Child's Game Turns Deadly by PairO'Dice Lost

Jacob and the MIB’s game is childish.

I’ve been trying to find a balance between the two separate themes at play that have been implied throughout the length of the series. Sometimes it’s a Game, and sometimes it’s a War. Is it a friendly contest or does it possibly have dire worldwide consequences? It always seemed to me that these are very different ways of looking at what should be the same thing, that is unless you can look at it from a child’s perspective.

From a psychological point of view, child’s play involves abstract representations that are separate from reality. A child will show more of a lack of appreciation for the consequences of its’ actions than an adult would (adult’s understand consequences even though they might choose to ignore them). If you doubt this simple truth, just google fun children’s games like Space Monkey, otherwise known as Suffocation Roulette.

After seeing the boy appearing in the woods in “The Substitute” it’s hard not to speculate on who it is even though we don’t have enough information yet to be sure. Right now I’m leaning towards him being a young version of Jacob. There are definitely physical similarities between them. Then again, maybe it was even the MIB himself as a child. Some people make the argument that the boy is Aaron, personally I doubt that one most of the three. Possibly, he is the single being from which the two opposing entities of Jacob and the MIB sprung from (that is laid out in another theory of mine you can read at http://goo.gl/fb/eIlW). No matter who he is though, it seems that it was because of the influence or close proximity of this boy that caused Flocke to change back into the Locke for a moment. So far the only time we’ve seen Flocke frightened is in the boy’s presence when he first appears, and as James rightly pointed out, that was a defining characteristic of Lock! e, which up to that point was noticeably missing in Flocke. Then when Flocke catches up to the boy in the woods a minute later, he trips and falls and shouts to him with Locke’s words, “don’t tell me what I can’t do” – again it seemed to me that Locke was emerging from Flocke as he lay on the ground looking as helpless as Locke did in the flash sideways when he was laying on his lawn with the sprinklers on. Let’s agree that no matter how you choose to interpret who the boy is, his power and authority is considerable.

Because of the emergence of this boy, I’m going to guess that Jacob and the MIB were children when they agreed to the rules of this game, friends even. I think when we see their back story (which I really hope we do), we’ll see them as innocent children playing in their proverbial magical sandbox who don’t understand the consequences of the game they have begun, but the older Jacob and MIB we’ve now met do know. They have grown up and learned.

Thanks for taking the time to read this, I’d appreciate any criticisms you might have. Praise is welcome too.