I fear you are right - Edit 1
Before modification by Comet Sedai at 14/05/2010 03:14:18 AM
The original Guardian (and perhaps the one responsible for the "original sin" re: the monster inside the prison) rather seems to have found a loophole to pass his task, that sounds a lot like a punishment, onto some poor soul (the same routine going on at the hatch by the way... that soldier guy tricking Desmond who tricked Locke who decided to split the job between many people but tried first to shove the responsability on Jack, and so on). Mother didn't kill the two boys' mother because "her time had come", she killed her so she wouldn't ruin her opportunity to get out. I don't think Jacob sacrificed so many innocents from O-815 because "his time had come". Nah... it seems Mother, like Jacob and no doubt all the guardians before them, for all their "wisdom" and their striving to be "good" are just humans, couldn't bear their task anymore and were looking for a way out just as much as Smokey is, if with different ulterior motives. And for the guardian, the way out is to find some other person to replace you, then find a way to get killed.
If there's a reason to all this (maybe there isn't, nothing says the show's God is fair), humans/a human may be responsible for meddling with the Light or unleashing Evil in the first place, out of greed for the light (like Jacob's comitted the sin anew, maybe, though it's more likely some fool entered the Light and started it all), and a human must atone for this by being the eternal guardian to this monster, otherwise the world will end/be in the control of Evil.
Many of the questions I have posed in my post (and in my posts below) were written with a heavy sense of frustration with the show. In fact, you've done a great job of stating outright the ideas/suspecisions underlying a lot of my 'complaints', so to say--that is, the guardians are selfish, enslaved beings, aiming towards no higher purpose, for all the Others' claims of being 'good guys', of 'trying to save the world', or any other ridiculous claim they've made. I've suspected (and sometimes stated, in earlier episode dissections) as much, but this episode seems to have sealed it. My questions stemmed from a sense of SURELY YOU MUST BE JOKING, but perhaps they are not, and frankly, it is royally annoying. Six seasons, all building towards a great big nothingness of selfish people being selfish. Everyone is selfish, manipulative, and corrupted. Is that the message? I mean, obviously, no one (in reality) is perfect, and everyone has moments of failing prey to being selfish, manipulative, and corruptible. But it's as if there's no one to root for anymore.
I don't want any of the Losties to end up a new enslaved Guardian. I don't want Smoke Monster to escape. It's like Desmond says, it's all a game to these people, and the Losties are just pawns. Except that 'these people' seems to include just about everyone.