"Two players,
two sides. One is light, one is dark."
Those were among the first words that John Locke
ever said on Lost in the Pilot. As he held up two backgammon pieces, one
black, one white, he seemed to be setting the tone for something ominous beyond
the crash itself.
Locke, as anyone who watched the show knows, asked
the most famous question in Lost history: "What if all of this were
happening for a reason?" And because he spoke in such a serene way when
everyone around him was terrified, the reaction of his fellow survivors from
Jack on down was that he was crazy. However, by the time of The Incident, the
season finale of the penultimate season, we finally got confirmation that, as
was almost always the case, Locke was right.
Because in the opening sequence (the episode would
be nominated for Best Dramatic Teleplay) we saw two men. One of them was
dressed in white, had sandy blond hair, and was wearing white sandals. The other had salt and pepper hair was
dressed in black and was wearing black sandals. They spoke in passive, benign
terms about a ship that was on the horizon and the man in black implied that
Jacob had brought it there. "Still trying to prove me wrong?"
"You are wrong."
"Am I? They come, they fight, they corrupt,
they destroy. And it always ends the same."
"It only ends once. Anything before that, is
just progress."
Then the Man in Black says perfectly calmly.
"Do you know how badly I want to kill you?"
The man with blond hair says just as calmly he
does. The Man In Black says one of these days I'll find a loophole.
And as he leaves having delivered this ominous
message in the calmest tones he says: "Always good talking to you,
Jacob."
"Always good talking to you," the man
we've heard mentioned so many times but have never seen until now tells him.
Even now it's harder to know which part of this
exchange is more shocking. It's not just that these men seem to be engaged in a
kind of great game which by implication has involved every single character
we've met in the last five seasons (and quite a few we will in the last one)
that it seems to involve something very much like the fate of human existence,
or that they are so calm when it comes to the discussion of killing each other.
(As we shall see in Season 6 that's just a front they use when they're together.
)
This episode features Jacob in the flashbacks but
they all focused on his involvement in the lives of eight of the survivors of
Oceanic 815 that are still alive at the end of Season 5. (Well, we think one of
them still is but…one thing at a time.) We will learn by the time Season 6 is
underway that all of them are important because Jacob believes that they are
Candidates to replace him on the Island.
(I'm including Kate because despite everything
that unfolds during Season 6 on the lighthouse her name is not crossed
out the way it was in the cave where he had the same group of names of all the
Candidates he had over the years. And as we learn in the penultimate episode,
even that consideration has always been perfunctory in the mind of Jacob.)
We see all eight of these figures at critical
moments in their lives, moments that we know because of other flashbacks or
part of their own narration we know our vital moments in every one of their
lives. We will eventually get
confirmation that Jacob has in some way been following them throughout their
own lives, pushing them towards the island.
In the penultimate episode Jacob will claim he
picked every single person who survived – and by implication all the other
candidates who didn't over the course of the series – because they were all
'missing something'. "I didn't pluck any of you out of a happy
existence," he says. "You needed this place as much as it needed
you."
But here's the thing. At this point we know
something about Jacob. He's never been a good liar and he is deeply flawed. And
he never answers a question directly. The obvious question is: Did he pick them
because they needed the island or did they need the island because he picked
them? And the thing is when we watch the flashbacks in 'The Incident', it could
very much go either way.
I should mention a source material that helped me
make these conclusions was one I have yet to cite in these articles about Lost.
Lost: Hidden Treasures by Lynette Porter and David Lavery was a
different kind of Lost guide that came out during the series' original
run. Rather than deal with the theorizing or trying to review episodes it took
a look at the series from where it was in the Zeitgeist, though it did do a
ranking of the ten greatest episodes of the series. Invaluable when it comes to
discussing both the literature and pop culture influences on the series, it
published three different editions, the last coming out in 2010 just prior to
the premiere of the final season. The most vital section when it came to the
series endgame was the chapter Waking the Dead, where among other things they
discussed Jacob. They speculated on what was one of the biggest questions of
Season 5: Was Jacob good or evil? I quote the section that is relevant:
Although Jacob permits and sometimes even
encourages those he visits to choose their own course of action, his influence
may instead turn characters away from good choices towards those that will
eventually form their undoing.
This is confirmed in a negative light by the Man
in Black in The Substitute who basically says to Sawyer. "At some point
you did meet Jacob…and as a result choices you though were yours to make were
never really choices at all." This is clear in each of the interactions we
see in The Incident which could be interpreted in ways that are good or bad,
though in some cases, there's no question as to how horrible the impact was for
each character.
Kate
Kate and her childhood love Tom are
about to steal a New Kids on the Block lunchbox. This lunchbox will become a
time capsule that years later they will dig up after Kate has come back to town
to see her mother who is dying of cancer.
Noteworthy: Tom was
supposed to steal the lunchbox but he forces Kate into it, a sign, even at an
early age how willing she is to do something for other people. She is caught
almost immediately, a pattern that will follow her life of crime from this
point forward. Jacob saves her by paying for the lunchbox.
As Jacob touches her, he says:
"You're not going to steal again, are you?"
Question posed by Hidden Treasures:
Did he save her from the police and being caught
shoplifting or was this an early lesson that she can get away from crime?
Answer: We see even from an early age
Kate will take big risks for the people she cares about. There might be an
answer in the fact that in the background we here the singer who will be the
associated with Kate on the show, Patsy Cline. The song is Three Cigarettes in
an Ashtray. It's worth noting the lyrics as Hidden Treasures does:
"Two cigarettes in an ashtray
My love and I in a small café,
Then a stranger came along
And everything went wrong."
The writers of Lost have never
done anything by chance and that's true with their musical cues in particular.
Sawyer
It's immediately after the services
for Mr. and Mrs. Ford. An eight year old James in penning the letter he will
carry with him for the next three decades. His pen runs out of it. Jacob shows
up in a suit and tie with a pen and says: "I'm very sorry this happened to
you.
Immediately after this we see his
uncle. His uncle finds the letter and reads what he's written. He sympathizes
with what happened to him but says "What's done is done. Now promise me
you won't finish writing that letter?" James says Yes but we know that's a
lie.
Now I think the assumption has always
been that Jacob’s giving Sawyer the pen to finish writing his letter is
automatically assumed to be the factor that caused him to go down that path.
Another interpretation: Jacob knew what was happening and therefore had an idea
what Sawyer was doing. Were his words: “I’m very sorry this happened to you,”
supposed to be a sign that he should take consolation from his uncle and not
follow through with his plan? (This theory is harder to prove but I think it’s
worth considering.)
It's worth noting that when Sawyer
finally tells Jack about what happened to his parents he also uses the phrase:
"What's done is done." In one context he's talking about how he chose
not to get into the sub in 1976 and stop what he knew what was going to happen.
But the fact that he uses his uncle's words makes the viewer wonder: How much
of the past three years has James really wished he had taken his uncle's advice
all those years ago?
Sayid
This is the first time we see Jacob
after one of the castaways returned from the island rather than before that.
But it's arguably the most important moment in Sayid's entire life.
He and Nadia are walking down the
street discussing where they'll go for their first anniversary. Jacob asked
Sayid for directions distracting him. Nadia walks into the street and is hit by
a car.
Question Posed by Hidden Treasures: Did he save Sayid from getting killed
by a hit-and-run driver or did his distraction prevent Sayid from pushing Nadia
out of the way of a car? (Nikki speculated it was the latter in the final book,
but it’s worth considering both.)
What makes this moment all the more
devastating is because it lays bare the most horrible fact of the last two
seasons. Sayid will be recruited as Ben's hitman, spend the next two years
killing for Widmore, be left in the cold with no one to talk too and be dragged
back into the madness by Ben, and is the only one of the Oceanic 6 who is
brought back to the island against his will. It's never been clear if Widmore's
people did actually target Sayid or whether this was a lie that Ben
told. This makes it all the more horrible because it's not clear if it was a
supernatural force, a battle between two evil people or just a random accident
that killed off Nadia: it's subject to interpretation. And considering
everything that will happen to Sayid not just by the time of the Season 5
finale but all of Season 6, it makes it clear more than with any other
character just how many people had to die for Sayid to come back to the island.
Jin and Sun
Jacob appears after Jin and Sun have
gotten married and blesses their union with the words: "Never take your
love for granted."
Question Posed by Hidden Treasures: Was “never take your love for granted” a
reminder to save them from future grief or a curse, a la “May you live in
interesting times? (It is irrelevant for the discussion which one of them was
the candidate.)
This is the first interaction I'm
honestly not sure was a good or bad influence. Having seen all of their
previous flashbacks we know that Jin always loved Sun and that Sun, despite
everything that happened, did love her husband. And it is clear there were
factors here that had less to do with each other and more because of Mr. Paik,
who hated Jin and always considered Sun more of a possession then a daughter.
It is true that in the weeks leading up to their trip Sun had doubted Jin's
love but there was clearly enough of it for her to overcome her plan and get on
Oceanic 815 anyway.
Jack:
Jack is performing his first solo
surgery as he described it to Kate famously in the Pilot. After cutting the
dural sac he told her that he would let the fear in but just for five second.
He counted to five and then he fixed her. Now we see he left out the most
important part. He didn't actually make that decision. His father was watching
and told him to do that, adding if he didn't he'd have to step and do it for
him.
After that Jack tries to get an Apollo
bar from the vending machine and Christian comes to him and tells Jack that the
patient is perfectly fine with no sign of paralysis. Jack is temperamental
saying that it's bad enough that his father doesn’t have any faith in him but
by giving him a time out during a surgery he let him down in front of his team.
Christian sighs and says: "Are you sure I'm the one who doesn't have any
faith in you?"
Jack then storms out and Jacob shows
with the chocolate bar. He hands it to Jack with the words. "It just
needed a little push."
Hidden Treasures: Does Jacob
really support Jack emotionally against his father's tutelage in and out of the
OR, or does he merely want to provide a counterargument in order to manipulate
Jack more effectively?
This depends on what your speculation on
Christian was. As Nikki reminded us, Jack may have been misreading Christian’s
intentions the whole time so maybe Jack took this as confirmation of his views
rather than the support it was. In the final season our opinion on Christian
will have completely changed and this episode gives us the first indication
maybe Jack has been misreading him the whole time.
Locke
Jacob is reading a book just as Cooper
pushes Locke out the window. He walks over and sees Locke lying on the ground.
He touches Locke, who seems unconscious and John immediately breathe.
This is the big one. Nikki theorized
that he brought Locke back from the dead with his touch. The thing is as
Richard has told us he's never seen anyone come from back to the dead on the
island and we'll eventually learn Jacob doesn't have that power. Dead is dead,
as we've been told. So that's not what happened. So why was Jacob there?
Hidden Treasures: Is Jacob
waiting for Locke's inevitable fall before giving hope to his eventual healing
or does he refuse to intercede so that Locke will suffer that fall?
Well he's waiting outside Cooper's
apartment building so he clearly has some idea what's going to happen. We also
know that Richard has been watching Locke for awhile in order to bring him to
the island and each time he's come Richard never saw anything special.
I think he was waiting for it to happen,
meaning he knew it was coming. Does that mean he could have prevented it from
happening if he chose? Taking it further, did Jacob know that this was the man
that the Man in Black was going to use Locke against him to kill him and have
the island heal him regardless? (Did your brain just explode?)
Hurley
He's just been released from prison
roughly 36 hours before everyone gets on Ajira 316 and he gets to the cab with
a stranger. Jacob doesn't identify himself but he asks Hugo why he doesn't want
to go back to the island. Hurley tells him that he feels cursed in large part
because he has spent the last three years seeing the dead people. Jacob asks
him what if it’s the other way around: "What if you were blessed?" He
tells him he's not crazy and says that there's a plane leaving in 36 hours. Then
he leaves the guitar case that we've been seeing Hurley carry ever since he got
on the plane.
Hidden Treasures: Doe Jacob
convince Hurley that seeing the dead is a blessing or merely con him into doing
his bidding because he understands Hurley's gift?
Now in this case I have to say the
answer is no. As we know because we've followed Hurley for five seasons the one
thing he is the most afraid of is being called crazy and that he is crazy. He
has just spent two years in Santa Rosa because he believes he has suffered a
break of reality. Now someone finally tells him that he's not crazy –
and it's worth noting Jacob is the only other person who's done this is his
mother.
And it's worth noting that Hurley was
the most recent person to see Jacob and actually spoke to him. Considering that
in the last five seasons the only person we know who has talked to Jacob is
Richard it was significant that of all the castaways Hurley received
instruction.
Now it's
worth noting by the time Jacob's existence has been revealed we know just how
ruthless this game has become just to get to this point. Even if we limit it
just to the action we've seen during the five seasons so far, the casualties
have been enormous: the Dharma Initiative, everyone who died when Oceanic 815
crashed, all of the other survivors who haven't made it to this point, everyone
on the Kahana, Nadia and by the end of the season we learn that John Locke, who
loved the island more than anyone has died just as he lived: a pawn in a game
and not understanding why.
And it's
just as clear that Jacob's opponent has been just as responsible for the
manipulations he's done. When 'Locke' and Ben get inside the statue of Taweret
Jacob knows him immediately: "I see you found your loophole." "I
did. And you have no idea how much effort it took." The clearest
implication, illustrated in Finding Lost was that
"…both
Locke and Ben have been manipulated their entire lives for this one moment: the
Man in Black's loophole was to get Locke to die so he could inhabit his body,
and to that he needed Ben on board. He needed Ben to spend a life beholden to
Jacob, where he would do things at the Man in Black's bidding, thinking he was
working for Jacob but really working for the wrong side."
There are
many questions about that confrontation. But before we get there I should
mention that I've talked about every single encounter Jacob had with someone in
The Incident with the Oceanics. But we saw him have one more encounter with
someone who wasn't on Oceanic 815 but was on Ajira 316 – and who did
have a conversation with Jacob before she got on that plane.
In the
next article in this series I'm going to talk about Ilana, perhaps the biggest
disappointment in the final season of Lost.
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