Don’t read this unless you like a good conspiracy. It may be a bit on the paranoid side. I woke up in the middle of the night last night possessed by the idea that Bernard is Him. That he’s the mole, and has provided the Others with beach intelligence ever since his group arrived. He orchestrated the Sydney logistics of getting certain people on the plane, and planned to accompany them to the island (to land, not crash). I think he's the mastermind behind it all. Here’s why:
- Bernard met Rose five months before the crash. I think he picked her because he knew she was dying. He targeted her, waiting for her in the snow that night to contrive a damsel-in-distress meeting. He knew she’d have little to lose, and maybe he thought the island could even help her. He married her and took her to Australia (honeymoon) to engineer the 815 flight and bring a select group to the island. This is not to say that he doesn’t love her now in his own pathological way, but that she was part of a larger plan, and the perfect cover.
- He got up to go to the bathroom and was gone for the entire crash.
- Bernard was in the tree after the crash,dry and pretty much uninjured. Goodwin was the one who “found” him there. I think Nathan also was a plant, either on the plane or from the island. Goodwin killed him because he was afraid he’d confess under Ana’s pressure. I also think Cindy was a plant.
- He could be
(from deleted scene), and that’s how he recruited the pilot. Or, the pilot was innocent and Bernard went into the cockpit to talk to him and did something to the radio. Then someone had the pilot killed after landing, I would guess.
- He got up to make phone calls at the gate in the Sydney airport. Who does he need to call from Australia? He’s a lifelong bachelor, so it’s not his kids. If you watch the scene in the airport in Rose’s SOS flashback slowly, you see this:
Bernard and Rose are seated at the gate.
A flight attendent who I think is Cindy walks by them. Then there’s a close-up of Bernard’s hands before he gets up, and if you watch it slowly, it seems that the takes
something out of a zippered pouch and conceals it in the fold of his ticket. You hear a zipper sound.
He gets up and as he walks toward the phones, and the flight attendant circles and walks by again, but this time
they brush past each other, and she has her bag
in her other hand. There’s a sign right above them on the wall that says “Communication,” which of course could be a coincidence. Then
she continues straight (towards the camera, not towards Rose), and later we see her return and
walk again walk towards Rose. It’s as though she and Bernard had some kind of prearranged exchange (of whatever that thing was in his hand). Maybe it was some form of the list, so that she could keep an eye on the “chosen” ones during the flight, or something to short out the radio?
And there are all kinds of little things that seem benign but may not be:
- Bernard was fixated on the radio in the Arrow after Goodwin died. He kept monkeying with it until Ana took it away. He may not have had a way to communicate with the Others and tell them what was happening. Maybe that's why Cindy, out of desperation, left.
- When the sky turned purple, they pointedly showed
Bernard protecting Claire and Aaron.
- He seems to understand Jin’s Korean.
- Rose said the monster sound was familiar. Had she heard it in connection with Bernard’s work at home (mini Smokey in the basement?)?
- He forgot Rose’s birthday – very out of character, especially for a man who knows exactly how many days it’s been since the crash.
- He gave Rose his wedding ring to hold during the flight. Maybe he planned for Rose to continue on to LA after he disembarked on the island and wanted her to remember him? Or maybe he has a wife on the island…
- The SOS sign he made. My crazy theory is that Bernard made the SOS sign on the beach to communicate a message to the Others (that Ben was trapped in the Swan, or maybe just that he himself was alive and had reached the camp). He may not have had an easy way of getting in touch with his people. Maybe he knew that they would see the beach on one of their surveillance monitors. Maybe the
weird DOS prompt sign that we never understood was a signal to the Others that Ben would try to get them a message on the computer, or that he was "ready" and things were in place (literally a prompt command). Maybe part of the reason Ben came to the beach in the first place was to meet or to help out Bernard. Remember, right at the end of SOS was when they sent Michael back to get the three others. Maybe they didn't take J/S/K in THP because the pieces weren't yet in place. They were waiting for Bernard's "prompt."
- Finally, if you’re a Dante fan, in the Divine Comedy, after Virgil travels through Purgatory and the circles of the Inferno and reaches the spheres of Heaven (Paradiso), it ends with him reaching the final (Empyrean) realm (infinite knowledge, enlightenment, the indescribable vision of God). If I remember correctly, only a few big time saints, like St. John the Baptist and St. Mary, reside in the last circle, and Dante’s last guide is Bernard (the big cheese of saintly guides and the only one who can bring lead Dante to his final vision of God). Basically, in the spiritual journey to enlightenment, Bernard is pretty much as high as you can go as a leader. I’m not saying that this is literally relevant, but it’s a nice metaphor.
Maybe his name is Bernard Jacobs, and the original list was of the people they intended to bring to the island (if the plane was meant to land, maybe those not on the list would continue on the LAX after a brief layover. I can’t get a good screencap of his plane ticket – it’s in motion and blurred – but it’s possible that it says
Jacobs. The second part says (I think) “Boarding Time.” It could say almost anything (Gate?); I can't really tell. But you never know, and the first letter looks kind of like a "J."
But then again, maybe he’s just a bachelor dentist with nice clothes and a Mercedes who met the love of his life five months ago, didn’t care that she was dying, took her on a honeymoon to Australia to pay $10,000 to a healer who was freaked out and couldn’t fix her, got back on a plane to LAX, disappeared right before the plane broke apart, and landed in a tree for Goodwin to find. He's just naturally the type to observe, listen, and not get involved. But he does have terrible teeth, for a rich dentist.
Sorry for the length!
Who knows if there's a shred of truth to it, but now every time I see him I see increasingly sinister motivations and subtext. Especially when he's with Rose, who's so at peace. I can tell part of him really cares about her, and you can see how conflicted he is, and how intelligent, just by watching his eyes. 
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