There's this island. It's a special island that lives and breathes through a series of intense electromagnetic wells. At the center of the island is its heart.
The island selects a guardian to protect its heart.
A long time ago, the guardian was a woman who we'll call Mother. Bored with her job, she happened upon two babies and decided to raise them as the new guardian. The babies where Jacob and the Man in Black. Being the manipulative mother that she was, she gave both sons certain power. For both they received eternal life, but for Jacob, she gave him the ability to set the rules for which he could govern the island.
The Man-in-Black banishes himself to live with the visiting humans. He discovers that they are evil and want to use the power of the island for their own good. The Man-in-Black allies himself with the visitors in order to use their knowledge of how to harness the island as a way to get off the island.
Mother, disturbed with the news, stops the Man-in-Black and purges the island of the visitors. Thus stopping their efforts. A fight occurs. Mother dies leaving Jacob as the new guardian and the Man-in-Black becomes the smoke monster and determined to see Jacob fail as the guardian. His mission is to kill the island.
Jacob now in charge has set the rules of a new game. There are two objectives: one, prevent the smoke monster from killing the island. Bring more and more visitors to the island to show that man is not inherently evil but can make the right choices.
Jacob brings Richard Alpert, Danielle Rousseau, Widmore and Gang, the Dharma Initiative, Yemi, Desmond, Oceanic Flight 815.
Interestingly enough, the Dharma Initiative is the most evil of the group. As scientists, they've been able to find each of the individual electromagnetic wells and built research stations on top of them. Each station has its own uniques purpose.
At one point they breached a well (The Incident). As a result they had to build the Swan Station on top and punched numbers into every 108 minutes and this caused all pregnant women on the island to die during child birth.
Because the Dharma initiative was getting close to finding the heart of the island. Jacob was forced to purge the island of the Dharma initiative and start over with Oceanic 815.
He carefully selected candidates and got them on the flight. Many of these selected candidates lived sad and troubled lives and they were often met with tragic deaths.
Soon the candidates, were whittled down to Jack and Hurley. After killing the Smoke Monster, Hurley becomes the new guardian after Jack sacrifices himself to resurrect the island from death.
With Hurley in charge and able to set the rules, he honors his friends from Oceanic 815 and especially Jack because he felt that Jacob had really screwed up their lives to play this stupid game with his brother.
Hurley creates the flash sideways. In the Flash Sideways, he gives each of his friends a chance for one week to be with the person they loved. Sayid and Shannon, Sun, Jin and Jeon, Hurley and Libby, Sawyer and Juliet, Ben, Danielle and Alex. Every except Jack and Kate. As Jack moves on from life to death, Hurley brings everyone together to let Jack know that he didn't screw up their lives but made their lives better. Jack even had a son David to show that he was not his father.
