Lost - John Locke Theory

For some reason this past week it all fell into place for me on what the heck has been going on on Lost since the beginning. Today I stumbled onto what is the deal with John Locke and his affinity towards the island.

If you remember back to the first season John was the first person to actually see Smokey face to face. While we don't see the actual confrontation, we do see Smokey zooming in on him from off camera, it's at this moment when I think that John was recruited by Smokey. The mystery of John's legs is still out there, but let's just say that Smokey fixed him in the hopes that he would join up with him, basically giving him the one thing that he wanted more than anything, just like he offered Sayid. This time Smokey takes the initiative and just gives him back the ability to walk, because the jungle isn't very handicap friendly.

So John meets Smokey and Smokey tells him about all of the fantastic stuff that the island has and in doing so bestows on John a knowledge of the island that is just a little beyond normal. Now Smokey can't make anyone do anything they don't want to do, we've seen that he doesn't actually control anyone alive, he just manipulates and plays off of their emotions. As Smokey said about John, he was the only one that didn't want to leave the island, Smokey gave him that opportunity to stay. Oh and just to hedge his bets, John's legs started to act up when him and Boone found the plane with the radio in it, which ultimately killed Boone, had John climbed up there, he'd have died.

Skip forward to season 2 when Ben is captured. In one of his probably lies, he tells John, that he was coming to find him, because he was one of the good people. My take is that he was lying about his intentions, but being truthful in that he was looking for John. Why would he be looking for John? Because he needed to take him to the temple to see if he had been infected by Smokey, but that never happens. Instead John, through his affinity to the island that even Richard is puzzled by is taken in by the others and eventually installed as their leader. Now let's go way out on the Ben might actually be a good guy limb and say that Ben didn't try to get rid of John on the island because he was jealous, but because he was the only one that saw that John had been infected. Now keep in mind I don't think that Smokey controls anyones soul, but he can manipulate their heart and mind by feeding John all sorts of wrong information.

Ben ends up shooting John, leaving him in the ditch with all of the dead Dharma folks, but he doesn't die. And what else does he see, a vision of Walt, might that have been Smokey... Then who tells John that he has to move the island, Christian, whom in my assessment is in league with Smokey. John doesn't even realize that he's being manipulated by the bad guy, JUST LIKE OFF THE ISLAND. He is the example of a good person following a false prophet. And you who the opposite of that is, Ben, a bad person following the good prophet.

The devil doesn't just come up to you and tell you he is the devil, that's the last thing that he does, he works in the back ground making you believe what you want to believe. John had a major flaw in him, he always wanted to be more than he was, (greed), Smokey gave it to him. Smokey even commented to Ben how pathetic he was with what John's last thoughts were, "I don't understand." He never understood that the whole time he had been a puppet of Smokey, all of the promises left him with nothing.

On the flip side, look at Ben. Here is a guy that is all sorts of bad, but he devotes his life to serve the defense of the island for a man that he never met. His blind faith in the belief that he was trying to do the good thing even if he himself wasn't a good person. Ben became the leader of the others because of his undying faith in Jacob. Which ultimately, Ben's faith was broken and he ended up killing Jacob. Considering that next week is a Ben episode I think we're going to see that character get flipped on his side in how we see him.