The Loophole and How the Bomb Changed Everything by The_Other_Other

I must thank Kimkim for the theory “H-Bomb does nothing” for bringing me around to my theory on how the bomb changed everything. I will also give the disclaimer that I do not know if these ideas have been theorized before, so all credit is due to the original originator. This is also my second theory; I don’t even know where my first theory went to on the site. Feel free to like, dislike, slam, skew, reflect, appreciate or unload on this theory. It’s a theory, that’s all.

"You have no idea what I've gone through to get here." -MIB/Flocke (whatever you want to call him)

It appears he/it has been hard at work to get to where he was at this point. But what exactly did this involve? I believe that it is careful manipulation to get to this point, possibly through many iterations of the same timeline. I think his overall goal was to get the losties to detonate the H-bomb. Why would this be his goal though?

We know from the beginning of season 5 that MIB wants to kill Jacob very, very badly. I think that this consumes his purpose as a being. I think he has been trapped for countless iterations of the same events/scenarios and is sick of it. Unfortunately he is trapped/bound to the island as long as Jacob is there. MIB cannot leave or exists as he wants as long as his counter force is present on the island.

So here come the losties that crash on the island or are brought to the island. This has happened before countless times, over and over, again and again and “it always ends the same way”, that is it always comes back to the beginning and repeats itself. If I was forced to watch the same movie over and over, no matter how good, I would go stark raving mad.

But the thing about this loop is that it will be impossible to kill Jacob, just as it was impossible for Michael to kill himself off the island. Because of the loop it was impossible for Michael to kill himself before he actually died in the loop. Because both Jacob and MIB survived the first iteration of the loop and are now trapped in it, it is impossible for either to die. This is why the detonation of the bomb is so important.

Most of you by now have seen the chessboard advertisement that has been running, I don’t remember what country /station it is from. I think this advertisement has a lot of insight into what is happening even though it was not officially sanctioned by the show. I think MIB has been doing a bit more manipulating than Jacob though. I think he has devised a way to break the loop by manipulating the losties into detonating the loop.

It is evident in the future that changes have occurred. I will refer to when Sun and Frank make it to The Barracks and it looks decrepit as hell. Everything is boarded up and the dock looks in shambles. It is as if no one has been taking care of the buildings for many years; I would venture a guess it was since the detonation. It could have also been abandoned shortly after as this would account for the boarding up of the windows and doors.

Since the loop has been broken it has given MIB the chance to kill Jacob as the future has not yet been written due to the loop being broken. In killing Jacob he has broken his bounds to the island and is free to either destroy it to prevent further loops being formed or leave it for what we would consider our world.