Once upon a Wednesday dreary, I watched the fifth season series finale of LOST and came up with a theory.

I think that after the Tawaret statue was demolished, children could not be born on the island thereafter, which was the Black Shirt's plan in preventing people from surviving on the island. His next step was then to find a "loophole" to murder Jacob so that Jacob would stop brining people to the island so that everyone on it would die off. He wants complete dominion over the island, but Jacob controlled, which is why Black Shirt wanted to kill him all these years. Jacob was using the island as an experimental laboratory to prove to Black Shirt that people do indeed possess free-will.

The argument between Jacob and Black Shirt is whether or not people have free-will. Jacob says yes, they do, whereas Black Shirt obviously disagrees and is willing to kill Jacob to take over the island for some reason. To accomplish this, he goes to the outside world (off of the island) and tries to kill the kill Locke, maybe. Jacob nullifies this by bringing Locke back to life. Jacob has also gone off-island to appeal to various characters at just the right time in their respective lives to make them either end up on the plane, or make them go back on the Ajira flight, culminating in a resistance against Black Shirt once he is dead. Somehow, Jacob knows that he is going to die, evidenced by his letting Ben stab him. He was taking measures not to prevent his death but to unify his posthumous resistance against Black Shirt.

Thirdly, I believe that anyone on the island was brought there by Jacob to prove to Black Shirt and himself that people have free-will. Microcosmically, he started the Dharma Initiative with an invisible hand in order to have them carry out experiments to test people free-will (push the button experiment, polar bear cage experiment, etc.) on these different stations. In turn, Jacob would then have been able to see whether or not the experimenters themselves have free-will too. This all went awry when Jacob caused "the incident" back in 1977 somehow. Frustrated with this, Jacob confined Black Shirt to his little hut with the black powder we saw surrounding it in the finale when Illana and Bram went to investigate at Jacob's behest.

When Ilana and Jacob show up at the cabin where Black Shirt has been imprisoned since 1977, they see Black Shirt is not there. Furthermore, they see he has escaped because the ring of black powder that has kept him in the cabin is ruptured. Jacob knew in advance what was going to happen and that he was going to die, and that Ilana was going to show up there as he told her, so he deposited a clue to tell her where to go next in order to find Richard. The burlap piece that was pinned to the wall of the cabin was stuck there with a long knife. This was the same knife that, in the opening scene, Jacob had used in the 19th century to cut his fish. This indicates that Jacob, knowing what Black Shirt had in store for him, and that he would go to the statue to meet him there, planted the clue to tell Ilana to take the coffin there. He did not to avoid dying, but to have Richard, Ilana, and Co. there when it happened, probably to stop what Black Shirt is planning to do next. As to why Locke (Black Shirt) brought all of the Hostiles there in the first place, this is anyone's guess. This is just my conjecture.

Black Shirt now controls the island, apparently, but Jacob said, "They're coming," before being kicked into the flames. Black Shirt, apparently, believes that as a God he has direct control over everyone and is not subject to their free-will, much unlike Jacob, who believed in them having a choice. I think Black Shirt is going to try to kill everyone, but not because he is the "God of Death." Come on. There must be an underlying reason for their feud, stemming back further into the mythology. If they do have a choice, then Faraday was right, and none of this shall have happened, right? Everything else has been closed-loop so far, which would seem to mean that they merely time-traveled to the present.

My last thought: I think the statue broke when the island first travelled in time. The tope of statue, being so high, did not travel with the rest of the island. This does not explain why there but one foot remaining, but maybe that was Black Shirt's Half, and when the feet weren't connected by the top he made it disappear... or something. How else can anyone explain why the statue is sliced clean at the knee, without any of the rubble in sight?

I have a picture to illustrate this which I'll include in a later post once I have proved my mettle as a non-spammer. I need 10 posts to link or place images in a post, I think. Sorry.

When Sun, Jin and Sayid took Desmond's boat to try to rescue Jack, Kate and Sawyer in Season 2, they came across the statue and it only had one foot in 2004.

So would you say that Jacob would feel vindicated about his freewill theory because most of the losties have redeemed themselves on the island, prooving free will can be good. Many of the losties killed someone prior to the island but also killed on the island to protect themselves. Proof that everyone has good and bad in them and that under the right circumstances will sacrifice for their friends.

Maybe blackshirt (as you call him) has been causing the rifts and chaos among all the inhabitants in order to eliminate them all from the island. This coupled with the absence of children would eventually lead to an extinction.

However, Widmore, Ben and Charlotte wanted desperately to get back to island (and later the Oceanic6). Ben, Charlotte and the Oceanic6 succeed, but not Widmore. How will blackshirt prevent everyone who left at some point, from ever finding the island again. Also, do you think Jacob caused all the arrivals? (BlackRock, hot air baloon, the DI, Danielle and crew, Desmond's sailboat, Oceanic 815, the freighter and flight 316.)

I wonder why Eloise Hawking never tried to help Widmore return to the island via the Lighthouse. We saw them discuss their son Daniel in season five. It is was so easy for flight 316, why didn't Widmore join them?

the thing that i'm confused about is:

in the beginning of the episode, Black shirt is talking like "oh, here we go again" type of attitude and he wants to kill jacob. so jacob is really the one that has trapped everyone in the loop and black shirt wants humanity to be free.

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I love my beautiful turnipheads...

Ben sais that when he came to the island the statue was already like that (just a foot) yet in 1977 several years after ben was at the island Juliette delivers a child (healthy) Also if the statue if the statue is the casue of fertility one could assume that men who have a 3x heigher sperm count on the island would no longer have this, yet Jin knocks up Sun.

so the statue would have to be destroyed between 1977 - 2008 which I dont think it was since there would be remains & would have had to have been either the others or the darma initive which did it, also with the time travel & the loss of the statue, where is the second foot? also there are mountains on the island which are larger then the statue & the radio tower is likely just as high as well.

I believe you can have a child, but the woman dies. Therefore, eventually the island would be all men, since there is a 50% chance for a female to be born and a 100% chance for the mother to die.

this is not true, the fetus is attacked in the second trimester, killing baby and mother, they say this on a few occations.

I am not sure their argument is about "free-will" per se. Blackshirt clearly states "They fight, they steal, they destroy, they corrupt. It always ends the same." Jacob responds with "It only ends once--everything before that is just progress." I get that Jacob tells Ben that he "has a choice" and all, but I think it's hard to look at what the two say to each other and interpret it to be free-will vs non.

Also interesting that Blackshirt refers to other humans as "they." It, to me, implies (and this comes as no surprise to anyone) that the two are higher spirits.

well presented theory englishmuffin. I think you've got something.

But you have ignored any religious connections of the notlocke and jacob. also at the end of the episode the teaser for next year was the word "destiny" with smoke in the background.

There is definitely an aspect of free will and destiny in the show. and we have seen for years how locke believed there was a plan, while jack believed that that there is none, there is just what people do.

I don't think of what jacob is doing as experiments so much as tests. i think if Jacob did bring the dharma people to the island (i think) it was in an attempt to have them (with their scientific experiments ) coexist with the others (and their worship maybe).

and maybe smokey or blackshirt/notlocke is the one constantly pitting people against each other on the island.

that statu is lost atlantis's god. this can be checked. you can read the old book about atlantis fairy tale. Jacob was a member or a boong of atlantis, and there are some others boongs, they are really powerful. Jacob and his people and even the island was sent to exile from Atlantis. did you notice the figure on the machine which was pushed every 108 minutes by Desmond? the bird and something else, and these words were the old words of old atlantis. and there is another big evidence. that statu, he hold a thing which looked like this: ♀. do you remember that, I can;t remember his name exactly, a darma member died, and people take a neck chain form him, and the shape of the chain was like that.