The Last Recruit/Theories

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The Last Recruit

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The Last Recruit[]

It's All Relative[]

Instead of referring to a specific character, the title makes reference to all of these characters but just within different contexts.

This makes sense as it is centered in the remaining candidates plus Claire, who was MiB's first recruit.

Jack[]

The last recruit is referring to Jack, as he is the last of the remaining Candidates to allow the MiB to speak to him. As Claire said, Jack sided with MiB the moment he let him talk to him. MiB also says "you're with me now" at the end of the episode.
Jack is both The Last Recruit and The Candidate and MIB wants to seduce Jack to darkness.

Lost has been Jack-centered since the Pilot.
Jacob shows Jack special attention, telling him he "has what it takes" and showing him the lighthouse.
In Everybody Loves Hugo the MIB pays Jack all the attention when the camps merge and has a special talk with Jack.
The candidates escape on the boat but MIB is happy because he has Jack
MIB has been trying to get Jack off the Island since White Rabbit because he knows Jack is "The" Candidate.
Jack now believes he is "The" Candidate. He came to this realization following the Lighthouse and the dynamite on the Black Rock.
Jack has transformed from the "man of science" to the "man of faith", resembling the real John Locke.
Jack has the greatest sacrifice to make. All of the other characters have their temptation in both timelines (ex. the Kwon's have their baby in both, Sawyer is accepted as a good guy in both, Desmond has Penny in both, Sayid has/had Nadia in both etc.) Jack has to sacrifice his son who only exists in the flash sideways. Jacob's job is one for a solitary man, and by sacrificing his son Jack would be choosing a life of solitude on the island unlike anyone else who also have their loves in the OT.

Claire[]

Claire made the changes in this episode - She decided to go against MIB and get on the boat (despite Sawyer wanting her out and Jack being ambivalent), and she was the last to make this choice and get on the boat.
She was also the last major character that Desmond had to go get in the sideways timeline. Hurley had been visited last episode, and the other characters were already on a collision course with each other (Sawyer had arrested Kate and was about to arrest Sayid, Sun knew who Locke was and was with Jin, and Jack was about to operate on Locke) but Claire was about to drift out of the picture, and Desmond had to go get her and his actions directly resulted in her meeting with Jack. Don't confuse Recruit with Candidate. Candidate has a specific meaning in the Lost lexicon, but recruit is just someone you need to sign on to your agenda.

Sayid[]

The Last Recruit is Sayid. He is the only one who is still on MiB's side.

The Man in Black is losing control of the situation[]

The Man in Black may have "recruited" Jack (at least that's what he thinks) but other than that has lost control as he is now facing opposition in multiple locations:

"Team Widmore" has provoked him repeatedly and thinned out his followers.
"Team Richard" is heading for the Ajira plane to destroy MiB's escape vehicle.
"Team Sawyer" and Claire have separated themselves from MiB and pursue an agenda of their own.
- "Team Sawyer" is now actually part of "Team Widmore".
Sayid may have had a change of mind and would thus be no longer reliable.
Desmond may still be alive and perform tasks on the main Island counter-productive to MiB's plans.

Christian[]

Two "Christians"[]

There two different Christians (after Christian's death):

The Fake Christian (MiB) who appears wearing the clothes Christian was buried in (suit and white trainers). The fake Christian is The MIB who appears exactly how he was dressed in the coffin. Jack saw him standing in the water after the plane crash and he then led Jack to water.

He wasn't leading him to water, in that episode there is a part where Christian lures him into falling of the cliff. If Smokey really fears Jack then it would make sense that he would try to kill him early on.

The "real" spirit of Christian seen wearing casual clothes who appears to other people prior to the whispers. This the Christian Sun and Frank met, and who Michael met on the boat before he died. The real spirit of Christian can appear off island on the boat and at the hospital to Jack. The whispers have been described as talk of the dead by Michael so it would seem that the appearance of the whispers prior to both appearances of Christian to Michael and Sun and Frank suggest this is the spirit of Christian, not The MIB.

Maybe there are two Christians, but the one Sun and Frank met would rather be in connection with MIB since he told them to wait for John Locke.

Not All Appearances of Christian Shepherd are the MiB[]

After escaping the island, Jack sees Christian Shephard in the hospital in Los Angeles, as seen in Season 5 episode "Something Nice Back Home". As the Man In Black is unable to escape the island because of Jacob this apparition could not have been him.
- Jack hallucinated, the smoke alarm didn't go off, but rather his subconscious deduced that Christian that he saw on the island was in fact Smokey.
In the Season 5 episode "Namaste", Sun and Frank are speaking to Christian Shepherd in one of the former Dharma Buildings. During this scene, the black smoke is seen entering through the doorway. We have never officially seen MiB simultaneously take on someone's appearance while still appearing as the black smoke, so this version of Christian Shephard is most likely not MiB.
- That is proof that they are the same. There was the monster sound effect when Sun and Frank were at the dock right before they met Christian.
  - But FLocke was on Hydra with Ben at that time (or at least traveling from Hydra to the main island).
MiB is lying about being Christian. Jack saw his dead father.
- The behavior of "Christian" in White Rabbit is much more ominous than in any other appearance - I would think that this indicates that it was Smokey.

The Island and MiB are somehow linked and that the Smoke Monster was used to gather information on the Losties through the scanning and it was the Island that created or embodied all of the images that people have seen. It does not have to be the MiB per se that is appearing as these visions. Kate's horse was not on the Island for MiB to duplicate.
- In some scenes, Christian is carrying a lantern (Locke in the FDW well). When MiB first appears to Richard, he is carrying a lantern. Although this isn't proof that MiB is Christian in those scenes, the motif suggests a connection.

In the last webisode of The Missing Pieces (those are supposed to be part of Lost canon), "So It Begins", Christian tells Vincent "I need you to go find my son". There's no reason for the MiB to pose as Christian to Vincent and to refer to Jack as "my son".
Most recently, in 'Lighthouse', when Jin questions Claire as to how she can be so sure that the Others have Aaron, she says "first my father told me, then my friend told me" (her friend being The Man in Black). Since she makes a distinction between the two, it could be said that they are different people. Although, it's probably more likely that The Man in Black appeared to Claire as Christian, so as to make it seem like it was two different people telling her that the Others had Aaron, to make her more convinced. Also, it mustn't be forgotten that Claire has gone a bit crazy, so it's understandable if the lines become a bit blurred for her.

The sickness[]

Claire broke free of the sickness when she was told she was going to be taken home to Aaron. If she still had the sickness, she would have reported to MIB that Jack, Kate, Sawyer ect. were leaving the Island without him. Sayid clearly has, or at least had, the sickness because he was loyal to MIB and did whatever he told him to do.
- Other then Dogen's word (who is not the most trustworthy, given he was trying to manipulate Jack at that time), there is no reason to believe Claire actually had the sickness. She didn't display the same signs as Sayid, she only seemed to be a bit deranged from all the time she spent alone in the jungle, much like Rousseau.
  - Rousseau also seemed to gain some sanity (healed of 'sickness'?) when she realized she could be reunited with Alex.
  - Besides of a positive outcome in the future, integrating the sick into some kind of community, responsibility, and engagement seems to be a key element, much like a therapy for the mentally challenged.
- It may be worth keeping in mind that when Claire was seen in the cabin with Christian (not long after she abandoned Aaron and wandered in to the jungle) she was acting very cold and dissaffected, much like Sayid is now. Assuming that the point where she left Aaron is when she was 'infected', it's possible that the emotionless state is an early, transitory symptom of the 'sickness', and not a permanent state.
Sayid is healed too. His eyes have been opened by Desmond.