The numbers revisited at last!

So on “The Lighthouse” we learned that the numbers are degrees of a circle. That’s awesome. Seriously, now we know, at least in part, where the numbers come from. The remaining unanswered question, of course, is what, if anything, determines which names get assigned to which numbers on the compass.

But that’s okay because the really significance of this revelation is that there is no inherent power in the numbers. It’s reminiscent of George Martin’s comment on the public’s reaction to “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” upon its release in 1967: “People were doing all sorts of things, turning it on its edge, playing it backwards, trying to find the answer, the cipher to this enormous enigma. And the really great joke was, there wasn’t one.” Losties went wild in the first couple of seasons trying to figure out some mathematical pattern or other such significance in the sequence 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42. But the power didn’t come from the numbers. The numbers came from the power. That is, the sequence of numbers became significant because of the names they were assigned to, because after all others were eliminated those were the ones who remained as candidates.

This also has great implications for Lost mythology. If the power of the numbers and the very sequence of numbers derives from them being the final candidates, then they were selected decades ago. Recall that Rousseau and crew were brought to the island in ’88 by the numbers. How old were the candidates then? And in the same year, in “Numbers”, Sam Toomey heard the numbers for the first time. If the candidates had been narrowed down to those six by then, what does that mean? And how were the other people eliminated? It’s not from dying, because, for example the name Straume, presumably referring to Miles Straume was crossed out and he’s still very much alive.

And the big one: (Kate) Austen 51. What does it mean that Kate is the only person not in that sequence who is not eliminated (crossed out)? She is neither eliminated nor in the 4-8-15-16-23-42 sequence.

By the way, in Jacob’s cave, I saw the name Littleton crossed out. Is that really Claire inside Claire’s body? Now that Sayid has been “claimed,” will his name be crossed out?

As complete a list as possible of the names and numbers from the cave and lighthouse are found in the Lostpedia article, “The Numbers”.