually leave the island. Knowledge of the island (at least the knowledge of what the island really is) is reserved for those who choose to stay and serve the island. They don't remember the island, even though they were there because that knowledge has been erased from their consciousness (but it flits about as kind of a memory of a dream). But their lives are reset based on what they "chose" on the island and how it is reset is based on whether or not they found ultimate redemption; whether or not they were able to be "good" (which doesn't bode well for Kate, I suppose...i.e. "be good, Kate"). Jacob said everyone he brought there previously was dead...but he didn't say he killed them or, for that matter, that they necessarily died on the island. Maybe once you are vetted as a candidate, you can choose to stay and serve (and presumably not die) or to leave and live your life, with death being the only (inevitable) outcome to that life. This would also explain why the dead island people are alive in the sideways timeline. Maybe "death" on the island is really just a shift to the life you would have had if you wouldn't have been detoured in Jacob's efforts to get candidates to the island.

Does that make any sense?

Not really. Attempts eventually lead you to lxico.com which has a Hanso logo and says "access disabled indefinitely". It's got a mission statement that doesn't say much, and a bio of Hanso that doesn't say much, then it has a list of "active projects" which are links to an "access denied' message. This is the list of projects.

The Hanso Life-Extension Project

The Hanso Foundation Electromagnetic Research Initiative

The Hanso Quest for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence

The Hanso Mathematical Forecasting Initiative

The Hanso Cryogenics Development Imperative

The Hanso Juxtapositional Eugenics Development Institute

The Hanso Accelerated Remote Viewing Training Facility

BTW, I'm still holding onto the possibility that it's not REALLY hell/limb, not REALLY supernatural, that Jacob and MIB just use the terms because that's what they want the people who arrive there to think. They may still end up at a "scientific" explanation for it all (which, of course, may also leave us with the notion that there is no distinction between science and mythos).

People who chose to stay but didn't make it as the ultimate "candidate"?

Yeah, I hardly think they would be revealing the true, true nature of the island with 8 episodes to go. That's the primary mystery of the show. When we heard that, we likened it to watching a procedural show and having the mystery "solved" with 20 minutes left. That mystery ain't solved yet, Dr. House - the patient will start coughing blood in 5... 4... 3...

And for that matter, I'm not convinced this has all been leading up to good v. evil. (But maybe that's wishful thinking, because I don't want it to be!) There have been many, many instances of confusion regarding who is on the right side, who is doing the right thing. "Jacob is the devil. No, wait, it's MIB." We haven't seen clear evidence that either is necessarily good. What we've seen of the pair is the same thing that we've seen of the rest of the Losties. People generally believe that they're using the right means to get to the right end. Unlike the Lost visual metaphors, there is very little black v. white for these characters. Only gray, gray, gray.

I still think it's the Vorlons and the Shadows.