So after the last two episodes of Lost I have been trying to reconcile things we are seeing now with things we have seen in the past. One matter of confusion for me is the matter of Locke meeting "Jacob" when Ben took him to the shack in the jungle. That 'sitting in the dark' kind of scary figure just doesn't jibe with the Jacob we know now. On top of that "Jacob" says something to Locke when he's shaking the shack up (like "Help me"?). Was it actually Esau? It doesn't seem likely it was Jacob. On top of that the shack was protected by the ash from the smoke monster. Jacob doesn't need protection from the smoke monster and it couldn't be Esau because of the ash (unless the ash only stops Esau when he's in smoke monster form).
I think that there is a third force at play we haven't been explicitly introduced to ... the darkness. The darkness that got Rousseau's team, the darkness that has Sayeed, the darkness that has Claire and daddy Shepard(?). I think this is really what Jacob brought the new people to protect the island from. If so I think the height of the last season conflict will be the fight against the darkness.
We still don't know why Richard was in chains, why Esau is stuck on the island, who the new people from the plane are who seem to know certain things about the island.
