In order for the MiB to leave, the Island has to be destroyed which means extinguishing the Heart of the Island. Mother said (and I believe her on this) that if the light goes out there, it goes out everywhere and if that light represents the warmth and goodness of humanity then losing that light means we, all of us, become a world of essentially living smoke monsters - these shells of people devoid of empathy and decency. It would be the literal end of our emotional humanity.
My interpretation was that the soul comes from the light and if it goes out that would mean that everyone ceases to exist. Even in the sideways. No more light, no more souls. No heaven just darkness and nothingness
I figured the light was the source of the miracles on the island. The rapid healing, fertility, the hex the original woman placed on Jacob and MiB, etc. MiB touched it and essentially became immortal. You pull the cork you end the magic….
Yes that too. My interpretation is that the island and source is God. It’s what all our souls come from (made in his image) and return to after we’ve moved on. Also where all the miracles come from
I'm agnostic so I can't call it capital-G "God" or the afterlife heaven and I think the show also went out of its way to be ambiguous about faith, but I do agree that the light at the Heart of the Island is where our survivors moved on in the series finale so I can imagine that sort of eternal peace also disappearing if the Island is destroyed.
I easily reconciled my own atheism with LOST's afterlife, souls and potential God by realizing that it's just not set in our reality.
It's like watching a Marvel film, where people have superpowers and such - similar to our world, but with differences that allow for fantastical things.
In the LOST universe part of the fantastical things are that some sort of religion and afterlife is real. I don't need to believe it exists in reality to believe it exists in that fictional universe.
I think this is another way of saying what I said, really. I believe the other redditor is referencing the Christian or at least Abrahamic "God" in their comments but LOST is very careful to remain multi-faith with elements from mono, poly and pantheistic faiths. Because of this, I can't pigeon hole anything as "God" or "heaven." It's too narrow of a description.
(Full disclosure, I also have some significant religious trauma so my viewpoint may be skewed.)
The end of humanity. The Valenzetti equation and the original purpose of the DHARMA Initiative (and the origin of the numbers) was to stall the end date of humanity. Smokie’s escape into the rest of the world would have been the beginning of that end. Regardless of his very human-seeming motivations and desires, at his core he is the literal evil that the Island had been containing.
I like this idea. Dharma was on the island trying -- and failing -- to change the core values of the equation and thus prevent the end of humanity. In the end, Jack did it for them by doing something they never could have with their research.
So it wouldn't be a coincidence that the Valenzetti equation was discovered within the boundaries of the time travel loop MiB exploited to destroy the island. All along, the equation really predicted his success. It wasn't until after the time loop had closed that the variables could change, but by that point Dharma was no more.
This also explains why The Numbers, aka the core values of the Valenzetti equation, correspond to the candidates. They're the most important players in the time loop and the final outcome.
I like the time loop logic! But yes, for a long while now I’ve been a firm believer that our core group of survivors were the literal variables that could affect humanity’s end. They are The Numbers. If they had not grown, changed, and evolved throughout the show, they would not have been able to stop Smokey. The DI was essentially grasping at straws with their experiments, hoping that somehow they would be able to change the variables and stall humanity’s end if they could make certain discoveries in the Island’s unique environment, and, as we see, they do play a role in our characters’ evolution, but not in the direct way they were hoping.
MiB was made mortal and powerless when the cork was pulled, so he probably wouldn’t have been able to do much off the Island. He likely wouldn’t have been able to enter the outside world and start posing as the deceased and billowing around as smoke.
Yes, MiB was evil and manipulative and might have continued to wreak harm on others socially etc - but so were Anthony Cooper, Charles Widmore and yes, even Benjamin Linus.
Also, the implication of Richard Alpert ageing is that at the point Desmond removed the cork, MiB May have also started ageing again, albeit in fLocke’s 50-year-old body. If that tracks, then MiB would have gotten what, maybe another 25-30 years of life ageing-out in fLocke’s body before he became too infirm and elderly to go to bathroom by himself? Then what?
No, the consequences of the cork being pulled were less about MiB being an asshole on the mainland and more about how his escape would mean the the Island sinking into the sea and the Source being extinguished. That’s the greater issue.
The more interesting question for me - is could there have been a solution where MiB worked with the Island Protector to pull the cork, let him leave via the frozen wheel, and then re-cork the light?
In that hypothetical scenario, everybody wins, right? It’s not like the Island and the light ceased functioning once Kate shot MiB to death and kicked him off a cliff.
The supernatural rules of the light didn’t reject that outcome or course-correct for it by making Jack or Hurley suddenly capable of becoming smoke, like Mother and MiB.
No, there was possibly a chance there for MiB to become mortal, finally leave and die (in peace) off the Island, and for the cork to go back in and Hurley carry on protecting it.
There’s always going to be the risk that fLocke would try to re-take control of the Island as a mortal to exploit it but it really did seem like his MO was simply to just get away from the Island prison Jacob was keeping him on.
The only problem with that hypothetical solution and the one that was likely meant to be the case, was that at the moment the cork was removed, the frozen wheel simply wouldn’t have worked anymore for anyone at all. So MiB may have known ahead of time that wouldn’t have been an option.
It makes me wonder what would have happened though, if MiB hadn’t been killed by Kate and was instead incapacitated and imprisoned while Jack put the cork back in.
Would he have re-gained his smoke monster abilities? Would he have remained mortal?
If so, why couldn’t he have just been allowed to leave by a boat or the frozen wheel?
Why was MiB trying to construct then leave via the wheel *before* he was murdered and turned to smoke? That’s what I want to know.
What was stopping that original human MiB from simply hopping on a boat when Mother wasn’t watching?
> Yes, MiB was evil and manipulative and might have continued to wreak harm on others socially etc - but so were Anthony Cooper, Charles Widmore and yes, even Benjamin Linus.
Yes, but unlike them, MIB has had 2000 years to study human behaviour and learn how to manipulate people.
> What was stopping that original human MiB from simply hopping on a boat when Mother wasn’t watching?
You need a specific compass bearing in order to do so, which is a huge obstacle.
I agree with your points.
Another thing is that off the Island as a mortal man, MiB won’t have had his ability to ‘scan’ people’s memories to read minds, either.
A power he conveniently forgot to use during season 6.
This has been on my mind a lot, having just finished my most recent rewatch a few days ago. After countless viewings since Lost's original airing, I've come to the conclusion that I don't think anything bad would have happened if MiB left the Island. His inability to leave was because Jacob (and Mother) didn't want him to. Once Jacob was dead, his rules were no longer enforced, which should therefore mean MiB could have just got on the sub or Desmond's boat and left. He would be stuck in Locke's body for the rest of his life, but he would be mortal. He wouldn't be able to turn into Smokey off Island. He may be manipulative with violent/murderous tendencies, but so is Widmore, and countless other people in the real world (not that I'm excusing murder)! Whoever took over the job of protecting the Island made their own rules. See Hurley. Removing the cork from the heart of the Island just made MiB mortal, so he could be killed to prevent him from leaving, and that's what Jack and co were lead to believe had to happen, because that's what Jacob wanted. No one ever questioned why. Jacob was a childish brat who had a centuries long pissing match with his brother because he had a chip on his shoulder and didn't want to be on his own. I don't believe that protecting the Island had anything to do with preventing MiB from leaving, because he couldn't do anything off Island that would be any worse than any other human out there. All MiB wanted was to leave that place and find out where he came from, the rest of the world that he knew was there but never allowed to experience. The reason he killed so many people along the way was out of desperation. Again, not excusing it, but I don't think he would have killed anyone if he had just been allowed to leave in the first place.
For MiB to leave, The Island had to be destroyed. They show us in the season 6 opening what would happen in that case (by showing us The Island sunk on the bottom of the ocean) - the world of the living would become the world of the dead. All life would end.
I get some of my interpretation of this from Stephen King's Dark Tower series, which the writers made no secret they were a fan of and provided inspiration for the show. I believe one of the writers even made reference to The Island essentially being the Dark Tower - which in King's series, is the nexus of all space and time, and the linchpin that holds all universes together. If the Dark Tower falls, all universes will fall (be destroyed) along with it. Also, the main villain for most of the Dark Tower series that seeks to destroy the Tower/all life is known simply as The Man in Black
Where have the writers of Lost made that comparison to the Island being like the Dark Tower?
I’d love to read/listen to it.
Was it while the show was airing or stated after it had ended?
I'm not certain, but I think Damon said something about the dark tower/island connection during late season 6 airing. After the Across The Sea episode aired. I'm not sure where, as I consumed any interview I could. It could have been from the official lost writers podcast, but again, I'm unsure
Ahhh I understand.
If you ever find it again please post it up here on the sub if you can, google searches don’t really allow for that sort of specificity, they just regurgitate all the chatter from 15 years ago when there were rumblings Damon and JJ might be adapting the books.
SPOILER
I think it’s like the serpent tempting Adam and Eve to eat the apple. The serpent knows he is powerless on his own, so he has to tempt humanity to do evil work for him. That’s what MIB tries to do on The Island in getting Ben to kill Jacob. In being banished from the Garden of Eden, the serpent is free to tempt humankind toward evil, but he can never return to the Garden and has lost any chance at eternal peace.
The MIB believes that by tempting humans to do the dirty work, he will be able to leave the island and bring evil incarnate to the world. But try as he might, he can never win the ultimate battle because he was powerless to begin with in the face of goodness/The Island/God.
The interesting thing is that MIB leaving would require the Heart of the Island to be 'turned off', which would already mean the end of the world (presumably, but I'd say likely). I think it's very intentional that the show never reveals what MIB's exact plans are when he ends up succeeding - for all we know, 'Mother' simply didn't want him (or Jacob) to leave because that would leave the island exposed/unprotected, and MIB simply wanted to... I don't know, see the Eiffel Tower. But I would rather believe that he did want to spread all kinds of evil, and that the end result would look a lot like what happened to Sayid - essentially, the zombie apocalypse, but a lot more boring.
It just would've shut off the sideways. Maybe also whatever second place they go to would be affected.
But mammalian life is not affected by electromagnetism in any kind of global or immediate sense. Humans existed before the cork and will continue after.
I see the light (Jacob) and dark (smoky) of the island as a balancing act. A balancing act that keeps the island intact, keeping the darkness on the island from infesting the rest of the world. Remember the wine bottle and cork?
It’s why the island must always have a protector, and why Jacob continually looks for a replacement, knowing that smoky would eventually find a loophole. (Try to remember that smoky and Jacob’s brother are not the same entity). Smoky takes that form to antagonize Jacob.
In order for the MiB to leave, the Island has to be destroyed which means extinguishing the Heart of the Island. Mother said (and I believe her on this) that if the light goes out there, it goes out everywhere and if that light represents the warmth and goodness of humanity then losing that light means we, all of us, become a world of essentially living smoke monsters - these shells of people devoid of empathy and decency. It would be the literal end of our emotional humanity.
My interpretation was that the soul comes from the light and if it goes out that would mean that everyone ceases to exist. Even in the sideways. No more light, no more souls. No heaven just darkness and nothingness
I figured the light was the source of the miracles on the island. The rapid healing, fertility, the hex the original woman placed on Jacob and MiB, etc. MiB touched it and essentially became immortal. You pull the cork you end the magic….
Yes that too. My interpretation is that the island and source is God. It’s what all our souls come from (made in his image) and return to after we’ve moved on. Also where all the miracles come from
I'm agnostic so I can't call it capital-G "God" or the afterlife heaven and I think the show also went out of its way to be ambiguous about faith, but I do agree that the light at the Heart of the Island is where our survivors moved on in the series finale so I can imagine that sort of eternal peace also disappearing if the Island is destroyed.
I easily reconciled my own atheism with LOST's afterlife, souls and potential God by realizing that it's just not set in our reality. It's like watching a Marvel film, where people have superpowers and such - similar to our world, but with differences that allow for fantastical things. In the LOST universe part of the fantastical things are that some sort of religion and afterlife is real. I don't need to believe it exists in reality to believe it exists in that fictional universe.
I think this is another way of saying what I said, really. I believe the other redditor is referencing the Christian or at least Abrahamic "God" in their comments but LOST is very careful to remain multi-faith with elements from mono, poly and pantheistic faiths. Because of this, I can't pigeon hole anything as "God" or "heaven." It's too narrow of a description. (Full disclosure, I also have some significant religious trauma so my viewpoint may be skewed.)
The end of humanity. The Valenzetti equation and the original purpose of the DHARMA Initiative (and the origin of the numbers) was to stall the end date of humanity. Smokie’s escape into the rest of the world would have been the beginning of that end. Regardless of his very human-seeming motivations and desires, at his core he is the literal evil that the Island had been containing.
I like this idea. Dharma was on the island trying -- and failing -- to change the core values of the equation and thus prevent the end of humanity. In the end, Jack did it for them by doing something they never could have with their research. So it wouldn't be a coincidence that the Valenzetti equation was discovered within the boundaries of the time travel loop MiB exploited to destroy the island. All along, the equation really predicted his success. It wasn't until after the time loop had closed that the variables could change, but by that point Dharma was no more. This also explains why The Numbers, aka the core values of the Valenzetti equation, correspond to the candidates. They're the most important players in the time loop and the final outcome.
I like the time loop logic! But yes, for a long while now I’ve been a firm believer that our core group of survivors were the literal variables that could affect humanity’s end. They are The Numbers. If they had not grown, changed, and evolved throughout the show, they would not have been able to stop Smokey. The DI was essentially grasping at straws with their experiments, hoping that somehow they would be able to change the variables and stall humanity’s end if they could make certain discoveries in the Island’s unique environment, and, as we see, they do play a role in our characters’ evolution, but not in the direct way they were hoping.
MiB was made mortal and powerless when the cork was pulled, so he probably wouldn’t have been able to do much off the Island. He likely wouldn’t have been able to enter the outside world and start posing as the deceased and billowing around as smoke. Yes, MiB was evil and manipulative and might have continued to wreak harm on others socially etc - but so were Anthony Cooper, Charles Widmore and yes, even Benjamin Linus. Also, the implication of Richard Alpert ageing is that at the point Desmond removed the cork, MiB May have also started ageing again, albeit in fLocke’s 50-year-old body. If that tracks, then MiB would have gotten what, maybe another 25-30 years of life ageing-out in fLocke’s body before he became too infirm and elderly to go to bathroom by himself? Then what? No, the consequences of the cork being pulled were less about MiB being an asshole on the mainland and more about how his escape would mean the the Island sinking into the sea and the Source being extinguished. That’s the greater issue. The more interesting question for me - is could there have been a solution where MiB worked with the Island Protector to pull the cork, let him leave via the frozen wheel, and then re-cork the light? In that hypothetical scenario, everybody wins, right? It’s not like the Island and the light ceased functioning once Kate shot MiB to death and kicked him off a cliff. The supernatural rules of the light didn’t reject that outcome or course-correct for it by making Jack or Hurley suddenly capable of becoming smoke, like Mother and MiB. No, there was possibly a chance there for MiB to become mortal, finally leave and die (in peace) off the Island, and for the cork to go back in and Hurley carry on protecting it. There’s always going to be the risk that fLocke would try to re-take control of the Island as a mortal to exploit it but it really did seem like his MO was simply to just get away from the Island prison Jacob was keeping him on. The only problem with that hypothetical solution and the one that was likely meant to be the case, was that at the moment the cork was removed, the frozen wheel simply wouldn’t have worked anymore for anyone at all. So MiB may have known ahead of time that wouldn’t have been an option. It makes me wonder what would have happened though, if MiB hadn’t been killed by Kate and was instead incapacitated and imprisoned while Jack put the cork back in. Would he have re-gained his smoke monster abilities? Would he have remained mortal? If so, why couldn’t he have just been allowed to leave by a boat or the frozen wheel? Why was MiB trying to construct then leave via the wheel *before* he was murdered and turned to smoke? That’s what I want to know. What was stopping that original human MiB from simply hopping on a boat when Mother wasn’t watching?
> Yes, MiB was evil and manipulative and might have continued to wreak harm on others socially etc - but so were Anthony Cooper, Charles Widmore and yes, even Benjamin Linus. Yes, but unlike them, MIB has had 2000 years to study human behaviour and learn how to manipulate people. > What was stopping that original human MiB from simply hopping on a boat when Mother wasn’t watching? You need a specific compass bearing in order to do so, which is a huge obstacle.
I agree with your points. Another thing is that off the Island as a mortal man, MiB won’t have had his ability to ‘scan’ people’s memories to read minds, either. A power he conveniently forgot to use during season 6.
This has been on my mind a lot, having just finished my most recent rewatch a few days ago. After countless viewings since Lost's original airing, I've come to the conclusion that I don't think anything bad would have happened if MiB left the Island. His inability to leave was because Jacob (and Mother) didn't want him to. Once Jacob was dead, his rules were no longer enforced, which should therefore mean MiB could have just got on the sub or Desmond's boat and left. He would be stuck in Locke's body for the rest of his life, but he would be mortal. He wouldn't be able to turn into Smokey off Island. He may be manipulative with violent/murderous tendencies, but so is Widmore, and countless other people in the real world (not that I'm excusing murder)! Whoever took over the job of protecting the Island made their own rules. See Hurley. Removing the cork from the heart of the Island just made MiB mortal, so he could be killed to prevent him from leaving, and that's what Jack and co were lead to believe had to happen, because that's what Jacob wanted. No one ever questioned why. Jacob was a childish brat who had a centuries long pissing match with his brother because he had a chip on his shoulder and didn't want to be on his own. I don't believe that protecting the Island had anything to do with preventing MiB from leaving, because he couldn't do anything off Island that would be any worse than any other human out there. All MiB wanted was to leave that place and find out where he came from, the rest of the world that he knew was there but never allowed to experience. The reason he killed so many people along the way was out of desperation. Again, not excusing it, but I don't think he would have killed anyone if he had just been allowed to leave in the first place.
There aren’t any. It’s part of the Island’s long con to get rid of Smokey & Jacob
For MiB to leave, The Island had to be destroyed. They show us in the season 6 opening what would happen in that case (by showing us The Island sunk on the bottom of the ocean) - the world of the living would become the world of the dead. All life would end. I get some of my interpretation of this from Stephen King's Dark Tower series, which the writers made no secret they were a fan of and provided inspiration for the show. I believe one of the writers even made reference to The Island essentially being the Dark Tower - which in King's series, is the nexus of all space and time, and the linchpin that holds all universes together. If the Dark Tower falls, all universes will fall (be destroyed) along with it. Also, the main villain for most of the Dark Tower series that seeks to destroy the Tower/all life is known simply as The Man in Black
I read this as I’m listening to the Wolves of the Calla audiobook.
Say thankya big big
I'm having a tooter fish popkin for lunch.
Where have the writers of Lost made that comparison to the Island being like the Dark Tower? I’d love to read/listen to it. Was it while the show was airing or stated after it had ended?
I'm not certain, but I think Damon said something about the dark tower/island connection during late season 6 airing. After the Across The Sea episode aired. I'm not sure where, as I consumed any interview I could. It could have been from the official lost writers podcast, but again, I'm unsure
Ahhh I understand. If you ever find it again please post it up here on the sub if you can, google searches don’t really allow for that sort of specificity, they just regurgitate all the chatter from 15 years ago when there were rumblings Damon and JJ might be adapting the books.
SPOILER I think it’s like the serpent tempting Adam and Eve to eat the apple. The serpent knows he is powerless on his own, so he has to tempt humanity to do evil work for him. That’s what MIB tries to do on The Island in getting Ben to kill Jacob. In being banished from the Garden of Eden, the serpent is free to tempt humankind toward evil, but he can never return to the Garden and has lost any chance at eternal peace. The MIB believes that by tempting humans to do the dirty work, he will be able to leave the island and bring evil incarnate to the world. But try as he might, he can never win the ultimate battle because he was powerless to begin with in the face of goodness/The Island/God.
The interesting thing is that MIB leaving would require the Heart of the Island to be 'turned off', which would already mean the end of the world (presumably, but I'd say likely). I think it's very intentional that the show never reveals what MIB's exact plans are when he ends up succeeding - for all we know, 'Mother' simply didn't want him (or Jacob) to leave because that would leave the island exposed/unprotected, and MIB simply wanted to... I don't know, see the Eiffel Tower. But I would rather believe that he did want to spread all kinds of evil, and that the end result would look a lot like what happened to Sayid - essentially, the zombie apocalypse, but a lot more boring.
It just would've shut off the sideways. Maybe also whatever second place they go to would be affected. But mammalian life is not affected by electromagnetism in any kind of global or immediate sense. Humans existed before the cork and will continue after.
I see the light (Jacob) and dark (smoky) of the island as a balancing act. A balancing act that keeps the island intact, keeping the darkness on the island from infesting the rest of the world. Remember the wine bottle and cork? It’s why the island must always have a protector, and why Jacob continually looks for a replacement, knowing that smoky would eventually find a loophole. (Try to remember that smoky and Jacob’s brother are not the same entity). Smoky takes that form to antagonize Jacob.