The online interactive narrative Find815 concluded just a short time ago. Just reading the title of the game would probably provide a hint as to what its outcome would be... that's right, Sam found flight 815. Or did he?
This brings the fandom back around to reexamine theories that were flying around last year at the conclusion of the season. We can conclude that Naomi was not lying, at least as far as Sam's discovery shows us. But is that really the same flight our beloved characters crashed on? The finding of the plane seems to lead towards two possibilities: the simple solution, or the complicated one.
The complicated solution would be somewhere in the ballpark of multiple timelines. In the world of the survivors as we know it on the island, they exist within a timeline in which the plane did crash, there were survivors, and they were never found. Sam Thomas and his expedition would then have existed in an alternate timeline, where the actual crash was found, and no one survived. Of course, there have been numerous time/space clues provided within the episodes of the show. Not to mention to the question raised by Desmond's new ability (time travel, or travel across alternate timelines?). Maybe the flashforwards themselves even span multiple timelines. In one, the survivors never get off the island. In another, some of them do.
However, there's always the possibility that we're so used to looking for the difficult answer, that we're now looking too deep. Set aside the time and space clues, disregard them as red herrings if you will, for just a moment, and consider the simple solution.
That wasn't the real flight 815. What Sam found was a carefully reconstructed model of the plane, crashed into the ocean floor. It was provided with the works: twisted and broken cabin, dead corpses, etc. It was placed there to make people think they'd found the real plane, and to give them some closure. Why? Well, to keep people from finding the real crash, and the island, of course. We know that Widmore is a powerful corporation in the Lost world, and such a set-up might not be beyond their reach. It would seem easy to plant a fake. With all of the media coverage, they wouldn't have to worry about people continuing to search, and stumbling upon a certain hidden island in the process. Talbot would have been planted on board the Christiane I for the purpose of leading the expedition to exactly the right location. He knew, to the exact coordinates, where the plane was located. Sam thought he was being quite sneaky obtaining them from Talbot, but maybe it was the Maxwell Group's intention all along. Lure him onto the ship, give him the means necessary to find the planted plane, and then simply let him follow the breadcrumbs until he got there.
There are holes in each theory, of course. Up until this point I myself though the alternate timeline theory to be pretty solid, with all of the hints we've been given. But perhaps those hints were too blatant, were simple red herrings. TPTB know their audience; we'll latch on to the most far-fetched theories, and cast aside the simplistic ones, because we don't think they could possibly be right. Maybe this time, that kind of mentality has gotten the better of us.
