Feeling Lost

Well we're just hours away from the final season where we've been promised some answers! I can't wait!! I've been thinking this show for so long I should be on the payroll for Bad Robot!! This isn't so much a theory as it is a series of rambling thoughts and questions... but then I'm sure that's what you've all come to expect from me! No answers, just more confusion!! :)

I find it interesting that some of the O6 “disappeared” from the return flight before it crash landed on the island. My question is why some and not all of them were transported to 1977 then I realized that everyone on the flight was taken to the time they were “supposed” to be in. Jack, Kate, Hurley and Sayid all would have traveled to 1977 with Sawyer and company had they not left the island. Once they got near it again, they were moved to the correct time line. Ben wasn’t transported to the 70's since he had no “future” there. He turned the wheel which caused him to leave the island and also started it moving through time. Had Sun not left the island she would have died in childbirth and therefore had no “future” in 1977 either. Lapidus was supposed to be the pilot on the original flight 815 and he would have died had he been on that flight. For that reason he had no future in 1977 and therefore wasn’t transported there.
Meanwhile, the man in black (MIB) who had breakfast with Jacob at the beginning of last season’s finale said he’d find a “loophole” to kill Jacob. It seems clear that he can not do it himself. We know the island’s power extends to the main land. Suppose that MIB posed as Eloise when Ben met with her and told him that “everyone” had to return to the island - including him. Well not everyone did return (Sun left Ji Yeon in Japan, Kate left Aaron on the mainland, and Desmond refused to return) so obviously not everyone had to be on the flight for them to return to the island. My theory is that the statement that “everyone” was needed was to insure that Ben was on the plane. Ben has no qualms about killing people and carries enough guilt about Alex’s death to manipulate things to leave the island so he could extract revenge on Widmore by killing Penny. Clearly this is the perfect person to manipulate, so once on the island MIB (posing as Locke) tells Ben to enter the hole in search of te smoke monster. MIB then poses as Alex to scare Ben into following Locke’s directions without question. MIB then resumes his role as Locke and tells Ben to kill Jacob.

If Jacob dies how does it impact MIB? Without a balancing counterpart (if that’s what Jacob is) is MIB able to do whatever he wants? During his conversation with Jacob he said of the people who come to the island,  “They come. They fight. They destroy. They corrupt. It always ends the same.” It would seem that he is now fighting and destroying. Is he repeating a cycle or is he being impacted by what he has witnessed so often?

And on a similar note, when Richard approached Locke in the finale and said “I have been here a long time, John. And I have seen things on this Island that I could barely describe, but I've never seen someone come back to life.” Locke replies that he never saw someone who doesn’t age to which Richard responds, “I'm this way because of Jacob.” So what happens if Jacob dies? Does Richard begin to age? Or will Richard suddenly become an old man circa Dorian Grey? Or will Richard just continue unchanged to live as if nothing had happened?

And going back again to the opening scene with Jacob and MIB on the beach, if the boat we saw was the Black Rock, then it would seem that the idea of the island suddenly appearing and beaching the Black Rock up in the mountains wouldn’t make sense anymore. So how exactly did the Black Rock get so high into the mountains?

Man there are so many questions with this show I really hope they answer them all!!