LOST Theories - DarkUFO

As Benjamin Linus once said to Locke, "I wish it was as simple as taking out a dusty old book and reading from it, but I'm afraid it's not that simple."

To which Locke says, "Why don't you just start at the beginning?"

So, I will.

I'm the guy always writing theories about how the electromagnetism beneath the Swan and the Orchid is so very important. And once again, I'm going with that idea. But this is much more comprehensive than that. So here goes it...

Jacob’s cork analogy got me to thinking... many are assuming when he was talking about the wine in the bottle and how it was symbolic for evil, malevolence and darkness and all that jazz that he was actually metaphorically referring to it as representing the MIB i.e. the Smoke Monster.

But I believe the wine was a reference to the electromagnetic energy beneath the island and the “cork” part of the analogy was referring to the Smoke Monster.

I know he said “The Island” was the cork, but stay with me on this.

MIB and Jacob go way back. Who knows how far? Maybe a loooong time ago. Something happened to both of them, something pretty bad that immortalised Jacob and changed MIB’s form from human to smoke.

What if they encountered the pocket of electromagnetism when they were around the late thirties age we see them as now. I’m guessing that MIB’s reference to his Mother a couple of episodes back in Recon suggested that there may have been a colony on the island and that’s where the two of these dudes originated from.

The MIB saying his Mother was "crazy" I am assuming to mean that she had visions “Joan of Arc/Cassandra” style. Visions of the end of the world and somehow, The Island told her that they needed to build the Frozen Donkey Wheel as a means to save it. It was kind of like a primitive Swan Hatch button. Because the energy was building up to a point of critical mass, so much so, that one day it would destroy the island and perhaps even the world.

So, the first colonists of the island, believing MIB’s Mother to be a prophet, set to work on a few monuments. Like a temple to worship in, and a statue to make their mark on this “new world,” claiming it as their own. I can only assume that it was their religion of the time hence the Egyptian goddess. And of course, the donkey wheel being the most prominent artefact of all that they were "instructed" to build. MIB’s Mother said how this had to happen and that the island HAD to be moved every now and then in order to reset the energy.

Anyway, MIB and Jacob set about building the wheel down in the old cavern where it was like below zero. MIB believed his Mother to be insane, but Jacob believed her to be telling the truth. Together they built the wheel but somehow, the very first INCIDENT occurred. (Much like in the way what’s-his-face in the god awful Spiderman 3 film turned into the Sandman), MIB was caught in a burst of powerful release from the electromagnetic energy, thereby dissolving him of form into tiny black particles. He more or less disintegrated before Jacob’s eyes and with the accompaniment of lightning like flashes, he disappeared.

He became A PART of the island’s electromagnetism and slowly began to reform himself as the smoke cloud. For short periods of time he could reappear as his former self, but only for so long before he reverted back to the smoke particles. From this point on he became TIED to the island but in the eyes of all the others he was dead and gone. This being a primitive civilisation, they believed his smoke form had elevated his passed-on spirit to that of a god, and so began the drawings beneath the temple in which to monument his existence for all time. Hell, maybe he even played up to that fact.

Remember in Dead is Dead where the Smoke Monster appears from beneath the temple through some holes in the ground, and how it lives underneath the island occasionally popping up from under trees to snatch or kill some poor lostie? Well, that’s because HE IS THE CORK! He returns underground because his energy and the island’s energy are one and the same. Unwillingly, he has become the proverbial "dam" that keeps everything inside the "bubble," or "snowglobe" as Desmond calls it.

Now either this civilisation died out, or MIB killed them all off. Everyone except for Jacob who was also invested, or imbued, with the SAME electromagnetic energy but was not close enough to it to end up like MIB. He stopped aging, but realised he could pass on this energy harnessed within him by touching others. However, the catch is this no-aging thing only works while you’re on the island. If you decide to leave it, even though you’ve been “touched” by Jacob, you go back to old mortal you again. Yes, his touch works off-island as far as drawing people to it, but the effects of the touch do not start working in the no-aging sense, a la Richard Alpert, until you get there. If he touched you off-island, and then you inevitably showed up, any problems you once had, such as say – paralysis — will suddenly cease to be an issue. You will be healed.

As for MIB's touch? Well, his touch CORRUPTS. See Rousseau's lover Robert going all trigger happy on his pregnant squeeze, Sayid going trigger happy on everyone and etc.

Anyway, so these guys are around for a while together. MIB wants to escape, not caring that he is the ONLY thing preventing the island’s energy from leaking and spreading, and ultimately destroying the Earth. HE IS THE SWAN HATCH BUTTON in a metaphorical sense. And he needs someone, a la Jacob, to keep “pushing” him, so to speak.

I also believe that these two men’s close proximity to this first “incident” also imbued them with another in-common trait. The Desmond-like “flashes.”

We’ve all assumed that the time travel stuff applied to these guys because they knew so much about the future, but what if they have never actually time travelled at all? What if, since their life changing, and form changing, encounter down in the donkey wheel cavern made them like we saw Desmond in Season3? They get flashes of important pieces of the future. One tries to make it happen, the other tries to prevent it from happening in order to change the outcome.

Jacob brings the people to the island that he foresees as arriving. The candidates are selected via his visions of them. That’s why it’s DESTINY. Because they were SUPPOSED to come to the island no matter what. Jacob tries hard to bring people there to PROVE to the MIB that mankind is actually A.OK. He NEEDS to do this in order to show the MIB what he would be destroying if he ever actually LEFT.

It’s like saying, “Hey, listen Mr. Man in Black, I know your life sucks right now. I know you can’t hold your original form for more than maybe a day or so before reverting back into the electromagnetic cloud, but if you leave there will be nothing to keep the electromagnetic energy at bay anymore. You ARE the cork my friend. Without you, this island will destroy the world.”

Then the MIB’s like, “Dude, I’m so tired of this living forever business, I just want to get out. Can’t you understand that? I’m lonely, I’m angry, I’m LOST. Just let me leave. Who cares if mankind perishes? They’re all just corrupted souls made up of killers and liars whose greed is more important to them than cherishing their lives and the lives of others. I used to have life and now I don’t so I appreciate it more now it's gone. So it makes me pissed off that these people who come, fight and destroy DON’T change or learn. To hell with ‘em if they all die.”

And Jacob’s like, “You say they’re selfish? Dude, that’s the biggest irony here. YOU’RE BEING SELFISH. You’re so desperate for freedom you’re not thinking about the consequences. Look, if I can PROVE to you that mankind has a fighting chance, will you stay?”

MIB thinks. “I’ll give you a few centuries. If you don’t do it within that time, then you won’t ever be able to do it... and then I'll kill you.”

Okay, so this version of that initial conversation is crude to say the least, but you get my point. Jacob has to bring people to play out this "game" out of necessity. Mankind's existence DEPENDS on it.

Two men imbued with power beyond human imagination – one a prisoner of his own power, the other a keeper of both his unstable friend’s and his own power too.

So, how did MIB end up impersonating Jacob in the cabin? My guess is that he didn’t get trapped there straight away. Perhaps Jacob asked to meet with him there, because he kept interfering with his damn plans all the time. The volcanic ash is not volcanic ash at all. It’s the earth from deep below the island. I mean real deep below. As closest to the electromagnetism under the island as Jacob could possibly find and retrieve. The ash contains fragments of that energy and like the pylons, acts as a kind of primitive electromagnetic field which MIB cannot pass through at the risk of annihilating himself entirely.

So MIB arrives in his temporary form we now know as Titus Welliver the actor (who is damn brilliant by the way) and is tricked, as Jacob and possibly Richard begin “sealing” him inside. Bam. His form, we know as MIB, can no longer manifest itself to cheekily try and talk people into helping him. BUT, MIB is not totally imprisoned. He can still move around in Smoke form, and the only way he can communicate with anyone anymore is by taking the form of the deceased. It’s his only way to manipulate. He also can invade the consciousness while a person sleeps and manipulate their dreams. Oh yes. That he can do too.

So, now he’s in a prison within a prison damn it. Can this guy’s luck get much worse? Actually, he’s planned ahead for this. Like Jacob, he has the visions going on too. He knows some of the people that will be coming to the island. And he knows this because he’s been copying Jacob’s homework.

Remember the Lighthouse and the cave with all the names inside? Well, my guess is, the lighthouse belongs to Jacob and the cave belongs to MIB. He lied to Sawyer about it being Jacob’s; it was merely him keeping score at his end of what was going down. Notice how HE crossed out Locke’s name? A subtle clue that the cave belonged to him. Remember the white stone he threw out into the ocean when they first got there? I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that was the VERY SAME white stone Alpert gave to him as a “present” from Jacob back in the day. I ain’t kidding. I really believe all this. I mean, a subterranean dwelling in the dark is much more up Smokie’s street than Jacob's. Plus, the whole "inside joke" reference Flocke makes to Sawyer when he throws away the white stone is something I believe we now are privy too since Ab Aerterno.

The cave is dark, the Lighthouse is, well, light! The math speaks for its fat self. MIB was merely keeping tabs, making his own plans for these candidates that good old Titus explained in the previous episode "Well, then I'll kill them too." All of them. Even fun time Hurley? Yes... even fun time Hurley.

Anyways, back to the cabin. So MIB’s original form is stuck in there, but he has his designs on a couple of new arrivals. The first is Benjamin Linus. That guy really needs a father figure. The next guy is John Locke. That guy also really needs a father figure. These guys have major issues. That makes them ripe for manipulation and providing MIB with a very long, elaborate plan to create a loophole in which to kill his keeper – Jacob.

Jacob says to Alpert, “Richard, don’t let the others now where I live okay? Otherwise they’ll constantly come hassling me. You know, I can’t get involved. I’m trying to prove a point to our imprisoned friend MIB that mankind can learn for itslef and change.”

Richard says, “Okay Jake, but what should I tell them if they ask?”

Jacob says, “Just tell them I don’t like visitors and I live in that creepy old cabin. That way they’ll know never to come find me because you know how. So unless some schmuck comes along and kicks aside that ash, we’ll be ok.”

Cue Claire "the Schmuck," albeit, a very beautiful "Schmuck," being conned by False Christian Shepherd into moving the circle of ash so MIB could be free to take a more PERMANENT form. Say, maybe, John Locke? You know, the guy all Jacob’s people believe is the one chosen to replace him and everything?

And that is kind of the whole deal. My explanation of Lost to some degree.

My prediction for the final play out is that MIB aka Flocke will get his wish. Freedom – at the cost of everyone else’s existence. But, now Desmond is back in play. A man groomed from early on by Widmore and by Hawking to become the one... dum, dum, dum, dum, THAT WILL SAVE US ALL.

Hawking said in Flashes Before Your Eyes that ...”if you don’t do these things Desmond, then EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US IS DEAD.” She didn’t mean just pushing the button. She meant when the time comes after these events play themselves out like they’re SUPPOSED to, he will be needed to STOP MIB. Or at least change the outcome of MIB’s destructive plan.

I believe Desmond has to perform some task or do some deed that will CREATE our alternate timeline or the flash-sideways.
In a way, the flash-sideways is a flash forward. I truly believe that. But, it’s a flash forward that exists because MIB has destroyed the island, so that any changes that Jacob made were also negated, meaning a lot of things are different in this branched out timeline. But Jacob’s touch stretches beyond “time and space” and slowly our losties will remember who they really are. They just need to look into the mirrors a little while longer until they see, like in The Lighthouse, their true past lives.

Desmond will play a big part in that. I don’t know how he will do it (something to do with the wheel maybe?) but he will do it.
The blood on Jack’s neck that he sees in the mirror on the 815 flight is the blood speck or splatter of Kate, or someone who is killed in front of him, just before the reset truly happens.
Desmond’s fail-safe key shenanigans made him the closest thing to a new Jacob and MIB that there has ever been before. That makes him the dark horse in this race. But Jack will ultimately have to take the responsibility as the NEW Jacob, because he was born to do it. He has what it takes now after Locke's endless speechifying that he was there for a reason. Now Jack is THE MAN of faith.

Now, I want to try and answer some questions here that I keep hearing brought up that people say have not been solved or some such.

The first, and most prominent being, “they haven’t explained why women can’t give birth on the island.”

I think they have. Juliet was brought there to find out why women could not give birth and as we now know Ethan was probably the last island baby born. And when did this happen? Just before the incident in 1977. When Juliet detonated JUGHEAD. The radiation infused with the electromagnetism and irradiated the whole damn place giving Miles his unique ability and causing pregnant women to die before child birth. Juliet WAS the cause of her own future dilemma. SHE in a sense, in a very ironic sense, caused her own suffering. If it were not for her detonating that Head of Jug, she would never have been brought to the island in the future in the first place. The writers are good at giving answers, just in clever, round about ways.

The next question I come across often is “why did the smoke monster kill Eko on their second meeting?” Well, we all know the Adewale reason "why" in the real world, but on the show, the writers conjured up a perfect get-out clause for the character.
MIB was aware that Eko bared spiritual similarities to Locke, and also that he was a man of faith with a complicated past that could be exploited in terms of his guilt over Yemi’s death. The Smoke Monster “read” him in The 23rd Pslam and then used the Yemi memories and overwhelming guilt against Eko to position him as one of his own potential candidates. Locke and Eko were on the same list for MIB.

Only Eko eventually, caught on and said, “You know what Ghost Yemi? I don’t repent for my wrongs. They were necessary to get me to where I am now. I’m a bad guy but I know that now and I want to change, but it has to be because I want it, not because you think I should want it. That’s what destiny is. Knowing the path you should walk, but choosing to walk it because you have finally embraced it, not been forced into penance.”

Of course Yemi/Smokie did not like this “New” Eko and realised he could no longer use Yemi’s form to win favour and manipulate this particular man of faith. He saw him as a threat now more than a candidate to use for a loophole, and thought, you know what? This man is better off to me dead.

And Eko got that in his last moments. Hence why he told John – “YOU’RE next.” And John was.

If only he hadn’t have misinterpreted Eko’s last words. If only Ben had not have been told that the cabin is where Jacob resided. If only Locke had not insisted on going there for further instructions when Keamy and co turned up all gun happy and everything. But this was how it was supposed to happen.
This, unbeknownst to the MIB, was the destiny that was set on a path a long time ago when his “Crazy” Mother first started having her visions.

“It set off a chain of events that led us down a path from that moment to right now.”

“And where does that path end John?”

Well... not at the hatch Jack. But I’m guessing, somewhere within the flash-sideways. There in lies the end of our story. Whether that be revelation and remembrance of the original world, mergence between the two, or something none of us have even considered.

Time to put this theory to bed now. I hope you enjoyed it. And I hope none of it turns out this way and instead completely about-faces and makes us all go “NO WAY!!!! Jacob and MIB are pimps from the future?!!"

We welcome relevant, respectful comments.
 
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