Lost's Final Season

I think I know where Lost is going with the final season and how they are going to tie up the series. The whole thing is about finding a successor for Nathan. There have been several references to this.

We now know that some of the survivors are "candidates". They were watched over and prepared from childhood by Nathan. Sometimes he met them in person. Other times he watched from his lighthouse. Each candidate has a number. The current set seems to match Hurley's numbers. There have been others, each one having his own number but most are gone.

This is being opposed by Smoky, the Smoke Monster who now appears as Locke. The real Locke was a candidate - probably a leading one given his rapport with the island. Sawyer/Ford was another candidate but he seems to have switched sides. So has Sayid. I can't believe that Sun or Jin would abandon the other. I'm not sure if Kate is a candidate or not but she is not a leader.

That leaves two candidates - Jack and Hurley. On the surface they are opposites - Hurley is easy-going and hates making decisions while Jack is tightly-wound and can't help being a decision-maker. They have some similarities, too. Hurley talks with the dead. Jack has healed people in seemingly miraculous ways. Both have been psychologically broken and needed the island to heal. Also, since returning to the island, Jack has been mellower and has made fewer bad choices. I suspect that Jack will become Jacob's replacement which will seem like an act of martyrdom - it will seem like it but he was a total screw-up on the outside world and has nothing to return to.

On the other side, Smoky is gathering his own set of candidates. Sawyer and the refugees from the temple have joined him but Ben rejected him.

So what is Smoky and who is (was) Jacob? I think that Smoky is the spirit of the island and wants to be free. Jacob was his jailer. Others have been Smoky's jailer in a line going back to Egypt.

What about Richard? I've always wondered if he came to the island on the Black Rock. The scene between him and Jack seemed to confirm this. It has been implied that he came as a slave and that Jacob freed him and made him ageless and undying (just as Michael was unable to kill himself). The only thing arguing against that is Richard's eye liner which could mean that he was brought to the island by the Egyptians.

Some questions - Ben's people made lists when the original Oceanic flight crashed. Where they doing this as a reflection of Jacob's list? Why do you have to kill your father in order to join Ben's people? Both Ben and Locke has to kill their fathers as an initiation. Was this a way of proving their commitment to the island? They keep insisting that they are the good guys but they have a high body count. Are the "good" because they help contain Smoky?

As for the flash-sideways - they seem to show what people would have been like without the island. I will not say that they seem happier, but they seem more at peace with themselves. Jack managed to keep a marriage together long enough to have a son. Locke worked through his bitterness and seemed to like his father. Ben is capable of self-sacrifice. On the other hand, Sayid is not a nice person in either world.