The Hot Wheel Track of Lost Time by ProgLOSTicator

Let's think about some things.

What we have to admit is that there are two different realities for Jacob and the MIB. There is what has always happened for centuries and centuries and then there is what happened when MIB found his loophole and "everything he had to go through to be there." When MIB runs his loophole he changed the way things had run for years. Let's look at his plan.

I think we can safely say at this point that the MIB is completely responsible for the time flashes on the island. For one thing he knew exactly when and where he would need to be in order to get Richard to tell Locke he will have to leave the island and die. First he leads Ben to believe that he must turn the wheel and not Locke. When Ben does this, MIB jams the FDW sending the island flashing randomly through time. Or so it seems. If it was just random flashing, how did MIB know where Locke would be when that particular flash came around. Therefore he either knew that the island was not flashing randomly and that he could predict a particular time popping up when it did or he was the one controlling when it popped up. I will assume the latter. After this he gets Locke to turn the FDW to reset it. He didn't need the time to flash anymore. Now he needed the time to stay constant in 2007 or the present island time. This allows him to manipulate Locke in the flash, sending off! -island the body he needs killed and the person he needs to kill it. And he gets Locke to convince all the other candidates to return before he passes. Pretty genius.

This of course assumes one thing. Ben was unwittingly working for MIB all along. He was conned the whole time. It was Smokey that appeared to him as Richard and his mother and led him to believe he was meant to be with the Others. Once he was with the Others he had their leader ousted in a questionable manner and placed himself in charge. So how does this work if Richard works for Jacob. Well we know that Jacob communicated through lists and notes. What if he left those lists in the cabin and Richard would simply retrieve them. And give them to Ben. Maybe the ash was so Smokey couldn't read the messages or interfere with this process. Once the ashes were broken he could invade the cabin and USE it to leave his own notes. Richard would be none the wiser, Jacobs real leader (Widmore) would be gone and he could set Ben up as the new leader because he knows he can manipulate him. Remember that Illana said the cabin was being USED by someone else. Not someone else had been ther! e. What was it used for? Why would someone that is supposed to be good like Jacob want to exterminate the Dharma village? He wouldn't, that was ordered by MIB. Exactly something he would do.

Which brings me to my next point, Dharma. The Initiative was brought to the island by Jacob and he was watching and using their research on time travel because Jacob knew MIB would try and use the time discrepancies of the island for his loophole. That is why they were gassed. Ben gassed them because Jacob (MIB) told him to.

Think about it the numbers on the hatch door, the numbers entered into the computer. Who has a thing for numbers and for those numbers in particular? Jacob. These are his numbers. At the time Jacob's people weren't listening to him. This is what clued him in on the fact that they were being conned by the MIB. So he just lets him run his con while he tries to figure it out and plan ahead. Dharma was part of that plan to figure it out. Maybe they weren't experimenting with time so much as timelines and paradoxes. In this theory Faraday is also a Jacob plant and at no time does Jacob have anything to do with the FDW.

When the Ajira flight crashes over the island, all the candidates on board except two flash to the 70s, Sun and Locke. And Locke is dead. That only leaves one candidate in the present with MIB. I believe that flashing Jack, Hurley etc. back to the 70s was so they would no longer matter as candidates in the present. He was trying to hide them so to speak. Effectively they were no more a threat than if they were dead. This makes sense when we look at the phrase "They're coming," meaning "The other candidates aren't trapped anymore as you thought they were." Remmber how worried he looked? MIB's original plan was to only have to deal with one candidate and convince her to leave the island. Frankly all he would have to say is "I found Jin, he's waiting for us." But Jacob orchestrated events that brought the candidates back to the present, thus foiling that part of MIB's plan. See how this whole move/counter-move starts to look like a game?

So This whole time we haven't been seeing a time loop but the loophole and counter-loophole. One side moves and then the other counters.

Normally time on the island travels in a linear fashion. What we have been watching for 6 seasons is MIB planning his escape. Visually this would look like a straight line with a loop in the middle sort of like one of those old HotWheels tracks. The real trick to understanding what is going on up 'til now is to know how it worked before MIB tried to kill Jacob and escape the island. Before he found his loophole. Back when they were both just protectors of the island. Remember Jacob said that MIB was an old friend who grew tired of his company. Maybe they used to be very similar entities that were entrusted to guard the island and at one time both were good. (Angels in the Garden of Eden or some universal power source) Maybe somehow one of them grew tired of guarding what he thought of as nothing or became infected and now the evil inside just wants him to leave.

Either way I think if we want to understand how things are working now we must step back away from the HotWheel track. Instead of looking at the loop in the middle we need to look at the straight part of the track and get a good understanding of how things were SUPPOSED to work and had worked for centuries.

Let me know if I've forgotten something or if I'm way off. I can take all the heat.