I have to preface this by saying that I didn't find Jacob's explanation for why he chose the candidates to be very satisfying. He subjected them to unspeakable hardship, torture and, in some cases, death because they were personally Lost in their off-island lives. To me, that doesn't justify what happened to them or the downing of hundreds of innocent passengers. If the fate of the very world depends on it, why treat it like a Trading Places type game? Why require that people personally grow and decide of their own free will, instead of just choosing candidates who might naturally want the job in the first place (Locke)?

So I would love to hear your thoughts on a theory that has been around for a while. Jacob did not pluck the Losties from their lives, but from their certain deaths. Whether it is in limbo or in another reality, or just geographically isolated on a magical island, the Losties were given a chance to cheat death. The candidates stay "there" until they redeem themselves, at which time they are released by on-island death, maybe into the Alt-Verse. It fits nicely with Charlie, Jin/Sun and Sayid's story arcs. It makes sense of all the "we're dead" comments by Richard and Hurley. It fits too with Ghost Michael's comment that the whisperers are those that can't move on.

I see many counter-arguments to this theory. People died without redemption (Libby, Ana-Lucia, etc. . . .) and they have appeared in the Alt-verse. We don't know about the need for redemption for many of the people on the cave wall (including some tools . .. Pickett, Pryce). Maybe the special, touched by Jacob, Candidates were always a subset of the larger group of all people ever to come to the island.

To me, it would be a less sucky Alt-verse ending, if it is shown to be the Losties' resurrection of sorts into the land of the living.

Just to address first the underlying theory that Oceanic 815 passengers were saved from a certain death by Jacob and given a second chance--I think that falls into a very slim maybe, given the things we have been told. The aircraft itself suffered no failure, mechanical or otherwise. Magnetic forces unleashed by the failure to push 'the button' in the Hatch pulled the plane down. Did Jacob save them from events set in motion by Desmond? Slim maybe. But that still depends on Island events drawing the plane to the Island, not some random plane crash.

Think of the Black Rock. A storm drew the ship to the Island, empirically. But MIB and Jacob both knew that the ship was coming when they saw it on the beach under sunny skies. The ship might have sunk in the storm, and its passengers then might have died if not for Jacob. However, it seems more likely to me we're being told that Jacob is plucking otherwise unendangered people out of their circumstances and drawing them to the Island. I'm still hazy on the 'how'.

On to the other issue of what Jacob has subjected the Oceanic passengers and countless others to across the centuries. What we might call hardship and torture looks a lot like life, in Jacob's godlike perspective. How is the Island much worse than being under the bed when your father shoots your mother, turns the gun on himself? Than being thrown out of a building by the father who stole your kidney?

What the last several episodes have clarified for me is that the most basic theme of Lost is this: our lives are the product of fate and choice. We are given hard circumstances beyond our choice, but the choices we make in those circumstances are what matters.

If we view it from Jacob's POV, I doubt very much that anything that's happened on the Island looks much different from what happens off-Island, except as measured by what is at stake. For that reason, the people he has drawn to the Island matter very much because the choices they make might pop the cork out of the bottle.

So I don't agree in either sense. I don't think Jacob plucked anybody from a certain death, and I don't think of him as a cruel manipulator. To understand Jacob's motivations, it's necessary to try to imagine what human life looks like to someone who's seen hundreds of generations come and go. Patterns emerge, and he develops understanding. With that understanding, he tries to create circumstances in which people might start to make better choices...if they choose to. When it's all said and done, Jacob didn't kill anybody on the Island (even his brother). People have suffered because of the bad choices that people have made.

Jacob is looking for progress on his Island microcosm.

So I don't agree in either sense. I don't think Jacob plucked anybody from a certain death, and I don't think of him as a cruel manipulator. To understand Jacob's motivations, it's necessary to try to imagine what human life looks like to someone who's seen hundreds of generations come and go.

Your whole post is an excellent response and I think you're right re: Jacobs point of view. My issue lies in the fact that most viewers' loyalties most likely lie, first and foremost, with the Losties, as does their perspective. And the Losties knowledge about what happens if the light is extinguished is so sketchy and so recently acquired. So I have to stretch not to see as tragic an ending where Jack is obligated for "as long as he is able" to protect the island. As someone else put it, "it's a stinky job for any of them." Maybe it seems more acceptable when we recall that Jack was on a freeway overpass ready to end it all in the real world, anyway. It doesn't seem fitting when I remember all the effort he made to get everyone off the island, and all the personal sacrifice and suffering for his love of Kate. Does he know the very existence of man is at stake? Do we?