Men in Black 3: The DHARMA Initiative
I’m going to go ahead and call the man who wears black Adam… not because I think he’s the biblical “first man” Adam, but just because that’s the name Locke gave him and Man in Black is getting flippin’ annoying. The quotes from the episode were copy/pasted from Lostpedia. If you’ve already read this theory posted by someone else just ignore me… I haven’t been around much lately and I’m still getting caught up.
There are strong similarities between the situations we saw in Across the Sea and the saga of the DHARMA Initiative, particularly in the purge. The DI was like Adam’s people from way back when (the Men in Black). They were men of science who had discovered the island’s power and were looking for ways to harness it. I believe their intentions were good but they were looking into ways to use the island’s power so that Adam could find a way to leave. He was tricking them… using them the way he used the original Men in Black.
Adam: I’ve lived among them for 30 years. They’re greedy, manipulative, untrustworthy, and selfish.
Jacob: Then why are you with them?
Adam: They’re a means to an end.
Jacob: What end?
Adam: I’m leaving, Jacob…I found a way off the island.
Eventually they were killed either by Jacob or his people, probably because their research and whatnot was becoming a threat to the island. Jacob took the same action his Mother took by killing the DI and just like when she did it everything started to unravel and eventually he gets killed… stabbed with the same knife even. At that time Adam was one of those people… he was left alive though and that might be what allowed him to kill her, despite the rules. That’s the first time the loophole was used. That’s where Ben becomes significant. He’s the one from the DI that was spared. He was taken in by Jacob’s people and not killed in the purge… later, it’s Ben who is able to kill Jacob. That’s the loophole.
The question then is, does their mother have a group of followers on the island that we didn’t see? Should we call them the Press Corps? If she does then I guess my Truth About the Purge theory goes into the trash… if she doesn’t then I suppose I’m probably right about the purge and it was Jacob that actually killed them using some kind of power he inherited when he took over as island protector…
Mother: “Now, you and I… are the same”
In our time it’s Ben who fulfills the role of Adam in the killing of the island’s protector when he stabs Jacob. Ilana takes the role of Jacob by pretty much literally dragging him through the jungle intending to inflict a punishment worse than death by making him dig his own grave and basically live his final hours in abject terror. In the end though she lets him live… she forgives him and gives him understanding instead of killing him in anger like Jacob did to his brother. This is kind of a vindication of Jacob in a way because I think she reached her decision to forgive him based on things Jacob had taught her. Unfortunately for her, this seems to have been her purpose and once it was done she was free to arzt all over the place.
So it happened differently this time and it makes me wonder what that means. For years and years (centuries even) there’s been this strife on the island… Jacob lives there protecting the island and Adam has been stalking around ripping up trees, killing people, making threats… just basically having a tantrum all that time… Knowing Adam’s back story now makes it possible to understand his feelings a bit… tell me that, as a fan of Lost, you can’t understand the frustration of not get the answers you’re looking for… I think Adam will be leaving the island soon, compliments of Jack and remaining crew… he’s going to be with his brother and his mother.
So who’s the loophole for Adam? My vote is for Claire.
dont think theres another loophole, but the short conversation you focused on between the brothers made me smile. Jacob smiled at the same point I did. Adam says the people are bad and states the reasons they are bad (lie, cheat, steal) and then says they are only means to an end. That means he is at least lying to them if not cheating and stealing. He is bad by his own definition.
i meant hes manipulating them, or whatever. it doesnt matter. hes bad.
It’s not another loophole… it’s the same loophole. Adam’s mission is the find a way to kill the island’s protector. He realizes that he’d done it before. Up to the time when the DI arrived on the island Adam had been killing the people Jacob brought to the island (most of them at least)… why allow the DI to stay? He allows them to stay and encourages them to study the island’s power and to try to find a way to use it in order to force Jacob’s hand. To make Jacob kill them, thus opening up the loophole.
The DI had their fences… They took steps to protect themselves from the smoke monster. But what about the drain in the closet where Ben goes when the mercenaries are attacking? Seems like someone within the DI was communicating with the monster secretly.
nice catch on the similarities between the two situations but i believe it is not the loophole. i think it is the writers simply referencing and mirroring other similar important scenes, as they are wont to do.
the loophole is just getting someone else to kill jacob for him. he tries with richard, no dice. so jacob realizes he needs to protect himself better and creates a buffer with the others led by richard.
I’m loading my theory up with comments… sorry.
So Adam is tricking the DI. He makes them believe that there’s a monster out in the jungle and that their fence protects them from it. In reality he’s living with them just like he was with the original Men in Black. I wonder who he was… and is this related to the Others demanding the body of that guy that was killed? Seems like it might since Adam has a thing about being dead people. Maybe by taking it they think they can show it to the DI if Adam takes the form of that guy to show them who they’re dealing with. Exactly the same way Ilana and crew took Locke’s body to the foot.
Richard was his first attempt at killing Jacob. I don’t think he realized yet what it was he needed to do in order to kill him.
ok i like the adam being part of DI idea. a lot. he probably joined lots of those groups, learning new technology, etc.
This theory makes alot of sense. On another note, the only thing that I can tell, that MIB & Mommy Dearest had in common was the same concept of people. “They come, they fight, they destroy, they corrupt.” They both have said this quote, thus being the only thing I think they could ever agree on.
Right, they do have that in common… They’re probably not that far off, either.
Jacob is a different kind of island protector than his mother was. He brings people to the island and doesn’t manipulate and use them (this could easily be argued though). Adam lives with the people and uses them so I guess I can see mommy doing it too.
highbrow you make a good comment about the MIB and the DI, maybe studying them to see if they can harness the power of the island. From just last episode watching MIB work with the people on the island learning from them and what not i think we can conclude that MIB was not the person in the Cabin. If it was MIB then why did he flip out when they turned on the flashlight, if he hates technology so much then why is he learning from the people on the island, and creating his own ie FDW
Yeah I really like the idea that Smokey allowed the DI to exist on the Island because the work they were trying to do was in his best interest. You think that Smokey would allow them to build the Orchid right next to his frozen wheel? The DI didnt have fences everywhere.. just around the barracks, and most of the stations were nowhere near the barracks so they were open to attack from Smokey quite often and for a very long time (20 or so years).
Yeah, totally… either they had a stupid habbit of operating outside their protection or they didn’t actually fear attacks from the smoke monster. They did understand that it was important to keep certain aspects of their research a secret from Jacob’s people. The Others had rules about where the DI could operate and the DI was trying very hard to be secretive about thier operations at the Swan and the Orchid.
I definitely think that he’d let them build next to his donkey wheel… obviously, since Adam is still on the island, the wheel hasn’t worked for him. He’s using the DI to come up with a new solution.
Christian was the one that pointed Locke to the wheel and even met him down there and told him to turn it. I assume that was Adam as well?
Adam has already admitted to being Christian at least once (when Jack saw him on the beach and chased him into the jungle)… I’m not sure to what extent the appearances of Christian were really just Adam. Maybe not all of them were. I don’t see any reason for him to appear to Locke at that point as Christian since Locke didn’t know Christian from Adam (ha ha)… but then again, the line “say hello to my son” gave Locke a convenient conversation starter for when he met Jack at the hospital…
perhaps smokie took the form of Radzinsky? WHAT A TWIST! haha but radzinsky seemed really focused on getting the swan built. digging. maybe he was influenced be smokie
That would be a twist… I’ve been looking at the list of known DHARMA members on the island and if the smoke monster actually is one of them then Radzinsky would be my first guess. The only problem is why did he kill himself? I guess maybe he could do stuff like that just to eff with Inman…
A few weeks ago i was actually going to write a post asking why the sonic fences weren’t around all the Dharma stations. i never got round to it but maybe if the thoughts here ring true then my question has been answered…..
Wow I really liked what you said “This is kind of a vindication of Jacob in a way because I think she reached her decision to forgive him based on things Jacob had taught her”..
I cant help but feel that it was MIB that was assigned the protector of the island. You said yourself that the smoke was known as the islands security system…
I think its meant to seem like Jacob is, but MIB is doing the job unknowingly almost.
And Jacob bringing people to the island doesnt seem very secure…MIB doesnt want them there…he is now preaching his mothers words, “They come, they fight, they destroy, and they corrupt”…
I know he is looking for a candidate, but Mommy taking him to the well/light and telling him “and dont go down there” is like a mother telling her kid not to push a button…wouldnt you want to know what the button did?
She gave Jacob every ingredient necessary to transform MIB into the monster.
She killed MIBs people, drawing him in to kill her, trying to possibly show one of them that people are indeed evil…EVEN thanking him afterwards…
She knew what was coming, and wanted to die.
She showed Jacob where the well was, telling him that it causes something much worse than death…and Jacob knowing he cant kill MIb, does the next best thing he can think…
And by doing so, all the times she told MIB he was special, or tried to push manipulation as a good thing was ultimately setting HIM up to become the islands protector.
So…do you also think we will go back and see the purge and whatnot from the past?
I dont even know if Im on topic anymore…
No, I don’t think we’ll see the purge again. There’s not enough time for it… I think part of the purpose of this episode was to show us certain things and how they’d happened in the past so that we can better understand how/why they happened later as an indirect way of answering island mysteries. So when mommy dearest kills off the Men in Black, we’re seeing the purge again.
While I can definitely see the merit behind those ideas I really don’t think we have time left in the series to have more of this kind of deception. Jacob is the island’s protector. If it was just a trick on the part of his mother why would he have any powers now? He obviously has them, right? How old is Richard?
Adam seems to be willing to tear the island apart in order to leave it… We’ve already seen once for sure how he allowed people to eff with the island’s power, and if this theory holds then he did it at least one other time with the DI. Protector indeed.
@I_Am_Jacob: The sonic fence is dumb, scientifically. I’m sure the DI had a plan when they set theirs up and when they put the Swan and Orchid outside the fence… they had to put those stations where the energy pockets were, right? They must have had a deal with Smokey. I can see them hiding it from the others, but not from him. Besides, I believe the fence is just for show. The DI is in cahoots with the monster and they have a back door built in for him to have access to the barracks. It doesn’t keep the others out either since Richard is indestructible… he can walk right through it.
Charles Widmore, apparently, isn’t so good at planning his fences since the last time he set one up he left the generator on the outside.
Ok, so I was commenting on another post and decided that they’re both supposed to be the island’s protector, only Adam isn’t playing along. I think that mother had intended for them to share the burden, Adam with the dark, Jacob with the light, but things went all crazy. Now the dark is trying to escape the island instead of staying to preserve the balance. Jacob is dead, so the balance is upset… Now all that’s left is evil until the balance is restored. I think Adam is going to be destroyed and so someone is going to have to take his place but I wonder who that’s going to be… or maybe it’ll be one person to represent both like the mother did…
I wonder… Does anyone think that all there is under the island is the light? Maybe there’s dark too… like maybe light under the Swan and Dark under the Orchid or maybe the other way around.
As I have watched the series, I’ve tried to keep tabs of who were the “good” guys and who were the “bad” guys, only to come to the conclusion that all the characters are essentially flawed and all have performed some truly egregious acts in an effort to protect the purity/sanctity of the Island or some personal and idealized set of convictions. Make no exception for Jacob, for ultimately it was anger, sadness and jealousy disguised as an act to protect the island from corruption that lead to the killing, or at the very least a brutal and violent assault on his very own brother.
I think in fact that it is Adam, as you call him, who has been the protector of the island, as said by A.E.S. This does seem to be the plan the mother intended, but I think Jacob picked up on her method of manipulating the circumstances to arrive at an outcome of her desire and perfected it. Jacob then began to develop is own game, to be played by his own set of rules, just as suggested by Adam when they were talking as children. From the moment Jacob sent Adam floating into the tunnel of light…on…Jacob used his mother’s tactics of manipulation to deceive and control all those he contacts. I’m not positive that Jacob has absolutely no special abilities or “powers”, but he has managed to convince all those on the island that he is special, without anyone really seeing any proof (besides Richard of course, but even Richard’s immortality could be attributed to his contact with Adam and not Jacob).
There are many themes that run throughout lost, but for the sake of this idea, I can’t help but focus on the theme of manipulation and it’s importance to each character’s perception. And how many times have many different character’s alluded to the fact that Jacob, and his relevance to the island, is grounded on faith and speculation, most of which originated with Jacob himself?
It’s hard to imagine that Adam himself has been tricked into believing that Jacob is the man at the top of the totem pole, and maybe Adam knows the truth, but even Adam has made several comments to people not to talk to Jacob because he can be so convincing.
So what if the candidate that Jacob has been looking for all along is not a replacement for his position, but actually a replacement for the man in black? Not only would the candidate be a new protector of the island that Jacob considers to be more worthy or deserving of such a title, but also in replacing Adam, the candidate could finally complete what Jacob was unable to do himself all these years…eliminate his brother.
Jacob’s touch is another example of Jacob’s power… even though we don’t know for sure exactly what it did, we know it wasn’t insignificant. Jacob is also able to bring people to the island which may actually be the same power or something similar.
The conversation between Jacob and Adam when Jacob gave him the wine bottle kind of indicates that it’s Jacob who will be replaced. Adam says he’ll kill him and Jacob warns him that he’ll just be replaced… We don’t really have any reason to believe that this is a misdirection… nobody other than the audience was privy to their conversation. It would be silly for them to lie to each other about that.