But this implies that the candidates know “the rules,” which apparently our current candidates do not. Unless you mean that Leaders like Dogen, Ben, and Widmore have the rules explained to them, but the lower-ranking candidates are left in the dark.
Dogen tries to have Jack kill Sayid. So candidates can kill other candidates? That fails so Dogen sends Sayid out to kill Smocke, knowing that he’d fail and piss off Smocke enough to kill Sayid, but that would mean he’s forgetting (or doesn’t know?) that Smocke can’t kill Sayid because he’s a candidate?
Not that this really resolves any of the complexities you’ve pointed out, but whenever various characters have mentioned these “rules” that prevent certain people from killing certain other people, it’s always sounded to me not that they aren’t allowed to, but that they physically can’t; that is, they’re all subject to some cosmic force that would prevent it. The island would stop them if they tried, the way it stopped Michael from committing suicide. The same kind of thing would have happened if Ben had tried to kill Widmore, or the MiB had struck at Jacob, or Dogen had actually tried to plunge the knife into Sayid when he had him pinned in this episode.
Be careful what you wish for. We could have all the questions answered exhaustively, completely and ridiculously in a two hour expository finale (à la X-Files), and then wish the series had ended two years earlier. Or we can just relax and realize that…
[Bolding mine] Actually they are wearing different people. And that must be important the way that they scrutinize and grade the qualities of the people they interact with and inhabit.
One possibility is that neither Jacob nor MIB have full control over the decisions they make while wearing the bodies of humans. Maybe that says something about their abilities to succeed with their plans. They still maintain their own goals and plans but are forced to enact them through the moral filters of their hosts.
Maybe that’s why MIB still retains a lot of the persona and mannerisms of Locke. Had he been wearing Jack or Sawyer then Sayid wouldn’t have survived his assassination attempt.
Yeah, the rules are really confusing. Sometimes the Island is done with someone and you can die, and sometimes it isn’t, and you can’t.
The rules DO sound like some unbreakable cosmic pact… and yet it really does seem like Unlocke COULD kill candidates, but fears the consequences, not that he actually physically cannot.
In Season 5, I assumed Ben and Widmore couldn’t kill each other because they had some special time-travel based knowledge of the future that meant it didn’t happen, and so couldn’t. I’m not sure now.
It’s a Biblical reference. Jacob and Esau were the fraternal twin sons of Isaac. Esau was the oldest and thus entitled to Isaac’s wealth when Isaac died, but sold his birthright to Jacob for a bowl of lentils. Jacob’s descendants become the Chosen People, Esau’s got squat.
When have we ever seen Jacob ‘wearing’ someone else’s body/identity?
For what it’s worth, the producers have said that Jacob has never taken on anyone else’s form, so I don’t think he’s being influenced that way.
My day-late-and-ninety-eight-cents-short-two-cents:
The blonde kid that Smocke was chasing looks way more like Claire to me than resembling of the adult Jacob, but the age is all wrong for any timeline. I think it is more likely to be Aaron somehow than a young Jacob.
Well, it sucks to be Sayid in any time line. Bummer.
Interesting that Smokey killed all the Others who stayed in the Temple, but not the Losties (plus Ben and Juliet). I wonder if that was meant to be “on purpose”.
Did Jack and Sayid kind of look at each other for the briefest of moments in the flash sideways? I think the writers are still screwing with us about whether or not there is any recognition between these guys in the ATL.
I dunno about how “intelligent” smokie is in smokie form. He certainly may well have barreled right through Kate had she not jumped in the pit. I think Smocke kinda loses his mind a bit when he’s chit-chit-chitting around.
Apos and Mr. Excellent - Vincent has actually been played by two different dogs already. The producers have actually said that he’s definitely going to make it to the end, the only ‘character’ for whom this has been confirmed.
I’m guessing he is still just as intelligent- the day Jacob died in the statue, he killed that Other who made an ash circle by pausing, thinking and problem solving- smashing the ceiling so it fell on him.
I like the fact that the smoke monster, though we didn’t know that’s what it was at the time, appeared in the very first episode of Lost, and turns out to be the key to everything.