"Harper's" appearance to Juliet: MIB?

[Fone Bone 2001]

We meet Harper - Goodwin's nasty wife - in Juliet's flashbacks in this episode.

Then she appears to Juliet in the present-day events of the episode, supposedly delivering instructions from Ben to kill Daniel and Charlotte before they complete their mission at The Tempest.

Does anyone else think it's extremely likely in retrospect that "Harper" in that scene was really the man in black? Some points to consider:

(1) Harper appears suddenly and disappears just as suddenly. This fits perfectly with how the man in black can pop into a visible human form and then vanish into thin air (as seen in "LA X" when Bram tries to shoot him inside the statue).

(2) The whispers are heard in this scene, too, and they often accompany crazy island happenings and visions.

(3) If the real Harper is dead (maybe she was on Tom's abduction team in "Through the Looking Glass"?), then MIB should have no problem assuming her form, since she would have died on the island.

(4) If the real Harper is still alive at that point, theoretically it MAY still be possible for MIB to assume her form, although it's less likely. We originally thought he needed the person he impersonates to be dead and their corpse on the island, but then he appeared as Isabella (whose body was not on the island). So perhaps the person needn't be dead, either, at least not for temporary, merely quasi-corporeal manifestations (as opposed to the more permanent, corporeal appearances of MIB as Locke and Christian)...

(5) Ben is good, but he's not that good. If it was the real Harper, how on earth could Ben - who was being held captive by Locke's group at the time - possibly have relayed his instructions to her? We saw later in the season ("The Shape of Things to Come") that Ben was not as "in control" as he appeared to be.

Besides, it's almost inconceivable that Ben would actually want what "Harper" told Juliet to do - nearly everyone on the island would have died (perhaps Ben, locked in that basement, would have been safe... after all, we know that Danielle Rousseau somehow survived the purge).

(6) Finally - and in my mind, most significantly - "Harper's" instructions fit perfectly with the MIB's overall objective. If Juliet had carried out her instructions, the poisonous gas would have been released again and killed off all of the candidates, and probably Jacob too. Then the MIB could have escaped from the island.

[mastyrwerk]

I agree with all of this!
Good deduction!

[Fone Bone 2001]

Thanks. It really seems to fit, and if it's true then I'm no longer annoyed that Harper never appears again.

[mastyrwerk]

Originally Posted by Fone Bone 2001

Thanks. It really seems to fit, and if it's true then I'm no longer annoyed that Harper never appears again.

Right! Cause if you're right, she never appeared to begin with (barring flashbacks, of course).

[Fone Bone 2001]

Yeah - if it's true, then the only time we viewers really met her was in the flashbacks of "The Other Woman"