But that's accepting the premise of him being evil incarnate which the flashback shows he is anything but, he's just a poor schmo whose emo brother tossed him into "the light". As far as we've been shown he's no more or less evil than his gullible twin brother who "killed" him. The gray area cuts both ways here...
Well, just to be clear: In the large scale of things, I'm not accepting either premise, I'm just presenting the one that is being ignored and Curzon was only presenting the one side without acknowledging the other.
What you suggest is a viable view of things. The ambiguous part: We no longer know who is good and who is evil, or whether TMIB should be left off the island...
IMO, the only people we can really trust at this point are the remaining exiles (Jack, Sawyer, Hugo, and Kate) because they're the only people with whom we are aware of all their biases; we've seen them for six seasons, explored their back stories, seen them at their best and worst. They're the only people we really "see clearly." Everyone else might be lying.
So we can trust their opinions.
It seems they're suspicious of TMIB... and not overly fond of Jacob either (except for maybe Hurley).
At any rate, I still don't understand why he can't just get on the plane and leave. Or why he hasn't done so at some earlier point (taken a sub from Dharma etc.) Jacob seemed to come and go as he pleased. Why not him?
I don't get that either.
Did Jacob really leave the island (thus leaving it unprotected?) or did he use the Lighthouse somehow? I have no idea how Jacob left and came back, without being dead.
I don't get why TMIB can't leave the island either. More rules we are not aware of? But here's an idea: TMIB insists they all leave together. Whether this was to kill them all in one swell foop, or whether this is because TMIB cannot leave if any Candidate remains behind to protect the island remains to be seen. it's obvious the TMIB is intimately tied to the Light -- when he was tossed into it, he emerged as the Smoke Monster, almost like a Jungian "Shadow side" of the Light. But no Candidate can remain behind if TMIB is to escape, that much seems true. As long as Jacob was alive, or one of the Candidates remains, TMIB is stuck.
I don't think either brother was allowed to leave the island until the current "game" was set up. Jacob did get to leave then. TMIB couldn't, and was not allowed to until Jacob was dead.
Yes, interesting.
And it gets back to the Game motif. What is the nature of the game being played?
Or Jacob and any Candidate that could replace him. Which TMIB wasn't allowed to directly kill.
TMIB killed other Exiles... (like Eko)... but never one of the main Candidates. And we've seen elsewhere that something was keeping Jack and some of the others alive -- incidents that should have killed them did not work. Which ones got protected? which ones did not? Why?
But most people were killed by other people or events beyond their control.
Reminds me of Ben and Widmore about how angry Ben was when Widmore (indirectly?) killed Ben's daughter. Neither of them were allowed to kill each other either.
Nice, I had forgotten about that momentarily. Yes, Widmore "broke the rules." What rules, what game were the rules part of?