If that doesn’t get answered, I’ll be a bit miffed.
I’ll bet it’s something like that. Or, think of it this way… when playing a game of backgammon or chess (or any 2-sided, symmetrical game), there might be “black” and “white”, but not necessarily “good” and “bad”. There is only opponents, equally weighted and justified in their respective positions. It’s from those positions that the idea of “good” and “bad” arise.
Another thing to note, from all the names scratched out on the cave wall: Apparently there were hundreds of “candidates” Jacob went through. Some of the higher numbers I was able to spot are in the 300s, and there are plenty that are 3-digit numbers. If the scratching out of the names, means that person is dead, then it’s true Jacob has been looking for his replacement for a long, long time.
Kudos to the set artists for making the other names damn near illegible, though.
Hey, overthinking is all part of the fun.
Also, Shephard (23) and Ford (15) are the only odd numbers.
Yep. That’s all I got.
This, and the mention that Esau is now “stuck” in the form of John Locke, makes me wonder if he’s also somehow stuck with John’s memories and personality which will begin to manifest themselves more and more.
I also wonder whether, if he succeeds in getting off the island, he’ll be paralyzed.
In “Walkabout” from the first season, Randy calls Locke “Colonel” to mock him. He catches Locke on his work phone talking war games with a co-worker and starts calling him “Colonel” after that.
It almost sounds like Randy was a little less douchey in this timeline. They way John reacted to “Colonel” made it sound like it was just a nickname as opposed to Randy mocking him.
I think we’ll be getting at least a little more on what those numbers relate to. I would, however, be prepared for them to correlate to something like the flight reservation numbers (any of the crossed out numbers there over 324 (the number of people on 815)?
But if that’s not itself satisfying, remember that we could be in part end up seeing HOW those numbers become significant, and not why they already are. That is, while the numbers were taken from something arbitrary, the fact that the people they are tied to are part of a larger scheme that’s NOW going to play out to, perhaps, stop MiB or something, is what will give them their significance. Jacob, who seems to have limited powers that reach outside of time, may have been searching for clues as to something he knows will be important in the future for saving the Island.
And what makes someone a candidate? Note that Illana originally talked about whether or not Frank was a candidate. And Jacob touched Illana. There’s a lot of confusion here. Is a potential Jacob replacement someone with mystical powers, which is why the Others were so interested in how Locke was healed? (Maybe Jack, with his spine-fixin miracle powers is what Jacob is looking for?) Or is it simply a particular someone who will play a pivotal role and thus end up being important?
If Esau is stuck, doesn’t that also mean no Christian Shepard or his original flashback form? That would kind suck a LITTLE, honestly, because it wouldn’t allow them to tie up some of those appearance-beats in a better way. I mean MiB/Christian was such a common figure previously. So never seeing that again, just having it explained, would be sort of goofy.
But that’s a mystery of its own I guess. How did MiB get locked in Locke form, and when? I mean, it appeared as Christian even after Flocke was up an walking, and then later it appeared to Ben as Alex, right?
So what happened between the Alex appearance and now that would prove that he couldn’t change again? The only things I can think of, and especially the only things that Illana would know about, is either the burning of the cabin or Jacob’s death. Of the two, Jacob’s death seems more significant: does something about the loophole do that?
Also, WTF was with Kate’s horse and Sayid’s cat? And where is the Big Box!
I think maybe Locke is just a little more serene in this timeline since he still has Helen. Randy sure seemed to enjoy booting Locke out the door.
In LOST, it’s tough to know what little dangling threads the writers left there on purpose. I don’t know if we’re meant to read Randy and Locke’s relationship as changed or not, but I hope that the glaring omission of Kate from Jacob’s list in the cave is hugely significant.
I brought up the theory during the season finale that the cabin is what lets Jacob and Esau become other people. Mainly because Illana said “someone else has been using it.” So perhaps earlier versions of Christian were Jacob and latter versions were Esau. So Esau being suck as Locke because the cabin was burned makes sense.
The producers have said,
Jacob is not a shape shifter. If we’ve seen Jacob, we’ve known it.
Why did that girl (Ilana?) scoop up ash out of the fire pit that burned Jacob’s body? Besides, doesn’t a fire have to be really, REALLY hot to consume a body that thoroughly?
Jacob’s ashes–which is interesting since we know ash circles stop Smokey.
And yeah–when Jacob burned up, he went up like kerosene doused paper.
He’s either a Jedi or it’s creative license.
I had a thought regarding Kate and her exclusion from the list on the cave walls. Perhaps Jacob visiting and touching various people in the flashbacks isn’t directly linked to the list but is instead linked to Jacob’s influence over them and their actions, or less directly it’s linked to his interest in them and his desire for them to be on the island. In other words, Jacob didn’t visit (and touch?) them because they were on his list, he visited them because he needed them, people on the list being just one subset of that.
This leads to the idea what Kate’s entire purpose for being on the island is to serve Jacob’s scheme. He brought here there for no other reason but to manipulate and influence Jack and Sawyer who are on the list. Jacob presumably knew, or made it so, that they’d both be smitten with her and do irrational things (like stay on the island with her so she doesn’t have to go to jail) to serve his goals.
This though then leads to the idea that maybe Smokey (Esau) is also manipulating and drawing people to the island to influence the outcome of events. Maybe he’s not just trying to upend Jacobs plans on the island, but is also choosing people to bring to the island that serve his goals. In that vein perhaps he’s the one that drew Juliet to the island in order to counteract Jacob’s choice of Kate. Since Ben is prominently involved with Juliet’s coming perhaps Ben was always a pawn of Esau and was never really part of Jacob’s plan. Maybe Ben thought he was working with Jacob and it was actually Esau impersonating him at least some of the time. To extend this idea further, Horace Goodspeed brought Ben to the island and maybe he’s a agent of Smokey too.
All this depends if Smokey is trapped on the island (and therefore unable to leave and influence people outside the island directly) and some of the people might have been chosen/manipulated by him ala Jacob and some might have just been duped by his shape-shifting ways and or impersonated by him. Maybe Horace wasn’t a pawn of Smokey, maybe Esau just impersonated him after his death. Maybe Esau just put Ben and family in Horace’s path knowing Horace would bring him to the island of his own accord without being manipulated.
Anyways, this means that many (all?) the people on this island were brought by Jacob and Esau, not just Jacob. It’s unclear if the DHARMAites are an unbiased 3rd party or if they are just pawns too. Maybe whichever Kwon is not on the list is the one brought by Esau. Maybe their entire marriage is a manipulated thing and the infidelity and/or Sun’s father’s evilness are tools of that manipulation.
Does anyone remember which Losties we saw get touched by Jacob? I know a few of the people he appears do get away without a touch.
Also, we should consider the possibility that the Kwon on the list is Sun’s daughter Ji Yeon. Maybe there’s some crazy scenario where Aaron is the Shepard too, being that he’s actually Christian’s grandson (by the same logic it could be Claire too).
I thought that at some point during last season’s finale, Ben acknowledged that he had never seen nor spoken with Jacob.
Jack DaVinci:
He called him that in the original time line also, because Locke was obsessed with war simulation/role-playing games, or at least he played them on his lunch breaks.
Arcite:
I’m pretty sure, from looking over the screen-caps, that “Littleton” is one of the crossed-out names.
What, show us her death like 5 times in a row for fifteen minutes straight?
Anyways, the kid seems to be Jacob again. Really, I wouldn’t he surprised if that kid was actually the actor’s son.
I also believe the “don’t tell me what I can’t do” is Locke’s personaliy into Smokey. Smokey has been changed by assimilating Locke.
-Joe
Supposition and a question.
Question is this: why does anyone believe that the numbers were written by Jacob rather than Blacky? Whatever “candidate” means, Locke seems to be the only one elected to any office.
The supposition is that Smokey is locked (hah!) in Locke’s form because that was his form when The Game with Jacob ended.
-Joe
You beat me to this explanation, Ben. 
Yeah, I liked this one a lot. My thought was the kid was a young Jacob, as others have said, since he looks like a young Jacob.
I wonder why Gaia took such a small bag of Jacob’s ashes. Assuming those are anti-smoke monster ashes, I’d want a whole lot more!