The Man in Black: “Of course. Of course I’ll help. I want to be free too.”

• When the Man in Black appears he’s carrying a lantern – the same style of lantern that we’ll see in locations like “Jacob’s” cabin and the Orchid’s Wheel room. Remember that the ghost of Christian has also been seen carting around one of these lanterns.

• The camera makes a point of showing the MiB’s hand lingering on Richard’s shoulder, in an echo of the way in which Jacob will later make Alpert immortal. Does this have significance? Both Sayid and Claire – the “infected” ones among Anti-Locke’s recruits – were near or past death but came back changed. Has the Man in Black similarly tried to “infect” Richard? Or is this simply an illustration of how relatively empathetic the Man in Black seems when compared to the Jacob that we meet in this time-period?

• More proof that the Man in Black isn’t a “good” guy: He leaves Richard in the hull of that ship until he’s close to death, and only then does he go to him and offer Richard freedom. We’ve already seen that the MiB can open locks with his extraspooky ESP powers, so we know that not having a key isn’t a problem, and so it isn’t like Smokey had to go play fetch the keys before Richard could be free. There’s really only one way to view Richard’s position: its intentional torture. The Man in Black has left Richard down there in order to “break” him, and to ensure that Richard will do whatever’s asked of him, grateful for the opportunity. This is not dissimilar to the ways in which the Others attempted to “break” Jack during his time with them.

Richard: “I am…in hell?”
The Man in Black: “Yes, I’m afraid you are.”

• Yes, the Man in Black is preying on Richard’s fears of punishment and damnation when he makes this comment to Richard, further confirming his untrustworthy status as things stand. But what’s interesting to me about this line is that, from the MiB’s perspective, they are in hell. He may be attempting to use Richard for his own ends, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s lying. Sartre described hell as a room without windows or mirrors, where people served as reflections into your weaknesses and sins. Like that windowless, mirror-less room in No Exit, there is no escape from the Island for this man, nor is there a way to truly “reflect.” He’s trapped, unable to leave this place physically, and unable to see his true form in a reflection any more than Inez or Garcia could see their reflections in the hell that Sartre envisioned.

• Before the MiB frees Richard he secures Richard’s pledge to do anything he asks, delivering Richard out of old chains and into new ones.

• We hear the MiB tell Richard that it’s “good to see him out of those chains” – the same words that Anti-Locke spoke to Alpert in the first episode of this season.

• We return to the same location three times over the course of this episode: some new, unidentified ruins. There is a stone bench that looks almost like a pew, some broken stone columns, and a stone floor that’s grown over. Was this once a temple/church/other place of worship? Something else entirely?

The Man in Black: “If he speaks, it will already be too late.”

• These are the same instructions that Dogen gives to Sayid, and the knife that the Man in Black gives to Richard is the same knife that Dogen gave to Sayid – which reminds me of Season 5’s “perpetual compass,” passed from Richard back to Richard.

What does this odd mirroring mean, if anything? The simplest explanation is that Jacob wanted to return the knife to his adversary via Sayid and send him a message in the process. The weirder, potentially-brainbending answer is that Jacob and the Man in Black are two halves of the same whole – possibly even the same person. The “two sides, one black, one white” that we’ve been watching this season can metaphorically refer to the two sides of human nature. Are Jacob and the Man in Black then somehow two sides of the same person/entity?

That’s crazy, even for me. But do you want to hear something even crazier?

The Man in Black: “You aren’t the only one who’s lost something, friend. The devil betrayed me. He took my body. My humanity.”

All together now: Whaaaaaaa?

Maybe the Man in Black is lying here – he’s lied before, and it wouldn’t surprise me. But what if he’s not? What if he’s at least partially telling the truth? If he is, then that offers up two possibilities: (1) Jacob convinced/talked/tricked the Man in Black into giving up his physical body by dying and becoming what he’s become, either as part of Jacob’s plan, or in an effort to entrap him. Or, (2) Jacob has LITERALLY taken the MiB’s physical body, wearing Smokey’s “real” body like a suit.

Option 2 is tres creepy, no?

But it might explain a few things. We haven’t learned the MiB’s name yet, after all. And that’s odd, considering that he’s been around in one form or another for almost two seasons now. One of the reasons for this might be that the MiB’s name is one we already know. Who do we know that’s supposedly “special,” was born on the Island, had a “crazy” mother, and has an implied significance to Lost that’s never been explained?

Aaron. Blond-haired (like Jacob), blue-eyed (like Jacob) Aaron.

Are Jacob and the MiB both Aaron, both in different ways? Is the MiB Aaron’s “soul,” somehow displaced from his body? Is Jacob “wearing” Aaron’s body? If so, then that means that every time the Man in Black looks at Jacob, he sees himself as he used to be – Jacob is a walking reminder of his past.

But that’s wonky stuff. Really, really wonky stuff. So I’m going to suggest that there’s no George Burns/Charlie Schlatter/Fred Savage/Judge Reinhold-style body-stealing going on here. Rather, I think option 1 is most likely.

Richard: “Murder is wrong. That is what brought me here.”
The Man in Black: “Friend, you and I can talk all day long about what’s right or wrong. But the question before you remains the same: Do you ever want to see your wife again?”

• The MiB offers Richard the chance to be reunited with his wife again by killing “the devil.” This is, obviously, a mirror of his previous offer to Sayid. Is the Man in Black capable of delivering on these promises? Setting that aside for a moment, let’s look at what Ol’ Smokey’s line of patter amounts to: “Right and wrong don’t matter. What matters is that you want something, and I can give it to you. All you have to do is betray your own instincts.” That’s the same general spiel he gives Sayid – another man with the guilt of a murderer in his heart – and that kind of shoulder-shrugging attitude toward ethics further convinces me that, of the two conflicting sides on this Island, Jacob’s side is the one I’d want to be associated with.

I love this shot, with the broken pieces of Tawaret half-submerged in the surf. Yet another example of the “cinematic” quality of the episode. And credit where credit is due: this is some nicely done effects’ work. 

Jacob: “Who gave you this?”

• That knife has significance, I tell you. Jacob seems to recognize where it may have come from – otherwise why ask a strange man who gave him the knife he’s trying to kill you with, as opposed to “why are you trying to kill me?”

• Do the Others somehow get their ridiculous fighting abilities from Jacob? Because Jacob is apparently the reincarnation of Chuck Norris, aka Walker, Island Ranger. Watching Jacob kick Richard’s ass makes it clear that Jacob chose not to stop Ben from killing him.

Jacob: “Did you meet a man in the jungle dressed in black?”

• There’s a sense during Ab Aeterno that this is the first time the MiB has tried using someone else to kill Jacob. The Island’s curious God-figure seems genuinely knocked off balance by Richard’s attack, and by the sudden escalation in violent intent from the Man in Black. More interesting still: when Richard tells him that the MiB said he was the devil, Jacob gets a weird, shifty look in his eyes.

Jacob: “Still dead?! Why should I stop?”
Richard: “Because I want to live!”
Jacob: “First sensible thing you’ve said.”

• Richard’s impromptu baptism mirrors Sayid’s drowning in the Temple. It also reminds me that the actor playing Jacob once dunked Jeff Bridges’ head in a toilet while screaming “WHERE’S THE MONEY, LEBOWSKI?!”

Jacob: “No one comes in unless I invite them in.”

• That’s interesting. What does it mean? It could mean that the big stone door keeps people out unless Jacob wants them to visit. But it could also mean that something – perhaps the same something that enabled Dogen to keep the Smoke Monster out of the Temple – is acting as a barrier and protecting Jacob. I’ve suggested before that Jacob’s foothouse was a kind of self-imposed prison meant to protect him from the Man in Black, and comments like this reinforce that theory.

• Jacob tells Richard that he’s the one who brought the Black Rock to the Island.  How? Did he somehow manipulate certain events to ensure that the ship would arrive with the storm? Did he somehow manipulate the storm itself? There’s a Dharma Station called “The Tempest,” which is also the name of a Shakespeare play in which a storm much like the one we see in this episode shipwrecks a man on a magical Island – is that Station able to manipulate the waves around the Island? In Shakespeare’s play it’s the magician Prospero who summons the titular Tempest in order to bring his enemies to the Island he lives on. As I’ve written about before, Shakespeare’s play contains a good amount of thematic similarity to Lost. There’s a magician capable of great feats, who brings a ship to his magical Island (Prospero/Jacob), there’s a half-man, half-magical being with a mother who was a witch who serves as Prospero’s unwilling, duplicitous slave (shades of the Man in Black, his “crazy” mother, and his apparent inability to leave, as well as Ben with his mommy issues, twisted love/hate relationship with Jacob). The character of Ariel, a spirit who serves Prospero in exchange for the promise of eventual freedom, also shares some similarities with the Man in Black, and now, with Richard.

Jacob: “Think of this wine as what you keep calling hell. There’s many other names for it too: malevolence, evil, darkness. And here it is, swirling around in the bottle, unable to get out because if it did, it would spread.”

• Jacob’s allegory recalls the Greek myth of Pandora and her now-infamous “box.” In the original myth, Pandora’s box wasn’t a box at all – it was a jar (in Greek, “pithos”), specifically of the sort that the ancient greeks used to hold wine (among other things). The pithos was also used to contain the remains of the dead. By opening the jar, Pandora set loose all manner of sickness and evil into the world. When the jar was closed, only one thing remained inside: hope. Where was “hope” located within the jar, and why didn’t it escape as well? More on this directly below.

• According to scholarly types, the myth of Pandora is “a kind of theodicy,” meant to address the existence of evil in the world. It serves a function similar to the eating of the apple in the Garden of Eden in the mythical/religious sense, both parables that attempt to establish that mankind was created without evil in the world, but the actions of mankind introduced that evil into existence. In other words: We are the causes of our own suffering. And what is Luke 4’s command regarding our personal suffering? “Physician, heal thyself!”

Jacob: “The cork is this island – and it’s the only thing keeping the darkness where it belongs. That man who sent you to kill me believes that everyone is corruptible because it’s in their very nature to sin. I bring people here to prove him wrong. And when they get here, their past doesn’t matter.”

• And just like that (if we can believe what Jacob’s telling Richard/us), we understand the purpose of the Island. After five-plus seasons, the answer is ours: the Island is a prison, the cork in a figurative bottle, a “gate” meant to keep malevolence from spreading through the world, “infecting” the earth. Note that in the Pandora myth, Elpis (or “Hope”) remained within the jar after evil had been emptied out of it. Where did Hope reside within the jar? In the lid – or the cork, if you will. It follows then, if Lost’s Island is meant to resemble the “lid” of Pandora’s jar, that the Island itself is/contains Hope, and that’s more-or-less explicitly confirmed by Jacob’s words here: “I bring people here to prove him wrong. And when they get here, their past doesn’t matter.” A clean slate; Tabula Rasa (the title of one of Lost’s episodes); A second chance. Aren’t all of these things bound up in the notion of Hope? Hope for a new beginning? For change? For “progress”?

• Notice that Jacob uses the word “sin” here to describe the true state of every person’s heart according to the Man in Black. Back in the Rewatch column for The 23rd Psalm I talked a little about sin and what it might mean in the context of this show:

“Do you believe in sin?”

I do, in that I believe all mankind has the capacity to inflict needless agony on the world around them. Sin is the dark half of every human being – the potential for cruelty and selfishness and harm – the black stone to the conscience’s white stone. In scientific terms it might be called the destructive impulse, or the unleashed Id, or any number of other terms.

Regardless of whether you name this impulse scientifically or spiritually, the complicated problem of sin remains, as does the thorny issue of “moral calculus.” If you do a ‘bad’ thing for ‘good’ reasons should you feel guilt, or should you find peace with the fact that you have taken on a heavier burden to lighten someone else’s? If you do a ‘good’ thing for ‘bad’ reasons is it less good? Or does the action justify itself?

These are brutally difficult questions. There are, arguably, no answers – only perspectives. I bring all of this up not just because I have a penchant for meandering as I write, but because these questions will come to have great significance for Eko’s fate on the Island.

We know that Eko is penitent through his actions and his behavior. We also know that he does not feel guilt for what he has done. Is this Lost’s way of illustrating the necessary formula for achieving personal peace/betterment? Again, it seems the show is suggesting that we cannot wash away what we have been, but that we can make amends and change who we now are.”

And while I’m obnoxiously quoting myself, let’s also revisit my column for The Incident, in which I pointed out the similarities between Jacob’s position on the Island, and Desmond’s position as the Button-pusher in the Swan:

“As Chud reader “Mattioli” pointed out, this riddle’s answer could refer to Jacob, who we saw laying in the shadow of the statue at the start of the episode. But it could also refer to the position that Jacob occupies – a necessary job that involves saving/protecting the world. If so, it’s another echo of Season 2, wherein the act of pushing the Button is supposed to save the world. Notice that Jacob, like Desmond, spends his time at work in a secret “Station,” albeit one created by much older visitors to the Island. In Season 2, we saw Desmond use a riddle (“What did one snowman say to the other snowman?”) to identify those he could trust. Here, Ilana does the same thing with Richard, aka Ricardus. If I’m right about Bram’s mention of a “candidate,” then someone will need to fill Jacob’s position – effectively taking over in the same way that the castaways take over from Desmond.”

• Where the Man in Black offers Richard water to drink, Jacob offers him wine. On a show as heavily steeped in symbolism as Lost is, this is probably not a coincidence. The shift from water to wine suggests the miracle of at the Marriage at Cana that the Bible describes in John 2:1-11, wherein Jesus was supposed to have transformed water into wine.

• Where does Jacob get his wine from, anyway? Does he make it himself using J.C.’s miraculous recipe (Instructions: “Wave hands. Be the Son of God. Voila!”)? Does he have a vineyard somewhere on the Island? Does he pick up a few bottles of red every time he heads off-Island to get a mummy to do his bidding, perhaps from Moriah vineyards, where Desmond once apprenticed as a Brother?

• Jacob and Richard sit down to discuss his involvement in the world, with Jacob claiming that he doesn’t want to have to explain to people what the difference between right and wrong is (quietly echoing the Man in Black’s comment that they could sit debating right and wrong all day), and Richard pointing out that while Jacob might not want to intercede in people’s lives, the Man in Black has no such scruples, which gives Jacob genuine pause. He seems never to have thought of this, and it again makes me wonder just how long these two have been on the Island, and why it is that the Man in Black has only now decided to try and kill Jacob.

Speaking for myself, I adored this scene, and the way in which it comments on the idea of a “distant” God who wants us to prove ourselves without His interference. Or, if you prefer, a Scientist who doesn’t believe in attempting to effect the outcome of his experiments.

Jacob: “Well, I don’t want to step in. Maybe you can do it for me. You can be my representative and intermediary between me and the people I bring to the island.”
Richard: “What will I get in return?”
Jacob: “You tell me.”
Richard: “I want my wife back.”
Jacob: “Can’t do that.”
Richard: “Can you absolve me of my sins so I don’t go to hell?”
Jacob: “Can’t do that either.”
Richard: Then I never want to die. I want to live forever.”

• Notice that despite Richard’s anger over his supposedly “meaningless” tenure on the Island, and the fact that Jacob’s “curse” has removed his ability to kill himself, its Richard – and only Richard – who asks Jacob for immortality. Richard causes his own suffering.

And notice all of the things that Jacob cannot do. If Jacob were actually God, he could presumably do anything – including reuniting Richard with his wife and absolving him of his sins. After all, God’s supposed to be all powerful. Even the Man in Black seems to (and the key word here is “seems”) have the ability to do more for Richard than Jacob can. But while Richard doesn’t get what he truly wants from this deal, it’s arguable that he gets what he needs (cue children’s choir and wicked Keith Richards solo). He gets time to do his penance, to work toward the penitent heart that he believes is necessary to save him from damnation. Getting his wife back via the Man in Black’s utterly-oblique promises would not accomplish this.

• All it takes to give a person “eternal life” is the touch of Jacob. I’m fascinated by this, and I want to know more. How is this possible?

• Richard returns to the Man in Black and gives him a white stone, which the MiB accepts with what seems to be surprisingly good-natured calm. In return, the Man in Black gives Richard his wife’s cross, promising him that if he ever changes his mind (“and I mean ever”), his offer still stands.

Richard: “I changed my mind. Are you listening to me? I changed my mind. I was wrong!”

• And with that, we return to the present day. Richard’s faith in Jacob has been shattered by Jacob’s death, and despite Jack’s Amazing Non-Exploding Dynamite Trick, he’s decided to try his luck with Smokey and the bandits. Like Benjamin Linus, Richard is at the end of his rope and finds himself Lost without purpose in the wake of Jacob’s demise. Like Ben, he reaches for the only person left on the Island who seems to offer him purpose, or at the least, rest. And like Ben he is persuaded away from that ominous path by the sudden emergence of Elpis, of Hope, from what seems like a hopeless situation.

Hurley: Your wife sent me. Isabella. She wants to know why you buried her cross.”

• The scene between Hurley, Richard and Isabella is deeply moving. And despite the fact that Hurley kinda reminds me of Whoopi Goldberg as he mediates between the living and the dead (It’s called “Ghost,” youngsters! Look it up!), I found myself genuinely touched. Once again, Hurley is responsible for helping to connect people, bringing them to places of potential “peace” within themselves.

• The moment where the camera captures Isabella’s kiss, moves behind Hurley, and reveals her to have vanished is very, very nice.

Hurley: “She said you have to stop the Man in Black. You have to stop him from leaving the Island. ‘Cause if you don’t, we all go to hell.”

• Awesomely spooky. And with that line we cut directly to Anti-Locke, who can’t be more than a hundred feet from the magnificently ancient-looking tree that they’re standing under. Was he on his way to get Richard? Did Hurley get to Alpert in the nick of time? It certainly seems that way. And what does the Ghost of Isabella really mean by saying that “we all go to hell”? Does the act of letting the Man in Black go act as a kind of Pandora’s Jar, allowing “evil,” “sin,” or “malevolence” to escape and spread across the earth? That’s the impression we’re given here, and remember that the Season 6 premiere featured Salman Rushdie’s “Haroun and the Sea of Stories,” a book about a professional storyteller and his son who attempt to stop the tainting/polluting of the Streams of Story. Sound familiar?

• The Man in Black theme that plays over the opening of Ab Aeterno’s final scene is greatness. I’m baffled as to why the MiB can’t just smash pick up a stick or a rock and smash Jacob’s face in, but apparently he’s genuinely unable to do so. I’m looking forward to understanding why.

The Man in Black: “Just let me leave, Jacob.”
Jacob: “As long as I’m alive you’re not going anywhere.”

• When the Man in Black smashes the bottle, we get the sense that there may be more than one way to free him from his imprisonment. Will Anti-Locke attempt to destroy the Island to free himself?

• Whew. Tomorrow night the journey continues. You can join me on Back to the Island after it airs, where I’ll have my Insta-reaction up for you to read. Otherwise, I’ll see you back here on Thursday. Thanks again for your patience.

*****

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The Doctor: “This is worthless.”

• Lost is fond of double and triple meanings in its dialogue, and this line is no exception. What, exactly, is the Doctor really referring to here? On the surface, the answer is the necklace itself, which appears to be gold, and thus at least somewhat valuable. Unless the necklace is actually made up of Iron Pyrite then, it has some monetary value.

It’s really faith itself that’s represented in Isabella’s cross – a faith that Ab Aeterno openly questions from multiple angles and in multiple ways. This continues to be my favorite aspect of the season so far. I like that Lost paints the act of faith as something hard-won and difficult to maintain. I love that “faith” in this narrative is not reducible to one creed, or religion, or culture, but is instead a kind of universal struggle for meaning and hope and acceptance. Richard and Ben’s episodes have illustrated this struggle beautifully.

•  In desperation, Richard struggles with the Doctor and kills him when the man’s head slams into the table – a moment that might echo the moment where Desmond bashed Kelvin Inman’s head against the rocks. Despite Richard’s claims to the contrary, there’s little that’s accidental about the panic and the raw anger that we see in Alpert’s movements. Perhaps Richard didn’t “mean” to kill the Doctor, but he certainly seemed determined to do whatever it took to get that medicine.

• Speaking of our favorite Absentee Scotsman, this episode strongly resembles that now-classic Penny/Desmond installment, “The Constant,” in terms of its romantic yearning and the emotional reunion we witness by episode’s end.

• Even if Isabella had lived, there’s no way to know whether the Doctor’s medicine would have saved her. How much was Isabella supposed to take? Is the medicine administered by syringe? Mixed with water? We don’t know, and neither does Richard.

• The portion of the Bible that Lost visually references in this episode is Luke, chapter 4. Visible during a brief shot, the following, famous passage can be seen: “No prophet is accepted in his own country.” I could spend all day tying that particular quote to Lost’s narrative in a bunch of different ways. Instead, I’ll point out the thematic similarity between this verse and the supposed meaning of Jack’s Bai-Ling-procured tattoo: “He walks among us, but he is not one of us.”

More interesting to me is the verse that comes almost directly before this one – a verse that’s contained in Luke 4, and which I believe holds the philosophical key to the redemption of these characters in their personal struggles and misfortunes. I’ve been pushing this particular theory from the beginning of my re-watch, and I see that Jeff Jensen over at EW seems to agree with me. What’s the key? Three words: “Physician, heal thyself.”

• The priest who comes to hear Richard’s confession is an odious-seeming fellow named Father Suarez. I’m not a Catholic, but I’m fairly certain that Priests do not go around denying God’s absolution to people, even when those people are admitted, accidental (?) murderers. Suarez appears to see the potential profit in Richard from the moment he notices Alpert reading an English Bible, and so I can’t help wondering whether Richard has been “set up” here in the sense that Suarez has intentionally removed Richard’s hope in God’s forgiveness so as to “soften him up” and make him amenable to enslavement. After all, if Richard were assured by a man of God that he was forgiven, would he have agreed to be a slave?

• It’s difficult to tell if this priest has “good” intentions or “bad” intentions. He seems not at all troubled by Richard’s impending death and (according to this greasy, suspicious fellow at any rate) damnation. Yet, by delivering Richard into slavery he saves Alpert’s life and gives him a chance to do penance. Is this a “selfless” act? Or does the money that this man receives for every acceptable slave that’s found among the almost-damned serve as his sole motivator? Is it a little of both, some white, and some black? I’d like to say that it is, for thematic reasons, but to be honest, this guy seems like the sort of fellow to sell out his own mother for a bucket of chicken and a skin magazine. Notice that this particular man in black shares a similar Modus Operandi with the Island’s Man in Black: both leave Richard alone and jailed, contribute strongly to his sense of hopelessness and his desperation, and both offer him a way out of his chains that serves their own purposes, not his.

• To escape death, Richard enters voluntarily into slavery, and finds himself brought to the Island. If this sounds familiar, it should. Dogen similarly entered voluntarily into “slavery,” by entering into Jacob’s service and coming to the Island.

Whitfield: “This man is now the property of Captain Magnus Hanso.”

• Richard is bought by one Captain Whitfield, on behalf of Captain Magnus Hanso – the owner of the Black Rock, and the ancestor of Alvar Hanso, the founder of the Dharma Initiative. Captain Whitfield’s name, as Back to the Island commenter “Capnnarcolepsy” points out, is a possible derivation of Widmore. Whit for Wid, and field for more, or moore. What I like about this possibility is that the name Whitfield literally means “White field,” while Widmore’s surname, though not as easily “translated,” can be seen to mean “Wide boggy marsh,” implying a kind of degradation in the family line. If Widmore and Hanso both had ancestors aboard the Black Rock it would explain in part how both characters might have discovered the Island – by attempting to find the place that these men vanished to.

• It’s never been clear whether the Black Rock intended to sail to the Island or not, but from the evidence on-hand in this episode, it seems the answer’s no.

• Some folks have pointed out that we saw what appeared to be the Black Rock floated calmly on placid waters during the first scene of Season 5’s “The Incident.” How is it then that the ship arrives on the Island on a prototypical Dark And Stormy Night? There are a few possibilities: (1) They f*#!ed up, forgot their continuity, and/or decided to rewrite it after the fact. Given that Lost’s resident continuity-man, Greg Nations, was a co-writer on this episode that seems unlikely. (2) the ship we saw in Season 5 wasn’t the Black Rock, but was instead an earlier/later ship, or (3) the ship WAS the Black Rock, and was anchored some miles from the shore during a calm morning/afternoon. That night, a storm/Tsunami came through and blew the ship straight to the Island, ala The Tempest (the name of one of the Dharma Stations, and the name of Shakespeare’s play about a magical Island – more on this below, and you can find more about these connections in past Rewatch Columns).According to the latest podcast, option 3 is the correct one, and it makes thematic sense. Like Prospero in the Tempest, Jacob seems to have used a storm to bring a ship to “his” Island.

• Some folks have also asked how likely it is that the Black Rock could smash Tawaret’s statue by smacking into it. I think it’s pretty likely, actually. Consider: Tawaret’s statue has been standing by the sea for what may amount to centuries. Wind-erosion and salt have presumably both been eating at the stone for that entire time. Add to this the fact that the Island appears caught in a Tsunami/Tempest, is being battered by multiple waves the height of the statue itself, and is struck at it’s top by several tons of solid wood and metal, and you have a recipe for statue-shattering that’s based firmly in physics.

And setting aside the practical reality of this moment, the moment’s symbolism is, for lack of a better word, nifty. We’ve seen that Jacob and the Man in Black’s philosophies have been represented by black and white stones, and we’ve seen that the statue of Tawaret is “Jacob’s statue,” in that he makes its foot his home. So, symbolically, the image of a large Black Rock smashing Jacob’s weirdo house is both fitting and kind of awesome.

• Speaking of good ol’ Tawaret, remember that this particular Egyptian goddess was seen as “one who protected against evil by restraining it.” That’s essentially the function that the cork analogy serves – restraining evil in order to protect against it.

• It’s the little things that make me a happy camper. Little things like the fact that the same tree we see here leaning up against the side of the beached Black Rock s still present, and in the same position, in the “present.” See this screencap from Season 1:

• Captain Hanso apparently died at some point between the smashing of the Tawaret statue (the destruction of an “idol”?) and the ship coming to rest in the middle of the jungle, buoyed by what looks like a wave of tremendous size and power. Killing Hanso off-screen is somewhat disappointing to me. Why do that?

Whitfield: “We are shipwrecked in the middle of the jungle. We have no fresh water, and limited supplies – and there are only five officers left.”

• To men of Whitfield’s day and station, these slaves are Others – not quite human, and not deserving of the same chance for life that he believes he deserves. I’ve talked at length about how ideas of Others and Othering suffuse the show on multiple levels, and if you’d like to refresh your memory just type “Others,” “Sartre,” “Lost” and “Chud” into your search field. You’ll be rewarded by far too much verbiage.

• Whitfield’s casual slaughter reminds me of the variety of ways in which human beings can react in extreme situations, and it makes the castaways from the initial Oceanic look like an army of relative Gandhis next to this cold-blooded bastard. I wondered for a brief moment whether Whitfield had become “infected,” and was acting on Smokey’s orders by killing the crew, but it seems unlikely. And this line of thought lead me back to something completely tangential, but also potentially interesting: Remember Nathan, the tail-end survivor with the bathroom difficulties who was suspected of being an Other during the events of “The Other 48 Days”? What if he kept stealing off into the jungle because he’d been “infected,” or was chatting with the Man in Black?

• Before Whitfield can kill Richard, the Smoke Monster appears, in yet another effective “attack sequence.” Of all the Smokey attacks so far, this is probably my favorite. It plays like a run-aground Jaws, with Smokey slithering about around the outside of the ship as we hear and catch brief glimpses of the carnage it causes.

• I found Richard’s slow struggle in the belly of the Black Rock to be riveting stuff, thanks again to Carbonell’s dedicated performance. I alo found it thematically-relevant. Jacob does not appear to Richard or help him in any way – at this point in Lost’s narrative, the Island’s resident “God”/Scientist figure firmly believes that people should be left to make their own decisions without any interference at all from him. To steal Locke’s line from season one, “Struggle is nature’s way of strengthening it.” Like the titular Moth from the Charlie-flashback episode that line comes from, these castaways have been left by Jacob to work their way free of their prisons/cocoons/bear cages in order to see them emerge as stronger people on the other side. Looked at in a certain light, this is essentially Natural Selection. The strongest survive on the Island, and the weak inevitably perish (and notice that there’s a conspicuously-CGIed butterfly that floats by the camera in this episode, again reinforcing the idea of beauty emerging from struggle).

• The sight of a boar eating the bodies of the dead is chilling, stomach-turning stuff. Lost is never afraid to go for a good gross-out moment, and I’ve always enjoyed that about the show.

• Isabella’s “ghost” appears to Richard, only I think we’re all in agreement that it’s actually the Man in Black assuming her form. Isabella tells Richard that they’re in hell, and it would seem that, in “scanning him,” the Man in Black has read Alpert’s mind in the same way it seemed to have read Eko’s.

• I really like many of the individual shots in this episode. One example: the way that the camera films only the writhing “top” of Smokey’s body as it makes its way down the stairs and into the ship’s hull.

STILL MORE LOST AFTER THE PAGE BREAK!

Ab Aeterno (S6, ep. 9)

“…a woman took off the great lid of the jar with her hands and scattered all these and her thought caused sorrow and mischief to men. Only Hope remained there in an unbreakable home within under the rim of the great jar, and did not fly out at the door; for ere that, the lid of the jar stopped her, by the will of Aegis-holding Zeus who gathers the clouds. But the rest, countless plagues, wander amongst men; for earth is full of evils and the sea is full.” – “Works and Days,” Hesiod

Jacob: “Think of this wine as what you keep calling hell. There’s many other names for it too: malevolence, evil, darkness. And here it is, swirling around in the bottle, unable to get out because if it did, it would spread.”

Take two:

I spent the a few hours over the weekend reassembling this column for you all, and I’m kind of glad that I had the opportunity. Ab Aeterno is an episode that rewards on multiple levels: there’s the simple fact of Richard Alpert’s back-story finally being told, there’s the layering of subtextual meaning throughout the episode – moments that reflect Lost’s larger themes and concerns and continue underlining them in largely nifty ways. Finally, there’s the revelation of the Island’s supposed purpose, a purpose that brings to mind the writings of Hesiod and the myth of Pandora. Ab Aeterno was, for me, a thoroughly satisfying and surprisingly “cinematic” installment of Lost’s final season.

Before we launch into the column, a word of shameless self-promotion: I’ve been working on a manuscript that will combine the ideas in these columns with all-new prose into a book that you’ll be able to purchase this summer, should you want to do so. If you’re interested in owning this book, shoot me an email at WhatIsWater@gmail.com, or pop over to Back to the Island, where you can do the same thing. By sending me an email YOU WILL NOT BE BOUND IN ANY WAY – I’ll simply know who’s interested, and I’ll be able to send those of you who are interested some sneak peeks of the finished product, some exclusive excerpts, and some reminders of its existence as the date of release approaches. I will not sell your information to Nigerian “princes,” nor will I bombard you with offers of “Enlargement.” If you’d like to show your support for these columns, or for my ramblings in general, I’d be honored if you’d take the time to drop me a line. And now that I’ve cleared my throat, on with the show!

Thoughts:

I think we need to stop for a minute, right here at the beginning, and talk about science and faith.

If you’ve been watching Lost this season and/or following along with these columns, then you know that Lost, like Van Morrison, has taken a flying leap Into the Mystic. You know that the conflict between Jacob and the Man in Black has taken on Biblical overtones, and that the stories of these castaways have now been revealed as threads in a larger weave that depicts nothing less than an apparent struggle between Good and Evil on what feels like a cosmic scale.

Some of you seem less than thrilled about this.

To some extent, this is inevitable. As Lost begins laying its cards down and showing us its final hand, “The Answers” (or relative lack thereof, depending on your point of view) will either satisfy or they won’t. Most of us have spent at least some time wondering what The Answers would be, and have come up with a few of our own possible solutions over the course of the show’s run. Some of us, identifiable by our lack of social skills and what our former friends might hypothetically refer to as that “crazy-eyed, twitchy thing you do,” have composed weekly columns. And some of us are bound to be disappointed to find that The Answers aren’t what we thought they’d be, or aren’t as numerous as we think they ought to be. I’m sorry if that’s the case for you, but it’s understandable and I have no intention of trying to convince you otherwise. A story is what it is, and you either dig it or you don’t.

But this week, I’ve noticed that some of you have a very specific complaint about this season and while you’re still on-board this Crazy Train, you have reservations – specifically regarding the emphasis on religion and myth that has permeated these episodes. Where did the science go, seems to be the core of these complaints, and if you’re one of those people, I’d like to take a moment to speak with you. Yes, just you. Siddown.

For those of you who are finding this season slightly alienating because of its seemingly-swift shift from quasi-scientific to flat-out mythic, I’d like to caution patience. Lost has always been a show about two men, not one: A man of science, and a man of faith. I’d argue that the last two seasons both gave us heavily science-based “chapters” in Lost’s larger saga. We spent serious time with wormholes, Minkowski space, the effects of electromagnetism on light, the theoretical “rules” of time travel, etc. et al. A lot of scientific Answers were parceled out about the properties of the Island, of time, of space, and these Answers in turn informed and reflected the actions of the characters. The castaways became living scientific Variables, working against the Constant of time itself.

Seasons 3 and 4 contained finales that essentially “bled” into one another, transitioning subtly from stories told about trying to get off of the Island, into stories about trying to return to the Island. Similarly, Season 5 “bled” into Season 6 in its final scenes – going from an attempt at a massive science-fueled timeline “course correction” to the death/self-sacrifice of a Christ/God-figure at the urgings of a Set/satan figure wearing the face of John Locke. It makes sense then that so far this season it’s been the man of faith’s turn to drive the Dharma van, and we’re getting what amounts to the other half of Lost’s series-long “conflict” between that man of faith and the man of science. The mythical implications of this Island are now being spotlighted overtly, and a lot of Faith-based Answers are starting to emerge – we’ve spent time realizing the ways in which Jacob represents a certain view of God, and how the Man in Black resembles any number of tempter/satan/Set figures in world religion. In effect, as I’ve talked about in past columns and as I’ll explain in more detail in my forthcoming book, the Island has revealed itself as a kind of Mythic/Religious Rosetta Stone, a “key” to possible explanations for/origins of myth, legend, story, religion.

Two sides, you know? If all of the cosmic Jacob/MiB stuff is getting you down, and you miss the science of it all, try looking at things from another angle: When John Locke first discovered it, The Hatch seemed to be some kind of buried Idol, whispering commands to him from under the earth, but turned out to be a Station built for scientific study. The Island’s strange properties have been revealed to have scientifically plausible explanations (in the theoretical sense at least). Time travel was broken down and explained using purely scientific terms, and Jacob is, after all, a kind of scientist. The Island has been his maze, and these castaway people throughout history have been his rats. From this POV, the Man in Black seems more like a fellow scientist who’s decided that the experiment has failed, that they should terminate the trials. Both men have decided that the other is dangerous, and have conspired against each other. The MiB has Jacob killed because Jacob won’t let him leave the testing area; Jacob has trapped the MiB because, so we’ve been told, to let him out would be to cause terrible harm to the people outside of that area.

Just because the story of Jacob and the Man in Black is painted in Mythic colors doesn’t mean that these characters aren’t human. Equating Jacob to a God/Christ/Ra/Aslan figure doesn’t make him an actual God. What it makes him is a kind of living allegory.

Does that make sense?

Science and faith have always been the yin and the yang of Lost. Rather than let the show’s current interest in the yang disrupt your enjoyment of it, why not try rolling with it and seeing where it takes us? Remember: Everything that rises (including seemingly-disparate methods of reflecting on the world) must converge.

Thoughts:

• Nestor Carbonell is a wonder in this episode. Until Season 6, the range of Richard Alpert’s emotional spectrum was extremely limited. Re-watch Seasons 3-5 (Richard’s tenure on the show) and you’ll see that the character essentially has two modes: quizzical and stoic. The closest we’ve really come to seeing Alpert express himself was during his debut episode, “Not in Portland,” and in that instance he was pretending at being someone that he really wasn’t – namely, Dr. Richard Alpert, Mittelos Bioscience recruiter (remember him telling Juliet about the “awesome” nature hikes?). Ab Aeterno gives Alpert the Ageless a chance to flex his acting muscles, and it turns out that this dude is, like, hella strong.

“I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was.” – Proverbs 8:23, KJV

He will regard the prayer of the destitute, and not despise their prayer. This shall be written for the generation to come: and the people which shall be created shall praise the LORD. For he hath looked down from the height of his sanctuary; from heaven did the LORD behold the earth; To hear the groaning of the prisoner; to loose those that are appointed to death.”) – Psalms 102:17-20 KJV

• Both of the passages quoted above contain the Latin phrase “Ab Aeterno,” which translates (depending on who is doing the translating) as “From everlasting,” or “From eternity.” Both have potential applicability to Lost. The verse from Proverbs refers to God, but one can also see Lost’s writers referencing Richard and Jacob’s apparent immortality. And for a show that’s heavily steeped in cons and confidence men/women, there’s a certain irony to the way that the King James Version of the Bible phrases itself: “I was set up from the beginning.” Other translations have this as “I was appointed from the beginning.” I like the notion of the Man in Black having been “set up from the beginning.” I like the idea that in an episode where Richard and the Man in Black express betrayal over Jacob’s veiled plans and actions, both have been “set up” for him.

• The verses from Psalms reference “the groaning of the prisoner,” which might refer to the Man in Black, Richard, the castaways, or even Jacob himself, and the promise to “loose those that are appointed to death” can refer to Richard, who is scheduled to die for murder but given reprieve, then granted immortality on the Island, and might also refer to all of the people who have died on the Island. 

Ilana: “After I’ve brought them to the temple, what do I do?”
Jacob: “Ask Ricardus, he’ll know what to do next.”

• The show again begins with a shot of an opening eye (visually evoking the idea of “awakening,” of “becoming conscious,” of achieving “good being”) – specifically Ilana’s. We’re back in that mysterious hospital room, where Jacob first recruited her into his service. It’s the same scene that we witnessed in the Season 5 finale, but extended slightly. We hear Jacob ask her to protect six people – the remaining candidates. At this request Ilana (who, despite looking like Peyton Westlake’s curly-haired cousin seems genuinely glad to see Jacob) tears up. Does she understand that this request means that Jacob will shortly die? Is that the reason for her tears?

• Hey, did you notice that in Jacob and Ilana’s first scene together she’s all bandaged-up but in their next scene together, which takes place moments after the first, she’s un-bandaged and unblemished, seemingly healed? Continuity error? Or intentionally stealthy detail? What do you think?

Richard: “You wanna know a secret, Jack? Something I’ve known a long, long time? You’re dead….We’re all dead. Every single one of us. And this? All this? It’s not what you think it is. We’re not on an Island. We never were. We’re in hell.”

• Ab Aeterno returns us, briefly, into the company of Jack, Frank, Miles, Ben, Sun, Ilana, Hurley and Richard, aka the Jacobians. We’re reminded that some of these people (Frank’s sole purpose at this point seems to be “convenient, not-dead pilot”) are Candidates to replace Jacob, but not what that actually means, nor how they go about determining who the “true” candidate is. All we know: Jacob told Ilana that Richard would know what to do next. Except that he really, really doesn’t seem to know. In fact, Richard’s more-or-less losing it (as Jack points out). His world is crumbling around him and the central defining purpose of his life has burnt up (literally and figuratively). In this context, Alpert’s near-hysterical giggling is both funny and deeply sad. It’s the laughter of a man who believes that everything he thought he believed was a joke.

• If you’ve been following along with the Rewatch columns and/or reading along with this season’s recaps, then you already know that the Island is a kind of “Underworld,” if only in the allegorical/mythical sense. The dead can be glimpsed, the living are judged, signs and symbols scattered over the Island reference and refer to “Underworld,” “sheol,” “Hel,” etc., and once you’ve arrived on its shores, the Island is a terribly difficult place to leave. So, in a sense, what Richard says is true. The Island IS hell, in that it shares certain features with the proposed versions of the afterlife that Greek, Jewish, Egyptian, and Christian belief systems.

• Speculative note: Jacob seems certain that Richard will know what to do regarding the issue of Jacob’s candidates. Suppose that this is because Richard has already performed this task/duty once before: when he tested a young John Locke with what seemed to be a variation on the test that the Pachen Lama has given to prospective Dali Lama candidates. Recall what Richard asked Locke: “Which of these things belong to you already?” Is it possible that, in addition to testing Locke for leadership of the Others, Richard was also, unknowingly, testing him for candidacy?

Jack: “Locke is dead.”
Ben: “If it’s any consolation, it’s not exactly Locke.”

• I’d forgotten that, after all this time, Jack still has no idea that “Locke” has resurrected. The eventual meeting between them should be epic, and you and I both know that it needs to happen.

Hurley (translated from Spanish): “Why? I don’t know. Yes, I can help you, but… I don’t know how to find him.”

• We see Hurley speaking in Spanish to what looks like thin air. It’ll turn out that he was speaking with Isabella, Richard’s dead wife. Her presence on the Island and her appearance to Richard has me amending my “Island ghost theory,” where I guessed that the body of a dead person needed to be on the Island in order for the Man in Black to assume her form. From what we see here, it looks as though memories, whether taken from the living (as the MiB seems to do with Richard in this episode) or the dead (as Miles is shown doing throughout the show) may be the key to the Man in Black’s “ghost” appearances. This assumption keeps my “Island Ghost theory” in play but adds this corollary: the memories of the living are fair game as well.

• Apparently, Richard and his wife Isabella lived in the Canary Islands, which are located off the Northwest coast of Africa, placing it roughly near one of the “Vile Vortices” which may be transporting people to the Island ala the “Bermuda Triangle.” 

Isabella: “We will always be together.”

• Isabella is dying from consumption, and gives her husband the same basic advice that we saw Michael Landon dishing out on Little House during “Recon”: The dead never truly leave us, because they reside in our memories (and this further supports the Island Ghost theory, suggesting that Isabella can manifest because Richard remembers her, and that Hurley can see her because Hurley is “special”). She gives Richard her necklace to help him pay for the medicine she needs – trading the symbol of her faith for the hope of science in a symbolic sense.

Note that the bottle of medicine which the Doctor is shown holding STRONGLY resembles the vial of “sand” which Richard brought to Locke during his aforementioned Pachen Lama test in Season 4.

THIS COLUMN CONTINUES, AB AETERNO, AFTER THE PAGE BREAK!