Let me preface this by saying this is not a "complaint" thread, as many of you have no doubt come to expect of me.

This has been something that has been on my mind ever since the Others' official introduction to the show. Now that nearly half of them have been obliterated by Smokey, I think it's more appropriate than ever that we address the issue.

The issue being, what is Others' purpose on the Island?

We've seen them be antagonists to the survivors, seeming protector/caretakers of the island, and cannon fodder.

They've conducted kidnapping, espionage, mass-murder, and a number of other things, all for what exactly?

Some of them are normal-everyday people who happen to live on the Island, some seem to be somewhat supernatural commandos with knowledge about the Island's mystic properties.

Since the end of last season, and the famous beach conversation, it has really bothered me that all the actions we have seen taken by the Others would appear to fall more in-line with the MiB's desires (to get rid of people, and stop bringing them to the island) than with Jacob's machinations, of which they supposedly serve.

On top of that, this season, we've seen that almost none of them really have any idea what's going on with the Island, or what Jacob's actual plans are, not even Richard. Dogen seemed to be the only one of them that actually had a clue about Jacob's goals, but now he's kaput, so that's a dead end (although it leaves me wondering why Dogen would know things that Richard would not, since he is an Island-noob compared to Richard).

Then even more confounding, last episode (among others) it became abundantly clear that Jacob doesn't really care what happens to the Others. This episode, we saw the result of that.

I believe with some certainty that Jacob is responsible for most, if not all, of the Others coming to the Island. So then, what was their purpose to his plan?

I've got two shakey theories on it, but I don't have much to support either of them.

1. Either they are failed candidates that did not "have what it takes," and are just left to their business on the Island, used by Jacob whenever he needs physical labor. Not a whole lot of sense in this one, but I do have the feeling that Jacob brings many people he thinks are good candidates to the island and weeds them out over time for some reason or another.

2. They were brought to the Island to be used as sort of an arbiter-class by Jacob. Jacob is either lazy or not as omniscient as he appears. He brings people to the Island that he thinks could be candidates, but isn't always sure. He uses the Others to test his subjects. They help him weed out the good from the bad. They are also there to instigate conflict, so Jacob can see who perseveres under pressure.

These are both mostly conjecture as we don't really have any hard evidence to support what the crap exactly they are doing there, besides practicing bonzai and miniature ship building.

Anyways... that's what's been racking my brain, among other things. It's this kind of dedication of thought to the show that I had hoped wouldn't go unappreciated this season, but... guess I'd be wrong so far.

Its a good line of thinking and confused me too for awhile. Everything seemed so hypocritical, until tonights episode I feel confirmed that one of the big picture elements is the sideways.

A second chance, a redemption but those on the Island arent privvy to experience it because they cant. I think that was the meaning behind Dogens words to Sayid with his own experience with Jacob.

Dogen "A" went to the Island and made the sacrifice to fulfill a role for Jacob so that Dogen "B" (created when they detonated Jughead) and which Jacob always knew would happen, could save his son. The Island exists outside of normal space and time and so when they changed events what it did was create our sideways which is in fact the real world because WHH.

Everyone on the Island is now a copy so to speak, because if anything involving them in the outside world was within the realm of being changed because of Jughead then they have a new original out there living a new life.

Its a good line of thinking and confused me too for awhile. Everything seemed so hypocritical, until tonights episode I feel confirmed that one of the big picture elements is the sideways.

A second chance, a redemption but those on the Island arent privvy to experience it because they cant. I think that was the meaning behind Dogens words to Sayid with his own experience with Jacob.

Dogen "A" went to the Island and made the sacrifice to fulfill a role for Jacob so that Dogen "B" (created when they detonated Jughead) and which Jacob always knew would happen, could save his son. The Island exists outside of normal space and time and so when they changed events what it did was create our sideways which is in fact the real world because WHH.

Everyone on the Island is now a copy so to speak, because if anything involving them in the outside world was within the realm of being changed because of Jughead then they have a new original out there living a new life.

While I like your ideas, I don't quite understand your point as it relates to the topic of this thread.
You think that the Others are all on the island because they traded servitude to Jacob for some sort of miracle back home (or in the alt-verse)? If true, that still doesn't really explain what Jacob needed them on the Island for.

There's a lot of things about the Others that doesn't add up and I think it's very appropriate to question their role at this point. One would think it would be clearer by now. In fact, that may be a major clue in itself. TPTB not explaining them in more detail may be because it would give too much away of the entire puzzle.

Some of my questions:
1) Why does the temple Others shooting off a firework freak out Richard? Apparently because that's the "OhMahGosh, Jacob's dead! Watch Out!" signal. Ok, so why no freak out in S1 when our losties shot off very similar fireworks?

2) Why the disguise kits for the New Otherton Others? Apparently that's the Other's dress code normally. Were they really needing to disguise up as other Others for the sake of our losties or were they trying to blend in for some reason? If it's getting back to their roots sort of dress, why the fake beard?

3) How can the temple be Jacob's joint when there's a Smokey grill down there? Heck, he's got a room dedicated to him. French team gets dragged into the same hole in S5 by smokey as our losties get ambushed by Others in. Does either of these things say anything about the allegiance of the Others?


Some of my "bouncing around my head" theories:
1) Maybe Others are game pieces to be used by either side. Maybe we have seen different groups in play by different players.

2) Maybe the temple doesn't belong to either Jacob or MiB. Maybe it's a place for out-of-play pieces to go, or a collection point of sorts. Sort of like when you take pieces off of a chess board, or maybe the bar in backgammon. Waiting on the bar to get back into the game.

3) Maybe if one of the players win, the pieces need to be collected and/or reset. Maybe the others trying to hole up in there were attempting to delay the inevitable. Maybe this is what Richard meant about MiB wanting everyone "dead". Time for him to clear the board?

4) If Jacob was locked up in that cabin for years, perhaps Richard and the gang were actually being used by MiB without knowing it. Richard seems to be a bit key to this though, and he seems a bit clueless recently.

In the end it wouldn't surprise me if all of the Others are actors in a production. Think of the film 'The Game." They may or may not be aware of the role they play.

2) Why the disguise kits for the New Otherton Others? Apparently that's the Other's dress code normally. Were they really needing to disguise up as other Others for the sake of our losties or were they trying to blend in for some reason? If it's getting back to their roots sort of dress, why the fake beard?.

This is an excellent question. In fact, it makes it very difficult to remember who was originally a dharma-ite and who was an original "other."


3) How can the temple be Jacob's joint when there's a Smokey grill down there? Heck, he's got a room dedicated to him. French team gets dragged into the same hole in S5 by smokey as our losties get ambushed by Others in. Does either of these things say anything about the allegiance of the Others?.

Yes. That was Smokey's joint at some point.




4) If Jacob was locked up in that cabin for years, perhaps Richard and the gang were actually being used by MiB without knowing it. Richard seems to be a bit key to this though, and he seems a bit clueless recently.

This is what I suspect.

On a larger scale, when you go back and watch earlier seasons, the word "others" is used so, so much, much more than you would normally use in conversation. "Others' is used to describe virtually any other group of people, even other Losties. Everyone is "other" from everyone else. I suppose the Losties themselves are "others" to the Others. There's some larger theme here.

Beyond that, all I can think is that there were originally "others," than the dharmites, then losties who became others...and that somehow they've become a big, rag tag group, with different offshoots and therefore different pieces of info and slightly differing interpretations of the island mythology. Not unlike a splintering of a religion.

But of course that doesn't answer any of your practical questions. :)

I'm thinking (and hoping) that with all of these Others with Locke now that we'll have conversations about exactly this topic. Maybe Locke will ask them why they came to the island, what their purpose was, what Jacob asked of them, why they trusted him so much...

Right now the Others in my mind are a bunch of pawns who think they are serving a better purpose.

On top of that, this season, we've seen that almost none of them really have any idea what's going on with the Island, or what Jacob's actual plans are, not even Richard. Dogen seemed to be the only one of them that actually had a clue about Jacob's goals, but now he's kaput, so that's a dead end (although it leaves me wondering why Dogen would know things that Richard would not, since he is an Island-noob compared to Richard).And also why Dogen wouldn't tell Richard about some of this stuff. Like, they had an "OMG The MiB Is Back!" Rocket, which Richard was familiar with, but the whole "He will come to you as someone who has recently died" just wasn't important enough to share?

I assume we'll learn more about the Others and Jacob later in the season, but really, I can't imagine there will be a way to reconcile the Season 1 Others with the Seasons 4 -6 Others. I mean, they blew up a raft and kidnapped a kid, for what reason again?

This is a question that has always frustrated me, and even more so now. They always seemed to be busy working toward some important goal, like when they took Walt, and when they were building the runway. What eats me up is, how come nobody asked Juliet in 3 years of living with her?

I thought they were course-correcters. Elloise explained it well to Desmond.

I think the Others are people who follow what Jacob tells them to do (or what they're told Jacob tells them to do) out of fairly blind faith, possibly created by Jacob performing some sort of miracle for them (Juliet's sister's cancer being cured, Dogen's son, etc.). They clearly don't know much about what's going on - Richard isn't aware of what a "candidate" is, Dogen seemed to be but didn't know Hurley, Jack or Sayid were candidates because in the first episode of this season he was quite happy to have them shot when they turned up at the temple. Incidentally, that scene maybe showed the lack of communication between Jacob and his followers - in order to not have them shot, he gave Hurley a guitar case with a wooden Ankh in Los Angeles, containing a list of their names. This was before he was killed, so presumably Jacob couldn't give the list directly to Dogen for some other (Other) reason.

To me Jacob seems, at best, to be someone (or something?) that's fairly ambivalent about people's lives and explaining things, which I guess would make sense if he's been around for as long as he seems to have been. I think the way things seem to be heading is with the MiB providing answers and explanations, as a counterpoint to this, which could be really interesting. It's just a shame that we seem to have lost the "they don't leave tracks" creepiness of the Others from the early seasons. Maybe there'll be some explanation. Ethan from season 1 now seems more like someone who was "infected"/an apparition of the Island rather than one of the Others as we know them now.

This is definitely one of the key questions that must be answered in some meaningful way by the time this saga ends. If we ever get a Richard-centric episode with his back story (Black Rock? Ancient Egypt? Zardoz?) it may go a long way towards clarifying this and putting the Others into some sort of overall context that makes some sense.

If we believe Jacob, I think the roles of the others have been to become like the island shields willing to sacrifice themselves to protect the island at any costs. The reason why they may have accepted such a job might have been through a similar manipulation to that of Locke over Sayid. They were offered something in exchanged for them giving their lives to the island. Think of Dogen and his son.

It is clear that the others didn't have the slightest idea about the whole candidate thing. Not even Richard did! Maybe the ones at the Temple might have had a deeper info than those at the barracks.

So they were all expendable pieces on Jacob's side. He was just recruiting people until he could find the perfect candidate to take over his role.

2) Why the disguise kits for the New Otherton Others? Apparently that's the Other's dress code normally. Were they really needing to disguise up as other Others for the sake of our losties or were they trying to blend in for some reason? If it's getting back to their roots sort of dress, why the fake beard?

I have never understood this either. Who are they trying to fool? And why? It seems like every time they ventured out to where the Losties can possibly run into them they were dressed like slobs. Think of Tom and Pickett when they set up Michael in the middle of the jungle, the fake Others camp where Michael met Ms. Klugh, and the time in "The Hunting Party" when they surrounded the Losties with torches. Then once they are home they are all dressed nice and neat.

The only thing I can gather is they didn't want the Losties to know they lived like normal folks in a small community with houses. They wanted them to think they lived in the jungle and wanted to scare them so they wouldn't go snooping around.

I agree with Droogs. The question of what exactly is the Others' motivation, and what purpose are they serving and why are they there must be answered. This isn't just a one-off mystery like "what's in the guitar case?" This is something that simply must be answered.

To serve the island by carrying out the wishes of Jacob. I know it's short and sweet but I think with the info we have been given it's the best I've got. By the way I agree we need a more detailed answer to this question although I doubt we will get one. I can see TBTB giving us an origin story to the others through the backsory of Richard and maybe we'll get lucky and get a full answer to the others purpose.

I agree with Droogs. The question of what exactly is the Others' motivation, and what purpose are they serving and why are they there must be answered. This isn't just a one-off mystery like "what's in the guitar case?" This is something that simply must be answered.

Just to clarify. . . While I think the purpose of the Others is one of the main issues that needs to be resolved, I personally don't need the answers right now. . . I'm perfectly fine with it being played out over the remaining 10 episodes or even resolved in the last 5 minutes of the show.

how come nobody asked Juliet in 3 years of living with her?

She wouldn't have told unless it were necessary to tell? Like the Latin she knew, and how she knew Ben might be helped by "the Others." Juliet never stopped being an Other, imo, and that's why she kept their secrets, but in general, no one ever was curious enough which has always been true!!!.

Despite their pretended ignorance, Ben knows "the rules" and so does Richard. And maybe they have a plan ...

To serve the island by carrying out the wishes of Jacob.

I would be perfectly happy with this solution if I thought it was at all what was going on. Actually, this is exactly what I thought of the Others up until the revelations of this and last season.

Now it seems that almost none of them even knew what Jacob's "wishes" really were. So how could they possibly be carrying them out?

Richard has more or less been the person guiding the overall direction of the Others for (at least) the past 100 years, and he had no clue about Jacob's whole "candidate" plan, which seems to be the crux of the entire show now.
So, what the heck did Richard think he was doing this entire time?

We know that the Others were fairly misguided under Ben's leadership, but what about Widmore, or Eloise?

Perhaps they actually spoke with Jacob, as opposed to Ben who never had. Maybe they actually knew what was going on?

It would be nice if we found out more about them two when they were leaders...

While I like your ideas, I don't quite understand your point as it relates to the topic of this thread.
You think that the Others are all on the island because they traded servitude to Jacob for some sort of miracle back home (or in the alt-verse)? If true, that still doesn't really explain what Jacob needed them on the Island for.

I guess its difficult to propose a purpose in general because of all the possible different circumstances. Dogens reason for being there is different from Ilanas or Bens. Each has their own unique story, each being their own puzzle piece while Jacob ultimately sees the whole thing put together.

I guess my line of thinking was at the hypocritical use of the word GOOD while they shot and killed people without hesitation i.e Hurley and them first arriving at the temple. My thought being that since theyre only these original copies now while a new time exists out in the real world, it rly doesnt matter if you died.

rabidranger: your comment about them being actors in a production=Dr.Suds' OTT assertions! Shout out :D

A bit irksome, the lack of communication (should be a motif for LOST after the end!). I just feel more and more that Jacob is far from benevolent. Like someone mentioned, he didn't give a damn about Dogen, Lennon etc dying.
He made a hard bargain with Dogen too: your son will be alive, but you can't ever see him, exactly how things turned out for Juliet.

And I'm pretty sure he did exactly the same with Richard, only the price he exacted was more than just being on the island: it was being immortal (in a way, as Richard hasn't aged) and his servant. Wonder what Richard wanted so desperately? To save a loved one's life, maybe?

MIB and Jacob are like two sides of the same coin/ idea/ person/ entity. Brothers seems more likely now. In any event, both use humans to achieve their ends.

the Others must all be in servitude... nice to see you out of those chains...Richard is free now that Jacob's gone ... UnLocke says Locke was the only one on the Island who didn't want to go home. The Others may have to stay on the Island ... some of us can leave.... until they finish their work. Jack has something important still to do.

As, uh, others have said, I think the purpose of the others WILL ultimately be revealed, and it's likely that they are just there to make things happen for Jacob. Whether that serves the island is a bit trickier. We have to see on what sides Jacob, MiB, and the Island come down on before we can start making qualifications like that. As I said in that other thread Beema, I'm not so sure Jacob is going to be our 'good guy', and the way he set the whole hierarchy of the others up, compartmentalizing information, keeping the masses dumb and uninformed, does not strike me as someone who wants his motives known.

I'm not exactly convinced the Others NEED a purpose. Him let's see there's strange and secretive rituals, like having Locke kill his father on some outrageous pillar. There's a temple. There's a healing well. There's a donkey wheel that throws the island through time and it's spinner always ends up in Tunisia. It's pretty easy to see they're a religious cult on steroids worshiping an island of extreme miracles and power. If there's any, that's their purpose. Jacob has brought them all as far as we can tell. The bigger question what is Jacob's point?

Richard must've been lying when he said he didn't know about the candidates. Otherwise, it doesn't make sense to me. Unless Jake figured Smokey would read Richy Rich and didn't tell him much for that reason?

Helll, was Dongen ranked higher than Alpert? Why did the deeath of the Dong Show let Smokey in?

*shrugs*
It'll be figured out.