the blast door map

more questions from closingspeed:

I just watched the 4th Missing Pieces installment, the one with Julia and Michael. I don't share your impression that Julia is anything but good. I think she is every bit the enemy of Ben that Jack is. She wanted Walt off the island because she knew he was in danger, that Ben would attempt to eliminate him as he did with Locke.

So here is my question. Assuming the others snatched Walt on Ben's orders...for his specialness. Why wasn't Locke on the list? I realize priorities had shifted. Ben needed a spinal surgeon. But there seemed to be no interest in Locke. To date, "special" has signified the ability to groove with the island. Maybe there is more to it than that.

hmm. i re-read what i wrote about missing pieces 4, and don't think i ever inferred that juliet was "bad." her situation at the time forced her to side with ben because he had complete control over her by essentially blackmailing her via her sister's health. i agree that she's 'one of the good guys,' (we know that now) but in these flashbacks, while her motives my still be against ben, her actions are still according to his bidding.

as for walt and locke - i think towards the end of the season it becomes clear that ben felt threatened by locke's potential to supplant him as leader of the others. this would not be the case with walt.

but let's look at that list that was given to michael:

jack
kate
sawyer
hurley

jack: 'wasn't even on jacob's list' according to pickett. clearly only there to do the surgery on ben

kate and sawyer: thrown together in hopes of mating, giving juliet a disposable, experimental pregnancy to work with.

hurley: as was shown, to go back and warn the camp not to venture to the other side.

so we can see that ben is already tampering with jacob's wishes. if only ben can hear jacob, then ben can say anything he wants and claim that it's jacob's wishes. locke could easily have been on the list the whole time. you can look at the interaction between ben and locke in the episode 'lockdown' (in which the blast door map is revealed) as ben's first investigation into what it is that jacob wants from locke. ben isn't jacob's slave, he's going to foremost do what he needs to do to hold onto his power. ben would have no reason to fear walt, and it will perhaps be revealed that walt did give him reason to fear losing his power.