Jacobs Final Trick: Explanations of Season 5 and Predictions for Season 6 by BobServant

So season 5 ended on one hell of a downer, and the writers were quoted as saying that we will wonder how they could ever do the same show again, in my case they were right, I did wonder that. But I think I’ve an idea of how they could, I’m not sure if I’ve got any new ideas here but I don’t think I’ve seen them in this combination at least lol

Jacob and MIB
What exactly they are I don’t know, we know that at least Jacob seems to be a mortal man, albeit with incredible power. The man in black, I am convinced is the smoke monster. I think Jacob and the monster occupy equal positions in the islands hierarchy, Jacob is the ‘man in charge’ who acts as a healer and spiritual guide to the islands people and the monster is the judge and protector of the island who weeds out all the people that are “unworthy” and defends the island. Then one day it decided that all the people were unworthy, it found flaws in all of them and killed them all off.

I think we will see the beach scene between Jacob and MIB again, I think that perhaps the ‘man in black’ was actually the last of Jacobs followers that the monster killed, the monster used this as a way to rub Jacobs nose in it. Jacob has had other ideas and somehow arranged for the Black Rock to find the island. The Monster now wants rid of Jacob, but unfortunately Jacob is flawless, every single act he has committed on the island has been for a good reason, hence the monster cannot fault him and therefore cannot kill him.
I think when we see this scene again we see the MIB march back into the jungle and then the smoke monster will rear out of the jungle, stretching out in to the sea and then pick up the black rock and toss it deep into the jungle, then rip the statue down. (Not really important to the theory but I thought it’d be a nice touch and a good way to kill two mysteries with one stone) The people on the Black Rock were recruited by Jacob, one of these was Richard and he
So anyway, the game begins.....



The Incident and Time Travel
I think that the incident always happened, a bomb always got thrown into the Swan Station site, hence all the concrete we saw poured down the shaft in season 2. There are many other things that occurred during the time travel that we know always happened, like Locke meeting Richard and telling him he’d be their leader and Pierre Chang losing his arm. The Monster having access to islands power has the ability to travel into the future, so he was able to manipulate events across decades, maybe even longer to bring Jacob to the checkmate situation he found himself when Ben finally killed him. The rules prevented the Monster from killing Jacob but he could manipulate somebody else into doing it, and he found that person in Ben.

Eloise Hawking and Charles Widmore
Eloise was chosen as the islands leader and unlike Ben, Jacob did come to her and after she learned of the eventual fate of her and Charles future son Jacob told her she had to leave the island and raise him in the real world in order to make sure that what happened, happened. During Eloise’s reign Charles Widmore became a kind of proxy ‘king’ of the others as Richard said to Jack “let’s just say love can be complicated”. Richard was expressing his misgivings that Charles was effectively their leader while he was with Eloise. After Eloise left Charles assumed control and I believe that at this point he was compromised by the Monster, the Monster showed him how to leave the island and enabled him to achieve massive power through the creation of Widmore Industries in the real world.
Charles was in the monsters thrall and is to this day, he began to do the monsters will and ordered the extermination of the Dharma Initiative. Jacob had chosen Ben and so Ben was saved and taken in by the Others, Charles had to ensure he still appeared to be doing Jacobs will. Although Ben was chosen by Jacob, Ben was flawed, but he was the lesser of two evils and eventually he and Richard hatched a plan to turn the people against Widmore. They succeeded, Widmore was banished and Ben became the leader of the Others but conscious of Ben’s flaws, Jacob kept Ben at arms-length until the time was right.....

Whatever Happened, Happened, but what actually happened?
We know that Jacob touched all the O6 at some point and also Locke after his fall, Locke I believe was intended by Jacob to be the next leader of the island and monster set out to deliberately corrupt and manipulate him when he arrived on the island. All this time Locke believed he was doing the islands work which alienated him from his fellows who had also been touched by Jacob.

Off the island Locke was manipulated into killing himself which eventually convinced Jack to bring rest of them back to the island, Jack’s new fatalist outlook would prove the catalyst for ensuring that the events at the Swan always played exactly as they did. I believe that what always happened was that the 6 left the island but only 4 actually returned the first time around. Those were Jack, Kate, Sayid (who were sent back through time) and Sun (who remained in the present). Jack, Kate and Sayid were sent back in time to the Dharma days and were recruited, events played exactly as we saw them in Season 5, minus Hurley, who did appear to be pretty much superfluous to the action in the Dharma days. Jack and his threw the bomb into the Swan and after the resulting chaos the Others decided that it was time for a show of strength against the Dharma Intiative, Richard (who was never down with the whole nuke thing) led a group down to the Swan site and massacred those that were! nearby, including Jack, Kate, Sayid, Sawyer, Jin and Miles. This was why Richard said he watched them all die, because he did.

Hurley and the monster’s bid to kill him
It occurred to me that Hurley seems to have a number of run-ins with potentially deadly forces on the island. We always knew there was something about him, the numbers and his seemingly god-like luck. But what I now believe is that the monster has been trying kill him since he arrived. One example of this is Dave, his imaginary friend who re-appeared on the island and tried to convince him he was in a catatonic state and that the only way to wake up from it was to throw himself off a cliff. After that in Season 4 Hurley got lost and “stumbled upon” the magical travelling cabin, inhabited by “Christian Shepard” aka the monster. I believe if Hurley had summoned up the courage to enter it, then it would have been curtains for Hurley. The monster wanted Hurley dead because like Desmond, Hurley is miraculously special and has been the ace up Jacobs sleeve, this I believe is why Jacob met Hurley outside the prison, he was fixing it so that Hurley would make it the plane, ! Hurley was a surprise addition to flight 315. Also remember Not-Locke’s obsession with finding a passenger list and the uneasy look on his face as Cesar described the “curly-haired guy” disappearing?

What is Jacob up to?
Jacob has known about the monsters plan and more than that he knows that it is inevitable that the monster WILL find a loophole someday, it was just a question of when. Knowing this Jacob met with several of the future 815 survivors at some point in their lives and touched them, in doing this he passed on a portion of his power to them. We saw this at work with Jack in Season 2 when he fixed Sarah, he felt that strongly about it that he released the hidden power that Jacob gave to him and performed a miracle.
He did this with all of them, some we have yet to see any evidence of this, but others such as Locke and Jin I believe were triggered when they arrived on the island, Locke’s own power passed to him by Jacob cured his paralysis and the same with Jin’s infertility.

This don’t look like LAX
Those were Sawyer words after the bomb was dropped and even after the explosion the Losties went nowhere. However I believe that the presence of Hurley triggered something else to happen this time around. We know that the energy of the Orchid allowed the Dharma Intiative to manipulate time, but what would the Swan which according to Faraday was 30,000 times more powerful or something. Jacob set this whole thing up to create a tangent universe – Donnie Darko style. Perhaps their eventual deaths in the first reality were also a necessary element to the creation of this universe.

Brave New World
So in the tangent, the energy from the Swan which caused the crash in first place does not exist and the Losties flight passes without incident and lands at LAX. They all have fleeting flashes of their island life, which seemingly involved the strangers around them on the plane, but all of them privately dismiss these as crazy dreams and return to the lives they once had, although slightly different than before as the premature demise of the Swan had bigger knock on effects for the real world. If we remember Desmond’s flashes, some of these came true and others did not, he first started to get these after being exposed to the Swans energy, what if these were actually flashes of a similar, but not identical reality?

I believe one difference in this reality will be that Sun actually did leave Jin at the airport and he will be travelling alone. So how will our confused Losties be reunited? I believe the answer is: Juliet. In this reality Juliet will never be recruited by the Others and will have been returned to 3 years before the crash of flight 815, crucially she know the exact date of the flight and will be able to prove to herself that her “dreams” are real by waiting at LAX and looking to see if Jack, Sawyer and everybody get off the plane. Sawyer will most likely be her first point of contact and hopefully she will be able to convince everyone else to come back, including the real John Locke.

Now I admit, this is theory is my extremely elaborate way of finding a way to bring back the real Locke lol He was always my favourite and I was a little non-plussed to find that the resurrection we were more or less promised, was actually a more like a body-snatch by MIB.

Probably wishful thinking but, oh well.