Lost - Ghosts, Others, and Richard explained

So outside of my wife and kids, I really have no life now that Olympic hockey is over, which means I spend a lot of my free thoughts thinking about Lost, big surprise huh? So it hit me this morning about how some of the older pieces of the show fit together, man I have no idea what I'm going to do come May 24th when the show ends. So without further ado...

What got me thinking this morning was who were the Others, and I think I get now why they are called the Others, they are the collateral damage of the people that were brought to the island. Meaning that when Jacob brought someone to the island it was unlikely that they would be alone, there would always be some "other" people along for the ride, just because they have bad luck. Now flash forward to the crash of Oceanic 815, what was the first thing that Ben needed to get from the two crash sites, a list of the names of the people, why? Because he needed to get the list to Jacob to see who were candidates in the crash. Everyone else was then taken by the Others. But why not take the candidates and leave the other people? Reason, the other people would be subject to being infected by Smokey, just like Rousseau's crew. But the candidates couldn't be claimed until they were dead. Sayid was dead for 2 hours, Claire, I'm guessing was killed in that rocket attack, but I'm also guessing that Smokey brought her back like Sayid. Or like Christian. Meaning that Christian isn't a ghost but more like a zombie, like Sayid is, fueled by the dark life that Smokey gave to him, just like the other "ghosts" that he can manifest.

Speaking of ghosts that Smokey can make, let's go way back and think about the crazy stuff that the Losties have seen on the island, and in particular Hurley seeing David (the guy from the nut house), long story short what did he try and get Hurley to do, jump off a cliff. Smokey can't "claim" the living candidates, which is why he scans them, but he can if they are dead or if like in Sawyers case they come willingly. Which is also why Jacob doesn't get involved with any of the candidates, they need to come to him willingly and without any more interference than getting dropped on the island.

Now let's jump to the Dharma time, the Others and the Dharma folks formed a truce where the Others would leave them be if they stayed inside their sonic fence, that kept Smokey out. Meaning that Smokey would have tried to get to the folks in Dharmaville and try to claim them if he'd have had the chance, but since there wasn't a risk as long as they remained within the fence there was no threat of that happening. Which is also why when Sawyer and Juliet killed those two others when they first got to 1974 the bodies had to be buried, so that Smokey couldn't claim them. Otherwise a corpse laying around could be claimed just like Christian, which is why he wasn't in the coffin either. So why is the body of Locke laying in the coffin? Because Smokey took on that form, in the case of Christian that really is Christian walking around. Jack's dad is walking around on the island and my bet is that the final confrontation is going to be Jack and his Dad.

Oh and speaking of dead people wondering around, guess what happen to Richard??? He's one of the first people that got brought back by Smokey, but the difference here is that he left Smokey to serve Jacob, that is why he doesn't age and has that dark look to him, but he's on the good guys side, because my guess is that Smokey promised him something and in the end didn't pay up. Considering that we still don't know anything about the ship the Blackrock, I'm guessing that Richard was on that ship.

So there you go, an explanation on the ghosts, the others, and Richard. The best part of all of this, ALL of this goes back to season 1 meaning that if I'm right, the producers knew all along what they were doing and to that I'll say Bravo!