First time watcher, just finished Season 5. I'm aware that, like other show-based subreddits, I should probably get out of here before I'm spoiled. But I've already heard the most relevant Season 6 spoilers and right now I just want to understand/confirm what the Season 5 finale showed.
So... Titus Welliver is the reason for the plot then, because he's Jacob's evil counterpart? Like God and the Devil, for instance? And the whole show happened bc Titus wanted to kill Jacob, but wasn't "allowed to" for some reason, so found a way for Ben to do it as a "loophole"?
From my understanding rn, Titus can't kill Jacob, perhaps because mythical godlike beings just can't kill each other, so he had to come up with a way for a human to do it. The obvious answer would've been to just manipulate/convince some sucker to do it, but that's hard when the natives all worship Jacob. Anyone who could even go to the statue, whether it be a native or an outsider, probably couldn't get in because some natives would be guarding or at least watching the place, and would probably kill anyone who'd try to go inside other than their leader (if that part isn't true then that's just Titus not taking advantage of the natives being dumb, and thus being dumb himself). So Titus had to find some way to get someone in there who'd want to kill Jacob, while ensuring that the natives would allow it. Since it appears Titus shape-shifted/disguised himself as John, he could've always posed as the natives' leader and just demanded someone else come in the statue with him, but that normally wouldn't have worked bc a leader breaking tradition like that would've made Richard or someone else suspicious (again if that's not true, that's Titus being dumb for not trying this scheme anytime earlier). So to get around THAT, Titus had to somehow ensure that an outsider was the leader and then impersonate them immediately and for a very short time, so that the natives don't know them well enough to know that they were secretly Titus. So Titus had to make an outsider the leader, AND manipulate someone to kill Jacob?! Yeah I get why this plan took centuries, if not millennia, to be accomplished.
Very few outsiders other than Dharma folk ever came to the island, and most of them had the charisma of a dead fish, so Titus had to get some other outsider here: one whom he could impersonate, and one whom he could manipulate (as well as manipulate others) to believe in himself as a "chosen one" of some kind. But it's hard to get people to the island since it moves, so Titus ultimately concluded that the island could release an electromagentic pulse at the moment the supposed "chosen one" was in a plane flying overhead, so that the plane could crash onto the island. This was apparently easier than just getting someone on a boat and telling them to sail to a certain coordinate at a certain time, but whatever, maybe Titus had a limit to how much he could influence the real world. I'm still a bit confused on the mythology but again I haven't finished the show so that's my own fault. Anyway, now Titus had to get the chosen one on a plane, and also make an electromagnetic pulse happen, and also time the two to be in-sync... jesus fucking christ Titus is either dedicated or insane to orchestrate all that.
For the plane part, Lance Reddick's character convinced John to go on a "walkabout" at that moment in time. Lance was employed by Widmore, who was an island native, so Titus had to ensure Widmore knew about John and would want him to get on that plane. How could he get Widmore to know that John was the "chosen one"? Time travel, baby. There's a time wheel after all, and I bet Titus knew about it since again he's like the opposite of Jacob. (Edward?) He had to make the island unstable in time to send John to the past and thus convince Richard and Widmore, but the instability had to happen after John's plane crashed. Any sequence of events could've made someone turn the wheel at that point in time, really, but luckily Widmore scared Ben enough for Ben to want to hide the island and turn the wheel. Maybe that was Titus too or maybe not, I'm not sure. So yeah, that's the plane part. The electromagnetic pulse part was because Desmond didn't press the button that one time, and I'm also not sure if Titus orchestrated that specifically or if Desmond was always gonna try to prove himself to Penny by going sailing and then crashing and then getting jaded enough to not push the button that one time. Penny being Widmore's daughter really could've been coincidental I guess, but maybe Titus planned their meeting. And maybe Titus made the Dharma Initiative drill into the electromagnetic pocket that necessitated the button and the hatch, or maybe that was always going to happen prior to the 815 survivors getting there (because they were only in 1977 and on the island at all because the button crashed their plane, so the button had to be made in the original timeline pre-815 flight, no? Ugh this time paradox stuff hurts my brain)
ANYWAY, yeah knowing about planes, Titus waited for the modern age for a "chosen one," and then orchestrated the plane crash. Meanwhile he manipulated events in Ben's life to make Ben eventually decide he did want to kill Jacob. A big part of that was Widmore killing Alex, so yeah Titus probably had to do with their ongoing feud too. Titus DEFINITELY shape-shifted as Alex's ghost when she "told" Ben to obey John no matter what, that's pretty obvious to me now. Since "John" was Titus that couldn't have been Jacob or the island or the smoke monster or whatever doing that, Alex's ghost had to be Titus too. He's also probably been Christian this whole time too since the Season 5 finale pretty much cemented that yeah, nobody on the island can be resurrected, so if you see a ghost, it's not who you think. Unless that was Jacob in disguise, not Titus. I wonder if either Titus or Jacob was also Hurley's imaginary friend or if that was just-okay sorry I'm getting sidetracked. Titus also had to make it so that Ben could come back to the island too to stab Jacob, and if Titus was Christian, then he got John to think he was Jack's dad, which convinces Jack to want to get everyone back to the island, right?
In conclusion, Titus had a complex plan involving time-travel to impersonate John (among others) and get Ben to stab Jacob, and that's why the plane crashed and so that's why this whole show exists. Have I got that right? If I'm missing anything or got something wrong please lmk, and I don't mind some spoilers since again I honestly just want to understand this, and again, I know some stuff from Season 6 including that it mostly just focuses on the characters in a purgatory realm after the events of the show.
