This week’s episode of LOST, like the earlier Richard-centric episode, was entirely a flashback. I don’t think we saw any of these kind of episodes during earlier seasons so it’s pretty neat to see two in the final run. Like Richard’s episode, “Across the Sea” did a lot to move the good vs. evil plot forward and reveal to us a bit more of what the island is really about. Do we come away really knowing anything new? I don’t know, I’m still on the fence about that. But it was a solid episode with lots of information and a lot of intriguing developments. An enormous 2,200-word essay is below the break…

One thing that certainly makes things easier is that there isn’t an alternaverse/island reality to deal with in this episode. In fact, this episode touches very little on the main LOST plot—although one could argue that this is the main underlying plot, I suppose.

Who was the woman that killed Jacob/Man-in-Black’s mother?

This is perhaps the central question we’re left with after this week’s episode. Who was she? Aside from playing a well-known character on The West Wing. Who was she really? Well, we know a few things. We know that she was there before the ship with Jacob’s real mother arrived. We know that she had been protecting the light on the island and that she needed a replacement. Other than that? I’m not sure what else we know.

As far as I can tell, this woman was performing the role that Jacob would later inherit, before Jacob’s mother and the others crashed on the island. Did she call them there? We don’t know. But it seemed like she was ready and eager to find a replacement for herself—a candidate?—because as soon as she could she killed Jacob’s mother she adopted Jacob and his brother, the Man-in-Black, as her own. She raised them with the full intention of having them take over her role on the island to protect the light. She knew that there were other people on the island and she kept that knowledge from both of the children as she raised them. She needed them to be sheltered, to be different—to not known evil? But then again, she herself acknowledged the Man-in-Black’s lies, she knows of his ability to deceive and Jacob’s inability to lie like him.

What’s up with the Man-in-Black?

Among other things, this episode completely turns on its head the idea of good vs. evil. Previously, I think we kind of understood Jacob to be a force of good and the Man-in-Black to be a force of evil. Well, not so. The Man-in-Black, we now know, is kind of a product of his mother. The woman the raised him and Jacob. The woman who he previously acknowledged was “crazy”. She lied to him. She raised him as her own son, told him there was nothing across the sea, and that he couldn’t go there, he couldn’t leave the island. She lied to him from the start and when his real mother appeared to him and told him the truth, naturally he went along with it.

The Man-in-Black’s departure to the camp with the “Others”(?) is only natural. He listened to and followed the advice of his natural, his real mother. He decided to make it his goal to find a way off the island and back to where he belong, after being lied to for most of his life. Is the Man-in-Black the embodiment of evil? Certainly not at this point. Instead he’s the victim of a lie and of, interestingly enough, evil. The victim of evil, not evil himself.

And what about Jacob?

Of course, we also see in this episode that Jacob isn’t the embodiment of good—he isn’t necessarily good, at least not at this point. Jacob acts out ragefully a couple of times in this episode, revealing his human side to be sure. In the end, after discovering that the Man-in-Black has killed their mother, Jacob attacks the MiB and eventually “kills” him by floating him down the stream into the light that his mother was protecting for so long. If there’s one thing we learned about Jacob in this episode is that he is capable of doing evil, or at least has a very strong sense of justice. After all, if the MiB killed their mother, in a “just” world, isn’t his death necessary to balance things once again?

The Light…

But the Man-in-Black doesn’t really die, does he? Of course Jacob finds his corpse and “buries” him along with their mother in the caves—later found by Jack, Kate and John—but the Man-in-Black obviously makes a return, later in the storyline, as the Smoke Monster. In a way, he’s dead, in another way, he’s not.

What I think happens is that going into the light, like Jacob’s foster mother said, is “worse than death”. I think it traps a person on the island, among other things. It’s stolen the Man-in-Black’s body, transformed him into the Smoke Monster, and somehow also trapped him on the island. Did going into the light make him evil? I’m not sure, but quite possibly. It certainly killed him, in a way, but it seems like if he can get a new body, like he’s done with John Locke, then he has a chance of leaving the island again. But he seems trapped by Jacob too because we’ve seen him in the past asking Jacob to let him leave, and Jacob saying that he can’t do that. Jacob also explained to Richard that the Man-in-Black was the embodiment of evil. We know that Jacob can’t tell a lie, so that means that maybe the MiB really did become the embodiment of evil after going down into that light.

Either way, the light seems to bind Jacob and the Man-in-Black to the island. It seems to be the thing that’s brought everyone there, I think. It’s certainly brought Dharma, which I’m sure we’ll hear more about in the final two episodes. Did Dharma have something to do with protecting the light? I wonder. I also wonder where the light is now? Is it underneath the Temple, or somewhere else, or is it just dispersed around the island and being tapped into at the different Dharma stations.

Candidates

It seems as though however Jacob’s real mother and the other people in her group were brought to the island, the woman intended Jacob and/or the Man-in-Black to replace her in the job of protecting the light. I wonder if she had the ability to bring them there—an ability that Jacob would later inherit—or if the light brought them there or neither. In any case, it seems like this is the same kind of thing that Jacob is doing later in the storyline: finding someone to replace him. Or is he?

Jacob, as we learn in this episode, is a broken man. He killed his brother in cold brother, whether or not it was doing justice he was clearly angry and killing him was an act of vengeance. We learned earlier on that Jacob is bringing people to the island. In a conversation on the beach the Man-in-Black tells Jacob that it’s pointless, that it always ends the same with everyone killing each other. Jacob says that in the meantime, there’s progress. We know that Jacob isn’t trying to leave the island so it isn’t progress towards that. I think it’s progress towards finding a candidate, and at the same time, proving that Jacob is right.

Jacob believes, to some degree, that people can and will do good—that they can redeem themselves from poor circumstances. He is thinking of his own poor choices when he killed his brother, he wants to believe that there are good people out there even if it doesn’t include himself. Meanwhile, the Man-in-Black has little faith in people. He’s taken the lie his mother told him to heart, stewed upon it, and his time spent with the people digging the wells only served to solidify his bitterness. Not to mention he was “killed” by his brother and is now trapped on the island.

I think Jacob was trying to find someone who was better than he was, perhaps, to both prove a point and to take over his duties on the island, protecting the light. Problem is, the Man-in-Black is now a force of evil on the island, somehow connected to the light as well. Did Jacob know he was going to be killed and was searching for a replacement to take over when that happened? Did he know it was inevitable that his brother would find a loophole?

Adam and Eve

I like that John Locke nicknames the skeletons of the Man-in-Black and his foster mother Adam and Eve. Like everything in LOST, this of course is very important. We can discount Adam and Eve as meaning the first two people on the island because we know they weren’t. Instead, Adam and Eve, in this case, is an illusion to original sin. Jacob and the Man-in-Black’s foster mother was originally sinful when she killed their real mother. Was that the first death on the island, the first murder? Maybe. The second sin, or murder, was then when the Man-in-Black killed his foster mother. So were these two the first two “sinners” on the island? It seems likely, but I’m not sure, it’s a neat allusion either way.

Other Allusions…

Of course because it’s LOST there are other allusions that we can now see have kept coming up throughout the story.

Baby-stealing seems common place. First, Jacob’s mother had her babies stolen from here and raised by the woman, Eve. Later, Rousseau had her baby stolen from her and raised by Ben and the Others. And finally, Claire had her baby stolen from her, in a way, and it was raised by Kate. In the case of Rousseau, we know that Widmore issued the order to steal her baby and we know that the Others had made a practice of this but we don’t really know why, do we? I suspect that maybe the Man-in-Black, and not Jacob, was counseling the Others at this point because we see the same thing happen later on with Claire’s baby and then it is the Man-in-Black who forces her to abandon Aaron.

The wine bottle. Here is the origin of the wine bottle, perhaps. Jacob’s foster mother has him drink from the bottle to indicate his new role as protector of the light. This is the same bottle that Jacob later uses to illustrate to Richard that evil is being contained on the island. The same bottle that Jacob later gives to his brother, which he smashes in a very poetic metaphor. If it were only that easy to leave the island.

Now we know who the little boy is. That little boy who has been appearing off and on throughout this season, chasing and chastising the Man-in-Black is Jacob, a younger Jacob. This makes sense, especially when he tells the Man-in-Black, in one instance, that he is breaking the rules.

This episode also gives us a glimpse into what all of those wells were about and their purpose. We even learn that the Man-in-Black himself built the wheel, intended to manipulate the light.

Consider This…

The appearance of the Claudia, the real mother to Jacob and the Man-in-Black, was actually the appearance of the Smoke Monster. Remember, it was on Claudia’s prompting that the Man-in-Black left his foster mother and Jacob and joined camp with the Others. It was by Claudia that he learned of his mothers lies and deception and it was from her that the seed was first planted that the MiB should try and leave the island. Was this appearance of his mother actually a manifestation of the Smoke Monster manipulating the MiB? I think the implications of this are far-reaching if it’s possible. Maybe, just like the Smoke Monster/MiB was searching for a body in John Locke, the Smoke Monster prior to becoming the MiB was searching for a soul. If the Smoke Monster’s goal, from even before Jacob and the MiB’s time, was to leave the island then maybe it needed someone to come down that whole, into the light, so that it could  have their soul, it could become a presence on the island.

I don’t know, but I wonder.

Final Thoughts

Yes, the Man-in-Black, Adam, was the victim of some serious brain-washing and lies but that doesn’t excuse him and certainly doesn’t mean that he’s not now the embodiment of evil. Was it Jacob’s doing, when he threw him down into the light, that made him evil? Maybe it was. Yeah, it could’ve been, because he certainly wasn’t wholly evil before then. But he is now. Manipulating and killing at will, in cold blood. His only goal now is to get off the island and it seems that he’s willing to accomplish it at any cost. Any sliver of compassion or sympathy seems to be entirely lost now, as far as I can tell. He’s in it for himself and himself alone.

That said, is Jacob entirely good? Is his mission to find a candidate wholly righteous? Probably not. When he drank the wine and was given authority as the new protector of the light his foster mother, Eve, told him that he was now “like her”. Does he inherit all of her faults as well as her faith? She was certainly not wholly good, she killed the entire village of Others that the Man-in-Black was living with. Whether or not she was doing this to protect the light I think we can agree that it’s a pretty unwholesome move. Jacob certainly isn’t perfect either.

So in the end I feel like we’ve learned a lot and then we haven’t. None of this really changes the main storyline, I don’t think. We still don’t want the Man-in-Black to leave the island. He’s still evil, as far as I can tell, even if he wasn’t always. We still need someone to replace Jacob on the island. We still want the remaining Survivors to survive. I don’t see a whole lot of difference. But, in any case, there is only 3 1/2 more hours of LOST left, forever. How it’s going to end and what we’re going to learn—or not learn—is absolutely anyone’s guess. It is insane though for a show to keep its fan base guessing right up until the eleventh hour, knowing LOST, probably up until the very last second, if not beyond.

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