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The question sometimes arises as to why the Man in Black was able to kill Eko (assuming that Eko at one time was a candidate.) So what happened to de-candidatize him?

In my view, Eko gets knocked off the candidate list because by the time of his death he is genuinely attempting to serve God to his best ability. He doesn't recognize Smoke-Yemi's "right" to judge him. But that also invalidates him as a candidate, perhaps - because he wouldn't recognize Jacob's "right" to judge or emotionally manipulate him either, or to play Almighty with his life and actions.

For instance, Jacob tells the final candidates, "You were all flawed." They all shuffle and look side-eyed, but I don't see Eko having that response - based on what we saw with "Yemi." As a priest, Eko would probably chuckle at that and answer something like, "In Adam's fall, we sinned all." In other words, So what? We're all flawed. And Eko would know all about that.

Further, I can see Eko giving Jacob a stern priestly lecture on community and responsibility. Jacob's "I stay remote so that people will be good on their own" argument might have bamboozled Richard (whose knowledge of Catholic fundamentals was very poor), but that wouldn't have washed with Eko.

In the final encounter with Smokey, Eko submitted himself to letting God judge his conscience, and in my view that's why he was no longer of use to either Jacob or MiB. And thus no longer a candidate.

Just pulling together some random threads that might get stitched into something, or might not.

From this June 24, 2010 meta by James Schellenberg in Strange Horizons:

The sideways flashes are not an alternate timeline at all, but a limbo/bardo situation, where all the characters, now dead, have been accumulating, long after all the other events of the show. ... Apart from the flash sideways, I was 100% behind the notion that Hurley would become the next guardian of the island and do a far better job of it.

Again, this gets undercut by the flash sideways, because as is stated rather baldly, the most important part of these people's lives were the times of suffering under the mad god's rule. I like the idea of the evolution in the guardianship of the island, but it's treated glancingly. (link)

Sometimes you read or hear something, and your head explodes with insight. "The mad god's rule" says it all.

What the FSW is saying is that what Jacob did, what MiB did, was *more important, more significant* than any attempt to clean up and live decently afterwards. It's like a massive reward for bad behavior.

This also ties in with the Bardo Thodol, and what the sipa bardo is: it's basically created by *karmic illusions,* the kind that result from an inability to let go of your former life and karmic experiences, especially the bad ones. Or alternately it can be a deliberate extended dream state, full of wish fulfillment (until the nightmares start and the god of death appears.)

In essence the FSW says that your karmic illusions are just fine, thanks, and invites you to wallow in them.

Jacob = "God?"

Some parallels between Jacob and God - some perception of God, anyway. Some thoughts which came to me (and I'm sure there are more...)

- Jacob (up till this episode) has been unseen, yet a powerful force in the lives of The Others. He communicates with one certain person ("The leader") and apparently in some ways also with Richard ("the advisor," who seems to be a kind of "Aaron" to the Leader's "Moses.")

- He seems to be picking out certain "chosen" ones, and not always those we would expect. For instance, he intercepts Kate in thievery, and the first person saved by Jesus while on the Cross is "the good thief."

- Jacob has a nemesis; this relates to the Zoroastrian idea of a universe divided between the powerful force for good, and one of evil, eternally struggling with each other.

- Jacob now has obviously been shown to have some kind of larger-than-life powers.

- Jacob, like Richard Alpert, doesn't age - but Alpert attributes his lack of aging to what Jacob has done for/to him.

- Jacob is shown eating roasted fish by the oceanside. Jesus after his resurrection eats roasted fish with the apostles.

- Jacob seems to be able to bring the dead back to life (Locke after his fall from the window), or at least heal.

- He doesn't answer Ben's objections ("What about me? Me? Me?") with much, except something reminiscent of God's answer to Job when Job complains about his lot, i.e. in essence, "You are a noob and don't know what you're talking about."

- His silence in the face of Ben's accusations are reminiscent of Jesus's mostly-silent response to Pontius Pilate.

- He doesn't seem to fight when Ben stabs him (Jesus's willingness to die without resistance, even though he doesn't have to.)

- Jacob seems to dispense blessings, or at least tell people to identify the blessings they have (i.e. his encounter with Hurley in the taxicab.)

- Jacob seems "Aslan-like" to me, with his blond hair and beard. And I've thought more than once that The Island is like Narnia (Eloise Hawking *does* refer to "the lamppost"), with perhaps some kind of window into "Aslan's country" (the foot of the statue?)

- Jacob dies in what's already a "sacred space" (the foot of the statue/sanctuary.) Jesus was crucified on Calvary, called "the place of the skull" for a reason. Traditionally, Adam was said to have been buried on that very spot - the skull in Golgotha/Calvary was Adam's. So Jacob has died, perhaps, at the very point where 'it all began.'

* * * * *

Also, Ben seems to be a Judas Iscariot type. The folk thinking often makes Judas quite jealous of Jesus's attention. It's an expression of a real human conundrum - *why* does God "allow" some to suffer, and seemingly reward others so freely? From Cain on, the question still persists - "Why him and not me, when it comes to passing out favors?" That ties in I guess w/ Jacob "blessing" some and not others.