Here's my theory of what's going down ( I wrote this theory in a Lost fanpage. I'm totally spoiler free going into season 6. ) http://forum.lostpedia.com/those-believe-future-catastrophic-event-t44310.html Cliff notes: Jacob and MIB are from the Future, trying to keep humanity from destroying itself by affecting decisions in small increments. Bringing the Losties to the Island has them run through a sequence of events that slowly but surely arms them with with the knowledge of saving the world. Future Catastrophic Event Theory Jacob and Man in Black are from the future. They witnessed a catastrophic event that destroys mankind after an acculimition of choices. This event could be anything from nuclear war, biological warfare, or meddling with the island until it threatens the world. Jacob and MIB are sent back in time via a massive time shift. The Smoke Monster was created during this event. Jacob and MIB end up in the distant past, knowing that the world is eventually headed to this fate and that universal course correction will stop them from trying to alter it. After centuries of this , MIB, a man of science, basically ascribes to the theory of "What Happened Happened" and thinks man's fate is inevitable. Jacob, a man of faith believes that it might be possible to slowly alter fate, not with one big change, but with a series of small changes where people are given the ability to slightly deviate off their course via free will. Jacob attempts this with several groups of people that find themselves at the Island, one of which was the Black Rock. Jacob, MIB (and Richard Alpert) have unusually long lives because Fate won't let them die until they've fulfilled their destiny, and since they are trying to affect events of that distant future, they will live up to that point. This is exactly the reason why Locke couldn't shoot and kill young Widmore because he's destined to grow up to be an old man, and also why Micheal couldn't be killed until he had reached a point in the timeline where he had fulfilled his purpose. This could also be the ultimate reason why Locke regained the use of his legs, because someone set his destiny and purpose in life, meaning that the only way he could achieve it is with the use of his legs (while not telling Locke exactly what that purpose is). Since Jacob and MIB are actively effecting events in history, the only way to do that is to keep them from dying, thus they don't age throughout the centuries. This leads us to the Losties. Jacob orchestrates events in their lives to bring them to the island. He doesn't force them, but uses a series of "little pushes" that begins forcing them into each other's lives, until Fate has them all meet on the plane and eventually the Island. That's why you always see all those little coincidences in their flashbacks where they interact in each others lives without the other knowing it, because Fate has been trying to bring the crew together. It's also why the Oceanic 6 eventually had to go back after leaving. Jack was stricken with grief because he was fighting against his fate. This yearning against deviation of purpose will probably bring Desmond, Walt and others back to the island in Season 6. So how does all these changes result with the Losties? They influence things in a big way: the changes they make are so big that eventually Fate was being strained. The Smoke Monster appears. The Smoke Monster is a direct result of the future castatrophic disaster, in my belief something Fate created to "fix" the timeline. It's the ultimate device when Fate can no longer be subtle about things like stopping ink in pens, bullets from firing, or collapsing scaffolding on someone because the taxi missed him. It has its genesis in the future but was moved to the past along with Jacob and MIB, and will exist on the island from that point all the way up to the Future Event. it is normally trapped in that underground hole beneath the Temple, but only appears to attempt to correct the timeline in drastic ways. Normally Fate can deal with deviations with small events, like stopping Claire's pen from working, or jamming Keamy's gun when he tried to kill Micheal. And even more drastic isallowing Locke to walk again (and taking it back). But when things are going too far off course, the nebulous cloud, appears at certain points to scan the choices that key people have made and then decided whether they are a threat to Fate. Smokey is more powerful than Jacob, but it can't simply wipe out the survivors at the beach, cause that will alter Fate significantly. Instead, ituses the likeness of familiar people in an attempt to judge them, and only when faced with someone that sets themselves stubbornly on a path (like Eko refusing to view his past actions as "bad"), it then eliminates them. The Losties in the meantime eventually create series of events that unwittingly use the Island's time shifting abilities, and end up in the past. Attempting to rewrite the future in one big blow, they detonate Jughead through force of will (things tried to stop them from doing it, including Dharma and Jughead simply not detonating at first, but Juliet's powerful freewill choice allowed her to set it off). They create the Incident. An alternate reality is created, since this is the only way Fate can allow for such a fundemental change without creating a paradox (spefically the "Grandfather's paradox". The alternate tangent universe represents the Losties landing in LAX and not making the choices we've seen them do in our timeline. For a while, everything seems fine as they go about their lives. The problem is, this reality has deviated far off course from the Losties' Fate, and though Fate has been defied in a HUGE way, eventually things must be corrected. The first thing that happens should be that the Losties begin feeling that something is wrong, in the same way Jack started feeling that being off the Island felt wrong. In Season 6 you should see them start to suffer and wonder why they are feeling like this. Also they'll eventually begin to have "flashes" of the proper reality after Sept 22 2004 of their reality. It's possible that when Desmond detonated the Swan hatch and obtained his flashing abilities, he got a glimpse of the big picture. He wasn't just getting glimpsing the past and the future, he was getting glimpses of the other reality as well. So in Season 6 you can expect the Losties to start experiencing events like Flashes Before Your Eyes, or The Constant, where they become aware of the proper reality and might possibly even start jumping between the two. Desmond's time abilities were just setup for showing how these characters in a different reality become aware of their circumstances. Hurley and Miles are interacting not with ghosts, but are communicating with people on the other side. That is why Charlie tells him "I'm not dead, and I'm also here" because it is LITERALLY TRUE. Charlie is dead in our reality but is alive in the tangent universe. They are just slightly variatons of what Desmond can experience. Eventually, that tangent timeline is merely a shadow that cannot last. And Fate begins to fold it back into our reality. The Merge will be a significant event on the show, on par with The Incident. The Merge will force remnants of that tangent, fractured reality into our own. The Dharma food drop in Season two gets mixed up during this merge and ends up in our world. Abrupt climate changes that last minutes at a time are remnants of the alternate weather at that time. But most importantly, the WHISPERS and the GHOSTS that the Losties have experienced from Season 1 are actually people from the other side, bleeding through into this universe. When the Losties eventually get back to the present in our timeline, they will be armed with new information. They will know that they are destined to do things and what the endgame is. Most people think the show is gonna thematically end with Faith beating science, but I think that the idea is that they have to work together. I would further venture and say that the reason Jacob and MIB failed is because the are fundamentally opposite to each other and never really worked together, while Jack and Locke will eventually be the Man of Faith Man of Science that finally join forces and make choices that will preserve the future and humanity.
------------------------- Other smalller predictions connected to this theory: - After being sent back in time, Jacob and MIB's first interaction with the outside world is with the ancient Eqyptians, who saw these immortals as gods, and built the statue as a monument, and depict the Smoke Monster in the Temple. From these life experiences, Jacob and MIB influence people on the island to incorporate heiroglyphics onto the island throughout the centuries, even in the Swan Hatch timer. - The numbers are the core values of the Valenzetti equation. It describes interactions of different factors that exist in humanity and can effectively predict that eventually everything will come to an end. This is the same future catastrophic event. - The Temple where a Dharma logo was seen on a map in Season 3 is a Dharma station in the Future. - Jacob's cabin moves around like the island moves around in space time. Eloise Hawking, a mathematician, can predict where the island is going to be, just like Horace Goodspeed can predict where the space the cabin will be built is going to be. The ash merely marks the boundary so people can know when they've stumbled upon it. - Rose and Bernard died sometime after their retirement in 1977 and are laid to rest in the cave from season 1. The old anagram from season 3 "Bones of Nadlers may lay lost deep in cave" applies [video=youtube;mVCFbUPPZRo]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVCFbUPPZRo[/video] (This is where "Only fools are enslaved by time and space" is heard.) - Locke will be resurrected from the other timeline and Jack will witness it - The series finale will end with Jack repeating his "1,2,3,4,5" quote before affecting some major change in the timeline
Tonights episode was amazing! Just like the ARG said about the Valenzeti Equation (4 8 15 16 23 42) it has all the answers. The final survivors were numbered by those numbers. w00t w00t.
