The “LOST” creative team took a huge risk this week, taking a sharp detour this late in the season and unabashedly plunging into fantastical mythology. And, given the payoff from “Ab Aeterno” earlier this season, we give them a great deal of credit for doing so. But “Across the Sea” seemed to fall far short of that ambition. It was a grand tale, but strayed into melodrama, and told us little that we hadn’t already been told. The good-evil polarization that had thus far developed with Jacob and the Man in Black became ambiguous again. And the one answer to a long-standing question was both overplayed, and underwhelming.
Last week’s episode put into stark relief the fact that our collective hearts are still closely tied to the timeline we’ve followed since season one, no matter how clever or resonant the flash-sideways exercise has turned out to be. Similarly, “Across the Sea” tried to give us insight into the two sides of an epic battle in which our survivors are apparently just pawns… and mostly convinced us that we’d prefer to follow the story of those pawns, rather than pick apart the game.
Yes, there’s something mystical on the island that connects to the very essence of man, or perhaps life. Yes, harnessing or exploiting that power inevitably drives man to destroy itself with greed. And yes, the island and this power has had a series of protectors, and a dark side that cannot be allowed to leave. Seeing all these things explored (and explained) on screen was interesting. But feels unnecessary. Only time will tell whether “Across the Sea” will be a key part of understanding the whole of “LOST,” or a curious distraction.
The character of Mother says that answers only bring more questions… a fact she embodies herself. She, too, was looking for a worthy successor, somewhere among the people who come to the island. What better candidates are there than innocent newborns? She raises two, chooses one, and welcomes her own death once the mantle has been passed. So we’ve now been shown the end of the preceding cycle, and know that “LOST” is leading up to the next transition. So where did Mother come from? And where did this eternal cycle begin? I guess, like a circle, there simply may be no such thing.
And the all important rules? The emphasis on the games that Jacob and the Man in Black made up tonight suggests that “the rules” are not rules imposed upon them by some higher power or construct, but some arbitrary set of restrictions they’ve set for each other.
After tonight, I’m no longer confident we’ll get a coherent explanation for the ultimate nature and overall purpose of The Island. Though “Across the See” makes me think I might prefer things left unexplained.
We did learn that Jacob and Man in Black were brothers, as many had suspected. And the rivalry and ultimate act of fratricide echoes the biblical tale of Cain and Abel. Jacob, the older brother, kills the Man in Black, who was the favored son. (Mother tells the Man in Black that he will never have to worry about death as a child, and she does not deny to Jacob that she loves the Man In Black more.) And we did enjoy the limited scenes the adult brothers had, which made up for the unfortunate reliance on child actors to carry the first half of the episode.
But after the events of “Across the Sea,” its hard not to again feel sympathy for the Man In Black, and question the assertions of Jacob. The Man in Black only wanted to leave the island, to leave the woman who killed his mother behind, and return to his true home, among people. Meanwhile, Jacob was a hapless mama’s boy whose worldview, however validated by Man in Black, was inherited from a woman who basically settled for him and who denied him any choice in succeeding her.
It was nice to learn that the Man in Black was the architect behind the Frozen Donkey Wheel, but now we’re wondering who eventually finished building it? When the wheel was imaged by the DHARMA Initiative in “Because You Left,” was it already assembled? At first I thought DHARMA must have connected the dots that the Man in Black left behind. But then I remembered that the wheel was working when Locke turned it, which was much, much, earlier. (Before, even, the well had been dug?) And why was the underground chamber freezing cold when Ben visited in 2004?
And we did like how “Across the Sea” suggests that “The Purge” of Season 3 was also part of the unending cycle of life on The Island. Perhaps the DHARMA Initiative, like the Man in Black’s people, were getting too close to “the light,” and had to be violently exterminated.
But did Mother destroy the village and slaughter its residents? As well as fill in a deep well and underground excavation? All before the Man in Black woke up? The moment when she slams his head into the wall of the well was violent enough that I could believe she has some kind of superhuman strength. But the scale of the destruction is so great, I couldn’t help think the smoke monster was involved.
But the smoke monster was created when Jacob cast the Man in Black into the light. Right? It somehow released his inner, darker, flawed essence, but left his body behind. A body that provided the form in which the Man in Black appeared (such as in the conversation with Jacob on the beach), until John Locke’s body arrived. And a body that Jacob could recover and leave in the cave with Mother.
And voila, there we have Adam and Eve.
As “LOST” reveals go, we have to be honest: learning the identity of the skeletons in the cave from Season 1 felt pretty hollow. To be fair, though, this is largely due to factors outside the show. It was one of the mysteries explicitly described as key, a reveal that would prove that the creators and writers of “LOST” had the endgame in mind when they introduced them in 2004. That they were a character introduced in Season 5 and his mother? It doesn’t give me the reassurance I was expecting. Locke described them as Adam and Eve. Jack said they were a female and male, and that they’d been there 40 or 50 years. We had time travel. We lost several couples. It would have been just as satisfying had they turned out to be Rose & Bernard, after all.
The anvilicious insertion of clips from “House of the Rising Sun” made the moment even more frustrating. Seriously, if you were a latecomer to “LOST” who didn’t know why it was significant that black and white stones were placed with two bodies laid to rest in a cave… would you have missed much without the flashback?
Last week’s episode felt like an episode of the last season of “LOST.” This week’s episode felt like a distraction. A sometimes beautiful, certainly daring tangent, but one that — at least at first blush — we feel like we could have lived without. We have only one more episode to get us back on track, and a series finale to wrap things up. We’re nervous, but still hopeful. We still love “LOST,” golden glowing caves and all.
- The Man in Black’s lack of a name was already absurd coming into “Across the Sea.” When Claudia says she only picked one name, the whole conceit collapsed into ridiculous. Now we’re hoping he doesn’t have a name at all. It’s hard to imagine any name being satisfactory.
- Seeing Mother smash Claudia’s skull moments after she gave birth was a shock. And, of course, both Jacob and the Man in Black end up getting raised by someone who wasn’t their mother, and both were clearly shaped in their own way by hardcore “mommy issues.”
- Interesting choice to transition from Latin to English fairly quickly during the episode. It wasn’t a “Hunt for Red October” transition, but still noticeable. Especially when Mother switches back to Latin when she pours the wine for Jacob. Was that to show she was speaking a different language that Jacob didn’t understand?
- Mother was tired and said her time was over, and handed things over to Jacob before he was ready. We can only assume she’d been the island’s protector for decades, if not centuries. But what brings about this inevitable decision to find a successor and check out? When Jacob let Ben stab him, was he also grateful for being released of this burden?
- Mother distrusts people, and denies that there’s anything beyond the island. Why? It seems almost as if her kidnapping of the twin babies was part of a weird experiment to see if people could be raised absent evil? After all, they had to ask, “What is dead?” But even without the influence of people, whom the Man in Black lived among, Jacob exhibited jealousy and rage.
- Mother tells the boys that she’s made it so they “can never hurt each other.” Except Jacob easily pummeled the Man in Black as a kid, and ultimately brought about the Man in Black’s death.
- I’m not entirely sure why the golden glowing cave was so hard to find, yet so easy to find. I think we’re supposed to think that its waters are the waters of The Temple, which was probably built to keep people away. Meanwhile, the specific well (of many wells) that Man in Black worked with will end up beneath the Orchid. We did get a little “LOST” geography lesson tonight, whether or not it makes sense.
- If Jack is indeed Jacob’s successor, who will administer his little cup of wine?
- Why was Jacob unable to see the vision of his dead mother, while the Man in Black could talk with and follow her? She says the reason is because she’s dead, but that’s not exactly an answer. Now that the Man in Black is a disembodied smoke monster, he certainly has communion with the dead. But did this ability predate his transformation?
- We were thrilled when we first heard the news that Allison Janey was cast for this episode. And given some of the lines her character had to deliver, its clear the role couldn’t go to a lightweight. (Frankly, the dialogue was often too heavy for even her.) Still, as an actress, she’s almost larger than life, and we have to admit it was a little distracting. It was the closest thing to “stunt casting” we’ve had on “LOST,” and we’re glad they didn’t make a habit of it.
We’d love to hear what you thought of the episode. Please comment below! Or, email us at lost@hawaiiup.com, or leave a brief (about a minute) voicemail on the LOSTline at (815) 310-0808.
Darlton have said that there will be some people for whom the conclusion is wholly unsatisfactory, and I think we are beginning to see some of that now. I guess if you were in it for the answers, for the ending, you may be disappointed or even feel duped. If you were in it for the ride (and what a ride it was!), then the overall experience would be very satisfying regardless of the answers received (or not) by the end.
I definitely fall into the ‘it’s the ride, not the destination’ camp.
So, after a night to reflect on Across The Sea, what DID we learn.
First, the nameless woman who raised Jacob and the boy without a name was likely an early version of the smoke monster but somewhat different. She was like the current smoke monster in that she seemingly can get violent and do mass killings (the original group of Others who were digging wells. She wiped them out.) Yet, she also was like Jacob in that she views herself as the protector of the island and its power. Yet, she is tired and wants release. She wants to be replaced. By grabbing Claudia she hoped that the baby would give her the opportunity to raise her replacement. What she got was two children, one light, one dark. The light boy, Jacob, is pretty naive and she can control him and virtually everything he does. The other, the nameless dark boy, is uncontrollable. He sets his own path and wants out of this island existence. Who can blame him?
The boys like to play games. The nameless boy sets the rules and Jacob follows them. Yet, the nameless boy tells Jacob that someday he can make up his own rules and we know that he does – candidates, you can’t kill them, you can’t directly kill me, numbers etc.
The nameless woman knows that Jacob will best serve the island and that she has to try to stop his brother from doing things that are against her or the island’s rules. She does little to persuade him to do good, perhaps knowing that he has a purpose, i.e. to kill her at last once she has passed the mantle on to Jacob.
Jacob is incensed to her death and takes revenge on his brother, pushing him into the light. What comes out is the current smoke monster with none of the good part that the mother had in her iteration of the smoke monster. In essence one protector with both good and evil has become to entities, Jacob (the naive one chosen to protect the island) and the current smoke monster (evil and wanting nothing more than to escape just like Jacob’s brother.) It’s as if Jacob’s brother went into the light and what came out was only his bad qualities. Still it’s not hard to feel sympathy for him. He was manipulated by the nameless woman, betrayed by his brother and now trapped in a form that he never wanted. No wonder he wants to kill Jacob.
So for the next 2000 years (apparently the script confirms that this all happened two millenia ago according to the new Geronimo Jack’s Beard podcast) Jacob sets his own rules, plays his game and brings many, many people to the island. Why? I don’t think he’s looking for a replacement. He’s looking for the one person or group of people who ultimately can put an end to all of this insanity. He’s looking to put an end to the island once and for all. We all have been led to believe that the candidate is to replace Jacob. We’ve fallen into the wrong trap.
I really liked this episode. It was pure kind of origin myth. It explained the motivation for the two characters who have set our story in motion. I like the fact that we will never know all the answers. It’s like any origin myth. If you keep asking questions like “where did so-and-so or such-and-such came from, you just get more questions. Myths can never fully be answered.
@Bonita: I understand that reasoning, but if Smokey is not Jacob’s brother, then Jacob killed said brother. (which begs the question of why they would include the line Mother said “I made it so you can’t hurt each other”…) In any case, why doesn’t Smokey simply kill Jacob? Ben was able to! Mother’s death demonstrates that the “protectors” were not immortal, and Mother killing Jacob & MIB’s real mother demonstrates that the protectors were not limited by rules. It’s a very weak plot point.
Up until this episode, I had been wondering if MIB was Satan (I was expecting Mother to name him Damien) and Jacob represented Good (but not God Himself, since he was clearly mortal). Now I that we know that they were both born mortal, I almost feel disappointed. But wait, they never age, right? Or at least Jacob doesn’t. So is the golden waters the fountain of youth? How else does Jacob get the power to bestow the gift of a certain kind of immortality to others (Richard?). This episode did not clear much up and we are RUNNING OUT OF TIME!!
I believe that Mother was Smokey before. I think she knew EXACTLY what would happen if you were greedy and went into the light and that’s why she warned the boys against it. I believe that is how she killed the villagers and filled in the well so quickly. I think it is why she was so grateful to be killed at the end and why she had to be killed from behind.
I am so glad we only had one episode with a “magical forest” and Mother. It felt a little too Grimm’s for my expectations, and I thought they would find a leprechaun looking for his magically delicious charms at any moment.
I am a true fan-girl but this one jumped the weaving loom and donkey wheel in a single bound.
Mother was definitely talking to the whole audience when telling Claudia that every answer will just lead to more questions. The writers made it clear that this was as far as they would go in giving answers about the island and it’s purpose. This message would have been easier to take sometime in the past 5 seasons.
Does anyone have any guesses as to what this means for Desmond and his purpose on the island? Does his apparent immunity to EM effects give him the ability to undo what Jacob did when he sent his twins body into the light?
Ryan and Jen, I applaud your frank blog post. Look forward to hearing the podcast!
I wish we were able to do a Sunset on the Beach for the Finale. The S6 premiere was the highlight of my Lost journey.
This episode makes me worry about the finale. I will always love Lost and will never consider 6 years a waste. No matter how it ends I will always appreciate it for what it was. An amazing journey. But, that being said, I think I am justified expecting an ending that I can process and understand. It doesn’t have to be “my ending” or anything like that. But I want to at least know what all the fighting was about. I get the basics, I have a feeling for the island’s purpose. But make it worth losing so many of our beloved characters. Make me understand enough to care.
My frustration comes from fear. When that final black screen with Lost comes on, I don’t want to still be lost. I don’t expect to know everything, have everything answered for me. But I would like resolution.
Here’s hoping this episode is made clearer. Damon and Carlton wrote it, I know it is important. But this episode fell flat for me. Just when I was ready to hate MIB, I feel sympathy for him. Is MIB no longer MIB at all but a smoke monster imitating him? Is there nothing really left of him? And if so why does smokey still want to go “home”.
I think when Jacob threw MIB into the cave, he set the evil free to roam the island. The evil took MIB essence (or soul), and left his body. The evil did the samething with Locke, so now smokey has the essence of both MIB and Locke.
My theory is that, to get off the island, smokey now has to kill all the other candidates and take thier souls, in order to be strong enough to leave the island.
Just a thought.
@Carol “Is MIB no longer MIB at all but a smoke monster imitating him? Is there nothing really left of him? And if so why does smokey still want to go “home—
I think that what came out of the cave was a hybrid, i.e. what you get when the nameless brother mixes with the island’s light. His form is smoke, but I think he is also largely the brother still, just in a more powerful and vengeful form. Even when he takes the form of others, such as Locke, he is still part brother and part island power. It seems almost as if when a human enters the light what emerges is his most dominant traits, in the case of the smoke monster, someone who longs to leave the island, hates his brother for creating him, vengeful, yet in many ways a sympathetic being since we now know how he was created.
@ John Fischer-Brilliant! The candidate is not to replace Jacob, but to end the cycle!
@Rachel – Remember that Jacob said, “it only ends once.” We should have picked up on that right away. He wants the cycle to end.
@John – thanks it makes sense when you put it that way. I feel a bit less frustrated now.
I think the funny part of all this is the theme of the show is “black and white” “good and evil” instead it seems like gray. A mixture of everything.
I like the idea that the candidate just ends it all. That would satisfy me as an ending.
It’s important to keep Jacob’s brother and the smoke monster who took his form as two seperate entities.
Jacob’s brother wasn’t pure evil; he just had a mind of his own and wanted to leave the island after he found out his mother was ‘fake’ and had killed his real mother. He did act in rage in killing his fake mom yes, but it was only after his fake mom knocked him out, destroyed his means to leave, and all of the people he lived with for 30 years.
That person was killed by Jacob. His body was sent down the well which triggered the release of the smoke monster. This evil thing took the form of Jacob’s brother. While it had the memories and traits of MiB, it was NOT him just like it is NOT John Locke but has his memories and traits.
So remember that the human MiB was flawed but not inherently evil. The smoke monster which took his form is.
I agree with the questions posed. And I’m a little irritated at the flashes of the characters finding the bodies. I think we could have figured that out ourselves.
Just saw a theory posted on another board, that the wine was really the mother’s blood. So could “the infection” give immortality?
@Bob ::In any case, why doesn’t Smokey simply kill Jacob? Ben was able to! Mother’s death demonstrates that the “protectors†were not immortal, and Mother killing Jacob & MIB’s real mother demonstrates that the protectors were not limited by rules. It’s a very weak plot point.::
I think you can only be killed if you want to be killed or allow it to happen. The light clearly has a life-giving power. It is or fuels the temple water which healed young Ben. Its influence presumably gives the whole island general healing powers (which we should remember if Kate seems to recover from her gun shot wound quickly). One assumes that Jacob used the light to give Richard his gift.
MIB could kill mother because she was ready to go. She had already made Jacob her successor by doing something with the wine that infused the light into it. She knew it was coming and accepted it. Jacob clearly was willing to die.
@John Fischer and others,
It doesn’t quite tie in neatly that Jacob created a game with his own rules just like his brother did with the game from Mother. In the game, you CAN break the rules (i.e., you just move the pieces in some illegal way). But on the island now, you literally CANNOT kill a candidate. Jack knew that he would not be blown up by the dynamite in the Black Rock, and sure enough, he wasn’t. That isn’t like a “game rule”, its a physical law of the island universe. Can Jacob control such things? Well, since he can convey eternal life to Richard, perhaps so. Well, how did he get such powers or to learn that he had them? Oops, sorry. You aren’t allowed to ask such fundamentally significant questions, scold the producers.
THIS is the sort of thing that those of us who are frustrated are talking about. It has nothing to do with wanting to be “spoon-fed”. That’s what they did in explaining the whispers, and it was stupid. Nobody is asking for that. But completely failing to even address things that are fundamental to understanding the show is really unfortunate, lazy and irresponsible, IMO. It would be easy to address these things without answering them directly and without spending an entire episode on backstory. It would be easy, that is, if the writers had an answer. I think they do not. I think they created a phenomenon without any idea of its origin themselves, and now they are trying to make their failure to address it into an intellectual virtue. Frankly, its somewhat insulting.
On the topic of whether or not Jacob’s brother became the smoke monster or died and released the smoke moster:
I initially thought this was ambiguous and perhaps even left deliberately ambiguous by the writers. But on further reflection and from reading comments here, I have decided it is pretty clear Jacob’s brother became the smoke monster. The monster told Kate about having a crazy mother. The monster, upon seeing the white stone in the cave, tells Sawyer it is an inside joke. The monster’s line to Jacob in the final episode of Season 5 that they come, they corrupt, they destroy, etc. is a direct quote from the woman who killed his mother. The monster tells Sawyer that he used to be a man but had his humanity stripped from him. And clearly the monster’s intense desire to get off the island is something that carried over from Jacob’s brother at an early age. I am sure we can find more reasons I’m missing.
Re: The episode in general:
After sleeping on it, I have mixed feelings about the episode. On the one hand, I enjoyed the mythology and thought it was a good story. But on the other hand, I think I have hit the wall of realism where I see that the writers are not geniuses slowly revealing a story that they had planned all along, but just television show writers making up a story as they go along. Now don’t get me wrong. I think they are good writers. And I still think it is the best television show I have ever seen. And I would put a LOT of space in between Lost and #2 on my list. But I am left after this episode for the first time in the series thinking, wow they really had no clue where they were going with this story. They could have done a thousand different things with the identity of Adam and Eve. And what they decided to do could have been thought of one week before the filming of this episode.
In short, I have dropped some of my unrealistic assumptions and hopes for the rest of the show. And I’m just going to try and enjoy the rest. But I don’t think that will take any kind of effort on my part. I still expect a great 3.5 hours of television left of this show and I look forward to it.
Regarding mother and smokey. I like the theory posted above that she was Smokey and protector and her role got split between MIB and Jacob. It seems clear that some version of Smokey took out the ancient others. Those wells are too thoroughly destroyed to be the work of a middle-aged woman. The other possibility is that she had the power to control Smokey and let him out. We’ve seen elements of that when Ben released smokey on the freighter thugs by draining the water.
I feel cheated by tonight’s episode. I guess my expectations were too high. I love LOST and I will watch all the way until the end, however, I feel question will not be answered and the show will leave us all with a finale of such of an open question…
I believe the end of the show will be that Jack is taking the place of Jacob, the monster will take the form of Jack’s sister and the the answer of what is the island will just not be answered.
Anyhow, I am here for the ride all the way to the end.
Perhaps MIB was stillborn and smoking possessed him from day 1. He was released when the body was destroyed.
@ Bob from Oxford – I totally agree with your last post. This episode was a culmination of a growing problem this season – forcing rushed SPOONFED answers that don’t fit the tone/tempo of the show and do seem to indicate that they weren’t as 100% sure of the backstory as they implied.
Stuff told to us in the first few seasons was done with more confidence than the actual explanations we’ve been getting. Things like the numbers, the well, the rules of the game, etc were all presented as critical, or artificially critical and meant to drive the Losties to make choices.
But now we are being told that a lot of the important stuff was just silly side things with not much weight behind it.
I mean am I the only one that now thinks that the “Jacob has a thing for numbers” line from many episodes ago is going to be the final answer to how a set of numbers is broadcast to sea, wins the lottery, shows up on a hatch, shows up in key places of Losty lives, and so on.
I think they need to go back to not giving us answers, or they should have taken another season so they could wrap things up in the slow unfolding fashion of the first 5 seasons.
Had Lost started off with shows of the caliber of this one I don’t think it would have made it.
PS – an episode without the main characters also showed how critical the main characters are to the enjoyment of the story. The ride I’ve been on has been with them, island or flash stories. Those actors and stories have been amazing, far better than the mythology for me.
The MIB’s descent and what his Fakemom said about the cave and it’s light sounded vaguely familiar to me, and now I know why. I haven’t seen this mentioned yet, so I’ll post it here.
‘Life, death, rebirth.’ read the following passage from Wikipedia on The Well of Souls:
“…that the souls of the dead gather in the well of souls to wait for that event [Day of Judgement], and to pray.
According to pre-Islamic folklore, the well of souls was a place where the voices of the dead could be heard along with the sounds of the Rivers of Paradise; the cave is now known to have no exit apart from those leading to the surface of the Sakhrah, and the sounds have been argued to be a resonance effect similar to hearing the sea from seashells.”
Hmmm, voices of the dead reflecting around? What Michael said about being unable to pass on and what we see in Smokey (scenes of other people’s lives; think about what we were seeing as it passed over the pit Claire and Kate were in)? The well of souls would make sense given a Judeo-Christian-Islamic version of the end of times. When the end comes, the world ceases to be…. when the bottle is uncorked, that’s it, game over, and mankind will not have any more chances to redeem himself, he will only be judged. And that is what we have seen Smokey do – scan and show people what they have done and seemingly judge them (or act on judgement that was passed on them from somewhere else). Jacob wants to prevent this, to give man more time to show that he does more than fight, kill, and corrupt. Smokey gave up on men when he was MIB and now he just wants it to all end.
I was fine with out the critical characters….but..i hate to say it..i have a feeling, at least from my “hoping”..i’m afraid i’m going to be disappointed with the end. I”m totally stuck on 1 line
“every question I answer will simply lead to another questionâ€
i don’t think there is an end..lost and the writers have shown and done everything out of the norm with the show..that is why we all like it so much…BUT..i think that whole theory is going to hold true with the ending..or what is going to be called the end. I’m still on until the end..but i’m prepared and ready to accept to be disappointed and unhappy with the end.
Jim
I do not believe there was from the beginning a master plan for the story. The writers have been winging it for a long time. That they have pulled off as much integration of widely scattered spectacle as they have is a testament to their brilliance. That there are numerous holes is a stigmata that stains, one that must be overlooked and forgiven to gain satisfaction from the show.
☛ Two players, one game, no winner.
☛ No gods, just (frail) humans.
☛ Science rests on Faith (the faith in Method, Theory, and Instrument)
☛ Faith rests on Science (the science of Inquiry, Expository, Structure)
☛ We are Losties, confronted with observations and a need to make sense.
☛ The world of Lost isn’t real — any attempt to over-archingly explain its many contradictions is to invest it with a reality that it does not have.
☛ The numbers really have never been explained — does that torture you?
☛ I still want to know who Wallace is, and if he will make an appearance.
☛ “It only ends once. Everything is else is progress.” Does this refer to the show itself? I wonder how self-referential the show is, and whether the ultimate reveal will be that the show itself is a game: Darlton vs. Audience. So far, I think Darlton are winning hands down.
@Yann From France
The reason I care about his name is because they made such a a point of not telling us and names have always been significant on this show and my guess is his name will provide possibly some explanation. Many names are more like easter eggs like all the names of various philosophers- but that has been something I have enjoyed on this show…the many little planted eggs – some of them clues…some of them just fun.
Damn! Can’t resist getting up from what I’m doing to keep going back to this thing! 🙂
OK– the Source, the light– because it is so powerful, it magnifies already existing traits, as others have pointed out…. that’s why Mother warned Jacob never to enter there. (Nice of Jacob to beat his brother and let him enter there under the circumstances!)
In this episode, Jacob seemed incredibly lame compared to his eternal self– so did the drink contain a smaller portion of the light and hence enable his latently good qualities to later emerge in a kinder, gentler way? I mean, I was in love with the more powerful Jacob– he seemed to basically be a mystical incarnation of good. As a kid, though, he was a follower, a patsy, without a mind of his own (obedient). A far different animal than what he turned into, it would seem.
I’m guessing that the candidate will help others figure out how they can tap the light within– the idea that a small part of it is in each of us (an old God theory that’s been floating around in different religions for some time). The gentle realizations of “flash sideways” seem to support that. In other words, God will always be powerful and ultimately unknowable- but he is within us, as well. If you try to unleash his power (a la the atom bomb?)– you potentially unleash some serious destruction, as well as awesome energy. I wonder if the Jughead blowup has anything to do with that notion?
Yes, this episode almost seemed intentionally underwhelming– the characters were not what I expected, and Jacob was a lame disappointment. But I’m thinking/hoping they’ll address that– they’ve done too much brilliant stuff along the way to enter this lame episode without a reason. Particular since D and C had a hand in it.
Well see! I trust ’em! (woman of faith!)
I believe “Mom” was also a smoke monster. How else would she be able to kill dozens of people and fill in the pit? She also appeared to know the fate of anyone who entered the light. She must have done this at some point in the past.
I believe she wanted to die as she said “thank you” when stabbed by MIB. Its very likely that only certain people had the ability to kill her. Similar to how Floke must be stabbed with the special knife before he talks to you. Island “rules” I guess. She manipulated the boys so that she could pass on her responsibilities and die.
Not sure why they won’t reveal the name of MIB. No name will likely be satisfying at this point.
Maybe it is not the wine that made Jacob live forever, maybe it was the cup he drank from. As in “The Holy Grail”.
Mother was Mary Magdalene?
Eloise Hawking and Charles Whitmore are in the order of Knights Templar? Their duty to protect the cup and its secrets.
The light at the center of the island emanates from the Ark of the Covenant.
Here are my remarks, without having read all of the other comments on here. I thought the episode did a good job of telling us the piece of the story we needed to see at this point. Now we know some points like who Adam & Eve are, but also where the recurring themes come from.
Let’s take it from a sci-fi point of view. Say the golden light is a metaphor for a spot where multiple universes and causality collide. A physical point were time and all possibilities come together and the barriers between worlds gets soft and mushy. Then you take some ancient culture that figures out how to manipulate it… and we’re back to Forbidden Planet.
So causality(fate) can be manipulated by a human mind. Big surprise reality gets wrapped up in all the screwy cyclical nonsense and warped weirdness of our brains. Even a normal person would eventually cause the destruction of everything given what lurks in our inner chimp psyche… let alone the screwed up issues of those two brothers.
…
My prediction, Jack becomes the new Jacob and chooses to let the Nameless one leave.
The one thing I’ve always wanted as a conclusion to all of this is for all the people involved to sit down, stop lying, and talk out there problems. Let’s face it, is there any real reason why the players involved had to go around killing people. Ben’s Others had houses and resources… they could’ve helped the plane survivors instead of tormenting them. It’s all the secrets and lies that have been destroying everything. That and whatever reality twisting issues caused by Mother and Brothers.
During the language transition, I thought of Red October too, so it wasn’t a big deal to me. With Red October, it was just Russian. It sounded like there were two languages being spoken between Mother and soon to be dead Mother.
Maybe it’s not mommy issues, but daddy issues all along. Maybe “Mother” was possessed by someone who was originally male.
After a good night’s sleep, I’m not as negative on the episode. It wasn’t awesome, but it wasn’t awful and did provide somewhat of foundation. But lets just get back to the original programming, shall we?
Now I’m bummed I didn’t get tickets to the NY Times talk. Darlton will definitely get a question or two on this episode.
Well, I don’t know. After sleeping on it and reading Ryan’s post and everyone’s comments, I’m still as ambivalent about this episode as I was after watching. It was kind of interesting to see Jacob and MiB’s story, but I agree with Ryan that at this stage of the game (no pun intended) it felt like a distraction ~ almost, dare I say it, a Nikki & Paulo moment!
Fundamentally, I’m left almost more confused than ever about the nature of Jacob & MiB’s relationship and the rules. FakeMom made it quite clear that the brothers couldn’t hurt each other and that MiB (they *really* need to give that poor kid a name!) didn’t need to worry about death. And yet Jacob easily killed him; whether he was dead before floating into the light and was killed by Smokey, or whether he was alive and somehow transmuted into Smokey when his essence commingled with the light, Jacob was the causal agent of his death. So what did FakeMom do to ensure that the brothers couldn’t hurt each other, and how was Jacob able to overcome the stricture so easily?
Last season, we saw MiB tell Jacob how much he wanted to kill him, with the implication being that he was unable to because of the rules of the island and/or of their relationship. Hence the whole long con with John Locke and the taking over of his body so as to manipulate Ben into killing Jacob. But if Jacob was able to kill MiB in a fit of rage, why was MiB prevented from killing Jacob? Was it simply because he was non-corporeal? This kind of fundamental flaw in the show’s internal logic, particularly when it involves elements upon which major plot points hinge, really bothers me. And given how much I love Lost, believe me that’s no easy thing to say!
Couple of other things…
Ryan, you said you thought Smokey might be the manifestation of MiB’s inner, darker, flawed essence. Fair enough, but personally I think Jacob is much darker and more flawed than MiB, behind his Zen exterior. He resented his brother for their entire lives because he knew that FakeMom loved MiB more than she loved Jacob. After MiB (justifiably) killed FakeMom, all of that rage erupted and Jacob killed his brother in cold blood, while MiB pleaded with him not to do it. That’s some deep seated rage at work, and I think Jacob is a classic case of suppressed simmering emotion, while MiB is more a what you see is what you get kind of guy. Certainly his actions in his Smokey incarnation have been evil, but the place from which they sprang wasn’t, in my opinion.
I agree with everyone that the flashforward to Jack & Kate discovering Adam & Eve was incredibly distracting, and to me it felt almost like the writers’ way of saying “See! We had it all planned out from the beginning!” It was just too much hand holding, especially for the Lost audience, which is famously tuned in to the most minute details of the show.
Anyhow, those are a few of my thoughts. I’ll stop now and get back to seeing what everyone else has to say.
Mahalo!
@hammer – I agree and I also believe every question does NOT HAVE to lead to another question if the writers gave us definitive answers. The people are on this board are diehard fans and even we have problems with this episode. I imagine the casual viewers are even more upset. If I didn’t listen to podcasts or follow this blog I would be even more confused.
Yes theorizing is fun, but having actual answers is also fun and less frustrating.
@Seth – Coolpeace posted a link to a NY magazine article yesterday. IN that article and others I have read (last week’s EW) Damon and Carlton state that the first year they were winging it and not everything had a plan. The hatch was the plot point they decided to concentrate on. Adam and Eve probably didn’t have a real source at that time. Jacob was something that was thought up in the second season and the seeds were planted there. MIB and Jacob was not in the equation.
@Kate – your post made me think of Richard’s comment about Jacob never telling people what to do. Jacob is a follower, he manipulates but does he lead? If Eve wanted someone to blindly do what she wanted she had that in Jacob. MIB was constantly curious and wanted more and she must have known she couldn’t control him.
I think the whole opening scene with “Mother” and Claudia is a good parallel for Darlton and the fans.
– Mother acts all friendly to Claudia and carries her from the shore, just as Darlton brought us into their show with a compelling opening.
– Mother gained Claudia’s trust as she nursed her wounds and gave her nutrition, just as Darlton initially fed our intellectual craving for mysteries, puzzles and interesting character development.
– Mother answered an initial question from Claudia, just as Darlton every so often threw us a bone and answered a single question among many.
– But no sooner has she done that, Mother petulantly scolds Claudia for asking another question and insists that she will answer no more because it will just lead to more questions. Just as Darlton refuses to answer most of the questions that they have left lingering throughout the series and insists that it is an unreasonable burden to do so.
– Mother delivers Claudia’s babies, suggesting again a care and concern for her, just as Darlton dutifully produced episodes sprinkled with the occasional tying up of a loose end, hinting at concern for the audience.
– Yet in the end, Claudia’s humanly inquisitive nature was more than Mother could stand, so she bashed her over the head and killed her. Similarly, Darlton can’t be bothered with the questions or desires of their fans. They are too inconvenient. The show is over, the baby has been delivered, and they are going off on their own, leaving us lying bloodied on the rocks.
At least Mother had the decency to apologize…
@Matt – that was brilliant. 🙂
@steve Says:
May 12th, 2010 at 5:34 am
Regarding tickets to the NY Times talk. Fathom Events will be broadcasting the talk to theaters across the country. My wife and I will be attending in Minneapolis. For those interested in finding a theater near you, here is the link.
http://www.fathomevents.com/OriginalPrograms/event/TimesTalks_LOST.aspx
I posted my write-up on “Across the Sea” this morning, which you can find at http://www.cousinbrandon.wordpress.com. I just now added this update, as this thought literally just came to me…
Any chance NotMom (Allison Janney) was also a Smoke Monster?
Hear me out. I forget exactly when it happened, but I just remembered a scene early on in the episode when you could hear the familiar clickety-clack of Smokey. In fact, my brother noticed it first and rewound it on TiVo. Next, NotMom is very specific on Jacob never entering the cave of light, even though she says it the source of all power and essentially good. Well, as we know, MiB is floated down and emerges as Smokey. Well, what if NotMom actually took a similar trip downstream and was herself converted to a Smoke Monster? After all, she was eventually killed at the end of the episode by the “special†dagger. (And by the way, she didn’t speak to MiB first! See, it matters!) Finally, remember how MiB’s people looked when he awoke? They were slaughtered and laid out, with everything burned to the ground. You mean to tell me NotMom did that? I don’t think so.
@tvscifi – yeah, I know it’s in theaters, but it would have been awesome to watch it live, in person Hey, maybe after this episode, there will be some people who will give up their tickets 🙂
I loved the episode, I liked that “Adam and Eve” where MIB and Mother, leaving us with 2 bodies with no names still. I think that is much more interesting to the mythology of the island than Rose and Bernard, though it would have been terribly romantic and coll in the 12 monkeys sense but really we last saw them living alone 30 years ago on the island and the 2 stones would just have been more confusing as Rose and Bernard couldn’t be to more good people we have seen on this island.
As far as the flash backs please remember not all of the millions that watch the show obsess like we do, they don’t listen to your great podcast, they don’t read the blogs, they don’t know of such a thing as Lostapedia, they don’t know about ComicCon or the great shows Damon and Carlton have put on and for that matter they don’t even know who they are other than some of the names that flash before them in the end credits. There are millions of people that watch because Sawyer and Jack and Kate are Hot, they watch just like any other show and may not remember something from 6 years ago that was really only mentioned once then and then again this season on the side. Remember many people lived in that cave for almost a whole season and the bodies where only really mentioned when they find the cave.
I don’t know if we will find out the name of MIB but not sure if it matters anymore, he isn’t that person but just using that body like he is now using Lockes. Jacob put the body into the cave which let the evil out so maybe it really is the Devil and like the Rolling Stones said “Please to meet you, Wont you guess my Name” Loved it love the ride just like a good book not all chapters are as good as the next but the story as a whole is pretty awesome.
Thanks Ryan and Jen for all you obsession on the show and putting together a great show about this great show!
Matt– hilarious analogy there, thanks! 🙂
In a simplistic vein, a huge theme of the show is faith versus doubt.
Jacob = (blind) faith
MIB = doubt, that led him into some (unasked-for) bad shit
First Locke= Faith, moved into doubt
Jack– started in doubt, is moving into faith
According to EW, D and C, both very spiritual men, have cast their lot with faith, so my guess is thee ending will have a lot to do with that theme….
Cousin Brandon,
Yeah I think it is quite possible.
Another idea that might go hand in hand:
We know the smoke monster can appear as people whose dead bodies are on the island. What if she took the form of their dead mother to appear to man in black so she could show him his people? What if she led Jacob to the light knowing that he would throw his brother in when his brother killed her? Could she have turned into the monster and killed those people in order to provoke man in black into killing her and provoke jacob into throwing him to the light? How else could she have known the result of entering the light if she had not already done it herself?
Has anybody heard anything about this?
http://www.tvguidemagazine.com/daily-watercooler/lost-finale-crisis–5030.html
@Carol – If you have no cable service, you can still go terrestrial and get LOST via old fashioned bunny ears (actually my antenna doesn’t look like bunny ears) in HD. That’s what I do and I am surrounded by really tall buildings.
@Carol from Boston – Yes, I have heard about this potential satellite problem for the past day or so on several news broadcasts. How it will effect things is a good question. It is probably going to depend on what programming is broadcast on which satellites. Something I’m sure someone can answer but not I.
As we get our ABC feed from an off-air antenna, I just hope it does not effect the satellite that ABC uses to broadcast to it’s local stations.
@Kate, excellent post and very similar to what I was alluding to! The comment about D&C putting the Kate & Jack scene in just to say “See, we knew all along…” was perfect. That is exactly what they were doing, neither necessary nor believable!
Simply dissapointed.If they have known how this would end from the beginning why does the whole story hinge on two unknownm characters.Why dont the numbers matter at all?Why doesnt |Dharma matter at all?Why are the writers clumsily and shoddily killing off beloved manners.With no respect whatsoever for what those characters have meant to thier very faithful viewers.As I said on the previous episode..Having the Muslim Arab Dude(Sayed)become radicalized and blowing himself up was way beyond insensitive.We didnt even get a chance to digest thier deaths in thei episode.It feels like what a kid does when they are bored with a once beloved project or activity,they rush thorug it happy to be done with it anxious for the next big thing.I am sorry but I have lost all faith that thier was a plan from the beginning.It saddens me to say that.But I truly don’t believe we will ever get the answers to the questions that meant the most to us.They couldnt even throw us the bone of having Adam and Eve be the remains of at least somewhat familiar characters..at this point I would have been happy with |Paolo and NIkki being Adam and Eve.I guess I just donet know why teh writers spent 6 years creating a beautiful tapestry only to tear it apart at the end and turn it into a dish rag..Its sad.
Yikes please forgive my typos I am using a frikken French Keyboard which I am sure works just fine if you are typing in French.Dang I promise I am smarter than I type.
I have satellite not cable, so maybe that means I don’t have to worry about it?
Those worried about the satellites going out on the 23rd; might want to get a digital converter box 😉
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001DVZXC0?tag=tvscifi-20&camp=14573&creative=327641&linkCode=as1&creativeASIN=B001DVZXC0&adid=0KJ9K8ES5EQENJ81QMYG&