Question about The Swan and The Discharge

Mr.Nice Guy

I was watching the season 2 finale recently and I'm still left wondering about The Swan and The Discharge, specifically Ben's attitude towards the whole thing. We know that The Others knew about what was going on in The Swan via The Pearl station since Paolo, whilst hiding the diamonds, spots Juliet and Ben monitoring Jack in The Swan. Thus it stands to reason they knew Desmond was in there pushing the button as well.

Now then, when Locke was trapped under the door in The Swan he released Ben and told him to input the numbers and obviously Ben did just that as the numbers returned to normal. However, later on Ben tells Locke he never inputted the numbers and that the whole thing is a waste of time. This increases Locke's doubts and eventually leads to Locke refusing to input the numbers and the hatch implosion.

Now I'm wondering why Ben tells Locke this. Ben must think it is important work otherwise why leave the people in the hatch to put in the numbers and why input them himself? Yet he tells Locke it's unimportant work which eventually leads to the discharge and the people off the island being able to find the island. Ben however doesn't look too bothered when the sky turns purple and seems to be quite nonchalant about the whole thing.

The whole thing has me a bit baffled. Did Ben underestimate the hatch's importance? Was he aware of its significance?

What do you reckon?

Sad Professor

This has always bothered me too. I posted a lengthy theory about it a while ago. See here. The important bits:

Ben had been in the Pearl station and would have seen Desmond/Kelvin on the monitors so he definitely knew that Desmond was down there. The real question is: what did he know of The Swan and it's purpose?
....[My theory:]
Ben knew *of* The Swan hatch and that there was *a* guy down there pushing a button every 108 minutes. But he give a s**t because he didn't know The Swan's true purpose. He thought it was exactly what the Pearl orientation video told him it was: a psychological experiment. "This place is a joke," he later told Locke. He was only a janitor after all and thought all the Dharma stations were for "silly experiments". Everything he knew about the island he learned from The Others. Dharma kept The Swan's true purpose hidden from it's own membership. Even the guys in the hatch didn't know what it was for.

All of this is based on the assumption that letting the numbers count down to zero would have been disasterous and caused world wide catastrophe or destroyed the island or other bad stuff, which had Ben known he wouldn't have left Desmond down there, nor would he have been f**king around with Locke in season 2. He couldn't have predicted that Desmond would turn the failsafe key and save everyone.

And what was The Swan's true purpose? In this theory, a cork/dam over the island's volcano. Dharma accidentally dug too deep trying to unearth the island's secrets and opened a fissure in the island's electromagnetic core. This caused "the incident". Left open it could destroy the island but instead of just resealing it Dharma built a dam, The Swan, over it so they could siphon off some of that electromagnetism for experimentation or whatever. When Desmond turned the key he sealed that leak permanently.

[Ben] had to push the button because he needed to use the computer to communicate with his people (as Michael did with "Walt" earlier in the season). Plus he probably just wanted to f**k around with Locke a bit more. When he later told Locke he didn't push the button it was a half-truth. He did actually push it but he honestly didn't think anything would happen if he didn't.

I'm hoping Ben's next flashback will fill all this stuff in.

SP

Mr.Nice Guy

Thanks. I think you've made some good observations there.

Gillie

I don't think he knew.
He didn't/doesn't want the island to be found so why would he convince Locke it was BS knowing that Locke would not press the buttons at the next oppertunity!

I'd say he was just trying to size Locke up.