Lost Rewatch on VHS: Ab Aeterno

 

VHS Rewatch: Examples of the first Dean Winters as Mayhem in All State and a preview of the Mark Wahlberg-Will Ferrell comedy The Other Guys.

 

Ab Aeterno is the kind of episode that I hoped all of the final season would be revealing some of the deepest truths about the island’s past and explaining how they relate to what we are seeing today. It is by far the highpoint of Season 6, and I guarantee you had every episode was of the caliber of this the controversy about both the final season and whether Lost had been a masterpiece or a misfire would not be a subject of discussion.

This episode does what the greatest episodes of the entire canon have done throughout the past five years: it tells a sweeping story that answers many of the questions of a major character as The 23^rd Psalm did; has the kind of saga that makes ones mind and heart ache as did The Constant; shows an epic saga that crosses the globe yet tells us as much about the island even though it rarely sets foot on it the way Jeremy Bentham did. And like the best episodes of television, it has a unique flow that makes it stand apart from the series it is ostensibly a part of.

If like me you got a glimpse of the episode titles leading up to the final season while you might not know Latin, like me you probably could have figured out that the second word was some derivative of ‘eternal’. When you learned that Nestor Carbonell was going to a series regular for the final season, you must therefore have come to the same conclusion that I did: after three years we were finally going to learn the backstory behind Richard Alpert who over the second half of Lost clearly has a role that has to do with the island far more extensive than any character we’d met to this point. But even if you’d figured that out, there was no way we could have been prepared for what we were going to get.

It’s worth noting that the first time we met Richard it was in the first episode centered on her: Not in Portland. At the time Richard just seemed like another…Other, someone that was there to get Juliet to the island. Because Season 3 was more about the Others than any previous season Richard seemed to be nothing more than one of Ben’s many underlings.. We’d learn that on the day of the Oceanic crash, Richard hadn’t even been on the island, so how central to the story could he possibly be?

It wasn’t until the season was nearly over that we began to see there might be more to Richard then met the eye (liner…sorry). When he talked to Locke in one of his flashbacks in The Brig, he spoke of the island as beautiful, called Locke ‘special’ and then gave him Sawyer’s file. I have to admit I’m not sure the importance of that registered: we knew the Others didn’t like Ben and perhaps this was a way to manage a coup. But in The Man Behind The Curtain, everything changed.

During Ben’s flashback, we saw a ten year old Ben run into the woods and straight into Richard. While he had longer hair and dirtier clothes, he was otherwise looked identical to the way he did in the present. Suddenly what seemed to be a throwaway comment by Ben in the opening segment: “You do remember birthday’s, don’t you Richard?” took on a subtext we hadn’t considered before. We’d already seen impossible things on the island, but could this island actually bestow immorality?

Because Carbonell had been cast in the CBS drama Cane a contractual obligation kept Richard mostly out of Season 4. The shows cancellation and the writer’s strike allowed him to make a mysterious return in Cabin Fever when it seemed that Richard had been following the progress of John Locke from almost the day he was born. The theory at the time was that Richard had time traveled from 2004 to the past, but there was a more logical reason (well, as logical as we get on Lost). Locke had time traveled to 1954 and told Richard to come and see him to prove that he was going to be the new leader.

Of course by that time, the island was skipping through time but as Season 5 went on it became clear who the constant on the island was: Richard. He looked the same in 1954 as he did in 1977 and in 2004. At this point the question became what was Richard’s position with the island? He’d answered to Ben, then maneuvered Locke so he could take over in the present. While Season 5 seemed like it was going to be about the war between Ben and Widmore, it was worth noting that in the past Widmore, who refused to take orders from anybody in the present and who had claimed to be the leader before Ben usurped him, had been deferring to Richard more than anything. He had gone to see Horace when the Truce seemed to be violated. When he chose to take a young Ben Linus to the temple, an Other questioned his authority and Richard said brusquely: “I don’t answer to them.” When Widmore learned about this and started to anger Richard dismissed him with: “Jacob wanted it.” There was no sign this was true, but Widmore backed off immediately.

By the end of Season 5 Ben told Sun that Richard’s position was essentially an adviser to the leader “and that he’d had that position for a very long time.” During The Incident when Locke told Richard he’d never seen anyone who doesn’t age, Richard just told him Jacob did this. Given that in the teaser we’d seen that Jacob had been on the island since the Black Rock came in 1867, Richard’s immortality seems more a practical matter for Jacob than anything else.

During the first three seasons he’d been on Lost, Carbonell had a difficult job, maybe tougher than any other performer. On an island where the impossible happened on a daily basis, Richard had to take on the attitude of perennially calm, as if nothing could surprise or bother him anymore. There were signs of that calm being breached near the end of Season 5 in the aftermath of Dan invading the Others enclave in 1977 and as the man he thought was John Locke started making demands of him that he wasn’t used too, but even then there was clearly a sense of an almost beatific patience as if he was sure how everything would work out

Then at the start of Season 6 Jacob was killed and the Man in Black showed up and we learned that Richard was as clueless as everyone else on the island as to the grand design of the island. In the first half of Season Six Richard has been falling apart, angry, terrified and as we saw in Dr. Linus, in total despair.

And now on a grand scale, we finally learn everything we need to know about Richard Alpert, get the answers to some mysteries that have been at the center of the show since the first season, learn how Richard came to the island, our biggest hints as to why Jacob and The Man in Black are fighting and what the island actually represents. Oh, and we also learn why everyone we’ve met to this point was brought to the island. As Nikki Stafford put it in her summary: “In other words…ANSWERS!”

So much of the saga of Richard deals with themes we have seen in some version on Lost over its run but it is the brilliance – and sadness – of Ab Aeterno that we now see them in a much more tragic context. One of the larger themes underlying Lost is the idea of love being able to prevail as well as what happens when you lose what you care about the most. For Richard in 1867, it was the love of his wife Isabella who he cared for then his own life and was willing to do anything to save. That love cost him everything he held dear and not only does he bear that guilt but even more it is based in his belief she died despite it.

So much of the series as been built on the argument of science versus faith and which is more important. If Richard had heard Jack and Locke’s discussion just before they blew the hatch he would have found it a cruel joke because in his mind, he is only on the island because both betrayed him – or at least their representatives. We see him come to a wealthy doctor who can’t even be bothered to stop eating before he tells him he won’t come with him. He offers expensive medicine that he says will save her life but most likely was itself a fraud just so he could stay drive and take Ricardos wealth. When he tosses aside Isabella’s cross as worthless, Ricardos sees this as a discarding of everything his wife stands for and out of desperation accidentally kills a man. His freedom means less to him then his wife’s life and he barely looks up as the authorities come to take him away. In jail a priest comes to see him and offer him a confession. Richard is clearly devout but when this horrid priest tells him that he can’t absolve him of his sins and that the only thing that awaits for him is hellfire, he takes away the last shred of hope Richard had of seeing his wife again. Just like the doctor its clear the priest was playing on Richard for his own gain, though it works for him better than it did the doctor. Richard is sold into slavery and by the time this episode begins in the present, he truly believes he’s been one all his life.

Many of several mysteries are revealed on the Black Rock: the connection the Hanso family has to the island (Magnus Hanso was the captain of the ship) how the Black Rock ended up on dry land and how the statue was destroyed – the last two happened when Jacob brought the ship to the island. (And apparently in 140 years he never bothered to repair the damage.) Most of the passengers died on impact, Jonas Whitfield slaughtered most of the surviving prisoners and would have done the same to Richard had not the smoke monster killed everyone left.

And after all of that horrific experience, starvation, dehydration, knowing that he was likely to die in the hull of the ship – he sees a vision of Isabella, no doubt a version of the smoke monster. This time he hears his wife die horribly and has to suffer that pain and loss all over again.

We are reminded of UnLocke when he told Sawyer that ‘he’d been a prisoner and he’d been trapped so long that he’d forgotten what it was like to be free.”  Considering how long he has spent in servitude to Jacob, it’s hard not to see that Richard must now be feeling the same thing. He’d already felt something close to that when the Man in Black shows up and is the first person to offer him kindness since his wife died.

There are many parallels between the final season of Lost and Stephen King’s The Stand but the scene in the hull of the Black Rock is one of the most direct references. Lloyd Henreid is a prisoner awaiting trial when the superflu hits the country. He starts seeing both the screws and prisoners dying around him and it is only because he has saved food and has water that he survives and is beginning to consider cannibalism. Then Randall Flagg shows up. (Interestingly Henreid’s first thought is ‘Be quiet. Maybe he’ll go away.”) Flagg comes into the prison, looks at Lloyd and promises to free him but only if he swears loyalty to Flagg. Randall Flagg then creates a key out of a stone (one called the black rock) and opens the cell door – even though the cell doesn’t have a lock and is controlled electronically. Flagg frees Lloyd and he becomes Flagg’s first and most loyal soldier.

The Man in Black makes a similar demand but he’s far more gentle than Flagg is who spends quite a while baiting Lloyd with his hunger and his actions before finally getting around to freeing him. The Man In Black by contrast is kinder, gives him water first, tells him that things are horrible and (as we shall learn) is actually empathetic to Richard’s fate. It is true that he is responsible for much of Richard’s suffering, but he does feel that he is prisoner and that this island is Hell. He unlocks Richard (and after he frees him says the phrase that caused such chills to him when UnLocke came out of the statue) and then says that the only way to save his wife is to kill the devil.

In her book Nikki Stafford reminds us of the three major thinkers of the enlightenment. We met John Locke and a Rousseau in the first season but Stafford said we had yet to meet the third major thinker: Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes was the author of Leviathan who famously said in Leviathan : “the life of man is…solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” When we first met the Man in Black it was very clear his philosophy was basically the same: “They come. They fight. They corrupt. They destroy. And it always ends the same.” How ironic that the Man In Black is now wearing the form of a man named John Locke, whose namesake believed very much the opposite kind of thinking.

So far in Season 6 we have been given to think that Jacob is the force of good on the island and the Man in Black, now in the form of Locke, is evil incarnate. We have seen this perception held by all of Jacob’s disciples, both in the Temple and clearly Richard himself. So its interesting to note that despite everything we already know about what he’s going to do in the future, our sympathy is at least initially more with the Man In black. Titus Welliver appears in the flesh for the first time since the teaser to The Incident and while he is clearly deceptive to Richard for his own needs, there is a certain honesty with him as well as a kind of benevolence. It’s clear he’s manipulating Richard to his own ends – the offer he makes to him is essentially the same one he made to Sayid in Sundown – but throughout his interactions with Richard there’s a gentleness that we actually have seen more in his form as UnLocke but weren’t sure we could trust. Even after his plans are foiled, he doesn’t seem to bear Richard any ill will: there’s something close to regret when he tells Richard what will happen and he makes it very clear that if he ever changes his mind his offer will stand.

By contrast when Richard timidly makes his way to Jacob’s sanctuary, the Jacob he meets bears no resemblance to the version we’ve seen before, living or dead. Unlike in The Incident, this Jacob clearly gives a damn about living and will do anything possible to stay alive – including beating Richard up and then attempting to drown him. Mark Pellegrino has essentially had to play someone benevolent for the few times we’ve met him; now we get a sense of much, angrier Jacob. He seems puzzled when Richard tells him his wife wasn’t on the ship and pissed at the idea that the island is actually hell and everybody is dead.

In the scene that follows we get the clearest interpretation of what the island is and while the metaphor may seem strange, in a larger context it makes sense: “Think of this wine of what you keep calling hell. There’s many other names for it, malevolence, evil, darkness. And here it is, swirling around in the bottle unable to get out because if it did, it would spread. The cork is this island. And it’s the only thing keeping the darkness where it belongs.”

 Jacob doesn’t say so directly but the viewer infers that the Man in Black is that evil and the island’s job is to keep him at bay. Based on everything we’ve seen the smoke monster do for five seasons we know that he is capable of great evil, killing indiscriminately, judging those he sees fit and either sparing or killing them. Richard clearly believes the island is Hell  - the fact that he was the last one to see the statue that was called the devil before it was destroyed – has enforced his thinking for the last 140 years. After all, he was told by the priest that he would burn in hellfire and as no less than Anthony Cooper told us (in the Brig of the ship Richard came on, no less) “It’s a little hot for heaven.”

Jacob confirms he has been bringing people to the island all this time, calling boats and later planes. He also tells Ilana, who passes on, that these people are candidates to replace him. There seems to be a larger context: “That man who sent you to kill me believes that everyone is corruptible because its in their very nature to sin. I bring people here to prove him wrong, and when they get here, their past doesn’t matter.”

This may sound benevolent but there are many subtexts, some of which are very clear to the viewer. By bringing people here, Jacob has been actively interfering in their fates as much as the Man in Black has been. The Man In Black confirmed as much to Sawyer in The Substitute and after everything we’ve seen the survivors had to go through just to get on the plane, one wonders if Jacob helped make their pasts so terrible the island would be a paradise. Furthermore, as Jacob tells Richard he’d ben bringing people to the island for a very long time and as of the time of the Black Rock, they were all dead.  Jacob’s responsibility to them apparently stopped the moment they came to the island and when Richard points out the consequences of this, it’s almost as if Jacob’s never considered this a possibility. One wonders if Richard is the first person in Jacob’s long life that has ever gotten this far, much less questioned his authority.

Jacob then offers Richard a job as his representative, which is his way of making him his ambassador. In another sense Jacob is essentially further isolating himself from the island: now Richard can be his go-between. Even this job offer comes with strings: he won’t give Richard the two things he clearly wants the most in this world – either to see his wife again or absolution of his sins. Jacob may truly believe that the past doesn’t matter, but Richard has never forgotten his. Instead Richard asks, “to live forever’. Only in that way does he believe that he can escape his fate of eternal hellfire.

Richard swore allegiance to Jacob, and by burying his wife’s cross forsook his entire past. He’s managed to spend 140 years believing he was serving a higher purpose, never questioning any of Jacob’s decisions. We’ve wondered for a long time why the Others have done everything they’ve done for five seasons and now its clear that they’ve been following Richard’s beliefs for nearly a century and a half. When he was alive Locke called Ben on this in regard to his own leadership, now its clear Ben – as with everyone else – has been blindly following.

But all this time none of them have had any idea what would happen next. Jacob came to Ilana before this episode, told her about the six remaining candidates, that she had to protect them, bring them to the Temple and then Richard would know what to do. It’s clear that she never questioned Jacob’s authority for a moment and when Ilana turns to Richard – who only came back to the beach because he believed Jack knew what to do next – falls apart.

With Richard the stages of grief have come differently: he has been dealing with fear, despair and now something close to insanity. It’s hard not to compare how Jacob ‘recruited’ Richard to the way the Man in Black recruited both Sayid and Claire: he got to them both at their lowest point, seemed to offer them something that they desperately wanted and in turn they swore loyalty to him. Richard came to Jacob in a similar moment of grief and Jacob offered him ‘anything he wanted’ in return for his loyalty. Now to be clear the Man in Black more or less did the same thing and had no intention of keeping his promise and Jacob did grant him immortality but given everything that’s happened since, It’s clear Richard is questioning every decision he’s made.

And then after everything we’ve seen Lost reminds us just why we love the show. Richard is at the breaking point and then Hurley comes to find him with the one thing he wants to hear: “Your wife sent me!” What follows is one of the most beautiful moments in all of the series’ history and it’s hard not to come to tears watching it. Richard has spent his entire life – longer than you can possibly imagine –  carrying the guilt of Isabella’s death on him. Now with Hurley as her medium, Isabella tells Richard what he’s needed to hear more than anything during this long period. He thought his wife was gone and that he’d never see her again. But even though he’s never seen her, she’s never left his side. She tells him that even now she still loves him and that they will be together again, despite everything. Carbonell is magnificent in every moment in the flashback, but there’s nothing as brilliant as watching him finally mourn and find a way to move forward in the final scene.

We also see why the Man In Black wants to move forward in the final flashback. There’s a return to the old benevolence between Jacob and The Man in Black but this time there seems to be almost desperation. “Why won’t you let me leave?” he almost pleads. Jacob seems cold when he tells him why. We almost feel something resembling sympathy when the Man In Black tells him why he is so desperate to kill both Jacob and his replacements – until the final moment. We know how badly the Man In Black wants to leave the island and we’ve been told if he does “We all go to Hell.” And in the last moment we see that the Man in Black will do anything to leave. He managed to get the Devil killed at the end of Season 5. If he does leave will Hell follow with him?