Bring out yer dead!

At various points throughout the show, there have been numerous dead bodies and with it, a strong urge to bury the dead. Consider even when Rousseau and Karl were shot by Mercenaries, they took the time to bury the bodies, and it’s not like their arrival was going to be a secret for long. in LaFleur, when Sawyer and Juliet killed the others attacking Amy, they had to bury the bodies in accordance with The Truce. Now this might be a way to hide the killings, but it also may mean that any dead bodies must be buried. After The Purge, the bodies were put in a shallow grave, but not covered.

Christian Shepherd’s body, like John Lockes body was on its way to be buried, we have no confirmation that Alex was buried. Yemi’s body wasn’t buried when the plane crashed although Eko burned the plane but Yemi’s body was mysteriously missing. Sayid technically did die and was not buried. Claire, if she did die wasn’t buried either.

So far it seems all of these bodies have been taken over or manipulated by the Smoke Monster/the Man In Black. My thinking is that when bodies are not buried, they are available for claiming by the Man In Black / Smokey, hence the need to ensure that any dead bodies are not left above ground to provide a shell for the MIB to manipulate. Yemi, Locke, Christian (probably) and maybe Claire have been affected by Smokey / MIB to some degree. Incidentally, this could also be a theory for Adam and Eve. One dark, one light, one for the Mib and one for Jacob for the next iteration. I also seem to recall that someone made the comment that the dead on the island tend not to stay dead or some similar phrase.

Numbers Up

Throughout the show, the numbers have been one of the most intriguing mysteries of all. The writers have said a couple of times that there might never be an explanation for the numbers.
at a certain point, explaining something mystical demystifies it. To try and have a character come and say, “Here is what the numbers mean,” actually makes every usage of the numbers up to that point less interesting. – Damon Lindelhof

Within the show, the numbers have been a consistent factor all along and while I am willing to concede absolutely that many occurrences of them is just pure coincidence (like the soccer shirts at the airport and hotel rooms), I think there absolutely is some need to explain their meaning. I think it goes beyond coincidence that the same numbers that were imprinted on the hatch end up being broadcast from the island for decades and were entered into the computer for so long. Why not just have the swan operator press the enter key every 108 minutes, why enter anything at all? Why even bother imprinting the numbers on the hatch if there is no relevance? It’s like writing the show so that every character is called Mike. It’s either relevant to the purpose they are there or just bloody stupid if you put it down to coincidence. With the last couple of weeks we have seen an introduction of the numbers again assigned to people and even angles on the lighthouse mirror so hopefully we will get the complete answer to the numbers.

The Loophole

So, it seems that Jacob and the Man In Black have been playing the same game over and over and this time the MIB finally found a way to kill Jacob. He asks Jacob if he has any idea what he had to go through which raises the interesting question of how long has MIB been manipulating the game? It seems smokey may have been on to John when they first encountered each other in Walkabout which was the fourth episode. John saw something beautiful, perhaps it was his own spiritual reflection, or perhaps it was smokey showing Locke what he needed to see (a common theme in Lost). One quality MIB needed was Locke’s desire to stay on the Island if he was to go off Island, die and bring everyone back. I’m sure there were other rules regarding who who could kill Jacob and how and why. Obviously, MIB couldn’t just kill Ben and then impersonate him as the leader of the others, get an audience with Jacob and then kill him especially since Ben had never had an audience with Jacob so how could he? The MIB had to promote John Locke up to the level of leader in such a way that he would be allowed to see Jacob, along with the requirement that Locke be that special someone who was the right kind of person to lead the Others and be so in tune with the Island that he would get to see Jacob. If this is the case, then it allows one to re-watch Lost with fresh eyes, spotting the places where Locke, and the Others were manipulated along, where Locke was encouraged forwards to the point where he would find his own destiny on the Island, but then meet the needs of returning to the Island dead so the MIB could then assume his identity and role and then manipulate Ben into wanting to kill Jacob. Perhaps MIB has been masquerading as Jacob for the purpose of ignoring Ben to prime the pump so to speak since we know someone else was using Jacobs cabin and he only showed himself to Locke to set the ball rolling.
I think we need to learn a little more about the rules in order to start drawing up what the MIB needed to do in order to create the loophole and how he did it. What would be mind blowing is if along with MIB manipulating the whole show we found out that Jacob had been manipulating the whole show so he could defeat the MIBs plans. After all, in the lighthouse, Jack was outraged that Jacob had been watching him and setting this up his whole life. Perhaps they both have been manipulating the viewers for the whole show. Perhaps Jack is Jacobs hope the same way Locke was MIBs hope, after all Jack versus Locke has been another common thread.

Random Mysteries

Here’s some random mysteries that I keep thinking about and will hopefully get answered.

• Why broadcast the numbers/enter them into the computer, whats the relevance?
• What’s with the psychic who advised Claire
• Why were all those tubes from the Dharma observation station being dumped in the middle of nowhere
• Why can’t women get pregnant?
• What happened to Anne? (Darlton claimed she and the volcano were important)
• What was the deal with Jin taking that watch to LA?
• I’m sure there’s more to Cindy than we know
• Will we see a Libby backstory?

Even as we start to draw down the show in the final season, we still keep getting fresh mysteries, such as who is Jacks ex-wife in the alternative timeline?

Back to the Beginning

Interestingly, we seem to be redoing the first season again. Many of the issues are cropping back up, Shannon’s inhaler, the caves, Adam and Eve, treks into the jungle with Jack and Hurley. Also, the central character for the episode that we see flash sideways for mirrors the season 1 order with Kate, Locke and Jack and Sun is next in both Season 6 and Season 1. It should be interesting the week after since that was a Charlie centric episode. One of the biggest earliest questions was “What is the smoke monster?”, after all it was introduced in the first episode. Darlton commented that we wouldn’t find out till the very last episode. I thought, like many others, he was joking but it seems that this is indeed the case since the MIB (along with Jacob) seems to be final mystery that encapsulates all others and probably will only be answered in the finale.

The parallels with Season 1 casts fuel on to the fire that the whole thing will end with a reset and start at the beginning, but that would seem a rather cruel and clumsy way to end it. Perhaps we see the start of the next iteration with the next group of Losties arriving at the Island. It would certainly open the door to another season or two or more likely, a spin off without having requiring the original actors or writers.