The producers will have to kill Walt off soon......

[Droop]

Looking at the first season and up to this point there is a difference in his appearance. You can tell he is growing up and with the way this show is playing out(pretty much an episode equals a day or two at the most) they have to know his growth spurt will present a problem soon. I say he doesn't last beyond next season. Either they kill him off or he is taken off of the island somehow. Maybe Michael takes Walt and sails away with him in that boat and they leave for good this time. Who knows? With him being a major player in this show that seems to circle around him I will be interrested in seeing how they handle this problem.

[jameswalwyn]

TPTB have said that he won't be appearing again for some time because of his griwth spurt. So they'll prob move the show forward alot, openinig up more island-flashbacks

[Khan]

That's an interesting and exciting theory.
I'm still hoping they just write him out along with Micheal.
TPTB are going to have to handle the children problem on the Island soon, we know there's more being held somewhere. And they can't spend the whole series season after season trying to rescue them and just can't forget that they are in captivity.
It would make sense to have one group of Others not be so bad and just remove them all from the Island.

[mzsandeestar]

Walt is so important to the others, I can't imagine him being killed. I think Michael will get off the island somehow and the others will remove Walt to a safer location.

[GenCobra]

Walt will be the sole survivor of the show. I'm guessing and calling it like the big peice of chicken.

[LPU]

I don't think he looked so different that I couldn't gloss over it. But next year when he has more of a beard than his father and is talking like Barry White...that's when they'll have to deal.

[HurleytheHutt]

They could always bring in an experimental "growth hormone" or "accelerated aging project" from Dharma - Walt being the "guinea pig" for this project.

But then, we fans would know it was just written in ... and this forum would react violently.

Didn't that happen with the DUI's?

[pinnerman]

Micheal is the one who is in trouble here. Sayid is going to spoil his plan and follow them to the others camp, and Jack will know he's shadowing them in advance. We all fricken KNOW that the others are not going to get the best of Jack, Saywer, Kate and Hugo, four of the most popular characters, and capture them. Think a little ahead here.

The others are not going to successfully capture ALL of those 4 people. Flat out. That's why this whole story angle is not that scary, because we all know that if the others succeeded, the show would be over and that's not going to happen. What would they do, show them in captivitiy for 12 episodes? I hope not.

What is likely to happen is that, as we all can guess, Sayid steps in at some point and saves the day/ruins Micheals plan. The others might get one of the four, but not all of them, thus breaking Micheal's little deal with them. Their threat to him was that he would never see Walt again if he failed, so Micheals failure will produce two things: 1) TPTB writing Walt out of the show for a while because that's what the others said they would do, and 2) everyone will find out about Micheal's traitorous ways making him an outcast, including Walt, who will know what his dad did and probably react like he always does...he will hate what his father did, especially if one of the four gets killed.

This will leave Micheal in a terrible place. He will have failed the others and they won't give Walt back, so he can't hang with them because he will represent a threat to them for wanting revenge, and the crash survivors will probably want to kill him once they know he switched sides.

That's what makes all of this kind of anti-climatic for me. Micheal is screwed either way. Figure him being gone by the end of next week or early next season. That, or else he'll end up being a crazy-outcast-loner-pariah who is missing his kid, stuck between sides, and all by himslef on the island...kind of like Danielle is right now. That would be the only interesting parallel situation to come out of his character, maybe Alex will save Walt and they can all be one big happy family. Just kidding.

[Gilligan]

Perhaps they can write off the growth spurt to the island.

Jack: ""Look, it healed Locke's paralysis, Rose's cancer, Jin's impotence. And now Walt's puberty!''

Sawyer: ""Not only that, but somehow, I've stopped smoking!''

Jack: ""I think that's because you're out of cigarettes.''

[MAMA]

Charlie kicked the drugs too...took him some time, but he's done and even threw the stash in the ocean.

[Bunny Frou Frou]

Perhaps they can write off the growth spurt to the island.

Jack: ""Look, it healed Locke's paralysis, Rose's cancer, Jin's impotence. And now Walt's puberty!''

Sawyer: ""Not only that, but somehow, I've stopped smoking!''

Jack: ""I think that's because you're out of cigarettes.''

That's cute!
If we can believe Kate's eyebrows are naturally that thin and well shaped, and that the island has Nair floating in the air, or that no one has gotten any nasty cases of crotch rot, or that all of the chicks on th island have just really great skin naturally, too, yaddi yaddi, I think we can believe that a few inches on Walt doesn't matter.

If they can Walt and/or replace him due to aging then peeps will get miffed. For this show, no matter how lack luster it may get, I am more than willing to suspend my disbelief.

[Gilligan]

Well said, Bunny

[roswellian]

IF they recasted walt I would be so disapointed.

[interplanetjanet]

A few seconds from Alex, assuming she'll be joining the fusies: "Something about the magnetic field/vaccine--adolescent growth is speeded up." Taken care of.

A jump in time would mean Aaron and Sun's baby had to be played by toddlers, who would change dramatically from season to season and even over the course of one season: 9 months for a 2 year old will produce a bigger change than the one month that passes on the island.

[KhariZZmatiK]

C'Mon.... kids go through puberty, why can't WALT go through puberty just because he's on an island?!

[jmwheeler]

If they know where Walt's story is going in the future, couldn't they shoot the scenes in advance? Shoot scenes now for seasons 3,4,5? It wouldn't be easy because the story could change and you would need to recreate a lot of details later down the road, but it is possible.

[mrfrankie]

Or they could give us a good story and not drag it out for 7 seasons.

[Hodgepodge]

I didn't notice that much of a difference myself. When people started talking about this at the beginning of S2, I expected him to be much taller. Changed drastically! I didn't see it! :confused:

I'd like to move this thread to the C&CD board. Lets continue the discussion there.

[Daniel]

Can't we just assume that it's the same Walt? If we know what is really going on, why can't we just watch the show without thinking "well, they better explain THAT". Everyone grows up, it's something natural. Even that Candle/Wickmund guy looked older in the Pearl video than in the other one..we assumed he was younger then because he still had his two arms. Oh, and because of the date...well, you got the idea.
I noticed that Walt was different, but I definitely didn't try to find an answer for that. BTW, did you know that Tanya Raymonde (Alex) isn't 16? She's at least 18 (don't know for sure). Well, we don't care about that, do we?
Just enjoy the show, don't make big deals out of stuff like this.

[Hoo]

Will Walt be back at all, even in the finale? When he was yelling out "I love you, I love you" to his dad, it sounded like a wrap to his character's story, to me. Walt's "issue" from the beginning seemed to be his inability to accept Michael as his father. The "I love you" lines seemed to firmly resolve that, and a resolved storyline often means the end of a character.

They could keep him around if they abandoned their "one consecutive day at a time" format for the show, which would be better for everyone, I think. Even the adults are going to look older season by season, and many long-term storylines (Sun's pregnancy, for instance) would be better served if the writers just abandoned the every-episode-is-the-next-day approach. What has it really done for the show, anyway?

[FletcherUK]

others could make him age faster.

[Prof_Frink]

It appears walt and mike are out of the show.

[Hawkie]

The problem is, walt was ten when he got on the island, maybe he was an old ten year old, and if they have actually been on the island around 65 days, that might make him about 11 depending on how far through the big 1-0 he was, no offense but rarely do you get people going through puberty naturally at that age... a simple solution would not have Walt say his own age and for the show just to go on michael's comment to jack "how old is he" "9, 9-10" or whatever it was he said.

If walt hadn't said anything about his own age they could have just said that michael wasn't really sure how old he was and he turned out to be older than michael thought.

So basically if they hadn't confirmed walt's age they might have gotten away with it.

I think they can resolve it but it will be kind of like, "Oh they're only doing this because malcolm has grown up" the same as MR & CWs DUI charges.

Anyway i'm babbling now so i'll leave you with my thoughts...

[splat93]

They could always bring in an experimental "growth hormone" or "accelerated aging project" from Dharma - Walt being the "guinea pig" for this project.

But then, we fans would know it was just written in ... and this forum would react violently.

Didn't that happen with the DUI's?

Like Hurley the Hutt said, they'll probably do something lame like Dharma/The Others doing it.

[9mile monster]

Don't you think that TPTB will tape the Walt scenes early and then just splice them into the upcoming shows? That way they can keep Walt young indeffinitely

[OMG its LFG]

That would be kind of lame...