Alvar Hanso/Theories

From Lostpedia

Origin

• Alvar is Magnus Hanso. He was marooned on the island and discovered it's anti-aging properties. Richard Alpert was part of his crew on the Black Rock.
• Alvar Hanso was born on the island, explaining his unusually high age. His father is Jacob Hanso?, the leader of the Others. The father and son had a falling out, and went their separate ways.
• Alvar Hanso and Jacob are twins, grandsons to Magnus Hanso, pilot of the Black Rock. Being his descendants, they were born on the island and therefore both know of the island's secrets, but while Jacob wanted to leave the island alone ("Jacob feels the same way about technology as you do" - Ben to Locke in "The Man Behind the Curtain"), Alvar wants to use the island to help humanity and that causes a rift between the brothers. Alvar begins the Hanso Foundation while Jacob leads the "Hostiles" to try and stop him. Whatever the "incident" was in the 1980s, it turned Jacob into a living ghost, able to control the black smoke, to read minds and create life-like images (such as Jack's dad, Kate's horse, Locke's dad, and so on).
• Alvar Hanso is Elsa's boss, the economist.

Actions

• Hanso embedded military ties within the DHARMA Initiative. We only know two DHARMA members, Kelvin and Desmond, to be former military officials with different attitudes towards authority. This alludes to the assumption that Radzinsky also, at some point in his life, was a part of the military.
  • Based on the arrival time of both of these two to the island, it is probable that they came to the island under the pretense that they were joining the DHARMA Initiative, when infact the Initiative personnel on the island had been wiped out and the Hostiles were now running the operation posing as DHARMA.
  • More to this is the US Army Knife Ana Lucia found on one of the Others, and possibly the German handgun Tom threatens Kate with.
• Hanso is Him, the leader of The Others, mentioned by Tom and Ben. Extending the Oz metaphor sometimes connected with the series, this would make Alvar Hanso "the man behind the curtain" aka the Wizard.
  • Not likely since the Dharma and the "Others" are separate groups.

Ian Patrick Williams who portrays Alvar Hanso bears a striking resemblance to this man identified as an Other

• The man who appears in video on Hansoexposed.com is the 'real' Alvar Hanso, whereas the man who appears in the window is merely the actor who plays him in the show. This would explain his drastically different appearance, and is backed up by Rachel Blake's appearence at Comic-con this year.
• Is a subject of the life extension project. If he really aided in munitions manufacturing during the Second World War, he would have to be at least 80 by now, and his photo shows no where near that amount of aging. (This could be "creative license", but the discrepancy is too large to be unintentional)
  • A side-effect of the Life Extension is his "unusual blood".

Name

• The name "Hanso" is likely spelled "Hansø" in Danish. The literal translation of "hans ø" from Danish is "his island".
  • Since Alvar is an norse name for elves and Hanso becomes His Island in both danish and swedish, you can without doubt say that his name means that he is an graceful humanbeing (as elves are) and that he is in control of land, in this case an island. Elves Hisisland is his name if you translate it into english.
• Possibly named after Hans Ørsted, a Danish physicist and chemist whose discoveries inspired the development of electromagnetic theory and the ØRSTED satellite.
• "Hansa" is Vedic Sanskrit for "swan." The repeated word "namaste" on the Hanso website is originally from Sanskrit.
• The name "Hanso" and the fact he was a weapons manufacturer may be a reference to legendary Japanese swordsmith Hattori Hanzo.
• "Alvar" is an anagram of "Valar", the "Powers of the World" in J.R.R. Tolkien's mythology.
• "Hanso" is a tribute to Han Solo of Star Wars