How the Temple Hot Tub Turned Red (or How Smokey Called the Shots for Longer than we Knew) by LaurelNev

Am rewatching the wgn re-airing of Dead is Dead. During this viewing, I noticed something that never seemed significant before.

Faux Christian told Lapidus and Sun to wait for Locke @ the Barracks. Flocke took Ben over from Hydra "to be judged" by the monster.Flocke (who we didn't know was Flocke at that point)pretty much insisted that Ben make summoning Smokey a priority.

Ben opens a secret door in his old closet, crawls through a hieroglyphic covered tunnel, and arrives at a muddy/red puddle of water. Ben reaches down, pulls some sort of drain plug, and the water goes somewhere. Ben waits for Smokey (who doesn't show) until John says they'll have to go to Smokey. Ben doesn't know where to go, but of course John does. As they arrive, Ben comments that's where they took him to be healed as a kid.

I thin this shows several things. First, it shows that Smokey was manipulating Ben long before we ever knew. As far as we're being shown, Ben didn't know where any of Jacob's havens were. He knew the temple existed, but seemingly did not know where it was located nor had been back since he was healed as a child. Christian (who Flocke admitted he had pretended to be) seems to be associated with all Ben attributed to Jacob--the cabin, the barracks, etc.

Secondly, when I rewatched that drain scene, the infected hot tub made perfect sense. Smokey planted the idea in Ben's brain that he (smokey) could be summoned by draining the pool under the barracks house. That drain is what kept Smokey's "virus" from invading the temple hot tub. It seems that smokey had all of the loopholes covered--have Ben infect the temple waters by pulling the drain plug, then have Ben go off and stab Jacob. (Again, Smokey led Ben to Jacob's house; he couldn't find it on his own.) By infecting the pool, Flocke was ensuring that any "candidate" wounded in the crossfire would NOT be able to be healed in the hot tub.

It's also why the Temple Others immediately whisked the Dharma Losties out of the temple underground when they arrived. The Temple Others knew the tunnels were the realm of Smokey. What they didn't know is that Ben was pulling that drain plug just about the time that the Dharma Losties were bringing Sayid to the temple to be healed.

This all circles back to the loophole. The Temple Hot Tub was NOT infected when the Dharma Losties brought him there to be healed. Thus, Ben became a Jacobite, or one who was reanimated by Jacob. John Locke was also apparently reanimated by Jacob, through a touch rather than a baptism. I'm thinking the loophole HAS to have something to do with "turning" one who had been revived by Jacob against Jacob. John had been reanimated by Jacob twice--once when he was pushed out the window by his father, and a second time when he regained the use of his legs on the island. Thus, Locke became the perfect "mark": the MIB had to reanimate one who had already been reanimated by Jacob.

MIB then found someone else who had been reanimated by Jacob (Ben) to become his second mark. He turned that Jacobite against the healer, and the healer's demise mirrored the killer's salvation.

I think MIB was hedging his bets a little too. He figured John would kill Ben or vice versa. He would impersonate the deceased and use the killer to get rid of Jacob. That scenario was set up when Ben first took Locke to the cabin, and MIB trashed the place, leading Ben to assume it was a message from Jacob. This solidified Ben's animosity toward Locke.