The Progress of the Candidates and Jacob's End Game by 1Miletogo

Here is a quick theory of the Jacob's candidates and the journey towards Jacob's End Game known as 4,8,15,16,23,42. Jacob was working toward progress, and he had an end game in mind. The candidates were brought to the island to perform specific tasks, some bigger, some smaller. I wouldn't be surprised if Valenzetti himself wasn't Jacob, and the brillant man who created the Lamp Post... Jacob

I think that MIB may have been the first candidate, he was brought to the island to start Jacob's Master plan. Part of this master plan was controlling the Smoke Monster. MIB was infected by Smokey and in the process Smokey and MIB both became trapped. Now Smokey was able to be controlled and Jacob worked toward his end game of 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42.

Smokey can also be used as a tool to remove candidates that have finished their tasks while on the island. Think of the Pilot Seth, he conveyed info to Jack & CO, then Smokey killed him. Same thing with Eko, Eko led John "to lift up his eyes and look north"

Jacob started on his long path of bringing Candidates to the island, each candidate had some role to play in the overall mission of the end game, but the final "progress" would be seen with the last group of 6.

Some candidates played bigger roles than others to ensure 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42 made it to the island.

We've seen that once a candidate has completed their "task" the island would allow them to die. It seems like as soon as a candidate has served their purpose then they die.

Here are a few of the candidates that we've seen accomplish big tasks that the island finally see fit for them to "go"

4 - Locke - many many tasks completed, got the remaining candidates back to the island Ben killed to ensure that the rest of the candidates returned.

20 - Rousseau - delivered Alex to Keamy to be used to manipulate Ben

27 - Dorrit - Called Freighter

58 - Burke - Caused Incident

124 - Dawson - essential in the Freighter candidates - as soon as the choppper gassed up and the 2 main candidates were away, the freighter exploded

101 - Faraday - essential for Jack to cause the Incident, Essential for Jacks protection

195 - Pace - brought the freighter - as soon as he turned off the jamming device - killed by the indestructable Mikhail or Jacob - body disappeared...

226 - Carlyle - as soon as he communicated with the tail section the beachcraft fell out of the tree

I think the main players in the end game are Hurley & Jack. They seem to be the 2 that Jacob is most interested in protecting.

The thing that Jacob didn't see was MIB taking Johns form and having Ben kill Jacob. There was a reason that only the leader could visit Jacob and not two people, this was to make sure that MIB couldn't have another kill Jacob. It could be that Jacob told Richard, that if Locke ever wants to see me, lead him here, and allow him to bring another to see me. Jacob may have known that MIB would take over Locke, and was waiting for it to happen and everything is going as planned.