Redemption Allows MIB to Go Home by B.A. Youngerman

Many times we’ve heard the writers say that LOST is about redemption. And redemption, I’m thinking, is the only real way to set yourself free, to go home.

In the Christian faith, people are redeemed through Jesus. According to Christian dogma, He died to save us all. Eastern religions, on the other hand, speak of karma, which isn’t about someone else working a miracle in your soul. It’s you who has to do the work, through lifetime after lifetime. You keep going round, through time, until you get it right. Then you are allowed to go home, to return to the Oneness, to the light.

On LOST, there might be someone to save us all. That person or being is the one who lies in the shadow of the statue. It could be Jacob. It could be Locke. Or someone else entirely.

Maybe everyone on LOST finds salvation through reincarnation. Time can be manipulated on the island. We have multiple timelines on the show. Were our characters “saved” by the release of electromagnetic energy that reset time? Was MIB allowed to go home?

Much is still a mystery. But I do think we know what the endpoint must be. It must be redemption. That’s when it’s really and finally over. And not until then.

The climax of the show—and the way to make sure there will be no sequels to LOST--will be the redemption of MIB. He represents the worst in us. He is the personification of evil, which is why you can’t murder him. Not with bullets or any conventional weapon, I’d bet.

Smokey is made up of anger and hate and other hostile emotions. When Smokey killed Eko, he was using the karmic residue of Eko’s past (all the murders he committed) against him.

Smokey's power could be diffused and might even be turned from dark to light if confronted by a Candidate with a pure heart. And only then. I'm thinking this because Locke first saw Smokey as a bright light. And Locke had a pure heart at that moment.

Jack had a pure heart when he swallowed the pill Dogen concocted for Sayid. So, I think Jack is the Candidate right now. Or it might be Jack and Hurley, who has always seemed pure of heart. There is a sweet innocence to him.

Some viewers now feel sorry for MIB, especially after his speech about once being a man who felt joy and pleasure. They aren’t for killing this being. They want to understand him.

Maybe, before MIB became a prisoner on the island, he was just a regular man. Maybe the God of the Underworld made him the repository of the evil in men’s souls.

To be free, to go home, MIB needs to shed all that evil. He needs to find redemption. What do you think?