Idea about why the six had to go back and how Locke has been used by Eleni9712

Just a random thought. I think there were three separate forces involved in getting the six to come back: MIB, Ben, and Jacob.

MIB didn't really have any designs on getting the six back. He wanted Ben and dead Locke to come back so that he could manipulate Ben to kill Jacob. He told Locke he had to bring them all back because he knew Ben was watching them, that Ben would thus discover Locke on the mainland, and that if Locke failed in his mission to convince the six to come back, he would be willing to kill himself if he believed it was the only way. Locke has been pawned all along by MIB to believe that he is special and a chosen leader for the island. This was how he was able to use Locke's "resurrection" to convince Ben to kill Jacob because in Ben's mind, he was the one being pawned and used all along. The same island that gave him cancer resurrected Locke - talk about feeling betrayed. I thought of this possibility because when Flocke is told by Caesar that he saw Hurley and the others disappear, he genuinely appeared puzzled and became intent on getting the passenger list - it was as though he! didn't expect it the others to actually be on the plane.

Ben just wanted back to the island. This is one of the reasons why he has kept his eye on the six over the last three years. He "knows", from Eloise, that he needs all of them to get back. I use the word know in quotations because I think that was a load of croc. If they had to recreate the flight, why didn't they need to bring Walt and Aaron with them? I think it was made up on purpose to convince them they all had to go.

Jacob knows what MIB is up to. So a crazy notion - Whitmore is not a bad guy at this point but is in fact helping Jacob. Whitmore happens to be there when Locke ends up on the main land, and it's interesting that he appears to want Locke to go back alive, as rather then in a coffin, like everyone else wants. Jacob is all-knowing so he probably figured out what MIB was up to. While Locke has been pawned all along, he is probably still "special" to Jacob as well and needed on the island (I envision Jacob and MIB going back and forth over Locke because they both have a vested interest in him because of his amazing ability to believe - for MIB, he's a tool. For Jacob, he's hope, or something else on the more positive/spiritual spectrum). Whitmore has knowledge of the impending "war" and it probably isn't much of a stretch to assume that the six, or Jack at the very least, are expected to have a role in that. Eloise and Whitmore have a relationship and so she played along in tell! ing them they all had to go back together. Jacob consciously chose Sayid, Kate, Hurley, and Jack to flash back to the 70's because Sawyer, Jin, and Miles are also needed in the present and the only way to pull that off is a leader who is able to convince them that it's a good idea detonate a hydrogen bomb - that leader being Jack. I would say that Jack is also a candidate for being "special" (remember the tattoo episode?) because Jack and Locke's conflict could parallel what we have seen between Jacob and MIB.

I know Whitmore allegedly tried to blow up the island and is generally drawn as the bad guy, but we know he was exiled by Ben, who was ultimately deemed not fit to lead. He was also instrumental in getting Daniel to the island and without Daniel, the bomb could never be detonated, and that seems to be the only purpose of flashing the kids back to the 70's.

I can easily twist this idea around to make Whitmore the bad guy too.

Irregardless of all this, there is clearly going to be some alt time line going on at the same time as this, but I think the alt time line is going to serve as more of a tool to further demonstrate the characters' destines/fates, or as a tool to show that things are going down hill on the main land and the "war" has to end right in order for things to be remedied.