6.09: Ab Aeterno

Man, did Richard (or Eyeliner as my bf likes to call him) get the short end of the stick or what? That guy's had a miserable life, and an "eternity" (as the title translates) to endure it. I never once would have guessed Richard arrived on the boat as a prisoner, or that he tried to murder Jacob. Jacob's another guy who's mellowed out with age, he was pretty aggressive with Richard trying to prove he wasn't dead by almost drowning him.

So what did we learn? We learned that somehow the "man in black" a.k.a. Smoke Monster a.k.a. FLock is some sort of evil spirit that's been captured on the Island, which is keeping the evil (guarded by Jacob) from spreading into the rest of the world. MIB is stuck there as long as Jacob's alive and he can't kill Jacob himself, but we know as FLock he got Ben to do his dirty work. I have to say that Jacob sounds a little evil too though, constantly bringing people to the Island for his little social experiments—where they all always die. Jacob evidently can't forgive sin, or bring people back from the dead, but he can give eternal life/youth...so my question is WHAT is Jacob? I'm also really curious why the MIB is stuck looking like Locke. He can shape-shift as we know, we saw him trick Richard by turning into Isabella and baiting him to kill Jacob. So who was the guy whose body he was in before? Why is he in Locke's "body" but his body's still in the coffin? Did they give away any other info. I'm missing?