The Island's Pregnancy Issues As They Relate to the Larger War Brewing by Shameless Addict

For me, personally, one of the most burning questions I want answered before Lost ends is the whole mystery surrounding the pregnancy problems on the island. The show invested so much time on this storyline during the first three seasons and then the issue seemingly disappeared over seasons 4 and 5.

Now that the whole notion of an “infection” has been reinserted into the storyline, I’ve started thinking about the pregnancy issue again and the bigger picture. I think the larger war being waged on the island for candidates/recruits is ultimately a war over people’s allegiance, or put another way...for their souls.

Perhaps the souls of the unborn and young children are up for grabs because they are impressionable and can be easily manipulated - or should I say infected? With this in mind, I can’t help but wonder if Jacob is behind the killing of pregnant women because he is trying to prevent the MIB from claiming any of the new souls being brought to the island via childbirth?

Although he has thus far been presented to us as a benevolent force, he is clearly not opposed to killing to achieve what he perceives to be the greater good, i.e. Nadia getting run down by a car to get Sayid back to the island, or the Others trying to poison Sayid to prevent him from being claimed. Should this all pan out, I think it would play right into the writers’ attempts to blur the lines between good and evil, black and white.

My theory behind all of this came about after I started thinking about the link between various people who have been “injected” with something while on the island.

When Desmond arrives on the island, Kelvin tells him that the outside environment is contaminated by a mysterious “sickness” and Desmond may have been exposed. Kelvin inoculates Desmond with a vaccine and tells him to inject himself with it every 9 days. Perhaps the real reason for the injections was that the Others were unsure if Desmond was vulnerable to being claimed by the MIB and therefore he needed these vaccinations to ward off the takeover. As we saw with Rousseau’s team, new arrivals are clearly vulnerable to Smokey/MIB. Later we find out Kelvin had deceived Desmond into thinking the “sickness” was something that could be caught outside like a cold or a virus, hence the ruse about having to wear hazmat suits outside. By now we know that this “sickness” or “infection” is not your run-of-the-mill, doctor treated disease. It’s clearly something more insidious and intangible.

I then started thinking of someone else who received injections – Claire. We know that she was kidnapped by Ethan while she was pregnant and given injections, but we were never told why. Again, like Desmond, was Claire given the injection to help protect Aaron’s soul from the MIB?

My mind then moved on to the other pregnant women we’ve known of – Sun and Rousseau. To our knowledge neither of them were given injections, so at first glance this would appear to kill my theory. But after some deeper digging, I think their unique circumstances only enhance my theory that there is a battle being waged over the souls of children and the Others have been aiding Jacob’s side.

In Sun’s case, this may explain why Juliet took extreme measures to ensure that Sun got off the island on the freighter before giving birth. When Sun and Jin were going to take off in search of Locke’s camp in order to avoid the freighter folk, Juliet took it upon herself to reveal Sun’s affair to Jin in a dramatic attempt to stop them. Later, when Sayid arrives from the freighter with the raft, Juliette again stresses that Sun should be one of the first to leave the island. As a former Other, did Juliet know that Sun’s baby would be vulnerable to claiming and therefore made it her mission to make sure the baby would be born off island?

In Rousseau’s case, to our knowledge she was never injected by the Others. But perhaps that explains why Widmore was so adamant about having Ben kill baby Alex? Were they afraid that it was too late to save her soul? Remember that Widmore, if you can believe him, even said that Jacob wanted it done. Because Ben didn’t kill her as instructed, perhaps this was why Jacob allowed Alex to later be killed by the freighter folk? Taking this one step further, maybe she was never supposed to have lived? This might also explain why Smokey was able to take on Alex’s persona while it was rendering judgment on Ben? Perhaps Alex had been claimed by Smokey/MIB from an early age?

If this theory about children’s souls being vulnerable is correct, it might also explain why the Others kidnapped Walt, Zach and Emma – to help guard these young, impressionable souls. We know that the Others were frightened of Walt’s seemingly unique abilities, particularly the group of dead birds he was apparently responsible for. We found out that the Others took tests on him and put him in “the room” which was later revealed to be Room 23, the brainwash room that we also saw Karl in. Perhaps Room 23 was a last-ditch intervention of sorts to try and manipulate young impressionable souls into allegiance to Jacob before the MIB claimed them permanently? Remember the image on the screen in Room 23: “God loved you as he loved Jacob.”

Taking all of this into consideration, ultimately, I think Jacob and the MIB are battling over souls, and the souls of the young and impressionable are a weighty prize insomuch as they represent a new start, or the chance to finally end things right.