"Maybe all it needed was a little push..."-- Jacob (Michael Pellegrino)
[MAJOR SPOILERS] The penultimate season finale of Lost was another tremendously entertaining feature-length effort, packed with nice character moments and the customary twists and surprises. The narrative behind the '77-set storyline of Jack (Matthew Fox) trying to detonate a hydrogen bomb at the Swan Station was fairly predictable stuff (and struggled slightly to convince us of his motivations), but everything else was cool, revelatory and enormous fun...
The most absorbing aspect of the finale was undoubtedly getting to see the mysterious Jacob (Dexter's Mark Pellegrino), whom we first meet in the teaser set during the 19th-century on the island. Jacob's weaving a tapestry in a stone chamber, then ventures out onto the beach to catch fish, where he talks with an as-yet-unnamed character referred to as "Jacob's Enemy" in the credits, "Samuel" in the show's casting call, and as "Esau" by fans (the opposing force of the Biblical Jacob.)
For simplicity's sake, let's call him Esau (Titus Welliver). Jacob wears a white top, Esau wears a black top. It's not complex symbolism, but clearly these two island dwellers are a Ying/Yang force of enormous importance to the mytharc. On the ocean's horizon, an old sailing ship (the Black Rock, surely) is approaching, apparently brought here by Jacob. Esau is despondent, reminding Jacob that people always bring destruction, corruption and how it "always ends the same", but Jacob claims that it only ends once and everything before that is progress. Before leaving, Esau says how he wants to kill Jacob and will find a "loophole" to do just that. As he walks away, we realize that both men were sat next to the enormous, fully-constructed four-toed statue (note: not an idol of Egyptian God Anubis as many thought, but actually the goddess of fertility Tawaret.)
By and large, "The Incident" breaks down into three storylines: in 1977, Jack and Sayid (Naveen Andrews) dismantle the hydrogen bomb using Faraday's journal instructions, planning to take the explosive core to the Swan Station and detonate it before the DHARMA drill team hit a dangerous pocket of electromagnetic energy. They're helped by Richard Alpert (Nestor Carbonell) and Eloise (Alice Evans) to reach the DHARMA barracks underground, and must go alone from there...In 2007, Locke (Terry O'Quinn) is leading the Others to see Jacob, to latter-day Richard's consternation. Ben (Michael Emerson) is along for the ride, having been told to follow Locke's every word by a vision of his dead daughter Alex, but isn't too happy about Locke confiding in him that the ultimate aim is to kill Jacob. Or, more accurately, he wants Ben to kill Jacob to avenge the decades of being ignored, sacrificing his own daughter, and banishment from the island.
Concurrently in '07, Ilana (Zuleikha Robinson), Bram and their team have arrived on the main island from Hydra Island, with the captured Lapidus (Jeff Fahey) -- who is shown the contents of their mysterious crate and reacts with a well-timed "terrific". They're on their way to some unspecified destination, but first they come across Jacob's Cabin (with a broken circle of ash around its perimeter), Ilana finds a parchment with a drawing of the four-toed statue pinned to a wall, but dismisses the cabin as a red herring and burns the building down...
Back in '77, Sawyer (Josh Holloway), Juliet (Elizabeth Mitchell) and Kate (Evangeline Lilly) are aboard the DHARMA submarine bound for Ann Arbor, but Kate manages to convince Juliet to stage an escape and head back to the island in a dinghy. Like Kate, Juliet doesn't want Jack to succeed in detonating his bomb, as he'll change history and she'll never meet SawyerInevitably, Jack and Sayid are spotted by DHARMA when they surface in the barracks and Sayid is shot during a skirmish, before the pair are rescued by Hurley (Jorge Garcia) and Miles (Ken Leung) in a DHARMA van and driven towards the Swan. However, their journey is interrupted by Sawyer, Juliet and Kate, and Sawyer takes Jack aside to argue that everything happens for a reason and it's wrong to mess with time this way
Jack is unconvinced, revealing rather awkwardly that his actions are entirely fuelled by the fact he won Kate but then lost her. Their talk leads to an intense fight in the jungle (including a rather underhand leg-to-crotch attack from Sawyer), before they're separated by Juliet (who, again rather awkwardly, claims she knows Sawyer still has feelings for Kate and can't live with that, so it's best to erase their time together with Jack's plan.)
There are also an abundance of brief flashbacks sprinkled throughout "The Incident", most featuring Jacob -- who was evidently the manipulator in getting everyone to the island, or back to the island. We see him distract Sayid on the street so that his wife is killed by oncoming traffic, he revives Locke after he's pushed to his death from that multi-storey window (confirming Jacob has supernatural abilities), he consoles young Sawyer at the funeral of his parents, he offers kind words at the wedding of Sun (Yunjin Kim) and Jin (Daniel Dae Kim), he helps young Kate avoid trouble with the police after shoplifting, he gives Ilana a mission to fulfill, he convinced Hurley to return to the island on Ajira Flight 316, and... er, he helped Jack get a chocolate bar from a vending machine after he was embarrassed by his dad for making a mistake during his first operation.
In the climactic moments, Jack ventures to the Swan alone, where Radzinsky (Eric Lange) is determined to keep drilling despite Dr. Chang's (Francois Chau) warnings. Jack's friends belatedly decide to help him and a gun fight ensues, before Jack manages to drop the bomb into the drill hole and triggers intense magnetism (echoing the season 2 finale) that starts to drag metal objects down the hole -- including Juliet, after she becomes entangles in heavy chains, and Sawyer fails to hold onto her...In '07, Locke's group reach the remains of the four-toed statue, where Richard claims Jacob resides. The Others wait on the beach as Locke leads Ben into the secret chamber at the base of the statue and find the stone chamber from the teaser -- where Jacob's finished tapestry hangs (showing rays of sunlight touching a group of people). On the beach, Ilana's group arrive with their crate, she gives her cryptic "what lies in the shadow of the statue?" phrase to Richard, who responds correctly in Latin with "he who will protect/save us all", and they reveal the contents of the box to him -- the corpse of John Locke
In the statue, Ben and imposter-Locke find Jacob and Ben's prompted to carry out his homicidal task. As Jacob commends imposter-Locke for finding a "loophole" (confirming that "Locke" is his enemy Esau) Ben asks why Jacob never made himself available to him in the same way as Richard, and Jacob's dismissive response enrages Ben into stabbing Jacob. Before he dies, Jacob tells "Locke" that "they're coming" before he's pushed into the flames of his chamber's central fire-pit.Back, in '77 -- Chang's hand is trapped by wreckage (the reason he's missing a hand in those DHARMA videos), and everyone's disappointed the bomb hasn't gone off. At the bottom of the drill hole, Juliet is found to still be alive, lying next to the unexploded nuke... which she desperately strikes over and over with a nearby rock, until... BOOM! We cut to white. Did the bomb really go off? Will that negate the electro-magnetism and rewrite history? Or has Juliet caused the very incident they were trying to prevent and topples over the first domino towards Flight 815's crash in 2004?
Okay, let's chew on the finale's events, clues and revelations, while mulling over the possibilities for the last season:
Jacob & His Enemy. Clearly a major piece of the Lost puzzle, as we realize that the Jacob we've been seeing on occasion in his spooky cabin was more likely his black-shirted "enemy" (contained inside by Jacob using the circle of ash -- which someone had broken recently, facilitating his escape?) It seems likely that Jacob's opposite can assume the identities of the dead, having apparently taken Christian's form, and now Locke's. It's great fun to remember everything Christian has ever said, now armed with knowledge that he's a deceitful villain only trying to manipulate people so he could kill Jacob by finding his "loop hole" (as these entities apparently can't just kill each other directly.)
But, if Jacob's enemy has been cleverly manipulating people on the island, it seems that Jacob has greater freedom and can leave the island to draw people to it. For what aim, exactly? Well, it feels like everyone on the island is part of a good-old-fashioned Good Vs. Evil "game" between Jacob and "Esau". But obviously, nothing's very clear just yet. Did the latest game start with the Black Rock, or was that a failed "round"? It seems likely that Richard was a sailor aboard the Black Rock, so was he given immortality by Jacob as the prize for being the only survivor of that last batch of "players"?
Is Jacob dead? I'm not so sure. Characters that work as symbols for Good and Evil don't usually die, they're just annulled and the delicate balance takes a knock for awhile. My prediction is that Jacob's now the one confined somewhere (the Cabin, or wherever). Maybe the fact Jacob was burned has significance, regarding the ashes sprinkled around the Cabin? Did Jacob burn his enemy and confine him to the cabin, so this was poetic justice?
In some ways, this new element of Lost reminded me of Battlestar Galactica's resolution -- which had its own supernatural entities working behind the scenes, and there was hints of a cyclical nature in "The Incident" similar to BSG's "all this has happened before and will happen again
Jacob's Cabin. Well, it wasn't his cabin. Jacob lives in the four-toed statue, so it appears that his adversary was trapped in the cabin (contained by that ash?) and pretended to be Jacob, primarily to Ben it seems... but he also had Locke fooled, and has been posing as Christian in there for awhile now. This also means that Claire is with enemy-Christian, and that Jacob's opposite has no interest in Aaron (whom he left in the jungle when he took Claire in season 4.)
Locke. Sadly, he really is dead, it would seem! But ask ourself: would the writers be foolish enough to get rid of Terry O'Quinn for their final season? I doubt it. But, will we only see Locke in the guise of Esau now? He can't keep the deception up now Locke's corpse has been found, so won't he have to disappear at the very least? Will O'Quinn's role become similar to that of John Terry, who appears only occasionally as Christian? That would be a shame...
On a note of optimism: this episode showed Jacob can bring people back to life (Locke was dead after that high-rise plummet), so it's possible Jacob could somehow return and bring him back for real. And Widmore sounded convinced Locke had to return to the island for a greater purpose -- unless, I guess, Widmore is in league with Esau and knew his "master" needed a dead body to inhabit to persuade Ben to kill Jacob. Oh, why does it always sound convoluted when you try to squeeze theories into the back-story!
"They're Coming". That's what Jacob said to his enemy before dying. So who are they? Does he mean Ilana's team (the threat being that everyone knows you're not Locke now)? Also, it feels that Ilana and Bram really are "the good guys", as they say. Ilana was definitely working on behalf of Jacob (who appears to be a genuinely good person) and her team have some connection to Richard's era, with the code-phrase exchange. Are they the only ones that can defeat Esau? Widmore previously mentioned that a war was coming -- those who side with Jacob, versus those who side with Esau?
The Incident. I'll hazard a guess that the '77-ers won't jump forward to '07 as a result of the bomb going off. There's still some loose ends in the DHARMA era to see tied up. Plus, Richard claimed he saw Jack's gang die back in the '70s, and he wasn't around to see them die/disappear in this finale. I reckon they'll eventually jump back to the present, but we'll have to wait as long as we did for the Oceanic Six to get back to the island this year (six episodes, or so) Whatever happens, I doubt history has been changed as Jack intended. The Swan will now be repurposed to contain the pocket of energy by inputting The Numbers every 108 minutes, and when DHARMA leave poor Radzinsky will be left behind to enter the code with new recruit Kelvin. It was fate.
But was the incident responsible for the island's odd infertility problem? Women can give birth fine in '77 and before, so it seems likely. And there must be some relevance that the four-toed statue is fertility goddess Tawaret. Is Jacob's death perhaps the reason, as he had power over who came to the island (even by birth)? If so, does this mean Jacob found his own "loop hole" and has actually returned to the island, reincarnated, as Aaron? Will Aaron/Jacob have to be brought back to the island next year, perhaps by Desmond?
In a related thought, maybe Eloise (who we learn is pregnant with Daniel) intentionally exiled herself from the island to give birth to her son because of the birthing crisis, despite knowing the terrible destiny ahead of him?
Random, additional thoughts:
- How perfect that the death of scientist Faraday has paved the way for more metaphysical approach to the mythology, with Jacob and Esau? Is there anybody left with a scientific approach to answering Lost's mysteries, or can everyone now accept it's a supernatural show at heart? Bad luck all those fans who don't like the theological side of Lost, and prefer the science fiction, it seems...
- This finale (and indeed this season as a whole) really felt like a prequel to season 2 in particular, and improved that year in hindsight. The season 5 finale also has many similarities to previous finale's (by design, or not), like the fact every finale involves blowing something up (season 1, The Hatch; season 2, The Swan; season 3, The Looking-Glass; season 4, The Kahana; season 5, The Swan again.) Incidentally, why is the Station called The Swan? Did we ever get an answer?
- I loved Miles throwing his eleventh hour curveball that Jack detonating the bomb might cause "the incident", so doing nothing is the way to get the job done. Genius.
- Is Richard going to fix that wall in the DHARMA barrack basement? It's a direct route to Other underground territory!
- Juliet's "death" scene was certainly an emotional highlight; very much the equal of Charlie's death in season 3. Elizabeth Mitchell and Josh Holloway wrung every drop of emotion from that moment, as Sawyer lost his grip and watched Juliet tumble down the drill-hole. It's a testament to both actors that the moment worked so brilliantly, as their characters have only been a couple for a half-dozen episodes, or so.
- Bernard, Rose and Vincent the dog made a belated return, which was nice to see. The reason for their absence this season, despite logically being jumped around in time with the others? Well, they'd just had enough and had wandered off to live together in a makeshift island house. Not sure I really buy that (they avoided Sawyer's scouts and the Others for three years?), but it was better than just forgetting all about them. Also, the way they basically classed themselves as "retired" from the craziness of their fellow islanders amused me. I doubt we've seen the last of them, though. The '77-ers are bound to get back to the present soon, and there's no logical way Bernard, Rose and Vincent would be left behind. And you need Vincent in the series finale, surely! He's an original Oceanic 815-er.
Overall, this was brilliantly entertaining, but it lacked the massive surprise of the season 3 finale, and the beautiful handling of the season 4 finale. This season as a whole has been a little too caught up in the time-travel shenanigans for my taste, but it worked nicely as a prequel to season 2 and undoubtedly filled in plenty of gaps in our knowledge without relying on flashbacks. There appears to be real forward momentum, which is the main thing to be relieved about as we contemplate the sixth, final season in 2010.
Until then... namaste.
17 May 2009
Sky1, 9pm
Writers: Carlton Cuse & Damon Lindelof
Director: Jack Bender
Cast: Matthew Fox (Jack), Evangeline Lilly (Kate), Terry O'Quinn (Locke), Nestor Carbonell (Richard), Zuleikha Robinson (Ilana), Josh Holloway (Sawyer), Elizabeth Mitchell (Juliet), Francois Chau (Dr. Chang), Jorge Garcia (Hurley), Ken Leung (Miles), Michael Emerson (Ben), Michael Pellegrino (Jacob), Titus Welliver (Jacob's Enemy), Eric Lange (Radzinsky) & Naveen Andrews (Sayid)
