LOST Theories - DarkUFO

The Answer to the Question by Louker

This is long. So long in fact I felt like I've aged by seven years writing it. If you don't like long theories, this isn't for you. I thought about breaking it down into two parts but thought to hell with it!

I get into a lot of the mythology and make guesses as to the candidates, MIB's plans, the flash-sideways relevance and lots of old pieces of backstory. I hope you enjoy it.

THE ANSWER TO THE QUESTION

What lies in the shadow of the statue? The answer of "He who will save us all" is in reference to the successful candidate.

Whoever is primed by predestination to be Jacob's "replacement" is the one who will save them all.

Ricahrd knew the answer to Illana's cryptic question, but obviously doesn't understand the context of his answer.

It's a phrase and response that Jacob taught his closest people (i.e. Illana's group, Richard etc) to recite if it was ever required to identify a fellow "other." Because as we have see on the outside world, there are many "others" in many different locations around the globe, and not all of them are aware of each other.

Jacob has created an elaborate maze-like infrastructure of people. An army. His army. And they have all been placed where they needed to be whether that be on-island or off-island.

Anyway, this phrase "What lies in the shadow of the statue?" is their code slash secret handshake. Because being an other is like being in a club. Jacob's most important ones, his closest confidantes and most trusted "soldiers" need to ask the question in case any of them ever meet each other. But the full ramifications of the question and answer are not completely comprehended by those who speak the words.

Illana is aware of the candidates, Richard however, is not. Considering Richard has been around for some time you think Jacob would have said something to him about it... unless...

Certain events needed to unfold and that could not happen if Jacob directly intervened with ON-ISLAND events. Sure, he can jet-set off around the world and touch his way through our entire cast but there's no way in hell he has the ability to interfere directly with what is going down on the actual island itself, perhaps influence or direct (a la the lists), but never interfere. Those are the rules. However, adversely, the MIB/Smoke Monster/Locke CAN effect on-island events directly, but not events on the outside world because he is "trapped."

So who is this candidate who will save them all and how will they do so?

Two options I believe to be the only feasable ones. People may strongly disagree but I feel either one of these guys is the inevitable choice.

Candidate possibility 1.)

Jack Shepherd.

He's our main character, our hero, and he has more or less been at the centre of everything since the crash. We have followed him more than the rest, and irrespective of your feelings towards the character, he is the central protagonist whose character arc of going from cynical man of science to conviction carrying man of faith has underpinned the entirety of Seasons 1-6. And I'll admit it. I have been waiting for this day to come ever since Locke first told him on the way out to the hatch in season 1 that Jack WAS a man of faith but "you just don't know it yet." How true those words are now.

Jack is the right man for the job and to be honest makes the most sense in terms of how his arc has shaped up. Jacob specifically needed Jack to see the lighthouse, to know that destiny is not a figment, for Jack's new-found faith to be reaffirmed and brought to revelation.

Candidate possiblity 2.)

Desmond Hume.

I know people argue that its Hurley or Kate or whoever for reasons amounting to the fact that Hurley sees dead people (although he has not been the only one I might add) and that Kate's name was not on such and such in whatever scene. But neither or these characters has been set-up or written over the years (in my opinion) to be The Candidate. They are special because they ARE candidates, but not THEE Candidate.

Desmond however, is, as Faraday said only last season, "uniquely and miraculously special." He is different in ways that none of the others are. He brought 815 down, by accident or design, he needed to be there in order to bring these people to the island. He turned the fail-safe key that imbued him with these special "powers." The ability to see the future. The ability to concious travel into his past and cause ripple effects into the present day. He's deeply connected to the Widmore family, Dharma, The Hatches, and the electro-magnetic energies that give the island its power.

His uniqueness is what qualifies him as The Candidate in this scenario.

Onto the question itself now.

The question, "What lies in the shadow of the statue?" is not meant literally. Yes, Locke was lying in the sand in its shadow when the quetion was asked and answered but that is not who the answer was referring to.

The question was devised and thought of in a time when the statue stood tall and complete, not when it was just a foot. It was Jacob's home then and right up until he died (the very fact that his tapestry took so long to complete suggests he spent a large majority of his time there, or at least on his days off). And I believe the question means quite simply, intended as metaphor, who will take over that position in the statue? Who will become the new "lighthouse" of the island, the new Jacob?

That is who will save them all. The person who takes over that key role.

It could be argued that Desmond already brought 815 and arguably the freighter to the island. His CV of bringing people, albeit, unintentionally, to the island is already pretty strong.

And Jack brought his people back to the island, and was instrumental in bringing the freighter there too.

One of these two men will be the chosen candidate. (My odds on favourites anyway).

Now, onto the next part. HOW will this candidate save them all?

I believe that the island is a living entity. Nothing that can be directly explained (e.g. it's an alien ship, or the garden of eden etc) but in its years of existing on this giant pocket of energy, it has become a place of healing and its magnetic nature draws in everything close to it in proximity.

It is also, unstable to the extent of being catastrophic.

Why does it need protecting? Flocke said in Recon that the others were protecting it from him, or at least he implied that is what they have always been protecting it from. But back in Season 1 Rousseau explained that she believed the black smoke was protecting the island. So is this just bad plotting and exposition on the part of writers who have long since forgotten their older explanantions and visitations during this series? Or is it simply misdirection?

The island needs protecting from ITSELF. It's like a child looming over an ant hill, innocent, not wanting to cause chaos, but because it has no concept of right or wrong, but by default it has no problem stepping on and breaking the ant hill beneath its foot. It is not aware of its destructive nature, nor its power.

The island's existence brings balance to the planet, as long as it is "protected" and "controlled." By the chosen candidate whose job it will become to continue bringing people to it to help harness and harvest its power for good and for the betterment of mankind.

The island must continue to exist in lieu of everything else because the greater good dictates that the lives of a handful of people who live there, who crash there, who fight there, are expendable in the ongoing struggle to maintain the lives of EVERYONE else on the planet. That's why so many of the others have been previously willing to give their lives as they are sacrificing themselves to save the many.

As for MIB...

The electromagnetism that thrives deep beneath the island, after the incident in 1977, began constantly building up to a state of critical mass and the button diffused that build-up. But it did not destroy the anamoly altogether as the energy benetah The Orchid still exists and as it is all a part of the same energy... the same matter... the anamoly STILL exists. And it is still building.

If it continues to build-up without anyone there to "control" it i.e. The Candidate, its power will cause a catastrophic shift in the magnetic poles of the Earth, essentially ending everything. This is what Jacob and his followers have been fighting to protect, fighting to prevent and fighting to presevre. A world without the island means certain doom.

MIB aka Flocke aka The Smoke Monster wants everyone left on the island gathered in one place so it can kill them all. Richard said it to Sawyer in The Substitute and I believe his every word on the matter. For MIB it would mean no more loose ends, no more escapes, no more loopholes.

It will be over for him.

Once every possible candidate and "other", and everyone associated with the island past or present, is gone, MIB can truly be free.

He wants the island at the bottom of the ocean. He wants it destroyed. But in so doing this it will also destroy the balance that it brings to the rest of the world. It's magnetic balance to the poles of the earth, and slowly the world will die because his end game is not just killing every living thing on the island, it is apparently, "going home." But home to what? That was centuries ago. Everything he knew is gone. He has no interest in going home as in the literal sense. He wants to end it all. And that does not make for good recruiting talk. who would follow a man whose ultimate goal is to destroy? So instead, he lies. And lies some more.

If Jacob and MIB go way back, my guess is that MIB became the smoke monster at some point perhaps as a punishment or through an accident (incident?). Was he caught in the anamoly's radius at some moment of critical magnetic release that more or rearranged his molecular structure? (okay that's a little bit too much sci-fi silliness for my liking.)

Either way, he became the smoke monster a loooooong time ago. Then when the Egyptians came to the island they mistook him for a "God." Their god. And they worshipped him and did as he asked. He was the leader of the island. The statue was built as a monument to what they saw him as. But Jacob somehow stole his following. He changed their belief system enough to take them away, they "betrayed" him, and in retribution he killed them all and then pulled down the statue in smoke monster form.

His living underground in the temple was all a part of the act. The idea that this smoke monster was some sort of powerful god-like creature who judged people and commanded great power.

Once Jacob started amassing his people in later centuries, who eventually became known as "The Others," Smokey tried his tricks again. But this time, not enough of them were biting. He would appear as deceased loved ones to try to lure them away, give them dreams of destiny, directing them to him, but always failing. Until the day little Benjamin Linus arrived on the island. His loophole for escape, divide and conquer began.

But he was banished into the cabin, or trapped in the cabin later on in the 70's before he could fully exercise his influence, at the request of Jacob to be done so by none other than Richard Alpert. This severely diminshed his powers and abilities but did not stop him from reaching outside of the cabin to try to recruit followers. His two most valuable ones, unknowingly, were led straight into his path.

Benjamin Linus and John Locke.

Two men intwined by fate, angry and bitter from years of suffering at the hands of their fathers, needing, begging to find a surrogate father figure in which to believe in. MIB manipulated his way into their lives to benefit his alterior motives.

He posed for a long time as Jacob in a cabin thought by Ben to be occupied by him. Which led Locke to belive so too. It was surrounded by ash to keep him inside (no doubt poured around it by Richard), but it only kept his corporeal body trapped. The smoke monster side of him was free to roam the jungle, taking the forms of the dead, if only for short periods at a time. He used Christian's body to appear to Claire, bring her to the cabin and remove the ash, freeing him to be able to take a more permanent form later on. The form of Locke. Now he was no longer chained to the island. He was free to manuever himself and make bigger changes, bigger manipulations all towards his end game of dividing and conquering over Jacob's followers, killing his candidates and destroying the island that had been his prison for so long once and for all.

MIB is the bad guy. No doubt in my mind. The more sympathetic the writers try to make him the more I'm convinced of his evilness.

MIB will be successful in his mission. The island will be sank to the bottom of the ocean... but somehow, this flash-sideways we are seeing unfold piece by piece is the element that changes that outcome.

Slowly but surely, all of our Losties will come together in this reality, they already have started to. And eventually once they are all together through the process of fate, something BIG is going to happen. Something that will reset all of MIB's work to destroy the island. To change history. To set himself free.

When Desmond mind-flashed the first time back to breaking up with Penelope in the past, that was the SAME reality as our current LA X timeline in Season 6. The past with slight differences, some small, some major. It has always existed. It's the reality Jacob saw into through his lighthouse mirror. It's the world MIB promised to Sayid and Sawyer and all the rest. By leaving the island he means to destroy it, and by doing that it leaves only this mirror reality - whatever it may actually be. But this is the only way MIB can go back "home" to his past before all of this happened. Perhaps, to make amends or do things differently. Who knows.

This side-ways flash of the lives of our losties is what Jacob is ultimately referring to as only ending once it's just that the MIB doesn't really know that it will be his true undoing because Jacob's touch imbued each of the candidates with a knowledge they do not yet have access to. But once they have died in the on-island reality, they become aware of this knowledge in the mirror reality where Locke is a subtitute, Sawyer is a cop, Jack's a father etc.

In keeping with the possibility that Desmond is the candidate, and if you buy into any of this craziness, doesn't it become much more interesting that he appeared on the plane in this side-ways flash to speak with Jack and then promptly vanish mid-flight?

Where or when did he go? And why was he there? Desmond after all is uniquely and miraculously special and I'll bet that his appearance on the plane in this LA X timeline has everything to do with everything.

That's all I have time for at the moment. I don't really know how much I believe some of this, but I know that something in here, at least even a small part, might be true.

Thanks for reading and enjoy the rest of Lost. :-)

We welcome relevant, respectful comments.
 
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