Hello there boys and girls. I know that I haven't done a write up for LOST the entire season so far. Before, I didn't feel that I would be able to commit enough time to all of it and I didn't want to half ass it. Now that there are only 2 new episodes to go after this one, I felt I needed to jump back on and share my thoughts/research findings with you guys. So here we are on the next to penultimate episode of LOST: Across the Sea.
The episode starts off back in the water with another wreck. We meet the lady in the water Claudia and learn she's quite preggers. She's coughing and choking on the beach and makes her way up to a stream and begins to drink. All of a sudden Juno's stepmom appears:
She offers her hand and *touches* the lady and takes her back to the caves from Season 1. Claudia begins to ask questions and she simply tells her that
"Every question I answer will simply lead to another question. Just rest"
Claudia then proceeds to give birth to who she names Jacob. The fun isn't over though, seeing as how she pops out another little youngin' and can't manage to think of a name for him. Allison Janney then apologizes and knocks poor mommy out cold, killing her – if you weren't sure. :P
We zoom forward in time around ten years and Jacob and as of yet unnamed kid are playing on the beach. Smokey finds a box and opens it, revealing a game played with white and black stones. He and Jacob play a round or two and Smokey asks that Jacob not tell mother, because she would take it away.
Naturally Jacob goes running back to the cave and Mother (since she took over the role after murdering the real one) is there working on a nice little tapestry (so that's where Jacob got his weaving notions). She realizes that Jacob is trying to lie to her and heads out to the beach and talks to Lil' Smokey. She informs him that Jacob isn't like him and that Smokey is "special". She also had left the game for him. "Where else would it have come from?" she asks. Also in this scene is her insisting that the island is all there is in the world.
More time goes by and Jacob and Smokey are out hunting boar. Unfortunately some people with very large belts beat them to the punch and they hide. When the men leave, the run back to Mother and tell her what they saw. She commences to blindfold them (logically) and walks them out into the jungle, telling them about how all people "are corrupt and violent and that it always ends the same way". She leads them to: *drumroll please*
A light.
In a cave.
Apparently this is very important.
Alright.
She informs the boys that the light is "inside every single man" but no one can know that the "source" exists because "if they knew they would want more" and that would "extinguish" the light and if the light goes out on the island, it goes out everywhere.
She also tells them that they can never go into the light, because it is a fate worse than death.
So we now seem to know that the island is special because of a magical light. Check.
Now, there are a couple of references to this throughout the show, I suppose. Back in season one Locke said when he looked at the monster that "he saw the heart of the island and it was beautiful" and compared it to a bright light. So, if you're paying super close attention and never forget a line, this could in theory work. We can touch on the rest of the references later.
Ok, so then Smokey sees his real mother while he's playing the game with Jacob one day. Jacob seemingly can't see her. Smokey follows her and learns all about his past, that he's from "across the sea". He confronts Jacob about all of this and blondie goes on a rampage, beating Smokey up, although we learn that the reason that they can't kill one another is that Mother has made it so "they can't harm one another". This obviously doesn't apply to full on beat downs. Mother explains that she had to kill their real mom because she had to protect them from becoming one of "them". Smokey isn't buying any of this crap and sets out to live amongst the people who shipwrecked with them ten years prior.
More time passes and we see the adult Jacob watching the "others" from afar. He goes and plays yet another game with Smokey. This time talking about the nature of the people MIB is living with. Smokey says that essentially, their Mother was correct and that they are corrupt at heart. Jacob claims if it's so bad why does he stay with them, and Smokey informs him that they're a "means to an end" and that he has found a way to finally leave the island and return home.
We get to travel to the building of the well (or one of them it seems). Smokey informs Jacob, with the help of his trusty dagger from throughout the season, that there are several areas on the island where metal behaves oddly. When they find these areas they dig.
Jacob, once again, runs and tells mommy what's what with good ol' Smokey and she pays him a little visit. He explains that he's been trying to find the light for over thirty years and he has never been able to get there again, so he and his people are working on a way to find another way to it. He explains if he installs this wheel *ta dah* and channels the light and the water, he can go home. This, of course, makes absolute sense. So much sense, it seems, that his mother felt compelled to try her tried and true tactic of head against rock on him.
We then see Mother back at the light source with Jacob telling him that he is the one that is destined to protect it. Jacob flat out asks her why him and informs her that he knows that she loved Smokey more. She replies that "she loved them differently". She convinces Jacob to drink from her bottle (the same one that he explains the nature of the island to Alpert and has him drink from). After mumbling a little incantation, and giving it to him, she informs him that he is "the same" as her now.
When Smokey awakes, his well has been covered up and his entire village massacred and burnt. Naturally, this does less than please him so he heads for the caves. He proceeds to stab Mother clean in the gut and asks her why she did it. "Because I love you" she says. Then she proceeds to thank him and die. It seems the implications are that she could not die on her own accord or that she had to find a replacement before her life could end. It seems that it may be the first one, since Jacob has not fully "initiated" any successor. (that's if the entire process of drinking the wine and such is necessary, which it seems to be given Alpert and Jacob's using it)
Jacob then enters the cave and gets his smack down on again, while Smokey asks him to not kill him. "Oh I won't kill you" is the response and Jacob drags him back to the source of the island.
He tosses Smokey down and his head cracks on the rocks in the river. His body then floats down into the light.
Soon after this, the smoke monster we all know and love comes roaring out of the cave. So, also, knowledge of the night: It seems that Jacob has created Smokey.
Later, Jacob finds his brother's body and brings him to the cave and lays him to rest with the bag of stones beside their "mother".
So Lost knowledge: Adam and Eve are more like Cain and Eve. Also, Jack is certainly not as reliable as carbon dating, seeing as how he quoted the skeletons as around 40-50 years old. He was only off by 1500 years or so.
Speaking of Jack, how ANNOYING was the intercuts from "House of the Rising Sun" back from season one. It's like "OMG OMG look, we're explaining something back from way at the beginning!" "What, you might not remember?! here it is here it is! Clumsily edited into this supposedly touching scene!"
The only good that did was remind us how sexy Jack was back then when he had chest hair.
I digress:
So, let's make some sense of this.
Things we learned
1. The island is special because of a magic light that is in all people
2. Jacob and the MIB were once just people and nothing special, like the rest of the show
3. Mother informs MIB that he can't leave the island, but Jacob does so at will throughout the show.
4. Jack was sexy in season one.
5. Jacob created the smoke monster by throwing his brother into the magic light.
6. Their "Mother" was the original guardian of the island
7. Adam and Eve are really Jacob's brother and adopted? mother
Things we don't know now
1. What is the purpose of the ash?
2. What IS the smoke monster (still)?
3. Is the entire explanation of the show that it's just "magic"?
4. What exactly is the light?
5. Is the light the source of the healing powers?
So it seems that since the Man in Black wanted to find out about his real life and wanted to get away from the murdering woman holding them there, that he is the ultimate evil. I'm not too sure I feel ok about this. The entire episode seemed as if the MIB was the victim in the situation, while Jacob was just a lackey for his mom. Jacob, also, created the largest threat on the island. Also, I'm now confused about Jacob's explanation to Richard about the island being a cork to hold the darkness in. Before he tossed his brother in a cave, the island seemed to be an area designated to protect the exact opposite. Every negative thing seems to be of Jacob's own doing.
Also interesting to me is the premise that MIB was kind of the original "man of science" wanting to know what the island is, how he got there, how to leave and such. Jacob has taken on the role of the first "man of faith" blindly going where his mother's will takes him.
The smoke monster's origin is fascinating to me as well. Is it actually the brother? Did Jacob release something else (perhaps an actual "security system") when he tossed him down there? Or is it simply MIB's "soul" taking the form of the monster, since his body is very much inside the cave. The idea that the light "resides in every man" is an interesting way to tie in the fact that Smokey can judge each of his victims and you can see elements of their life flashing around inside the cloud.
It would have nice to find out how the monster became sort of a "god" figure to them as well. The temple clearly didn't exist at this point (neither did the Tawaret statue). If Smokey hates people so much, it doesn't seem likely that he'd install summoning areas to do their bidding, unless he's trying to use them all to help him leave the island. Looks like we'll never know.
I went into the episode hoping for answers to all of LOST's greatest mysteries. Perhaps I had built myself up for a wonderful episode, but overall, it seemed disappointing. It felt like the episode raised more questions than answered. Since we have only two episodes left, I highly doubt anything we all want to know will be addressed. It seems like they copped out of it with the Mother's quote to Claudia earlier in the episode.
There's more to discuss, but I need to wrap this up. Sorry it was so long, but the episode surely was an emotion evoker, for good or bad. I'm now worried/excited about the last two episodes of the TV show that changed my life. Thoughts? Comments? Is there something I'm obviously missing? Theories? Let me know.
Namaste.
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