The island wanted LOST SEASON SIX THREAD to happen (***CLICK CAREFULLY -- CONTAINS SPOILERS***)

did you miss how Jack basically turned into a gigantic crying blouse

Hang on, I could be completely wrong. I'm only part way through Season 5 re-watch and haven't got to the bit where Locke appears to Jack to tell him all about how nasty the island is since he left. Lostpedia seems to think this was a main influence in sending him back.

well also he kind of flips out when locke says "oh hey your dad says hi"

The Locke meeting is what causes his depression (that and suspicions about Kate on the phone). Makes more sense now, having Locke & Jack showdown off-island. I think I had the different bits of the story in the wrong order in my head.

All I mean is it's just surprising in this show, where they give people quite clear motivations, for Jack to become a 'man of faith' without it being a major plot point.

Yeah I agree with this - Lost used to spend so long on back-story that any characters motivation for doing anything would become painfully obvious. So it's surprising here that there is even any debate as to what his intentions for going back were. In the episode I watched last night Juliet confronts Jack in the shower about why he came back, not believing it was to save those they left behind but for his own selfish reasons, and Jack reveals he thinks coming back to the island is his destiny (or something along those lines). This is a seismic shift in Jack's personality and imo hasn't been explained yet. That said the show could probably do without another episode filling any of that wack off-island phase of the story at this point.

As for the other characters:

kate - wants to find claire and bring her back to the mainland
hurley - no idea ? am i forgetting something ?
sayid - wasn't intentional
sun - wants to find jin [why did sun not go back to the 70s?]

My main other gripes with the 'the lie' is as follows: what made them think that if they lied and did nothing that everyone else left on the island would be safe? For the entirely of their stay on the island they were constantly in danger...even before the Widmore character was brought into the show...so why would they be safe now?

other things that have pissed me off rewatching:

- why does everyone talk about 'their people' so much. at what point do other human beings you are trapped with on an island become 'your people'. would like to know please thanks

- ben says that 'his people' don't even have a name for 'the monster'. i mean wtf? how do they talk about it then? would seem a bit difficult tbh

I dunno, I really felt and believed the sense that everything just went fucking wrong for Jack once he left the island. I don't think, having made a difficult decision to leave this weirdo fucking island where so much crazy shit happened, that it's that weird for him to want to go back, to think "maybe I wasn't actually supposed to leave", not least when he's hallucinating and shit and seeing his Dad. The sense for me was that there was no real equilibrium to his life when he left.

http://lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/Jack

LG, that's how it appeared in the order the episodes were aired, but seems he was ok for a while, stuff started going wrong only after 2 years or so off-island (so that's why it didn't sit well with me that he would instantly decide leaving the island was the cause of everything going wrong). I guess it all built up into general craziness then Locke's visit was the final nail in the coffin (Locke taking advantage of Jack's state of mind to manipulate him into going back?) - need to re-watch that ep.

Oh yeah and I reeeealllly wish Kate would stop called Aaron 'my son' rather than just, y'know, 'Aaron', because every single person she says it to seems to reply "he's not your son!" and she gets pissed off.

it still pisses me off that Locke's note to Jack was just "I wish you had believed me". I think that was my least favourite thing about the entire last season.

wish it had been "4 8 15 16 23 42"

wish it had been "hi jack, i left a lump of cheese in the hatch back when we were on the island, only to find it unwrapped and half eaten!!! you were in the hatch that day. what happened??? i'm confused! Locke."

hurley - no idea ? am i forgetting something ?

SOmething to do with Charlie telling him to go, hence the guitar case.

It wasn't Charlie, it was Jacob. Also there were dudes trying to kill Hurley all over the place and he'd already had his "this is fucked up" moment at the start of the season.

I think part of the problem was that the Locke episode in the last season was so badly written, ESPECIALLY the face-offs with Jack and Kate. They could have done so much more with those scenes than just "nyerr, you just want to go back to the island because you've never had a girlfriend".

sup frackles

frackles, frackles, frackles

Jack's sudden change of mind to come back to the island (which only happened within a matter of like 48 hrs by the way) isn't as weird as Kate's reversal, which was even shorter, but whatever. They leave a lot of shit to be inferred here, but it's all somehow plausible. Also to answer someone upthread, it was Jacob himself who convinced Hurley to go back.

I still don't find the original Oceanic six lie about the island convincing, though. It's kind of garbage in my opinion. I just know that the story needed them to lie, so they did without ever having a convincing rationale.

I dunno, I guess I just love and hate this show at the same time. As much as I love this show, so much of it is so dumb in my opinion, and always has been.

how can we even be talking about bullshitty motivations and changes of heart in S5 as if any of them are at all crazy compared to Juliet's 10-minute turn around from "we have to stop them from blowing up the island!" to "we have to blow up the island!" in the finale?

haha, good point!

just take the convoluted Lost logic and strap in for the ride, guys, that's how it's been since the first episode

yeah that's otm.

oh yeah, don't get me wrong, i'm fine with the show glossing over motivation and character traits to get from A to B, but if we're gonna gripe Jack going back to the island is small potatoes

i mean i STILL don't understand the thing about Kate getting a guy killed over a little toy plane or whatever

oh my god. LOL. thanks for the reminder. I hated that bullshit when it happened. That was like the first episode that I thought was terrible.

Just re-watched the one in S5 where they actually go back and that probably contains THE most irritating bits - Kate making some huge deal about Jack NEVER ASKING about Aaron again (she only gave him to Claire's mum, right?) and Mrs Hawking telling Jack not to worry about how ridiculous it all sounds but saying he needs to give Dead Locke something of Christian's... that is probably the most video-game shit of the whole series.

I think I gave up on ever trying to decide Juliet's motivations after the first 10 seconds she was in it. Jack can trust her... OR CAN HE.. no actually he' can't... OR CAN HE...

Oh yeah and how come Kate's allowed to fly? Isn't she on probation or something?

it wasn't a public jet was it?

Mrs Hawking telling Jack not to worry about how ridiculous it all sounds but saying he needs to give Dead Locke something of Christian's... that is probably the most video-game shit of the whole series

I think stuff like that is so batshit it kinda doesn't matter, given we're talking about a series where there are giant monsters made of smoke that kill people.

That's actually kinda why I'm not so bothered about a resolution to things like Smokey, because "a giant security system that judges people and then kills/forgives them" is enough for me. Any further attempt to explain it away would just seem a bit ridiculous. I'm kinda fine with shit just being magic at this stage.

there's magic and there's humans just being unconvincingly irrational and stupid but yeah

just while smokey has been brought up....I'm going into s6 assuming jacob's blackshirted enemy is smokey. is that basically a take for granted fact now? also my theory is that he was living in the cabin and when someone broke the ash he escaped. hence why the ajira dudes all burn the cabin down...

It isn't even remotely a take-for-granted fact. In fact I think it's probably not the case at all - it's just something people have said on the internet.

well I think it prob is true....

It's really a pretty dumb idea, dude. Not that that'd stop them

erm...despite the fact he's controlling this fake locke...seems a pretty telegraphed on way of them suggesting it's him, considering the history of dead people being controlled by smokey.

Yeah, but the escape? He was attacing long before anything happened to the cabin, iirc

yeah but it seems somehow significant...

Ha dude you've just summed up all of LOST ever, y'know

"a giant security system that judges people and then kills/forgives them" is enough for me.

there was an idea in a previous lost thread that bears repeating: that smokey wanted to guilt mr. eko into submission by appearing as his brother, and killed eko because eko wasn't scared of it

Jack wasn't scared of his dad, just pretty freaked

doesn't eko say something to the effect that he knows it's not his brother?

Yeah, the working theory (haha) for now is that Smokey works for Titus Welliver aka Black Shirt aka Esau or whatever. This is mostly due to Smokey not killing Ben and telling him to do whatever Fake Locke wants right? Makes sense.

The cabin thing I think is explained but I'm a little confused on that. It's possible that everything with the cabin is Smokey/Black shirt-guy related, and he was trapped in the cabin until recently, the dead serving him, etc. all the way through season 3 when it was introduced.

What was that other thing? The one that took trees down and nearly sukced Locke underground... kinda thought it ws an early Smokey

that was smokey obv.

my theory would also be that whoever was inhabiting the cabin was smokey/black shirt guy all along, and he set up locke even at the stage of ben bringing them both to the cabin. ben didn't have a clue about who jacob was or wasn't anyway, as per the end of s5.

I think part of the problem was that the Locke episode in the last season was so badly written, ESPECIALLY the face-offs with Jack and Kate. They could have done so much more with those scenes than just "nyerr, you just want to go back to the island because you've never had a girlfriend".

Terry O'Quinn agrees with you, he said to a guy from Sky One that he thought Locke's attempts to talk everybody into coming back were 'pretty weak' ... and implied that Locke's being ineffectual made his attempted suicide scene work.

Given the fact that there have been a few scenes in which they're establishing that you never see Locke and smokey at the same time (latest example being Ben's confrontation with Alex), I think they're signalling pretty strongly that smokey, various dead folk, Locke, and Esau are all the same guy. Which is weird because sometimes the dead can touch you (Alex) and sometimes can't (Christian, Esau). And smokey seems to have no problem grabbing hold of people.

my theory would also be that whoever was inhabiting the cabin was smokey/black shirt guy all along, and he set up locke even at the stage of ben bringing them both to the cabin. ben didn't have a clue about who jacob was or wasn't anyway, as per the end of s5.

Yeah, agreed. Ilana pretty much confirmed this when she showed up at the cabin.

I'm having a hard time making all the details add up, but the impression I have is that Esau created the idea of Locke as 'special' or 'future leader of the Others', gave that idea to Locke, Locke wanders through time telling everyone that he's the leader of the Others, voila, he's the leader, and thus in a position to get close to Jacob. That's a hell of a long con, and I'm not even getting into the idea of Esau as pretending to be Jacob for years and years. It's dizzying!

locke is the first to actually encounter smokey, isn't he? and afterwards he seems almost euphoric - is that when the esau dude somehow connects with him?

Sorry, I should have said 'undead Locke and smokey aren't around at the same time' rather than 'Locke and smokey'.

I think your Esau long con theory works because of the time-travelling. Esau-Smokey-Locke only comes into existence post-2007 crash, after Real-Locke is dead in a box.

2007 Esau-Smokey-Locke simply tricks Alpert into getting Real-Locke, who's skipping through time, to go to the past and tell everyone he's the Others' leader... and voila, in the future, Locke is their leader.

i guess this is why the question of whether the bomb resets everything is pretty key - presumably all of Esau's plans hinge on Oceanic 815 crashing in the first place.

I think your Esau long con theory works because of the time-travelling. Esau-Smokey-Locke only comes into existence post-2007 crash, after Real-Locke is dead in a box.
2007 Esau-Smokey-Locke simply tricks Alpert into getting Real-Locke, who's skipping through time, to go to the past and tell everyone he's the Others' leader... and voila, in the future, Locke is their leader.

Exactly - you've got it. I think a lot of the setup for Locke as leader of the others comes in the last few eps of season 5. Richard seems really deferential to Locke in past episodes, but towards the end of season 5 he says that he didn't find anything special about Locke at all (the Dalai Lama selection scene in which Richard visits a child Locke). He's promoted to think of Locke as leader because Locke's told him he's the leader a few times in Richard's past. Richard follows through with this, and is also pretty amazed at stuff like the compass, etc.

The way I see it is that Locke and Esau had no connection at all until he reached the island. Once there Esau determines that this is the guy to usurp Ben's place as leader, nobody really sees why Locke is so great, but enough weird shit is happening around him that people like Richard say 'well, the island must have chosen you, okay'.

Jack, Kate and Charlie encounter Smokey in the very first episode, except we don't see him.

That long con theory definitely works apart from the question of why Jacob would bring Locke back to life when he falls from the building. But I don't suppose we know what Jacob wants with them all in the first place.

I'm not sure that Locke is necessarily completely dead, or entirely the man in black, he might be a new unaging Richard Alpert type. Locke didn't appear to recognise the statue foot when they arrived there in the last episode, which is a pretty big giveaway.

My own theory is that the Island is a prison and both Jacob and the other dude (I refuse to call him Esau) are trapped there but kind of cancel each other out. They can't kill each other for some reason. My guess is that the remaining survivors aren't there to save the Island at all, their destiny is to destroy it.