Okay, since episode ten has recently aired, I thought I would point out that, so far, I haven't seen anything to veer me away from my newest theory that-
1. Sun will eventually be the candidate to replace Jacob.
2. Jin will himself replace MIB (False Locke)
Or, possibly, it will be the other way around.
The two new candidates to take on the mantle of these godlike entities will then by virtue of their undying love for each other, utilize said love to make peace between the two entities-which according to my theory is actually one person. Jacob being the cold, logical rational side of the schizophrenic life force of the island, MIB being the primal, emotional side.
This has all been a game leading up to this healing of the self. Bear in mind, there have been past candidates. Jacob and MIB are themselves past candidates, which explains why they would appear as English speaking Americans, in 1867, to Richard Alpert, a Spanish man from the Canary Islands whose knowledge of English was rudimentary at best.
Otherwise, if Jacob and MIB were not themselves prior candidates, then the two entities would either appear as Spanish people, forms Richard could more easily relate to, or as their original selves-whoever or whatever that might be. Since it stands to reason this has been on-going for centuries, if not thousands of years, it becomes obvious the two original forms of the two entities were not as English speaking Americans.
Since whatever forms the entities take are locked in, the personalities and even emotions becoming merged, then it stands to reason they had no choice but to appear as they did. It also stands to reason that if Sun and Jin are the two ultimate candidates/replacements, their emotions and memories, including how they feel toward each other, will become an integral part of the equation.
So what happened in the last episode? Well, it became clear that Jacob's influence, while profound, is also not irreversible. A mere touch from the Flocke can undo it, though only to a point. When he touched an unconscious Sun in the last episode, he obviously couldn't undo the fact that she and Jin were married. However, he could and did negate another of Jacob's influences-her command of the English language. While she could still understand it, she could no longer speak it. Her communication skills, therefore, with the remainder of the candidates, and others, became limited at best.
The most important effect of Jacob's influence, however, was Sun and Jin's marriage. As we saw in the Sideways' time segment, Sun and Jin were destined to not marry, but merely be would-be secret lovers, a situation which, once it was discovered by Sun's Korean mobster father, led him to arrange a twenty-five thousand dollar payment (to be delivered unknowingly by Jin himself) to Keamy, to kill Jin. Thanks to Jacob's influence, however, this whole scenario was turned on its head. Thanks to him, Sun and Jin were not only legally married, but this came about with the actual blessings of Sun's father.
Seeing as how Sun and Jin were on Flight 815 originally, it stands to reason that this marital arrangement was important to Jacob. He did not want them to be mere lovers and parents of an illegitimate child (who in Sideways Time might turn out to die due to the bullet Sun took toward the end of the show), he wanted them to be united by the bonds of matrimony. That in itself has to be significant, while his desire for them to communicate fluently in English can be seen as a mere matter of convenience.
We have seen other examples of Jacob's influence. For example, originally Sayid, a former Republican Guard member loyal to Saddam's regime, was a brutal torturer who fell in love with a woman who had been destined to be just one more of his victims. This changed him, but apparently, not much. He cares for his family and his love, but knows he is not good enough for her, and so he arranges her marriage to his brother, a weak man he can easily control. When he discovered a bound and gagged Jin at the end of the episode, he showed no concern or sympathy, barely bringing himself to go to the trouble to place a box-cutter in Jin's hands in order for him to extricate himself from the tape with which he was bound. He is basically a cold, heartless thug, a bad man whose one redeeming feature is he knows it and doesn't want to negatively impact those he loves because of this.
Jacob's influence was to make him believe that he was a good man, or that he could become one, even to the point he might be able to live a good enough life with the woman he loved to make a fresh start.
Then, in the blink of an eye, Jacob took that love away from him. But the inspiration was still there, and provided an impetus for Sayid to insist, to himself as much as to others, that he was a good man.
And again, we saw the influence of Flocke's touch. He has reversed Jacob's influence, to where Sayid is now once again a stone cold, hard, uncaring brute of a man with no love, no compassion, and no hope for redemption.
The effects of Flocke's touch on Sawyer is yet to be determined, and thus far Kate has rejected his influence. Nor is it clear whether Flocke will exercise the power of his touch, the power to reverse Jacob's influence, on any of the other candidates. But one thing is abundantly clear, though perhaps not to Flocke. And that is, he can not hope to reverse Sun and Jin's love for each other, for that came about independent of Jacob's influence.
And that fact might well in the long run be what leads to Flock's undoing.
Note that Jacob has done bad things in his career, even evil things, while MIB has arguably presented clues that he is not totally evil. Again, this is not, in my opinion, a simple timeless battle between good and evil, but a question of balance between two warring aspects of the same personality. The marriage of Sun and Jin seems to be the most likely means to brings this conflict into balance.
What remains to be determined is who these entities are, and their origins. Are they Djinn, as I speculated in my last post, or are they possibly literally sons, or the scizophrenic son, of the goddess Tiawaret? My own opinion on that is the statue of the goddess was built during a time when visitors to the island interpreted the island's properties based on their own cultural and religious proclivities, during a time when the constantly moving island appeared for a brief time in the Mediterranean or Red Sea region.
At any rate, the true identity/identities of the two warring entities, regardless of whether or not they turn out to be one schizophrenic entity or two separate ones, might well be one of those mysteries the writers alluded might not be completely answered, at least not in full. We might get the who and why, but not the how or when, for example. We'll just have to wait and see.
