MiB's grand plan

[blueshadesolo]

Ok so please help me work this out... What was MiBs big plan to ultimately be able to kill Jacob and how did the trip to the 70s tie in?

1. Mib tells Locke to move the island. Was the original reason to get rid of Locke and start knocking off the candidates at that point, or did he know Ben would do it for him?
2. Who was driving the candidates to return to the island on the Ajira flight? Was it Jacob to get his candidates back? Or was it MIB to stop them from replacing Jacob by sending them to the 70's? Mib seemed to want Locke to leave so he could return as a corpse that he could use, but also Jacob was definitely also arranging for Sayid and Hurley to return on the flight.

2a. Who was Ben & Miss Hawking working for when they put the candidates on the Ajira flight? They both insisted Locke's body needed to go on the flight too which seems to suggest an allegiance to MiB, but who off island was pulling their chain and how did they make contact with MiB or Jacob.

3. When the candidates flashed off the Ajira plane who was controlling their movements, Jacob or MIB? Was Jacob protecting his candidates by putting them out of harms reach or was MIB putting them out of Jacobs reach?

4. Was Jacobs touch a way to tag his candidates so he could track them through space/time?

5. When the candidates returned from the 70's after the bomb went off, this seemed to be under Jacobs influence, yes? Only he knew they were returning to their original timeline, not MIB.

6. If the candidates hadn't returned at the point when Jacob died, could MiB have left the island at that point?

So... How much of what happened was Jacobs plan and what was Mib's?

Let's work this out together. Are there any other details of this story arc over the laSt 3 seasons that need to be considered? I'm starting to think that after all that time On the Island Jacob wanted to die and so he was actually pulling a long con on MIB and so gave Locke to MIB on a plate... HELP!

[spinaltumor]

1. MIB was able to take over Locke's dead body. To ensure that this happened he had Richard tell Locke to leave the Island via turning the wheel in the past...so that he would die and MIB could take over his body. He didn't want Ben to do it, which is why Christian (MIB) scolded Locke for not turning it himself. Of course Ben turning the wheel first ended up working in MIB's favor...as Ben went on to murder Locke off Island.

2. I think Jacob wanted the Candidates to return because he knew he would be dying and needed his possible replacements back on the Island. That would be why he enlisted Ilana's help in getting Sayid back.

2a. I would think Eloise genuinely believed they needed to recreate the events of Flight 815 as best as possible. And that included needing a body. I think she was mostly acting out of what she knew would end up happening based on her meeting Jack, Kate and the others when she was younger in 1977. Whatever happened, happened. And she was making sure she did exactly as she was supposed to.

3. I'd possibly say neither one was controlling anyone's movements. The Candidates just ended up where they needed to be.

4. I think his touches were simply "little pushes" in the right direction of their lives. He had the lighthouse if he needed to track them.

5. Like #3, I don't like giving Jacob so much credit. But he did know they were coming.

6. MIB couldn't leave until all the Candidates were killed...so...I'd venture no.


So basically, I don't think MIB or Jacob had this big all-knowing "plan." They may have had plans in general...but I don't think either had the ability of foresight. Hence why both ended up quite dead. Even Jacob had hoped Ben wouldn't kill him. He just accepted that he did once it happened. MIB tried to play the Candidates like pawns, but he failed. Jacob tried to give the Candidates what he could so that they could survive. I guess that came with mixed results.

[blueshadesolo]

I can't jump on board with the 'stuff just happened' theory at the moment, that seems to fall into 'lazy writing'. What was the motivation for moving the Island in the first place,he would need to know Locke would die then be returned by Jack. We have seen evidence of foresight, e.g. When mob knew the location & time when Locke would appear to be told he needed to turn the wheel & convince the Candidates to return to the Island by dying. He could have got some of this from Locke's body for whom(!) this was his past but this was very specific. Don't you alsovthonkbit was too much of a coincidence that onlgvtge candidates flashed off the plane? Some intervention by someone there surely?

[blueshadesolo]

I can't jump on board with the 'stuff just happened' theory at the moment, that seems to fall into 'lazy writing'. What was the motivation for moving the Island in the first place,he would need to know Locke would die then be returned by Jack. We have seen evidence of foresight, e.g. When mob knew the location & time when Locke would appear to be told he needed to turn the wheel & convince the Candidates to return to the Island by dying. He could have got some of this from Locke's body for whom(!) this was his past but this was very specific. Don't you also think it was too much of a coincidence that only the candidates flashed off the plane? Some intervention by someone there surely? Assuming Sun wasn't a candidate because she was a mother.

[spinaltumor]

I don't think anything I said was "stuff just happened."

When MIB became Locke, he inherited all his memories. He remembered Richard coming to Locke and telling him he needed to leave the Island and die. MIB knew he needed to tell Richard to tell Locke this while they all flashed through time so he could ensure that became Locke, which he already had. So it wasn't really foresight. It was more...time travel shenanigans.
It was Locke's present, but the Locke MIB was in was from the future. He knew everything about Locke, even dying.

Jacob could have known that the Candidates would flash so they were in the same place at the same time. I just don't think that when Ajira was flying in, Jacob waved his hand and did some magic hocus pocus to make it happen or some such thing. I don't think he's that powerful.

[monsterjester]

I think the issue is, how did Smokie/Locke know when that exact moment would be? Richard wearing the same clothes as when he gave Locke the compass? Or like, Smokie foresight? And it seems to me that both Smokie and Jacob might have, over 2,000 years, learned to somehow manipulate the electromagnetic time travel properties somehow. Maybe not, but possible.

[deanosicerelli]

It comes down to lazy writing, I am sorry to say. Anybody can write in a lot of mysterious stuff, never to be concisely drawn together into a logical story. It is making those connections and showing how it all fits that is the difficult part; the ending. It is easy, even preferable to hook your viewers with story line details that intrigue, are hard to believe and make us want to know more. It is also apparently easy to coax your viewers into forgetting all the mysteries that kept them interested in the show, and instead, play on their emotions for the characters themselves and their reunification, such that viewers are left with some sense of satisfaction and closure and hopefully forget that they have received no payback for investing in most other areas of the story. I, for one, am willing to admit that I was silly to invest time into a story that still hasn't actually been told as evidence by the fact that we can't explain why or how the large and small details happened in the storyline. There certainly isn't any reason to believe that there was a plan for the ending until the 5th season. Almost everything that happened in the 6th season was virtually unrelated to the first four seasons. The time travel aspect was just decided upon after deciding on a series finale date as far as I can tell. It is hard to admit that it was a waste of time but it was.

[spinaltumor]

I don't think I wasted my time. I've had a lot of fun.

[tygh]

Ponzi scheme!!!