Fate vs. Free Will by Anna

There will be no reset. One big clue to this is Chang injuring his arm during the incident. What ever happened, DID happen in this cycle of life. There are many hints of the Egyptian "eternal return" throughout Lost such as "It'll come back around" and Ms. Hawking's ouroborous. With eternal return, the world ends but starts over again.

Jacob is Aaron from the future. Aaron, along with other children we've seen on the show are from a future time where the world is either destroyed, nearly destroyed, or about to end.
This is why children are so important to the Others. The Others know what is going on. The Losties' kids/etc are the ones who orchestrated travelling to different times of the past and changing events in order to change their future outcome (such as Flight 815 crashing and as far back as the Black Rock or maybe farther). What we've seen is a very manipulated cycle of time.
This manipulation has caused discrepencies seen throughout the show, such as the changing picture frames. As I mentioned, the Others know what is going on (thanks to their "Advisor"), and are keeping the children safe in order not to allow one of these future time manipulators to die in their youth. Think of the paradox this would cause-how could they have travelled back and changed events if they die as children?

Ms. Hawking is obviously preserving this changed cycle of time. Notice that Ms. Hawking's ouroborous pin is not the traditional eternal return symbol--the snake is not biting its tail. This shows the break in eternal return that's happening. I believe that in Season 6 we will be given a glimpse of what has happened in previous cycles without all this time manipulation. I don't believe 815 was meant to crash. MIB is from the future too and never agreed with this plan. He wanted to let fate have its way. With future technology, they can assume other identities too. I believe the Whispers are the time manipulators viewing events and commenting. Maybe they are in the Temple but can also view unseen due to future technology (like when they viewed Charlotte Malkin's resurrection).

Kelvin could have been told what to do and led Desmond away from the Swan so that the button would not be pushed and 815 would crash at that time. He said he was there to "save the world".

I think the island orbits in dark matter. It's the record/base of eternal return. Maybe it was discovered by Ancient Egyptians or maybe Jacob travelled far enough into the past and
brought them to it. The Smoke Monster is from the future too and must have been brought to the Island early since it's seen inscribed under the Temple wall with Anubis. I think it's MIB's
"pet".

Fringe is already a show about alternate/parallel universes, Lost can't be about the same concept.

Two sides in the coming war--those who side with Fate vs. those who side with Free Will.