The Game

This was sent to me by a coworker who copied it from a message board. We've been going over its merits and shortcomings all morning. Let me know your thoughts. (Spelling errors and run on sentences, etc. not my own. OBVI.)

Not sure if this has been mentioned already but in my opinion MIB can only leave the Island when there are no further candidates remaining on the Island. As per the names written in the cave, there were six active candidates(Lotto numbers), however some like Locke and perhaps Claire are already dead. Once all the candidates die, there are no more chess pieces left, meaning no more pieces for the white team Jacob.

So long as Jacob was alive, he could continue to recruit new candidates, meaning the chess game would continue over and over again with a new game for each batch of candidates who arrived on the island. That is perhaps why MIB was so unhappy about seeing the new recruits come to the island via the black rock. By killing Jacob, MIB could insure that once and for all, there would not be any more candidates coming to the island, being recruited by Jacob. Now, all MIB has to do is eliminate the remaining pieces.

The rules says that MIB cannot kill any candidates directly. You are a candidate if Jacob at some point in your life physically made contact with you. That is why, when Locke came face to face with the Smokey early on in the show, he was not and could not be killed by it. What MIB has to do is find a way of having the candidates eliminate each other. By having candidates such as Sayed or Claire die due to the act of other mortals, the MIB could infect them and have them kill the other candidates/pieces. That is why Jacob told Hurley to rush back to the temple so Sayed could be healed and not be infected by MIB. Also that is why the temple people wanted Jack to kill Sayed before he could kill the rest of the candidates.

Of course, Flocke may attempt to convince Sawyer who has not died or infected to simply try to kill the rest of the candidates.

I will let Danielle extrapolate upon her theory of why there are only men on the current candidate list and the significance of Bloody Boy in the Woods, and pose these questions: what if Locke has been "infected" (or at least "influenced") by Smokey since the beginning of the show? Perhaps MIB fixed Locke's legs to try to get him on his team from the start? How does Locke's backgammon explanation to Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaalt about the "one light side, one dark side" play into everything?

There are only 12 episodes left?!!!!!!!!!?!