It always ends the same... by Skipmanii

What the heck is going on in Lost? MIB tells us that it always ends the same. Jacob says it only ends once and everything prior to that is just progress. Daniel tells us what changes the scenario. It is the people that are the variables, because they have free will. Who is inserting the variables? That is Jacob. Why is he inserting variables? Because he wants to change what happens.

It is interesting that the thing that makes people variables, according to Daniel, is their free will. This explains why the others are always trying to persuade Jack and crew to do things, but never really force them to do anything, they have to use free will to change things, if they are force to take action, they cannot be variables. It would seem that MIB foils Jacob by taking over people and forcing them to do things (claiming them), this robs them of their free will and takes them off the table as variables. Once they are forced to do something against their will, a variable becomes a constant and Jacob must introduce more variables to the equation.

I believe the thing that happens, that always happens is that the island is destroyed. MIB confirmed this in the Season 5 episode when he said, “They come. They fight. They destroy. They corrupt.” Notice that the corruption comes after the destruction. This is curious.

I believe that the island is always destroyed in the end. So when we see the ALT time line where the Island is destroyed, I believe we are seeing what happened before Jacob starting the process to bring the Oceanic flight to the Island. What we are seeing is what would have happened in these peoples’ lives had Jacob never brought them to the Island.

If this is a timeline after Jacob brought them to the island, then we must assume that the series will end with Jacob giving up and the MIB is right, the island will always be destroyed.