Pardon my language, but is there really any other word that I could use? No other show does a better job at completely screwing with my mind like Lost. I’m a little speechless about the ending, but there is a lot more to talk about before I touch on that….
This week in my Lost in Lost post I mentioned that I wanted to write a post speculating on the nature of Jacob. I was hoping that some light was going to shed on the mysterious figure in this episode, but I never expected this much. I had assumed that most of the answers about Jacob were going to be saved for the final season of the show, but I was pleasantly surprised to learn as much as we did in the finale. The question now, however, becomes: does any of it matter?
Honestly, I’m having trouble even knowing where to start with this episode. As Jacob seemed to be the focus of the episode, I think he’s a good place to start. As it would turn out, he’s just a dude. Well, probably not just a dude, but he was definitely a person (or at least looked like a person). I thought the opening scene with him and his buddy (Titus Welliver, yet another Deadwood vet to show up on Lost) on the beach was fascinating. It reminded me right away of the scene from last season when Ben went to visit Widmore in his home. It was indicated in that scene that Ben and Widmore could not kill each other. It would seem that this relationship started long ago with Jacob and Welliver’s character.
Is the battle between Jacob and this other guy the battle that we’ve been told about for so long now? Is Widmore somehow in league or associated with Welliver’s character? If so why was he a part of the Others, who seem to be the group working for Jacob? All answers for season six, I suppose. It’s a shame we’ll have to wait about nine months for that. Pardon me while I go get some tissues….
It was very interesting watching how Jacob appeared in all of our characters’ pasts, seemingly at the most important points of their lives. Well, most of them, anyway. Does it mean anything that we didn’t see Jacob with Juliet in her past? Also, was it just me, or did it seem like Jacob brought Locke back to life after his fall? What does it mean that he visited Sayid and Hurley after they returned from the island? So … many … questions….
There are so many things I would like to comment on, but I wonder just how pertinent any of it really is. With the episode ending the way it did, there are infinite directions for the show to go in. Did they succeed in changing the future? Who fricking knows? If they didn’t, are they all dead? Is Juliet going to be around next season? What about Sayid? It certainly was looking dire for him. I think speculation for season six is going to be near impossible. Oy.
There were some things I absolutely loved about this episode that I want to talk about. How great was it, after four seasons of watching Ben manipulate and mess with people’s heads, that the tables were turned on him? I, for one, enjoyed him playing right into the plans of fake-Locke. I think it’s going to have horrible consequences, but it was a great turn for his character. As for fake-Locke himself, it seems clear that he is Welliver’s character. How that all went down, I just don’t know. There were some implications of this that I really enjoyed, too, though. I have to assume, at this point, that the Christian we saw on the island really was not a mouthpiece of Jacob, as he claimed to be, but a mouthpiece for this Welliver character, moving pieces to get himself in position to off Jacob.
We finally got a good look at the four-toed statue in this episode, too. There had been some banter on the Internet about the identity of the statue, and it seems that some of it was correct. From my view, it certainly looked to be Taweret, an Egyptian fertility goddess. Though, after a little research, it seems some people believe it to be Sobek, the crocodile god. Both Wikipedia pages have been edited, claiming that the statue depicts each deity. Oh, well. I think a fertility goddess seems to fit better. Perhaps once it was destroyed the problem with pregnancies began on the island?
Finally, my last favorite part of this episode was watching Jack get beaten up, including a foot to the crotch. Sawyer’s beating was satisfying, but it was even better when he got bashed in the noggin by a flying toolbox. Good times.
There was a lot of character stuff going on in this episode, particularly with the Kate/Juliet/Sawyer triangle, but honestly, I just don’t know if any of it matters. I’m going to be really annoyed if that future was changed like Jack planned and none of these characters know each other come next season. I just don’t think that’s a realistic possibility though. With Jacob saying “they’re coming,” I have to believe he meant the folks who were displaced in time, and not Ilana’s group. Well, I guess time will tell.
Clacked by Bob Degon
on May 13, 2009 @ 23:55 EST5EDT
A few notes from the chat:
– The lunchbox young Kate stole was, in fact, the same lunchbox that she had in season 1 with the toy plane in it: https://www.losthatch.com/images%5Cscreen_captures%5CS1E22_Time_Capsule.jpg
– Jacob is played by Mark Pellegrino, who played Paul Benett on ‘Dexter': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Pellegrino
I’m hoping that Jacob will be born again in Locke’s dead body and kill the fake Locke. I think Jacob will be 1 step ahead of fake Locke. I don’t think they will get rid of Locke and Jacob before the last season even starts.
Hello…we DID see Jacob with Juliet. She was the little girl whose parents were divorcing, and that flashback happened right before adult Julia broke up with Sawyer and changed her mind about helping Jack, because if she never met Sawyer she’d never have to lose him.
No, sorry, I take that back. He didn’t talk to her at all. I was thinking about little Kate. My bad! But maybe Jacob was lurking outside the window or something!
*POST AUTHOR*
Hehe, I know. I kept waiting for him to show up in her flashback and he never did. It was a bit strange, but the flashback served to inform Juliet’s motivations in this episode.
okay, the last 30 minutes blew me away, but the finale was dragging on a bit, remind me of the season one finale when they just stared into the freaking hole.
inserting Jacob in all the character’s lives like that was kind of weird, similar to Nikki and Paulo, and I’m not sure it worked that well. jamming all the tiny flashbacks into one episode was way too much, the one with Juliet was especially out of place (Jacob wasn’t even in it!)
favorite moments: Bernard and Rose living the retirement on the island. Sawyer and Juliet’s heartbreaking goodbye. and the super freaky “if that’s Locke, then who’s in there!” shocker, send chills down my spine. and of course Juliet setting that damn bomb off! kind of appropriate that the finale was nicknamed “fork in the outlet”
now we have to wait till 2010, what a tease!
The insertion of Jacob seemed wrong to me too – and I’m not one to be bothered by those types of things.
Not my favorite Lost season finale, that’s for sure.
Rose & Bernard – awesome scene!!!
Also, did you not see the scene with the new plane folk??
I’m a Lost hater, but since it’s on in my house (Keith was leading the chat, for crying out loud!), I’ve caught quite a bit of it this season. The Rose and Bernard scene was my favorite hands-down. I said to Keith, “That Rose and I, we think alike!” Those two are the only likable characters in the show; I don’t care about any of the drama b/c I don’t care if any of the characters live or die, they are all just so horrible.
This coming from someone who loves House, Mr. Congeniality himself.
*snicker*
You love to hate House because he’s flawed in his logic.
On “Lost”, everybody is pulled right off a Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Model issue or a firefighter calendar. Their flaws are tiny compared to those of House. It’s all about love, again this time, and it always leads to the characters doing stupid things, all the while we try to make sense of the whole story. I see where Deb hates “Lost”, but honestly that Evangeline Lilly has such a smoking hot body I don’t give a damn ;-)
House is funny, though. There’s nothing funny about Jack being a complete dick every week.
Or even entertaining for me.
Best cliffhanger ever.
We don’t know what happens next.
We don’t know who lives or dies.
We don’t know what time period Season 6 will take place in.
We don’t know what UNIVERSE Season 6 will take place in.
I don’t think a bigger mindfuck than that is even possible.
[My theory: the “incident” would have happened anyway, but the bomb going off during it caused some kind of freak time phenomenon. Instead of resetting things so 815 never crashed, it resets things so that none of the time travel ever happened. (Everyone is back in 2007 right after Ben turned the donkey wheel.)]
When Ben turned the wheel it was 2004 or maybe early 2005, it was not 2007.
I didn’t like the episode, it dragged on and on and on and on and on. It doesn’t have me wanting more, it just leaves me with a feeling of “I’m glad that is the last season finale of the show”.
Trust me, the series’ finale will have cliffhangers too. If only to leave room for a “Lost” Movie.
I agree with you completely. This whole thing dragged for ages and it didn’t offer any story development at all. We only saw previous connections we already knew about (maybe a tiny little bit of “more” here and there) and Jakop popping up everywhere. Who gives a damn? Who cares that Locke is still dead? Who cares about who the new Locke is? They basically brought in two new characters and the whole finale was about those two guys – we know nothing about them and they took two hours to show us that they’ve always been there – just like they did with Richard before and all the time with the lives of everyone on the show, how paths have crossed and it’s all just annoying me to no end. Who gives a damn? So they are all connected. WE GET IT. We got that THREE FRIGGIN YEARS AGO.
Now I have to wait another 8 months for some basic plot development. I mean seriously, Jack drops the bomb and it doesn’t go off, we get a couple of death scenes which basically aren’t death scenes and then the nuke just acts like the wheel at the end of Season 4. I think I’m going to vomit if Juliet ends up in Syria and the others on the beach. Seriously.
*POST AUTHOR*
Introducing and spending time with Jacob in this episode didn’t bother me too much. I thought it was slightly reminiscent of the Season 2 finale, when the flashbacks were dedicated to Desmond, who was still a bit of an unknown at the time.
In any case, we’ve been waiting for answers about Jacob for a long time now, so I was happy to see it. It’s not like we had to sit through another episode explaining one of Jack’s tatoos…
Oh god don’t remind me of that episode Bob :-)
Oreo – do you actually like ANY TV?
Or is it just luck that all the shows I see you commenting on (ie. the threads I’m interested cos I LIKE the shows) you seem to have something to whinge about.
Maybe I just like bad TV though I suspect not.
:)
I can’t even begin to make sense of it all.
Are we to believe that Anti-Jacob was the one trapped in the cabin? Did he also take the form of Christian Shepherd? Ben’s daughter Alex? Yemi? Even Ben’s mom? Does he travel around as the smoke monster, too?
I loved the revelation that Ben is indeed *just a guy* that Ricardus took pity on as a child. It was kind of heartbreaking to hear Jacob say “What about you?” Was Locke equally unspecial, just a puppet for Anti-Jacob? Richard Alpert seemed to suggest so much when he asked Jack – with deep concern – about Locke’s quasi-self-fulfilling prophecy?
I’m thinking Jacob never said anything about Locke’s being special, that was all put into motion by Darth Jacob (we need a name for this guy: AJ?). Was AJ being held prisoner inside the cabin, locked in by the circle of ash? Who broke the circle to let him out?
I really liked the duality of the Jacob mythos: light/dark, good/bad, Dexter/Deadwood. I wasn’t sure, but did dead John Locke have black and white pebbles in his hand?
I must say I’m a little frustrated because it seems they’ve only recently committed to the ancient Egypt stuff. You could argue that there were hieroglyphs in the hatch, but the tunnels and statue and tapestries are all season 5. I’m just saying it’s a tough pill to swallow, but the writers do make it easier with their fantastic storytelling. Actually, after last night’s finale, it’s more like a suppository.
Saw someone elsewhere mention that the Latin translation of what Alpert said of “what lies in the shadow of the statue” is: “He who will save us all.”
Ok has anyone ever read American Gods by Neil Gaiman. In the book it had whatever religious figures from forgotten religions still wandering the country trying to survive. Well maybe that is what happened to Jacob. He is that Soblek God who has been forgotten and no longer worshiped. In the book the old gods still had powers but were not all powerful. Needless to say Jacob did not look that powerful and wasn’t invincible. The book also had a war brewing between the old and new gods. So fake-Locke/guy from Deadwood in the beginning could be a new God who banished Jacob and whatever religious being smokey is to the island for the time being till he found a way to kill him. However Jacob still has some power over mortals and was able to manipulate the cast’s lives on a path that brings them to the island so he could use them to fight the new God. Unfortunatley the new god one upped him by switching himself with Locke.
That is my attempt at making sense of the 2007 storyline. I wont try to make any prediction of what the fuck happens after Juliet went BOOM in the 70s
*POST AUTHOR*
One of my all time favorite books from one of my all time favorite writers.
Wow… Was totally not impressed by this episode. It wasn’t bad, but it didn’t hold a candle to any of the previous season finales, especially after last season. Last season, we knew what happened, but no how or what it meant. Now, we’ve just got a fade to white.
Jacob visiting the Losties was interesting. It seems that he gave each of them a gift of some sort at first, but in the end it was just touching them. A touch, that seemingly revived John Locke when he fell out of the building.
That Locke is still dead is pretty interesting, but petulant Ben was kind of annoying.
What did Ivey do with Dorv?
Dorv got lost… Don’t know how that happened :(
Hello bsgfan….you darling lady you….the sunlight of cyberspace….
Hi there! ;)
Maybe Locke’s whole speech to Walt in season one, talking about the ancient origins of Backgammon and making reference to light vs. dark, was more significant to the overall story than it initially appeared. (The light vs. dark motif was, arguably, highlighted here again by the contrasting colors of the respective clothing of Jacob and his ‘nemesis’).
Before it seemed like Jacob and the island were one and the same or linked and possibly moving people towards certain destinies (if Locke’s perspective was to be believed). But perhaps, this has really been like one big game of Backgammon (or maybe Chess) between these two beings, which would bring the question: “Who was moving which “pieces” and when?”.
Titus Welliver would have made a better Jacob. I found Mark P to be underwhelming and a typical Hollywood GQ pretty boy. I really don’t understand this casting choice at all. He wasn’t interesting in the least and I almost found him to come off slightly as “Rainman” at the end. When talking about the tapestry he made, “You like it, yea hard to make, yea, but I guess that’s the point..” What? Not very imposing for a character we have waited five seasons to finally gaze upon. Obviously the guy we saw in the Cabin in season three wasn’t Jacob because Jacob has a pretty boy hair cut and the five o’clock shadow going on. I loved the story and the ending but wished for a better Jacob.
Now that I’ve finally finished watching, I’m just angry. Whenever Lost decides to throw us a bone, that’s really all there is to it. It was just crappy of them to give us Jacob and then kill him. So, so angry…and now, I’m off to stew until 2010.