MY FINAL THEORY

Note: All this pontificating and I realize that I neglected the most obvious Biblical source for my twin brothers theory: Jacob and Esau. There has been so much discussion of this angle ever since "The Incident" introduced the Man in Black, that I guess my mind just glossed over it. I've now added a little bit of Jacob/Esau, but since others have done a much better job of connecting LOST to this famous tale from the Bible, I've kept it brief.

Alrighty. Well the season is quickly drawing to a close, and we have but a few episodes left before the sun sets forever on LOST. Which more or less means that I am running out of time to synthesize and post any of my often wrong uber-theories. I spent a little while over the past week or so giving the series a good think-through, and I’ve developed what is essentially my final theory about the end game of the show. Except, here’s the thing: this time, I think I’m pretty damn close.

That being said, I don’t really care if any of this turns out to be true or not. It’s fun to theorize, but at the end of the day, LOST is what it is, not what we thought it was. Is that Mike Brady enough for ya? Anyway, here is my best and last guess as to what is really going on with LOST:

The island has an electromagnetic anomaly. (Really, Sherlock? I promise to blaze through the obvious stuff quickly). We may never learn what's generating the electromagnetic field. For lack of a better word, the explanation may be dialed down to something as vague as "magic," which actually would make a lot of sense. I truly believe the island is the meeting point between science and magic, and that some sort of pseudo-scientific answer will explain some but not all of the island's weirdness, a la the Force. But if the series really does offer an attempt to reveal the source of the electromagnetism, my guesses would be: energy that has fallen from space (maybe even a distant galaxy), alien technology, or an actual mystical-religious answer like Heaven and Hell. I do think those cards are on the table, but I'm not sure how likely it is the show's writers will really play them.

Whatever may be causing it, this electromagnetism heavily affects people who are born on the island, meaning they are often born with psychic abilities and powers. Those who already have latent psychic abilities find those talents amplified or magnified when they come into contact with the electromagnetic energy. Think Walt, Ben, Miles, Locke, Hurley, Desmond, Isaac of Uluru . . . all of them have been transformed or enhanced by the electromagnetism in some way. (Isaac wasn’t on the island as far as we know, but it did seem he was affected by the EM energy at Ayers Rock).

Anyway, a long time ago on a weird island far, far away, there was a woman. This would be the lovely lady discussed by the Man in Black in “Recon”. Somehow, she came to the island, maybe via a shipwreck as so many others have. This woman was pregnant. With twin boys. She gave birth to them on the island, meaning these children were born with powers afforded them by the electromagnetic energy. One was Jacob. The other’s name we do not know, but he came to be called the Man in Black. Jacob and his brother grew up on the island and always carried with them a rivalry, possibly related to their mother, who herself was driven a bit mad by the island’s strange spacetime fluctuations. As the boys grew older and became men, their powers continued developing until they more or less had abilities that normal people would consider godlike.

The competition continued between Jacob and the Man in Black as they grew older. They played games with each other such as backgammon, where they used black and white rocks that would later become symbolic of their rivalry. Jacob’s brother was always jealous and frustrated with him, as their mother doted on Jacob.

This is where things get weird. Somehow, some way, the Man in Black died. I have no idea how. Maybe his mom was nuts and she killed herself and him. Maybe he died in an accident. Maybe Jacob had to kill him for some reason (that could explain why the knife seems to be so significant). Regardless, Jacob’s brother died, as did their mother, and their corpses were laid to rest in the caves. That’s right . . . I think the Adam and Eve skeletons are the Man in Black and his mother, whom he spoke of so strangely when he was talking to Kate. To be honest, I really wanted them to be Rose and Bernard, just because I think there is something beautiful and poetic about that. But too much emphasis has been placed on the black and white stones this season, and those stones were present in the pocket of one of the corpses. I think those stones belonged to Jacob and the Man in Black. And truthfully, I do lean most toward the idea that Jacob killed his brother, maybe in self-defense or maybe because Jacob was a lot meaner when he was younger. Locke may have gotten it wrong. This isn’t necessarily Adam and Eve: it’s more Cain and Abel. The ultimate rivalry between brothers. This would also explain why the Man in Black blames Jacob for the reason he is no longer strictly corporal.

(I have no real idea where the father figure is in all of this. Since the concept of absentee fathers is very important to the show, it would make sense if he wasn’t around for whatever reason. Neither Jacob nor MIB have really mentioned anything about a father, but on the other hand, that doesn’t preclude the concept either. If there is a daddy who plays into the equation, it’s quite plausible that he could be Adam, instead).

Whether or not the Man in Black is the male skeleton in the cave, I think that he definitely died somehow and that whatever happened gave him just cause to blame Jacob. As we’ve seen, the island facilitates a gateway between this life and the beyond, and souls who are not ready to move forward remain trapped in the island’s energy field. I suspect the Man in Black, either not willing or not able to depart (could Brother J be trapping souls on the island?), found a way to more or less reassemble himself. Since he had deific powers, his life force remained on the island and used the island’s energy to reconstitute into a new physical form, much like Dr. Manhattan in WATCHMEN. This is how he became the black smoke, which is really just a cloud of magnetic dust or some other particles contained within an energy field. And considering the fact that he died, the Man in Black now dwelled in the realm between life and death. This is how and why he always takes the forms of the dead; the realm of the deceased is his realm, his domain. He can adopt their forms if he pleases, using the faces of the dead as a mask, and he oversees the many souls who are still trapped on the island. This is also how he is able to claim people. Those who are dying on the island pass into the realm between places and become his property, and he is able to return them to life, but with a hefty price. They are infected with his energy. Even the living are in danger of corruption, as getting too close to his energy field can eventually induce madness. But being “claimed” by MIB doesn’t necessarily mean that one is damned; it may be possible to break away from his influence.

After becoming this new type of being, the Man in Black continued his dramatic disagreement with his godlike brother. Civilizations came and went on the island, worshipping both brothers, with Jacob acting as a healer/giver of life and the Man in Black acting as the judge, jury and executioner. After many centuries (maybe even millennia), the Man in Black grew tired of people, and tired of these games between himself and his brother. All he wanted was to leave. It’s unclear if he wanted to physically leave the island, or if he wanted to move on to the next world. But he couldn’t leave. Someone (maybe Jacob) built a contraption under ground which restrains his force, via magnetism. The black smoke is invisibly tethered to this subterranean device, and the Man in Black is unable to destroy it. This essentially chains him permanently to the island, offering further humiliation by reducing him to the level of a guard dog. (It’s also possible that he is tied to whatever is generating the electromagnetic anomaly). Being trapped on the island for century after century has more or less driven MIB insane.

The Man in Black has desperately tried to leave the island but needs someone to free him. This could not happen until Jacob died. However, there were rules in place making it so that the Man in Black could not kill his brother. Maybe these are strictly arbitrary rules agreed upon by Jacob and the Man in Black, who both seem to have a thing for games, or maybe it’s something else. What if the energy on the island has two different poles or different ends of the spectrum, and Jacob is harnessing one form of energy while the Man in Black is harnessing the opposite? What if, in other words, they are positively and negatively charged, respectively? This could mean that they literally are not able to kill each other; they both need to exist in order for the energy of the island to be balanced and stable.

What if the protective ash essentially contains one type of charged energy (like traces of magnetic rock transformed by the island’s volcano into ash), and the black smoke is similarly charged, causing the ash to repel the smoke if it gets too close? This would explain why the monster cannot cross the ash, and possibly even why Dogen was testing Sayid with the ash during his little electro-torture session. It also explains all of the black/white stone symbolism (everything from the Black Rock to the white flashes), and could be applied to the contamination of the healing fountain (more on that below).

Perhaps Jacob is trying to protect the world from the black smoke because his brother’s death was his fault, and he has a sense of guilt over what happened, especially since the black smoke would not exist without him. Eventually, I think Jacob found a way to further contain the Man in Black, once he realized that MIB was never going to stop trying to leave the island. He imprisoned MIB’s soul in a cabin that Jacob had originally been using. Separating the Man in Black’s essence from his physical form (the black smoke) weakened his power considerably, and reduced the threat to Jacob. The Man in Black’s life force remained in the cabin, plotting how to free himself and ultimately arrange Jacob’s death. His key pawns were Ben and Locke. We know the rest.

Now that Jacob is dead, the Man in Black is stuck in the form of Locke because he no longer has exclusivity when it comes to departed souls. MIB is as physically incarnate as he possibly can be, since Jacob is rendered incorporeal. Jacob now inhabits the realm of the beyond and can prevent the Man in Black from assuming the forms of the deceased.

However, the Man in Black can still claim those who are near death, and even before these events transpired he has already claimed (or attempted to claim) one character unbeknownst to anyone else: Aaron. The baby stopped moving after the crash, and didn’t start moving again for some time. This is why the “psychic” Richard Malkin told Claire there would be no happy life for her baby if he wasn’t raised by his own mother. She is what he thought would be needed to combat the corruption Aaron would experience in the womb. Maybe in some sense Aaron is already the way MIB has gotten off the island, or is his tool for eventually moving his misanthropic/apocalyptic stage show to the outside world, and he saw to it (through Christian's form) that Claire would be nowhere near the child. The question we now have to ask ourselves is if being raised by Kate or anyone other than Claire had a positive or negative influence on Aaron. (I've raised the possibility before that Jacob may have claimed Aaron, and I still think that idea has some potential. But if Aaron's future really is in question, given what we've seen this season I'm more inclined to suspect MIB).

I don’t really think that the Man in Black has any intention of using the Ajira plane or Widmore’s sub to get off the island, though I could totally be wrong. I’m more in line with the thought that he will be wreaking much more death and destruction, including disposing of even those who have helped him. I strongly suspect he intends to kill every single person on that island. He needs the candidates dead, and I think many of the offers and promises he is making to the characters are partially his way of testing them, and by agreeing to help him they are all failing his test. And if he does want to physically leave the island, my guess is that we’ll find out Locke never really blew up the DHARMA sub. He merely hid it to use as a playing card later, and the MIB knows this because he has inherited all of Locke’s memories.

It seems quite plausible that the flash sideways are what will happen if the Man in Black gets his way: the island is destroyed, he is nowhere to be found, and the lives of all of the characters are supposedly better. But as we’ve seen, their lives are not necessarily better, as many of them are missing out on the destinies that were seemingly meant for them. For instance, Sayid has Nadia again, but not in the way that he would like; Hurley is lucky, but his life is empty; Locke is content but unacquainted with his destiny; Desmond is respected by Widmore, but Penny and little Charlie are absent, etc. Their fates seem to have been erased and replaced with Reality 2.0; perhaps this is the “end of everything” which everyone seems to fear will happen if the black smoke escapes. It seems that Ms. Hawking is well aware of what is really going on, and she is respecting the rules of this “better” reality. If I were her, I probably would too, considering in this chain of events she doesn’t murder her own son and instead is able to keep him by her side, coddling him. Maybe Desmond needs to continue waking these characters up so that the Man in Black does not win.

What if Jacob foresaw all of this? Is it feasible that the creepy kid we keep seeing in the jungle is in fact young Jacob, projecting into the future and witnessing everything that was coming down the pipe? It is extremely possible that the many strange appearances of Walt were due to a similar psychic projection, so is there any reason young Jacob couldn’t have done the same thing? If so, it would mean that Jacob was ready for his death, and has patiently and subtly been manipulating time (or allowing things to happen a certain way, which seems to be more his modus operandi), in order to prevent his rival from destroying the island and to set up his plan of attack well in advance. It would mean he’s been more than one step ahead this entire time. Of course, it could also be as simple as Jacob's ghost appears as a child when in the presence of the Man in Black. Either way, this begs the question: what else could Jacob be planning?

As far as the island storyline goes, I'm guessing that the imbalance created in the island's positive and negative forces will be activating the volcano and hasten the potential destruction of the island. What if MIB's force is dependant upon fire and heat (as I mentioned above, if he is using magnetic ash, it may relate to the volcano and to lava), whereas Jacob's force is dependant upon water and the cold? That could tie into why the donkey wheel is located in a well that is now frozen. Cold water might preserve the pocket of energy, and perhaps Jacob built the wheel in the frozen chamber, which would explain some of his abilities. The Man in Black may even be trapped because his energy is frozen into place, and he needs heat to be released. If the island is going into meltdown in the finale, it could be literal: the ice core keeping the energy stable may actually be melting, releasing the island's energy and causing the volcano to erupt, finally freeing MIB (and possibly the other souls trapped on the island as well). This could also explain how the island is under water in the second timeline, though I'm at a loss as to how it explains anything else.

This would be a literalization of the conflict between fire and water, two forces which are oft-referenced on the series, most directly in the episode actually titled "Fire + Water". (Remember that fire and water are the two elements which always seemed to be taking turns trying to kill Charlie). Water would be an apt symbol for Jacob, given its association with baptism, cleansing, purifying, life-giving, not to mention the healing fountain in the Temple, whereas fire is a perfect metaphor for the Man in Black, with its relation to the concepts of Hell, damnation and destruction, as well as the fact that MIB himself appears as, y'know, smoke. Regarding the healing spring, perhaps the water turned dirty because Jacob's death allowed the fountain to be contaminated by the dust of the black smoke; this could also relate to the muddy pool of water which Ben used to summon the monster. Certainly food for thought.

Lest it seem like I’m pulling all of this fraternal rivalry stuff out of nowhere, let me explain my thought process. First of all, the idea of two brothers was part of the original concept of LOST went it was a pilot script called “Nowhere” written by Jeffrey Lieber (who still shares co-creator credit on the series due to a WGA arbitration). Well before the series had a sci-fi / supernatural sheen and was just an island survivor story somewhere between “Cast Away” and “Lord of the Flies,” the two main characters were half-brothers and rivals. Eventually, the survivors would split into two camps, with the more righteous sibling leading one and his morally questionable brother leading the other.

Beyond that, take a look all the way back to season two’s “The 23rd Psalm”. Eko and Claire discuss why she named the baby Aaron, and Eko talks about how the biblical Aaron was the brother of Moses and that, despite the fact that Moses gets much of the prophetic credit, he wouldn’t have been who he was without his brother. Claire suggests that Aaron was probably always jealous of Moses, which at the time was meant to foreshadow the backstory between Eko and Yemi. In hindsight, this suggestion of a vague competition between two brothers who were mystical prophets again sets up the larger idea of Jacob and the Man in Black being related.

Then of course, as I mentioned earlier we have the classic Cain and Abel story, which does relate to the tale of Adam and Eve. (Let’s not forget other mythological examples of this type of fraternal rivalry and jealousy . . . Romulus and Remus, for example).

And finally and perhaps most relevantly, there is the Biblical story of Jacob and his brother Esau, which has been a major topic of discussion amongst fans ever since Jacob's rival entered into the story last season. Esau and Jacob were twins but Esau was the firstborn; however, he was hairy and red and preferred to live off the land, whereas Jacob's skin was smooth and he was more quiet and introspective. Jake's mom doted on him and even helped Jacob deceive his father in order to steal the blessing of the firstborn from Esau, which understandably pissed Esau off. The rivalry between the two brothers and their subsequent families very much defines their characters in the Bible, and it seems to go without saying that their story is a major influence on the mythology of LOST. It seems likely that the tale of Jacob and the Man in Black is probably a mix of Cain & Abel and Jacob & Esau (with a little Adam & Eve as well, in regards to at least the mother mentioned by MIB), since LOST isn't overtly trying to be directly analogous with Biblical stories, but more providing a general sci-fi riff on various mythological themes.

But to be honest, my main source of inspiration for much of this theory was the mythology of HBO’s terrific and short-lived CARNIVALE, which I have always considered to be a sister show to LOST. In the CARNIVALE mythos, every generation sees the birth of two avatars. One is a representative of light, the other of darkness. These avatars have mystical and magical powers, but every avatar is more skilled at certain abilities than others, and there is not necessarily any rhyme or reason as to which avatars are naturally skilled at which powers. (An avatar of dark could be naturally inclined to heal with the laying on of hands, for example). Anyway, though the series did not last long enough for its mythology to be fully explored, the creators of the show did reveal some key after-the-fact info about the story’s background.

Apparently, the origin of the avatars was a female named the Alpha, who was a magical being not inclined specifically to light or darkness (or creation and destruction; however you want to read it). She gave birth to male twins. Unfortunately, giving birth to avatars often drives the mothers crazy, leaving them batshit nuts after their avataric children are carried to term. One son was the first being of light, and his twin brother was the first being of darkness. One eventually killed the other, but not before a bloodline was sired. Through their avataric blood, the interplay and conflict between good and evil began, the universe striving to maintain a balance between the two. Various avatars have demonstrated a variety of abilities, including but not limited to: healing, telepathy, precognition, empathic powers, telekinesis, summoning of storms, the ability to send dreams, visions and hallucinations, teleportation, astral projection / remote viewing, and communing with the dead. Ahem. Sound familiar?

Not to say that LOST is ripping off CARNIVALE or whatever. Just that they are two shows made in a similar spirit. Anyway, I think my theory does have some precedent, so we’ll see if any of this even comes to pass. Regardless, this is my final major theory.

At least until next week.