Ben's promise to Jack

[TheJuice]

I looked, but did not see this in any thread, so I hope I am re-posting, but...

Jack asked last night, and Ben promised, to be taken off "this island." Wouldn't this merely require Jack being placed back onto the original island? Technically speaking, this would fulfill Ben's promise, and Jack would be taken off "this island."

To date, Jack is not aware of the existance of the Alcatraz-island.

Again, hope I'm not covering old ground here - just some thoughts.

[LostNotForgotten]

This was discussed somewhere...not sure where though.

[Mcrobrewer]

I looked, but did not see this in any thread, so I hope I am re-posting, but...

Jack asked last night, and Ben promised, to be taken off "this island." Wouldn't this merely require Jack being placed back onto the original island? Technically speaking, this would fulfill Ben's promise, and Jack would be taken off "this island."

To date, Jack is not aware of the existance of the Alcatraz-island.

Again, hope I'm not covering old ground here - just some thoughts.


That is exactly what will happen.

[lost_in_lucidity]

That's what I immediately thought too. But that would be pretty cheesy even for Ben to play semantics like that. I don't think that's the spirit of the promise, but I could be wrong.

What I want to know is, did Jack ever officially ask to get all of the losties off the island, or just himself?

[bricarguy]

My wife laughed at the same thing...cept one thing...we know Jack is underwater, and we do not know how close he really is to Kate and Sawyer. He might be closer to the larger island. We have not seen the enterance to Jacks cell.

[andfound]

Think about what Benry said to Jack in that other episode (one or two ago) before we knew they were on another island; before Benry took Sawyer to the cliff. Benry told Jack that if he did what they wanted him to do, he would take him home. We all assumed home meant civilization, but it obviously just meant back to the other island.

[Chess1]

I think Ben would have kept his word and return him to civilization if Jack saved his life. Michael did a favor for the "Others" in getting Jack, Kate, Sawyer, and Hurley to their position. In return, Ben returned Walt to his father, Michael, gave them the Others’ boat and the coordinates where they are more likely to be rescued which hopefully is a heavy commercial shipping lane and not a path to the Antarctic. If you do a favor for them, they’ll do an honest favor for you. From what I’ve seen, the Others only lie if they need to infiltrate the survivors of Flight 815 or if the “Others” need something from them like Claire’s baby and other Flight 815 children. However, from what happened in the surgery when Jack (who is an impatient hothead) smacked the “Other” nurse, I doubt they’re going to keep their promise. Or they might screw Jack with further mind games even if he saves Ben. But then again, if Ben lives he might still keep his promise and return Jack to civilization or give him a boat to leave the islands, which might be an archipelago. This might be Jack’s peaceful exit out of the show like what Michael did and place Locke and Sayid in the main leadership role since a lot of fans here are starting to dislike Dr. Jack.

[mzsandeestar]

I think Jack should have asked for proof that they could get him back to the real world before he did the surgery. He should have asked for a video feed of Michael and Walt back safely at home.

[LightSide/DarkSide]

I don't think that Jack believes they have a way to get off the islands and back to civilization anyway.

[Chess1]

I’m pretty sure Michael will try to keep his cover low and will want to get rescued by some clueless Indian, Arab, Philippine, Chinese, Singaporean, Korean civilian merchant ship or fishing ship operating in the Indian Ocean. He’ll probably make up some story that his small tourist ship drifted off course from Australia and ended up in the middle of the Indian Ocean and deny that he was in Flight 815. He probably doesn’t want heavy press coverage in the US on what happened to him and Flight 815 which could lead to more questions. If he gets rescued by a US Navy or Royal Australian Navy vessel, or an American or Australian civilian merchant ship and commercial fishing ship, they’ll want to question him more about Flight 815 and track down their crash site. If they do track the islands and rescue the survivors, they’ll know he killed two people Ana Lucia and Libby since he spilled the beans to Hurley about it. If Michael returns stateside on his own, he’ll try to keep low and deny that he was on Flight 815.
As for Dr. Jack, if he really cared about Kate and the other survivors of 815, he would have bargained with Ben that he want all of the survivors out of the island and return to civilization instead of making all of the dramatics in the surgery room with Kate on the walkie-talkie or cell phone. That’s what struck me as odd from that conversation in that security room with Ben earlier.