'Lost': The man (in black) with the plan, Part 5

Ryan, I have been reading your Lost articles for a very long time and want to say how much I appreciate your work. Thanks!

Two quick thoughts this morning -

1) I'm thinking that Jacob's death is necessary to get the "touchees" back to the Island in 2008. One of the things that was bugging me was "how will they get back to THIS TIME and THIS PLACE?" Any "boom tube" requires ends, and the geographic and temporal end markers would have to be Jughead in 1977 and Jacob's death in 2008.

2) I don't think MiB expected anyone to survive Ajira 316 - remember he said to Richard that after they saw Jacob, they would have to "take care of" (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) the other 316 p***engers. My question, though, is "why didn't MiB know about the runway?". I mean, it wasn't exactly top secret work like the Swan! Did he see it being built, but just not make the connection to his plan? In general, Jacob seems intimately familiar with what MiB is trying to do - why doesn't MiB see Jacob's counter plan? Is it just hubris on his part, or does Jacob have some way of concealing his intentions better than MiB?

Anyway, great series, Ryan - really looking forward to what's next!

lovin' the Obi Wan-ness of Jacob. it's starting to make a little more sense.

question though: while everybody was busy getting touched by Jacob, Illana AND Juliet were not. thoughts on why Juliet wasn't touched? not the Jacob was in her presence (as far as we know) to show her not being touched, but you know what i mean.

The million dollar question: Why could Locke die off-island but Michael, Jack, and presumably the rest of the Oceanic 6 were immortal?

The question of who Jacob touches and why is an interesting one. If you watch the flashback of Jacob touching Locke after he falls from the window - well, it looks as though he brings Locke back to life. We know that the island or Jacob or some combination thereof denotes healing on the chosen. Isn't it possible that what Jacob was giving his selected "variables" was a touch of protection? He touched all players present at the incident and Sun, who was not at the incident but was on Ajira 316. Perhaps, Jacob is trying to ensure that his variables survived both plane crashes and any other number of life-threatening scenarios to reach whatever task he requires of them - or, perhaps, more importantly, whatever CHOICE he is hoping they will make. Afterall, Jacob is a champion of free will.

As for Lapidus - I have been struck by the fact that three of the Freighter Four had already been to the island - Miles was a baby there, Charlotte a child and Daniel either a newborn or a fetus. Now, why should Lapidus be any different. What is this man's connection to the island. I have been asking myself all year (and posted the question previously to this blog), why is Smokey so interested in Lapidus? If you recall the pilot episode, Smokey approached the wreckage of Oceanic 815 and we witnessed him/it/her lift the body of the still-alive pilot from the ****pit and then kill the pilot. We discovered in the Freighter Four flashbacks during the initial introduction to the series, that the pilot who flew Oceanic 815 was a replacement for Lapidus - I conclude that Smokey was looking for Lapidus and was disappointed enough not to find him in the ****pit of Oceanic 815 to smash the life out of the replacement . Couple that with the scene from this year when Sun and Lapidus rowed their outrigger into the docks of deserted Darmaville. If you recall, the leaves and bushes along the shore rustled with the frolicking of an excited Smokey who then followed Sun and Lapidus at a discrete distance to observe their meeting with Christian when he showed them the picture of those from Ajira 316 who were now in 1977. He even hovered at the door, observing the conversation. Why would Lapidus be the only member of the Freighter Four without an established previous history with the island? Why would Smokey be so intent in his search for Lapidus if he weren't expected/important to the entities long game?

Now - Juliet - I see Juliet in a new light since I learned over at Doc Jensen's write-up that he observed the figure Isis in Jacob's chamber and ABC ID'ed the statue as Taweret. Taweret is the consort of Apep (Set), the god of chaos and evil. Set was once a defender of Ra and then his adversary. Interestingly, Taweret is also thought to be a goddess of fertility - particularly a protector of pregnant women. The image of Isis (goddess of fertility and childbirth) in Jacob's chamber within the statue who saved/resurrected the forever youthful and soft-spoken god of the Underworld Osiris from his slaying at the hand of Set is another nod to fertility - and to Juliet's actions in "The Incident."

Let's remember that Juliet was originally brought to the island to heal the "curse/plague" that terminated island pregnancies after her ground-breaking work in impregnating a male mouse and, then, injecting her sister (rendered sterile from cancer treatment) with her experimental substance to enable her sister's subsequent pregnancy. Juliet, in detonating Jughead, may have reset the timeline - saving Jacob (Osiris) and resurrecting the ground-zero players - giving a new life to all - birth/rebirth. In all the flashbacks we saw in the finale, Juliet's flashback is the only flashback in which Jacob did not appear/intervene/touch a variable player. Perhaps, Juliet cannot be interfered with as it is her string of choices that determined the outcome for all the major players. Jacob seems to be a p***ionate champion of the notion of free-will. Juliet's exercise of free-will (giving Kate the code to the sonic fence, returning from the sub, ***isting Jack to get Jughead into the hole, detonating Jughead) and the choices she made appear to have fulfilled Jacob's ploy to reset the past, alter the future and eliminate Set's(name of man-in-black?) loophole - ie. "They're coming."

Hoping they'll be discussion! I'm dying to discuss all these ideas!

It really does feel like things are coming full circle; the Losties started out, well, lost in their lives, then made it to the Island, got lost again a little while there and by leaving it, and now they're back and on-track to fulfill their collective purpose.

Unfortunantly, the final battle is coming up and the Man in Black, faced with extinction, with his ultimate loss to this game he and his opponent have been playing for centuries, is going to go down swinging and I just know some of our favorite characters will not survive this - especially since Jacob, as far as we know, is gone or unable to protect them any longer.

Here is my puzzlement: If Jacob's touch is healing and/or protective, how was Ben able to murder Locke?

@ Lady-in-Gray - we know that each of the selected variables appears to be able to die when they've become expendable or performed the task Jacob/the Island/Man in Black/Some combination thereof had in mind. Perhaps, Locke was done. Perhaps, this was Jacob's endgame for Locke - to become the catalyst that reunited his other variables to return.

We all used to believe that Locke was intregal to the fate of the Island - because we'd been told so - the same reason that Locke believed it. In the flashbacks that we've seen, especially Richard Alpart visiting Locke at least 3 times during his childhood to "test" his readiness, the "Locke is special" message seemed to be confirmed. We now know that Richard did not visit Locke because Jacob told him to - he visited Locke because Locke told him to during their conversation at the camp in 1954 that we saw this season (perhaps in "Jughead"). Richard only visited Locke at his birth because a time-skipping Locke told him to. He returned to check in on Locke for the same reason. He told Jack in the penultimate episode this season that he'd visited Locke off the island and he did not appear special. I have come to the conclusion that Locke isn't special. He is a device to undermine Ben's confidence in his rightful place - a huge blind. John Locke operated under an ***umed name, Jeremy Benthem. Jeremy Benthem was a philosopher who, amongst other things, created the notion of the Panopticon - a minimum security prison in which the inmates are, nevertheless, completely trapped by their own paranoia. Locke operated on Ben's natural insecurity in his position - he was a name which helped to justify the Other's questioning of Ben's directives. Locke - just the idea of Locke planted in Richard Alpart's head by Locke, himself, acted to instill the worst sort of gnawing paranoia and self-destructive doubt in Ben.

In the episode this year entitled "The Little Prince," I thought the Prince in question was Locke. I begin to suspect that the Prince is Ben. The Prince is master of a tiny asteroid. One of his main duties is to tend his garden, sown with the seeds of good and evil. He must tend them equally so that neither gains too much ground (literally and figuratively) but he strays from his asteroid, meeting a companion, the narrator, in the desert of our world. He meets 3 people in his journey, the drunk (Jack), the businessman (Widemore) and the Lamplighter (?). He tells the narrator that of them all, only the Lamplighter might have been his friend - but his world was too small. Now, the station manned by Eloise Hawking is called The Lamppost; however, I'm not sure Eloise is the Lamplighter. Early on , when I viewed this episode from the viewpoint that Locke was the Prince, the characters were the same, but I thought Ben was the Lamplighter. Viewed from the perspective that Ben is the Prince and the Island is his asteroid and he is the lynchpin in the battle to keep good and evil in balance, the Drunk might still be Jack or his father (father issues are BIG with the island and with Ben), the businessman is still Widmore but I believe the Lamplighter might be Richard. The point of this is - Locke is a masterful Red Herring. I would suggest that the person driving the car that ran over Locke's mother, initiating his premature birth - is likely Set/Man in Black/?. Locke is the loophole - we all know this. He is the flashy distraction that we've all been looking at - including Ben - and Jacob has allowed it, has nutured it - because we know that his advisary (aided by Smokey) can see your thoughts, your sins - because he needs the Man in Black to focus on his plan because Jacob has been moving his own pieces into play. It's all about CHOICE - Juliet's choice - Ben's choice - Isis/Taweret and the Prince - the White Queen and the Black Prince. Locke had to die for the Man in Black's plan to work - so Locke died. Perhaps Locke was always meant to be part of the variables - but I wonder what role he'll actually play in the reset timeline that I believe Season 6 will be. And if those touched by Jacob are able to remember what they witnessed in the first telling - how will their choices differ with that knowledge?

Let's not forget that Sayid and Hurley weren't "touched" until after they left the island. How does that fit into your theory?

@ Not Christian - You're addressing a touch in the last timeline. I think that Jacob has imbued each recipient of "the touch" with some sort of essence - be it protection or knowledge of the timeline variations or both. You are right in finding a flaw in noting that Hurley and Sayid weren't touched until after Oceanic 815 and therefore it cannot be simply a matter of protection. Perhaps, then, it has more to do with memory. Or perhaps it has to do with protection foreseen as needed beyond what is required for a plane crash but more a nuclear explosion over a pocket of electromagnetic energy that initiates a electromagnetic/gravitational maelstrom so powerful that it resets an entire timeline - ie. "They're coming."

If you're familar with frame-dragging, it is one aspect of the Kerr Metric solution to Einstein's field equations and what Pierre Chang was sent to the Island to study. The Kerr Metric solution theorizes that, amongst other phenomena, space/time/light might be halted/warped/eddied in its normal progression by the introduction of a supergravitational force such as a black hole. The eddying effect of time is more commonly known as a wormhole - the vehicle through which it is even more fantastically theorized that time travel might be possible. The exit of a wormhole is supposed to be a "pinpoint" at the bottom of the eddy of time. If you've watched the Pierre Chang/Faraday video from comic con (I found the link to it on one of the early columns from Ryan), Pierre Chang states that he is sending the video message through an open pinpoint that existed prior to Dan's death, ie. just before the Incident. This makes an enormous amount of sense in the nonsensical world of Lost because if you are an eddy in time orienting around a rotating black hole then your pinpoint isn't fixed - it moves in response to the movement of the gravitational well. I've wondered since seeing the Pierre Change video if the reason the island seems to skip around geographically (not in time) is because it is the outlet for this pinpoint - ie. the moving exodus of a wormhole. The Kerr Metric solution also states that your perception of this eddy will differ depending on the point of view - I can't help think that this is why the first opening shot of the series is Jack's eye - the first opening shot of post-Ajira 316 time jump was Jack's eye and the promo seen at the end of the Season 5 finale appeared to be Juliet's eye opening - perhaps on the new eddy that she had just created by detonating a nuclear blast - an enormous electromagnetic pulse - into an opposing electromagnetic wave (the pocket of energy, I think, is the energy emerging from the whriling eddy). I'm not suggesting that the last timeline was down to Jack - but let's suppose that this is a repeating time loop with minor variations during each play and that last time through Jack was successful in his detonation of Jughead - perhaps it was his point of view. As Jacob states, "it only ends once. Everything before is progress." If we are looking at a timeloop, as might be suggested, perhaps even the choices that Jacob and the Man in Black make to interfere each time are slightly different - bringing forward different players with different knowledge.

So - why weren't Sayid and Hurley touched until after their return - I don't know. Perhaps, in the last playout of events, this is where Jacob decided they needed a nudge? Perhaps, this time through, Jacob selected them based on events that unfolded post-Oceanic 815 that convinced him that, next time, these variables were as essential as the earlier "touched."

Perhaps the reason the Man in Black is so exasperated with Jacob during their conversation on the beach is because, as he states, it will be the same. The men of the Black Rock will fight, they'll lie, they'll deceive. Perhaps his bitterness towards Jacob is because Jacob's will is holding them in this endless loop of time and, more recently for the Man in Black, in the ash ring, and he has lost hope that the outcome will change and that there is purpose to the continued game. This would make the Man in Black Jacob's prisoner in his own omniscient experiment in which our characters are merely players.

I'm off til tomorrow. I appreciate you guys reading my ramblings. I never have anyone to talk about my Lost theories with, and I enjoy this immensely!