Everybody has theories about Lost. Here are mine. If they turn out to be right (which seems unlikely), I guess they’d be spoilers, now, wouldn’t they?

I have two theories:

1. I’m not sure if this is a theory, or if it’s just obvious. I theorize that the island is not an island, but is some kind of mechanical…thing. Perhaps an alien spacecraft which crashed on earth strange æons ago, before humans arrived on the scene. Since then, various humans have come across it and gotten intrigued by its strange, extraterrestrial qualities. Lots of the artifacts found on the island were left by the various human groups that have populated or tried to populate it over the millennia.

2. The island is kind of like the Lord of the Rings Ring, in that it’s powerful, people who have it get obsessed with it, and they lose their ability to die and get “stretched out” like Bilbo. Hence, the seemingly immortal Richard and some of the other Others, and Jacob’s ethereal state. Also, the island latches on to people who can be of service to it, and then discards them when they cease to be useful.