Jacob and MIB are Polar Opposities by twittertracker

Posted before, blah blah, apologize.

Widmore knows about the Orchid. He knew that Ben could trick people into being banished from the island, he knew exactly where people would end up in the desert after turning the wheel, and his son has a notebook full of information on this station in particular.

Widmore doesn't know about the alternate reality -- he was surprised when Desmond immediately agreed to do whatever he wanted. He knows, and possibly expected Desmond to spend three years in the Swan. He knows Desmond survived an electromagnetic burst from the Swan. He put Desmond in the solenoid chamber to see if he could survive another because he plans on exposing Desmond to the energy that powers the FDW in the Orchid. This is what Zoe was asking Jin about with the Dharma maps.

Assume for a second that Desmond and Jacob have the exact same abilities as of right now. The parallel between what Jacob did in "The Incident" and what Desmond is doing in "Everybody Loves Hugo" is uncanny.

Jacob is light, MIB is dark. Jacob was exposed to the Swan energy, MIB was exposed to the Orchid energy. A Swan burst allows you to see flashes of the future, which Desmond used to (save) Charlie and Jacob used for his schemes. An Orchid burst allows you to see flashes of the past, which the Monster uses to scan people's minds.

We already know a lot of this series can be explained by electromagnetism, black holes, whatever you want to call it. It will probably explain why the Island has healing powers and why it is invisible to the outside world. The finales of season 2, 4 and 5 all had electromagnetic events. Zoe just brought it back up in "The Package."

Assume the Swan is positively charged and the Orchid is negatively charged. They repel each other. Jacob is positively charged. The candidates he touches become positively charged. MIB is negatively charged. He can not touch or kill people with a positive charge. This builds the foundation of the rules.

Couple of things: Yes, I know magnetism doesn't work like this, opposites attract, etc. I'm not actually referring to magnetism, I'm just using their terms to get the picture across. Magnetism doesn't prevent Locke from just shooting Jack with a rifle. All I'm saying is that rules are physical things that keep stuff in place. They are not a bet between Jacob and MIB. As you can see in "The Incident" and "Ab Aeterno" Jacob is trying to make a point but MIB is sick of it and doesn't want to play anymore. I'm sure that if he could stop playing the game and break the rules, he would. He doesn't, so I believe he forced to play because of physics.

The reason why MIB is invincible is because he is the only "negatively" charged person on the island, the only person to survive an Orchid incident. Only a negative can kill a negative. Widmore's plan is to expose Desmond to the Orchid energy and make him negatively charged as well, giving him the ability to kill MIB. Obviously, if he does the same thing as MIB, he will lose his body the way MIB did, or as he says, was "cheated" out of it by Jacob. This is the sacrifice Widmore talked about.

If the Orchid can erase people's bodies and turn them into dust clouds, it's clearly far more dangerous. Widmore wants Desmond to do it because he has a good chance of surviving this if he could live through the Swan event. MIB may or may not know of this plan. But the reason MIB fears Desmond is because Desmond was directly exposed whereas Jack and co. were only touched by Jacob. Desmond is far more positively "charged" then the candidates, and will be much harder for MIB to kill -- possibly even on Jacob's level himself.

I'm not sure I believe this theory, just throwing it out in the hopes that someone smarter than me will elaborate on the idea. Even assuming it is correct, Widmore's plan will likely fail. If it succeeds, Desmond will end up being another smoke monster and the thought of two smoke monsters wrestling each other to the ground for a series finale is pretty pathetic and sad.