Was rewatching episodes and came up with a question / inconsistency.

Ben tells juliet that her sister's cancer came back, and that she can choose to go back and be with her during her last days, or she can stay and help with the infertility, and ben will have jacob fix the cancer. Juliet stays to help. Later, Juliet flips out and accuses ben of being full of shit, so Ben shows her a screen (@ mikhael's communication station... ya I suck with remembering station names) with showing current date (from the newspaper) and juliet's sister/kid playing on a playground. So, we assume jacob cured the cancer (or suspect foul play - no cancer in the first place, fake video, whatever).

Now that we've seen through the end of season 3, we know that Ben is the only one who's even SEEN jacob? That means that, despite having never seen jacob with her own eyes, having no knowledge of his real 'medical skills', and wanting to be with her sister more than anything, juliet still went and trusted ben/jacob with something so important.


Something definitely isn't adding up here. Juliet is a hardcore scientist, and I can't imagine she would leave her sister's life in the hands of someone she's never even seen / met, especially when she had suspicions about their medical abilities from the start (~"nobody in the field has even heard of mittelos", etc).



I'm sure this has been brought up but I can't find it, if anyone could direct me to some ideas on why Juliet could possibly have that much faith in the jacob ghost, it would be appreciated!

Was rewatching episodes and came up with a question / inconsistency.

Ben tells juliet that her sister's cancer came back, and that she can choose to go back and be with her during her last days, or she can stay and help with the infertility, and ben will have jacob fix the cancer. Juliet stays to help. Later, Juliet flips out and accuses ben of being full of crap, so Ben shows her a screen (@ mikhael's communication station... ya I suck with remembering station names) with showing current date (from the newspaper) and juliet's sister/kid playing on a playground. So, we assume jacob cured the cancer (or suspect foul play - no cancer in the first place, fake video, whatever).

Now that we've seen through the end of season 3, we know that Ben is the only one who's even SEEN jacob? That means that, despite having never seen jacob with her own eyes, having no knowledge of his real 'medical skills', and wanting to be with her sister more than anything, juliet still went and trusted ben/jacob with something so important.


Something definitely isn't adding up here. Juliet is a hardcore scientist, and I can't imagine she would leave her sister's life in the hands of someone she's never even seen / met, especially when she had suspicions about their medical abilities from the start (~"nobody in the field has even heard of mittelos", etc).



I'm sure this has been brought up but I can't find it, if anyone could direct me to some ideas on why Juliet could possibly have that much faith in the jacob ghost, it would be appreciated!

i had the same thought, and i'm hoping this is something they explore more in season 4. all we know is that even the stauchest "man of science" (ie Juliet) is in awe/fear of Jacob and his abilities. before recruiting Juliet to the island, Richard Alpert told her that she would see things she's never seen before... perhaps the power of Jacob is one of them. for all we know, Jacob is causing all pregnant women to die before giving birth. his motive would be because the others have adapted to the dharma initiative's technology, and we all know how much jacob hate technology.

but ben said only he's seen jacob, which means that no matter what jacob 'did', whether killing babies or making earthquakes, would have to happen first, then ben says 'it was jacob'. That still makes it real hard for skeptic/science types to swallow imo.

i think we can assume that juliet has seen some kind of proof good enough to convince her that jacob has special abilities even if shes never seen him ... it seems like the others arnt trusting ben on blind trust it seems they have reason to believe in their cause and jacob ... so i think we havnt been shown what juliet and the others have and therefore dont know what typw of phenomena theyve experienced to make them believe

... it seems like the others arnt trusting ben on blind trust it seems they have reason to believe in their cause and jacob ...
I disagree. Can't remember if it was bonnie or gretta during the finale, and I'm gonna paraphrase here, so excuse inaccuracies:
mikhael: so you never questioned orders?
chick: of course not. If I question orders, this whole thing comes tumbling down.
mikhael: good point. <BANG>


Seems to me that ben has more of a cult following going on than a logical group following him.

I think there's a real point here. There's a BIG "excluded middle" between Juliet-the-messed-up-scientist drinking the Kool-Aid and Juliet in the thrall of an extremely weird cult. I hope we get to see something of that transformation.

I think there's a real point here. There's a BIG "excluded middle" between Juliet-the-messed-up-scientist drinking the Kool-Aid and Juliet in the thrall of an extremely weird cult. I hope we get to see something of that transformation.
Agreed. And I think that they mentioned the only flashbacks will be the others and rousseau's, so hopefully we'll see more of juliet's first days there and her indoctrination (and richard alpert / naomi stories wouldn't hurt :) )

But yeah, I'm still sticking to my guns that they're a cult blindly following ben (at least most of them, perhaps I'd exclude richard alpert, and maybe a couple others), based on brainwashing/faith/etc. I wouldn't be so sure of it just based on the 'why does juliet trust jacob cured the cancer if she hasn't even seen jacob?' idea, but coupled with the gretta (or was it bonnie?) statement, and mikhael's agreement towards it, it really implies heavily that they take orders w/o question and obey as told, which is very cultish lol. I'm very interested to know why Juliet's cool with that (although it could easily just be something as simple as 'rule #1, you don't question ben', and if you don't play by the rules, you never go home. I think that right there would be sufficient enough reason for her and the others to blindly follow, as they'd be seeing that as the only way to behave).

Now that we've seen through the end of season 3, we know that Ben is the only one who's even SEEN jacob? That means that, despite having never seen jacob with her own eyes, having no knowledge of his real 'medical skills', and wanting to be with her sister more than anything, juliet still went and trusted ben/jacob with something so important.

First Ben is good at lying so we are not sure he's telling the truth to Locke when he said that, maybe Juliet has seen Jacob.

Then Juliet accepts the job Richard Alpert offered her despite the fact that the organisation he works for probably killed her husband like she "wanted" (hit by a bus), he knows all about her life and he comes to her when his husband is just behind and dead...would you have accepted the job? I personnaly wouldn't! I don't know but a lot of Juliet's actions sounds weird to me not only the one you describe. Either she's really naive and she believes everything people said to her or we don't know everything about her...i mean why she married Burke? why she said to Richard she want Burke dead and then go back to him (Burke) smiling and talking about her succesfull research on her daughter? She often seems very emotional and fragile and on the other side she's able to kill in cold blood...she's weird!:rolleyes: She's still a mistery to me.

First Ben is good at lying so we are not sure he's telling the truth to Locke when he said that, maybe Juliet has seen Jacob.

Then Juliet accepts the job Richard Alpert offered her despite the fact that the organisation he works for probably killed her husband like she "wanted" (hit by a bus), he knows all about her life and he comes to her when his husband is just behind and dead...would you have accepted the job? I personnaly wouldn't! I don't know but a lot of Juliet's actions sounds weird to me not only the one you describe. Either she's really naive and she believes everything people said to her or we don't know everything about her...i mean why she married Burke? why she said to Richard she want Burke dead and then go back to him (Burke) smiling and talking about her succesfull research on her daughter? She often seems very emotional and fragile and on the other side she's able to kill in cold blood...she's weird!:rolleyes: She's still a mistery to me.
I'll definitely give you that (ben may've been lying about being the only one to see jacob) it could be the case, but I'm still thinking he's the only one. When he said it he said it pretty loudly, and they (the others) were all pretty close to each other (they were in that concentrated camp on their way to the temple, so many could overhear him, at least potentially, and we know that lying doesn't jive with the group. He said 'why would richard take you to see him, richard doesn't see jacob, he doesn't know where jacob is!' I don't think he could've been that loud about it if it was a lie, given what we know about lying in that group (big no-no ;) ). Also, they were shocked when locke pronounced they were going to see jacob. That doesn't prove that nobody else has seen him, but it does make it seem a very, very big deal to go see him, a bigger deal than if many of them had already gone.
(I definitely concede that there's no solid proof nobody else has seen jacob, and we know ben lies, i'm just betting he was accurate on that, and if not, that juliet at least has not seen him. I'm sure it will be disclosed in the 4 though!)

About juliet's weird actions, I don't find them too weird. She takes a job after they kill her husband as she wishes - I don't think she believed (at least at the time lol) that they were behind it. About all the other reasons you're finding suspicious, I don't see them like that really. They all seem to go with the situation. She would act happy towards burke with the results, not because of who he is, but because of what she had done. She would take a job far away after he was hit, both to get away from a (now) nightmarish locale, and because now she can. The fact they know a lot about her and appear to have crazy money could make you suspicious, but could also make you trusting - they appear to have their stuff straight, and seem a very organized company. Plus, richard's a helluva salesman! And about marrying burke, well, who knows how long ago that was and how burke (or juliet!) may've changed over time.

Of all Juliet's weirdness, I still have the most trouble accepting her trusting ben on her sister's cancer, considering she's a doctor herself (probably knows the best possible places to bring her sister, people, etc). I wish I had a good timeline on when juliet was told that her sister had cancer and jacob'd fix it, to deduce how long she'd been on the island at that time.