Great episode this week focused exclusively on Jacob and the Man In Black without our main characters. It seems a pretty polarising episode online, but I absolutely loved it. Here are my thoughts.

There are no Flash anythings in this episode so I’ll go in chronological order:

Unknown Date And Time
We start the episode with yet another shipwreck and Claudia appears to swim her way to our beloved Island to give birth to, you guessed it, Jacob and Man In Black (who still has no name). She’s then bashed in the head with a rock by a lady who then adopts Jacob and Man In Black (I’m going to call her Mother for simplicity’s sake), but not before Claudia asks a lot of questions about Mother and the Island, to which Mother answers “every question I answer will just lead to another question. Just be happy you’re alive.” – given that this episode is written by Darlton, they could very possibly be speaking to us fans to be happy with whatever answers we have by the time the series is over, and be happy we’re part of such a fascinating show, the likes of which the world has never seen prior, and might not see since. Will that be enough for us? We’ll see.

We see the kids grow up and Mother seems to favour MIB over Jacob, a fact that doesn’t go unnoticed by Jacob. One day, she brings them to a little spring with a strong Light and tells them one of them will take over from her to protect it one day. Must be easy for her, having two Candidates, compared to Jacob’s 360. I have to admit when I saw the spring with the hokey special effects, I wrote down “if that is a portal to the outside world a la Narnia I’m going to flip” – thankfully, it wasn’t that bad. That said it didn’t give us any concrete answers to it either, instead making vague references to it being like life and death and men wanting it. Alright fine.

Fastforward thirty years and MIB has gone back to live with his “people” (the others shipwrecked with Claudia) after he finds out from Claudia’s ghost that Mother killed Claudia and stole them as babies. Why could MIB see Claudia and not Jacob? Who knows. At this point we see how their philosophies begin to form. Both MIB and Jacob, while with Mother, were told the same thing – Men are evil, they corrupt they destroy and it always ends the same way. After thirty years of living among people, MIB agrees, while Jacob, watching from afar, thinks they aren’t so bad. At least we get some glimpse into their conversation and motivations way back in “The Incident“.

At this point I want to give both Mark Pellegrino (Jacob) and Titus Welliver (MIB) credit for their acting chops. Neither man acts like the “present day” Jacob or MIB that we met in “The Incident” and I really felt like we were given an insight to the men they were before they became the men they are. Very much like how we first saw Richard as a frightened slave on the Island in Ab Aeterno, wildly different from the perpetually calm, spiritual adviser of the Island he became.

We find out MIB has found his way off the Island and it has to do with the Island’s pockets of electromagnetism and the wells they’ve been digging. Mother decides to visit and MIB is heating/cooking something over the fire that looks like… rocks? I don’t know. We see a Frozen Donkey Wheel cameo and a surprisingly human side of MIB, before Mother knocks him unconscious against a rock. (Jeez with a mum like her, no wonder Jacob and MIB turned out kooky)

Mother brings Jacob back to the Light and tells him “it has to be you” (to be the new protector of the Island), to which Jacob almost petulantly says she always wanted it to be “him” (aka MIB). Almost felt like a throwback to the meeting between Ben and Jacob where Ben feels second-best. I wonder if this is going to echo in the season finale, with Jacob (or someone else) wanting it to be someone else (John Locke?) but realises it has to be “you” (ie Jack) all along. Jacob, without a choice, accepts, and becomes the new protector of the Island.

MIB wakes up and sees his wells destroyed, filled up with dirt and his people killed. Now who did all that? I don’t think Mother had the power to turn into Smokey, and I don’t think Mother could have killed them all AND filled up the well overnight. This is a puzzle.

A Quick Sidetrack (Or Flash Sideways)
What I did like about this scene, is I felt it answered a question I had all along about Jacob and the Dharma folk. Recall that in “The Incident” and “Ab Aeterno“, Jacob admits to bringing people to the Island, hoping that for once they won’t end up being a “bad” example of humanity. As I wrote in my review of The Package:

Was this part of Jacob bringing people to the Island in a bid to show Man in Black that people were good? If indeed so, why did he (through Richard) exterminate them using Ben?

I feel this was finally answered. MIB’s “people” got perilously close to finding the pockets of electromagneticism (and by extension, the Light) and before they could exploit those secrets, Mother (presumably) kills them. To me, this is a parallel to the Dharma folk drilling their holes and building stations like The Swan and getting too close, so Jacob (through Richard and Ben) killed them, but left their unknowing victims like those recording observations in The Pearl and folks like Kelvin in The Swan.

Edit: Just read an interview with Darlton and it looks like this drawn conclusion is pretty much confirmed:

When Mother slaughters the people in the human village, the iconography looked very much like the Dharma bunkers after the purge. Was this your way of suggesting why it was Jacob might have allowed The Others to slaughter the Dharma folk – that this is the punishment for anyone who gets too close to unlocking the island’s secrets?

DL: In terms of what Jacob allowed, what he didn’t allow, what The Others did of their own volition, with Ben basically saying “This came down from Jacob” is all in the area that is subject to interpretation purposely. What our intention was is that there is a repeating vicious cycle that seems to happen on this island, where people come to the island, they try to figure out what makes the island work, and the closer they came leads them to their own inevitable demise.

Back to Across The Sea, MIB appears and kills Mother (to which she says “thank you” as if happy to be relieved of her guardian duties) and then Jacob appears to beat the pulp out of MIB and throw him down the spring to where the Light is, where Mother previously warned him a fate worse than death awaits. Seconds later, we hear the all-too-familiar sounds of Smokey and it whooshes out of the Light, past Jacob and into the jungle.

Eventually Jacob finds MIB’s human body and lies it next to Mother’s in the Caves which our Losties would find and inhabit in 2004. We get hammered over the head that these are “Adam and Eve” in a flashback to a scene from Season One when Jack and Kate first find the dead bodies (and Jack, a doctor, says they have been decomposing for about fifty years – uhm more like thousands?). This part was the issue I had with the entire episode. Unlike FlashForward, Lost has never been about hitting us over the head with connections and/or things that we should pick up. Suddenly we have this blatant sequence and for what?

The writers would have us believe that tying back Adam and Eve’s body to Jacob/MIB’s backstory shows they’ve been knowing what they’ve been doing since Season One. Well maybe. Or they just knew how to write a story to fit in two corpses with a pouch with a black stone and a white stone in them. I’ll leave that to you. Another reason I was not impressed was that the writers have always said they will answer the questions that are important to our characters (what is the Smoke Monster) as opposed to things that exist in the larger mythology (what exactly are the Numbers). In this over-the-head beating of Adam and Eve I felt they went out of their way to answer a question from Season One, just to prove they “knew what they were doing”.

Let’s wrap this up by talking about MIB. There seem to be two ways we can read into this. One – by finding his body, MIB is dead and what Jacob unleashed really is pure “evil” and Smokey as a malevolent entity. Entirely possible given that Smokey has always used dead bodies (like MIB’s body) to inhabit, but then there is the other way to read into it. Two – MIB really did become one with Smokey, given that Smokey’s motives and desires are one and the same as MIB’s – get off the Island. If it were just the Smoke Monster, one would assume it would have other motives, wouldn’t it? Also, given that Smokey is also bound to the “rules” that Mother set (neither MIB or Jacob can actually kill the other), I think that lends credibility to theory Two. What do you think?

Edit: Desmond
Flashing back to the end of Season Two when Desmond and Locke don’t turn the hatch. Doesn’t the world kind of glow a little? Almost like the underground Light? Significant that Desmond was literally bathing in the Light and is now immune to electromagnetism? Perhaps?

Parallels
Just a quick mention of the parallels that we’ve seen over five seasons echoed in this episode. We see Jacob and MIB “raised by another”, we see Mother as yet another “crazy” woman living by herself, we see yet another child abduction (like Alex Rousseau and Aaron Littleton), endless black and white imagery, electromagneticism playing a big part as it has since we first found The Swan (and the Hatch), parent issues and the important inclusion of (or illusion of) choice – at least where Jacob being the next protector is concerned. I’m not going to delve into these in any detail, but they’re interesting and worth noticing if you’ve been a fan for the last six years.

Next Episode
Titled “What They Died For”, the promo shows precious little to go on with and the writers have said that from this episode onwards the promos will be thin so there’s really no point speculating who the “They” in the title is or what it might have to do with the episode. It’s the last episode before the finale, so three and a half hours of Lost left. Time is ticking away. If I have any complaints about Season Six it’s that its’ pacing is off. Rushed in some places, too much set up in others. After five seasons of us thinking it’s about human factions warring with each other, in the final season it’s revealed it’s a bigger clash of godlike characters each with their own sides and reasons AND a Flash Sideways universe… it’s just way too much to pack in. And hey, what happened to everyone in the Flash Sideways universe finding their “love” like we last saw in “Everybody Loves Hugo“?!

How the season ranks so far:

1. Across The Sea
2. Everybody Loves Hugo
3. The Substitute
4. The Candidate
5. Sundown
6. Dr. Linus
7. LA X
8. Ab Aeterno
9. Happily Ever After
10. The Last Recruit
11. The Lighthouse
12. The Package
13. Recon
14. What Kate Does

As much as everyone seemed to love Ab Aeterno, to me this is the episode of the series simply because it finally lets us know who Jacob and the MIB really are. And given that at the end of six seasons, we know it’s been down to a philosophical war (which at times has been downright violent and bloody) between these two mythical characters, this episode becomes really important and aside from the Adam and Eve thing, I think they did it really well. I just need to say, looking at the list now, that episodes like What Kate Does really look like a waste of an hour of Lost, especially with episodes like Across The Sea in the same season.

Okay first: Do not read another word unless you have watched this episode. I promise you do not want to know what happens in advance.

Still here? Right, let’s get to it.

So many things happened this episode I feel I should watch it a second time before writing this post but I don’t have the time today. This was one of the episodes which has decent Flash Sideways, but unfortunately they were majorly dwarfed by the action on the Island.

Flash Sideways
We open with a defeated-looking Locke and it’s just sad to realise that the writers were playing a cosmic joke on all of us this whole time. Locke never was an important character in the series but was always meant to be a tragic loser. We can a neat glimpse of Bernard as well as a nice half-sibling moment with Jack and Claire before Jack goes full on “fixer” mode and tries to find out what’s wrong with Locke. We find out Locke did have a good relationship with Anthony Cooper and it was in fact his fault that Cooper ended up in a wheelchair.

One of the most interesting scenes was an unconscious Locke mumbling “push the button” and “I wish you believed me” while Jack was in the room. Channelling his inner Island Locke? Or something else?

Finally, we see that unlike what many of us thought from the first episode of the season LA X, no matter which universe they exist in, Jack and John aren’t going to be friends. Possibly a significant nugget of information for the show.

Now for the meat of the episode, the Island.

On-Island
Continuing the capture of our Losties, it’s clear that Widmore knows about the list and uses it to threaten Sawyer. We see Team Smokey is decimated and down to SmokeLocke, Jack and Sayid – so much for gathering his tribe in Sundown.

We re-live some of Season Three with our Losties in the cage and a little more time spent on Sun and Jin after last week’s brief reunion which had me write down “Yay! Sun and Jin reunion!”. Oh how short lived that would turn out to be.

Smokey has everything figured out. From the watch to the C4 to the stealing of the sub, he’s one step ahead of the Losties, or at least, one step ahead of Sawyer.

All our Losties (except Claire) are in the sub after Kate gets shot and sharp-eyed viewers would have noticed Locke swapping packs with Jack (just like how Jack did with Kate and the dynamite back in Season One). They finally find the C4 and even though Jack says not to do anything, Sawyer goes ahead and pulls the wire which results in the death of four of our Losties (well, three of them and one of the freighter folk). Let’s look at the deaths in some detail.

Sayid
We see Sayid going from zombie Sayid to redeeming himself in the span of about seven episodes, doing nothing much in the middle except for capturing Desmond. Do I buy it? It was a little rushed. Could they have done more with Sayid given his kick-assery in Season Four and Five.

Frank
Frank didn’t have a very satisfying death as far as I’m concerned. From being a sympathetic pilot in Season Four, to being identified as a Candidate in Season Five, being knocked out by a blast door and drowning was pretty disappointing. That said we didn’t see a body, so you never know.

Sun and Jin
I think most Lost fans knew one of them was going to go after their early reunion, but I did not see the death of both of them coming. Their deaths definitely hit our characters the hardest, and it’s probably the same for our viewers. It’s sad because they’ve spent most of the last two and a half seasons apart, and they get reunited to die. Given how their characters have progressed since Season One and the birth of Ji Yeon, drowning wasn’t the way to go. It wasn’t as heroic as Charlie or poignant like Daniel and I feel these two characters deserved better.

The Candidates
Everything is heading for a close but we still don’t know what Widmore’s plans are, except to be a pain in everyone’s ass. Three Candidates left and my money’s on Sawyer dying before the end of the season. He’s come full circle as a character and he’s every bit (if not more) guilty as Jack is when it comes to deaths. Sure he can blame Jack for Juliet’s death at the end of Season Five, but Sawyer single-handedly caused the death of four Losties. That’s a lot of grief to recover from.

Hurley has pretty much shown time and time again that he’s safe, so I’m not worried about him. All signs point to Jack being the new Jacob, although some part of me thinks Kate was kept alive for a reason. Given that her name wasn’t scratched out in the Lighthouse, she could still be a secret weapon that takes over Jacob’s role and allows Jack to get off the Island to raise Aaron and Ji Yeon. I sincerely hope that is not how things turn out to be because Kate has been a weak character ever since Season One and does not deserve to be the hero of the story.

I find it terribly unfair and unsatisfying that Kate, who is not even a Candidate, is still alive when Sun, Jin, Sayid and Frank are offed. Seriously.

Getting Here.
Looking at where the season has brought us, I once again find myself wondering if the season could have been much tighter. Did we really need to spend all that time with Dogen and the Other Others in the Temple, especially given that in the end it comes down to our Losties, Smokey and Widmore anyway? Could Desmond and Widmore have come into play earlier and move this along? I don’t know. We’ll have to wait till the end of the season to see whether all that time was wasted, or not.

Edit:

One thing I forgot to add in my thoughts was a little more elaboration on why I felt this Season has been disappointing – For the longest time, us LOST fans have had to defend the Flashbacks. Why show their past when the Island is (arguably) more interesting? And we know that’s because we needed to know who they were to understand who they are, and who they will become. We needed to know Sawyer had a terrible history with cons and trust issues but he grew to care for people and even jump off the chopper so the rest could get off the Island. We needed to know Jack was a Man of Science to cheer when he comes round to embrace Faith. We needed to know Charlie was an addict who hit rock bottom so that when he was “reborn” in The Moth and eventually had a relationship with Claire and sacrificed himself, we could appreciate that and mourn his loss. The list goes on.

Now, outside of Jack needing to see the Lighthouse, did any of our Losties NEED to go where they went for us to appreciate where they are today? Did they need to hang around the Temple with Lennon and Dogen? Did they need to have a chat with Richard only to be separated a few episodes later? Did Sun need to lose her speech? My answer to most of these paths is no.

I could go on about the parallels we’ve seen in this season and all the seasons before. Jack giving Sawyer the “faith” spiel instead of Locke telling Jack. Kate held at gunpoint outside the cages instead of Sawyer (a parallel that even Sawyer acknowledges), Jack buying an Apollo bar, the earlier mention of the backpack swapping and numerous others. These were fun easter eggs to watch out for when we were first watching the show, but in Season Six, they really do take a backseat.

Next Episode
Titled “Across The Sea”, this is supposed to be the episode with none of our main characters – meaning it’s probably a Jacob and Man In Black flashback. When I first heard about this episode I was psyched, but given how disappointing Season Six has been, I’m lowering my expectations. After this episode it’s the finale which has just been extended to two and a half hours from the original two. Let’s hope it gives us a satisfying close to the show, coming off the harsh deaths of our beloved Losties.

How the season ranks so far:

1. Everybody Loves Hugo
2. The Substitute
3. The Candidate
4. Sundown
5. Dr. Linus
6. LA X
7. Ab Aeterno
8. Happily Ever After
9. The Last Recruit
10. The Lighthouse
11. The Package
12. Recon
13. What Kate Does

I placed The Candidate above Sundown because I think an episode with four major deaths deserves to be recognised as a good one, and also because whatever happened in The Candidate pretty much cancelled out what happened in Sundown. Redundancy? I don’t know.

Finally, what the heck has Team Alpert been up to this whole time?

First off: There will be spoilers in this blog post, so if you haven’t watched the Lost season five finale, don’t read this until you have!

Wow where to even begin? I guess the best way would be to tackle 1977 and 2007.

1977:

Lots of stuff here. Pity Sawyer didn’t kill Phil, but glad he died anyway.

I never thought I’d say this, but I really felt tormented when Juliet was falling down the Swan shaft. I mentioned after four episodes that I like how they’re making her a sympathetic character, but I never thought I’d feel real emotion when her “death” was about to happen. Poor Sawyer. He should know no one stays happy on Lost for long.

Jack, this season, has been the man for me. Finally throwing off his “man of science” ways, I’m liking how he’s just doing what he thinks he should do.

Dharma Food

Hurley for me, is the mystery. Why was he the only one Jacob spoke honestly to? What’s in the guitar case?

All in all, I had a great time in 1977, meeting Horace, Radzinsky, Dr. Chang and the rest of them, but it’ll be great to get back to our core Losties and the battle that is certainly coming.

2007:

Nice part reaching the Losties old camp. I liked Sun’s role in reaching over Aaron’s cradle and finding Charlie’s old Drive Shaft ring. Sun hasn’t had enough to do this season but I’m glad she had that moment to shine.

I guessed the revelation of what’s in the cargo box, but it was still a shock. I guess we unfortunately have to accept that John Locke is dead, but will it be for the better?

Jacob:

Watching Jacob meet Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Sun, Jin, Sayid, Locke and Hurley was really nice. For awhile I was thinking “Why just them?”, then I realised they’re the only survivors of the original Losties on 815 out there. RIP Boone, Charlie, Shannon, Michael and the rest of you. Another question is why did Jacob choose those moments to meet the Losties? Why while Kate shoplifted? While Sawyer was writing his letter? Why Jin and Sun’s weddings? Perhaps there’s no significance…. But nothing on Lost happens without a reason.

Okay who the hell is pulling who the hell’s strings?! If Jacob helped Locke when he was thrown out of the window, did he know he would one day be “possessed” by his enemy? And if Charles Widmore (and Abaddon) helped Locke to get back to the island, was he helping Jacob, or his enemy? If Smokey told Ben to follow “Locke”, is the Island on Jacob’s side? Oh my mind explodes just thinking about it.

The only weak parts of the episode as a whole were the emotional flip-flopping of Juliet and Kate. “No Jack’s got a bomb we must stop him” “Yes I’m with you Jack”. I mean, come on already. Kate has really been a character that has no use anymore and I would not be sorry if she dies.

So what next? Now that Juliet has triggered the bomb, what happens? I have a feeling we’re going to see the 1977 Losties reunited with the 2007 Losties, but what happens then? Will they be back on the plane? Back on the beach? Did reality “reset”? How will Jacob’s death affect the upcoming battle? Who will be the players? Team Richard? Team Jacob’s enemy? Team Widmore?

Gone are the days where it was as simple as Team Jack vs Team Locke for moving into the caves vs staying on the beach. It’s bigger than any of us would have thought back in season one. It’s madness, and I can’t believe we have to wait till 2010 to find out.

After four episodes this season (Because You Left, The Lie, Jughead, The Little Prince), with roughly two focused on the Losties on the Island and two on the Oceanic Six off the Island, I figure I’ve been shown enough to finally give some first thoughts on the season so far. I’ll split between “on” and “off” the Island for simplicity:

Losties on the Island
This is definitely the more intruiging story in season five so far. The Losties are jumping through time and encountering different people at different times. How long have the Others been on the Island? Who has been on the Island previously? Is Jughead buried in the Swan?

Some thoughts on the characters:

Locke
He’s been told by Ageless Richard he has to go back and bring the rest, even if he dies. We know Locke ends up in the coffin, but what happened in between?

Sawyer
Definitely seeing a Sawyer-Juliet relationship develop. I love how he wants Kate to be happy off the Island, but betrays selfish emotion to wanting her back.

Faraday
The highlight of the Losties (or maybe, Freighter Folk). Clearly, Daniel knows what is going on. Why was he in the Frozen Donkey Wheel chamber years before? Who is his mother?!

Juliet
I used to hate Juliet, but they’ve done a good job of making her a sympathetic character, and being the last “Other” of the group, brings a great dynamic to the Losties.

Miles
Miles is still relatively “mysterious” and we still don’t know much about the character. What’s the deal with his ghost powers?

Charlotte
I can’t really care much about Charlotte other than the fact that it’s hinted she’s born on the Island. Faraday’s the physicist who tells us about the time jumps, Miles is the ghost dude, but Charlotte doesn’t even bring her anthropological roots to the scene. I was almost glad when it seemed like she died at the end of Jughead

Richard
Clearly, Richard knows what is going on. But how much? How old is he? What does he have in store for Locke?

Big question: Is Locke going to turn the Donkey Wheel? Apparently Locke tells the Oceanic Six that terrible things happened to the “rest” of the Losties on the Island after they left, but who really are the Losties “left”? Besides Locke and Sawyer, the rest of the Losties are extras (with the exception of Rose, Bernard and Vincent). So why would the rest care?

Oceanic Six
So the O6 have to get back to the island, and miraculously they’re all in LA. Mighty coincidental, but we’ll let that slide. Desmond’s story with Penny is easily the most sincere, heartwarming story of Lost, which makes me worried that there is going to be no happy ending for the couple.

Jack
Still the leader. I don’t know why it took him 3 years to come to his senses, but better late than never.

Hurley
We haven’t seen much of Hurley except for him to be “saved” by Sayid and then captured by the police again. His little dialogue with Ana Lucia was interesting and I wonder what role he has to play, given that he could find Jacob’s cabin on the Island and can speak to dead people off it.

Sayid
Killing guys with a dishwasher, dodging tranq bullets, Sayid is kicking all sorts of ass this season, and I love it. I’ve never been a Sayid fan, but he’s finally growing on me by being such a bad ass.

Sun
I have to say I was SO sure that Sun was behind the troubles that Kate/Aaron were having. She’s acting very weird. I’m not sure how I feel about that because I’m a huge Sun fan, but I can totally understand it if her character turns to the dark side.

Kate
Don’t care much about Kate, never have and probably never will. Her sudden love for Aaron is bordering on disbelief and just like back in season two where she would run off and get them captured by the Others, I can see her being the source of “weakness” here again.

Ben
As always, Ben has all the cards. Right now, we don’t know WHY he wants to get them back to the Island, except that he wants to do that very much. Can’t wait to see more of his schemes develop as the season goes on.

The Big Issue: The Oceanic Six story is a little mundane to the time-traveling story happening on the Island. I suspect Charles Widmore is going to come into play at some point to spice things up, and that can only happen sooner rather than later.

With just over 30hours of Lost left to go before it’s done for good, it’s a crazy ride from here on out. If you left the show when it dipped in season two and early season three, it’s time to come back. All the time-traveling bit may sound a little crazy, but I assure you it’s done in a much better way than Heroes.

In the meantime, if you’ve never caught Lost, check out this fan video. It proves how awesome it is.