Also supporting this theory is how Faraday told Jack “you’re not supposed to be here, she was wrong”. Assuming that Faraday is on the ‘good side’ and Eloise is on the bad. Why would he say she was wrong if she wasn’t up to something bad?

My next wonderish thought, is how the statue falls. Maybe this will happen as a result to this “incident” ?

Definitely confused as heck about the time travel and I am sure that even at the very end of Lost (season 6) I still will be, just as I was after watching J.J Abrams’s new Star Trek.. I just can’t wrap my head around this time travel stuff – but I do love it!

All credit goes to my sister Claire for pointing this out, but maybe the white ash ring is not to keep Jacob IN, but to keep the smoke monster out. Not the Island’s hosts (ie Christian and houseguest Claire) but specifically the Smoke Monster. The white ash may not be ash, but white sand. Like the kind found at the beach where Jacob lives. The beach where the Smoke Monster can’t show up on. And if the Island has been using the cabin to manipulate Locke, once it had achieved its goal and gotten Locke to leave the Island, then it would have no need for the Cabin, would dash the line and let the Smoke Monster trash the place, and it did look TRASHED.

Think about it: the ring of ash(or sand) didn’t keep Jacob in one place. Obviously, because we see him off Island throughout multiple decades. Maybe, it’s the only place he could meet with people IN the Island where the Smoke Monster couldn’t get to him, so that only Richard knows where Jacob truly resides (because human leaders can get so pesky!)

So I still think we haven’t seen Jacob in the cabin. But knowing that you may not agree with me, I leave you with this theory:

I think Jacob may have never appeared to Ben because, like the ash ring is a precaution, I think distancing himself from Ben was another precaution. I don’t think Jacob initially healed Ben.

I think Ben owes his life to the Island. Jacob heals Locke in the 90′s and it didn’t take his innocence. Also, Smokie lives in the Temple. Smokie seems to be in league with, if not the incarnation, of the Island.

My big problem with this theory is WHY would Richard take Ben to anyone BUT Jacob?

Anyway, Theory Cocktail out!

Your theory certainly is possible… that would mean that Jacob isn’t Ray Shepherd (as I’m proposing), but rather Ray Shepherd’s father. I don’t know… it could be.

If Jacob is Aaron from the future, then in the Bible, Jacob is the great-great-grandfather of Aaron. So it’s possible that Jacob is Christian’s grandfather, Jack’s great grandfather…

Sarah-I think you’re spot on with the idea that Jacob was working out a back-up plan. Jacob didn’t seem surprised to see Locke, or even Ben, at all. He even knew immediately that Locke wasn’t really Locke-and knew that the moment for the Loophole had arrived.

I think that idea goes well with what you said John, about Juliet-there is a simultaneous Loophole occurring, which is what will allow the WAR next season.

I had a couple of random questions/thoughts. You should excuse their randomness.

JULIET. AACKH!

What is Richard’s relationship to Jacob? There is something close there-Illana knows to look for him. Is he a pirate? And why did Jacob make him ageless? A favor? A need? So many of the comments fake-Locke made to Richard seem a little snide now.

I think someone already mentioned how similar some of the things Jacob and the man said were to what Ben and Widmore said-referring to “the rules.” What is the hierarchy of rules that governs even THEM, that can only be exploited through a loophole that took hundreds of years to create? (Assuming that was the Blackrock ship we saw.)

There are a lot of biblical brothers. Cain and Abel came to my mind, Isaac and Ishmael, along with Jacob and Esau.

And when it comes to the time-space-scale of the Island, I can’t help thinking about the fact that Darlton recommended reading the Chronicles of Narnia (all seven books?). The Magician’s Nephew is the beginning book, in which Narnia forms. Narnia is originally reached (in its unformed state) through the “Wood between the Worlds,” a wood in which pools of water actually lead to various worlds, places, times-if one is wearing the appropriate ring. In the last book, The Last Battle, the original characters from the first books try to find the rings so they can return to Narnia to try and save it from war. Thousands of years have passed in the meantime in Narnia. I think CoN is foreshadowing the time/space of the war next season.

We’ve seen the cabin 4 times:

1.) Ben took Locke there and Locke saw what can only be described as an old ghost “begging for help”… help was not given.

2.) Hurley looks in to see someone in a chair. Then an eye (strongly resembling Terry O’Quinn’s), looks out at him. Later when Locke finds Hurley, we learn Locke wasn’t coming from the cabin… in fact he needs Hurley to help him find it again.

3.) Locke goes to the cabin one last time and finds Christian there (the walking dead since Season 1)… Christian tells him he’s not Jacob, but he can speak for him… tells him to move the island… and by turning that wheel the plan is set in motion.

4.) Illana and crew go to the Cabin looking for Jacob (carrying Precious Cargo). But they find a.) oh my god! the ash has been broken… and b.) he hasn’t been in the cabin for a while. Someone else has been living there. That means a.) they didn’t expect the ash to be broken… and b.) they expected Jacob to be inside that ring of ash… a ring, I should remind you, that was not broken (or at least not shown broken) during cabin encounter number 1.

And the way I see it, a moan for help is a moan for help… at least compared to opposite techniques we’ve now seen used by Anti-Jacob since.

It’s entirely possible that the manipulation of Locke (the plan to destroy Jacob in 2007) began at cabin encounter number 3… not at at number 1… and that in number 2 the cabin we saw was actually occupied by BOTH Jacob and Anti-Jacob. In fact, it’s possible that we’ll see that scene again… but from the inside of the cabin, looking out at Hurley. It disappeared just after that… are we totally sure Hurley wasn’t seeing something from another Time and Space?

Jacob asked Illana for help. She agreed by taking a dead body to that cabin in the hopes of finding Jacob there.

So… are you positive we never saw Jacob in that cabin?

Three visual cues that hooked me into the show in season 1 had to do with black versus white.

1) Locke on the Beach with Walt. He holds up two backgammon pieces, one white, one black and says those two colors slowly, with emphasis. The camera holds on those two pieces, intro’ing us to Locke as a mystic of sorts, but also to a theme of an “eternal battle”, as Locke introduces the game to Walt.

2) The caves. Adam and Eve. Around Eve’s neck was a leather pouch, containing two marbles, one black, one white.

3) Claire’s first nightmare. Locke appears over her cradle and condemns her for her decisions about Aaron, and when he looks up at her, one eye is all black, one is all white.

So we now know, above all other things, this show revolves around an ancient battle between the Island and Jacob, one black, one white, and that the Lost writers have foreshadowed Locke’s involvement between those two since season 1. The three black and white references only appear that blatantly (and with Locke) in the beginning of season 1. That AMAZES me.

And as you pointed out weeks ago, when we first suspected Locke was not Locke, he appeared on the beach shrouded in … BLACK!

And I think the Island has been trying to manipulate Locke since season 1 when the smoke monster tried to pull him into the tunnel. And that was NOT Jacob in the Cabin. A) Ben had never been around Jacob. Everything that we saw about Jacob tonight is incongruent with an invisible guy in a chair who needs help. B) Jacob can go off Island whenever he wants to. Why would he need Locke to help him? Obviously, the Island has been playing Locke for a while, especially since it was Christian (Island) who told Locke he had to die.

*Idea: Did Jacob have Nadia die to get Sayid to come back to the Island to detonate the bomb? Did Jacob, in 2005, have some idea that the Island had corrupted Locke and was working out a backup plan?

Never liked Juliette (the plastic surgery is too distracting for me) AND I did not believe the relationship between those two – but man, they did a great job in that scene. So the bomb explodes and we see white – like the time flashes- and we see Juliette’s eye, correct? Maybe she is stuck in the loop now?

Oh, come on now…it’s not fair to tease us like that!

When the Losties were traveling in time, they blipped to a date when the statue was standing (it was a major moment for them)…. the next time they blipped, they were in 1977 and the statue they had just seen through the trees was no longer visible.

Greg, dude, just want to thank you for adding the translation to the comments. Very helpful in figuring all of this out.

I just want to talk a little bit about the moment with Juliette at the end. I know some of you said it was lame that she survived, and impossible given the circumstances. Others said that this indeed fulfilled the loop, and actually allowed the Swan to be built. And Kelly Jo, you wondered why hers was the only flashback sans Jacob. Well here’s a possibility:

Jacob doesn’t come to Juliette in her flashback, because her “moment with Jacob” is yet to come in the episode.

The events that happen on this Island have been looping continuously. The drill will always hit the pocket. Chang’s arm will always be crushed. Jack will always make it there with the bomb. And the bomb will always hit the bottom without detonating. But something different happened this time. A woman who should never have survived a fall of that kind… survived…. just like Locke who should never have survived a fall of his kind… also survived. I think there’s a connection.

It’s interesting to note that after Jacob is killed, we cut to the scene with Juliette. We just witnessed an event that broke a hole in “The Loop”… so is it crazy to imagine that this moment with her… alive… is also a one of a kind “Loop Hole”.

I definitely think Iliana was looking for Jacob at the cabin. At some point Jacob must have resided there, or at least gave that illusion to protect his real whereabouts.

Not sure what Christian Shepherd’s deal is. On one hand he told Sun and Frank to wait in Dharmaville for John Locke. So you could easily lean towards him not working for Jacob. Or perhaps, even Christian was duped by fake locke. And as far as the “say hello to my son”, well fake locke has a brainful of real lockes memories, so this too could be true of Christian.

It seems odd that fake locke wouldnt remember jacob lived in the statue, when Jacob told him in the beginning that’s where he’d be. Was he just playing the part of Locke, or did he really not know. Same goes for his conversation about the Monster with Ben. If he is the Monster, shouldn’t he know what he did? How much of it was him playing the part of locke, or actually not knowing. Why ask about the cabin?

The fact the quarantine door was still at their camp would suggest that what they were doing in 1977 changed nothing. It was the incident as it always was. otherwise the door couldn’t be there in 2007 because for them 1977 already happened. Richard has memories of it.

I too was glad to see Charlie’s ring. Were they reminding us he died for a purpose, and it would belittle his sacrifice to erase it, or did they just want a cool match cut to Sun’s wedding ring? I think the former.

Okay, so some more thoughts:

Buffalonygal, yes, you’re right. Many mythologies are involved. And actually, since this Jacob character seems to have been around since the beginning of human history, he seems to have been an influencing factor in every culture’s development. He seems to like to give people the tools to shape their own destiny. But not tell them exactly what to do with those tools… he leaves that up to them. Well that goes for societies as well. If he’s been at this game for a long time, then he likes to give societies a nudge and see what they create. This sort of hodge podge of styles that he lives in (statues of Taweret, with roman sandals, and a male body) seems to be his way of honoring these great achievements of man. Kind of a, Godly way of hanging the crayon drawing on the fridge with the magnet. “Aww, look at what my kid made”

I’ll have more on this in a future post. But I have a very strong feeling I know who Jacob and this Adversary are. Or who the writers are drawing on.

JR Tschopp , you there? I think you may know where I’m going with this.

And as for the plane crashing. I would be pretty surprised if that doesn’t happen at some point in the season. I’m still holding firmly to the belief that the plane on the bottom of the ocean is connected to a real crash.

And for sure I don’t think this is all biblical. That is why I won’t buy into the idea of either of them being god or satan or an angel. I think it is easy to make parallels to the adversarial tribes of Jacob and Esau and think that the story is about that… but I think it is more. It could be a commentary on the struggle between the the jews, pagans and christians. We do seem to have three factions on the island right? The Others, the Dharma Initiative and the Losties. I’m not saying that this is THE story line… but could be just broad strokes that paint the background for all the fictional details.

The finale added to the ton of egyptian imagery with nods to the Romans and Mycenaeans… so I’m curious what stories can be found there regarding fights between good and evil, dark and light. Though… the pagan traditions are more about the balance between light and dark. The idea that without a Jacob… we couldn’t have an “adversary.”

Oh… and when the whole Shepherd family name came up… I thought to myself… “who WASN’T a Shepherd in the bible? But boy are those 2007 Others sure sheep!