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Well. I’ve spent a few days trying to work out how to write this, or even if I should. This was the episode that I personally have waited six years to see. It didn’t answer my questions, but it shoved me in the direction of the answers. I guess that this is the episode that the writers and producers have wanted to show us for so long, waiting for a solid end date to the show so that they could schedule it in.

It’s had mixed reactions. A lot of people claiming that they’ve jumped the shark. In a show that featured polar bears on a desert island back in season one. With a monster that lived in the jungle. NOW it’s jumped the shark? Not with the time travel?

I guess it shows how much people are invested in this show, that they can be so affected by not getting exactly what they wanted. But I’m not going to talk about other peoples reactions. I loved the episode.

I’ve theorised previously about the date Jacob was first on the island, and it seemed pretty clear from the beginning of the episode that we were looking at a point in the fairly distant past.

We see another reinforcement of water as the pregnant woman (Claudia) looks into a stream and sees a reflection of Mother. It’s interesting that she’s scared by the reflection, and continues to look at it as she retreats – rather than looking up at the woman. Seemed like a fairly important piece of direction, to intensify the importance of the water. But I could just be reading into it too much.

This woman, Mother, either natively speaks the same language as the pregnant woman (which I believe to be latin), or she has the ability to speak in a multitude of languages (something we’ve seen Jacob later do). They shift into speaking English, which is almost certainly just done to spare the actors having to learn latin and the viewers having to read subtitles. The interesting thing is the sound effect they play just before the shift. Almost like they’re inferring that this is some kind of magic. But I think it’s just a bit of an aid to suspension of disbelief.

Claudia asks mother “where are the rest of your people” to which mother replies “there’s only me”. We could look at that in a couple of ways. The first would be that she’s answering the question as if it meant “where are your friends, family, neighbours or companions?”. The second would be “where are your race?”. My second option there might seem like a bit of a reach, but if I was stranded on an island and someone asked where my people were I might be tempted to say something like “I was stranded here”, explaining why I’m the only one. “There’s only me” sounds like either she’s the last one, or has always been there, or is the only one of her kind. In any case it’s a suspicious answer. She does go on to answer the next question by saying that she got there “by accident”, but really that tells us nothing and sheds no light on where “her people” are.

Mother is angered by Claudia’s desire to look for other survivors: “if there are other people on the island I will find them”. She doesn’t sound like she’s trying to help, she sounds like an exterminator! Does she want to find the others so she can get rid of them? Does she want to find them so she can judge them like we’ve seen smokey do?

Claudia gives birth to two babies: a quiet, serene baby wrapped in light colours called Jacob, and a wailing baby in black called… Oh wait, still no name (and apparently no umbilical cords either). Then Claudia gets bludgeoned to death.

Older MiB finds a game of sorts on the beach and we later find out that Mother left if there for him to find. But I’m wondering where she got it. She could, perhaps, have made it – but surely her children would see her. Perhaps instead she had the ability to leave the island, or perhaps she took it from the other people on the island. It’s also interesting that MiB knows how to play the game as soon as he has it. Perhaps he’s simply suggesting that he made up a way – or perhaps he genuinely has some kind of preexisting knowledge. The symbols on the game look Egyptian, but I’m going to steer clear of the notion that Jacob and MiB are some kind of resurrected Egyptian souls, gods or something similar.

Interesting that Mother seems to be pressuring Jacob to tell the truth about his brother having the game, like she’s steering him onto the path of truthfulness. She then speaks to MiB on the beach and says “Jacob doesn’t know how to lie” in an almost mocking tone, as if this is some kind of private joke they make about Jacob – because MiB and Mother are both expert liars. She says “he’s not like you”.

After telling the boys that they’re there for a purpose, she starts leading them to the cave. Refers to the other people on the island as “men” and “people”, then ignores the “but we’re people” objection. She seems to be making it very clear that the three of them are certainly not normal people. Whether this means that they’re not normal humans isn’t clear. Her statement “I’ve made it so that you can never hurt each other” seems very peculiar. How has she done this? By imposing rules? By raising them a certain way (a long con)? By modifying their minds or bodies? Or is this just a similar type of action to Jacob later giving Richard immortality, or (possibly) bringing John Locke back to life? Also, how is it that we see Jacob smashing his brother in the face on a couple of occasions throughout the episode?

The cave. It’s described as containing “light”. A light which is contained within all people (again, she didn’t say “in all of us”). It sounds like this cave (or whatever is beyond the cave) is responsible for all life (or possibly all souls) and could wipe out all life. It’s not a leap of faith to connect this cave with the islands childbirth problems.

We see that the Man In Black has the ability to see dead people, just like Hurley does later. This possibly explains Fake-Locke seeing the little blonde boy, who we now know to be a young Jacob. But I recall the first time this happened Jacobs hands were covered in blood. At no point in the episode do we see Jacob get blood on his hands – so is this just some kind of guilty vision on Fake-Locke’s part, rather than a direct spirit visitation?

What I don’t really understand is that ghost-Claudia tells Man In Black that she’s going to show him where he came from. But he’s not being shown that.. He didn’t come from there. Or is that just semantics, I don’t know.

Jacob is watching Man In Black with his people, building the well, then in the next scene they’re sitting together playing the game in front of a well. You can’t tell if that’s the same well or not, but assuming it is – where have all the people gone?

We see Man In Blacks pugio again, definitely the same dagger that Dogan gave to Sayid to kill Man In Black with, and that Man In Black had previously given to Richard to kill Jacob.

When Mother appears down the well with Man In Black, she’s shown as being bathed in light, much like Claudia was shown as a ghost earlier. Odd choice, but probably not connected in any way.

We get a bit of an explanation about the frozen donkey wheel. The plan was to connect it to some kind of system which would channel the water and the light. We already knew that there is water and light in the cave, so it doesn’t really help us much – but i’m more interested in the idea that Man In Black and his people seem to have some opinion as to why messing with them would accomplish something. What’s led them to that? Did they experiment? Why does Man In Black think that’ll get him off the island? Even Mother is confused by how he knows about it.

I don’t know if Mother was trying to kill Man In Black, or just knock him out while she destroyed the other people and collapsed the well. Assuming she did it.

She tells Jacob that she had to say goodbye to his brother, I can’t tell if they’re suggesting she believes that he is dead (in which case why remove his body before collapsing the well) or if she’s simply lying to Jacob about letting him leave, or even perhaps that’s she’s accepted she’ll never see him again – either because she expects to die, or because she does expect him to leave. In any case there’s a good chance she’s lying to Jacob here.

Mother tells Jacob that inside the cave is the heart of the island. This is a big deal, I’m almost certain that this is a direct shout out to when John Locke saw “the heart of the island” and thought it was beautiful – did he stumble onto the cave? She explains that inside the cave is the source of all life, death and rebirth. I think it seems plausible that the cave has something to do with souls.

Interesting to note that the liquid she makes him drink isn’t taken from the water, it’s a bottle she was already carrying, which she says some kind of magic spell over before offering it to him. This seems to be the moment where she gives him immortality. Saying that he needs to protect the cave for as long as he can.

It interests me that she says she can now see that it always should have been Jacob. Perhaps this is because initially she thought that she needed a devious person to protect it, like her and Man In Black. But after his intent to leave the island is made clear she reconsiders having a “good” person like Jacob be the protector of the island. After he drinks the liquid she explains that he’s the same as her. Does she mean immortal? Powerful? Inhuman?

I wonder what the timeline is at this point, did Mother and Jacob kill all of Man In Blacks people together, or did she do that before “converting” him? I suspect the latter, partly because they’ve portrayed Jacob as a good person, and partly because she clearly sends him away – expecting death to come for her, and it does by way of that pugio again.

Note that she’s killed from behind, with the knife, before she speaks to Man In Black. This was the way that Dogan told Sayid to kill MiB, and MiB told Richard to kill Jacob. Is this the secret to killing them?

Why does she thank Man In Black? Is it because she’s now released from her task? From her immortality? Is it because he’s putting her plan into action? By doing this did he somehow do exactly what she wanted? Did she need him to be a “bad person”? Maybe it’s because she knows it’ll be the one thing that will compel Jacob into doing what he needs to do? Lost has been all about long cons, and as I mentioned before there’s a good chance that she was playing the long con with them since birth. Did she always intend for them to take these roles? To take over from her? Was she the personification of both roles together, and now they’re split between the brothers?

Regardless, the end result is that Jacob throws Man In Black into the cave, and he’s sucked down with the water. The smoke monster emerges moments later, seemingly terrifying Jacob, who obviously didn’t expect it and very probably knew no more about the cave than we do.

Man In Blacks body turns up draped over a tree as if he’s fallen from the sky. Was the smoke monster carrying it? Dumping it, lifeless, after scanning it? Absorbing it’s personality perhaps?

We know that the smoke monster can appear as people whose dead body it has encountered. But we’ve heard Man In Black infer that he is a man, and basically is who he is. We’ve also seen Man In Black use Locke-isms while in the Locke form (“Don’t ever tell me what I can’t do!”) and refer to his memories – so there’s a chance he absorbed Lockes mind when he took over the body shape. Did this same thing happen to Man In Black? Is this creature NOT the original Man In Black, but just has his memories? I don’t believe so. We’ve seen Jacob sit down with Man In Black and have personal conversations. Offer him food even. I think somehow Smokey was created when Man In Black entered the cave. Why? I don’t know.

I also don’t know what happened between this episode and the present day, but the answer seems to be “a lot”. There were Egyptians on the island at one point, building the statue. There’s a large temple with a lot of people resident. The lighthouse was built, lots of candidates selected. Possibly most important of all – Man In Black has built up a hatred for Jacob. He’s desperate to kill him, and the seeds of a war have been planted.

Seeing as last weeks episode left us with Jack and Fake-Locke coming face to face, this episode couldn’t have been anything other than a little bit revealing. So it’s safe to say that I was pretty excited about it.

At this point in the story someone HAS to start asking questions, and that someone was bound to be Jack. Given the title of the episode, I personally wondered if “The Last Recruit” was Jack, the last person that Fake-Locke would have to convince to be part of his group.

Fake-Locke and Jack’s face to face gets down to brass tacks quickly – Jack pointing out that he has no idea what Fake-Locke is. Note “what”, not “who”. Fake-Locke doesn’t contend it, and replies “sure you do”. But didn’t he say “I’m not a what, I’m a who” last time this question was posed? Or is this just Fake-Locke confirming that he’s the smoke monster?

Why John Locke? He replies that it’s because “he was stupid enough to believe that he had been brought here for a reason”. So basically he was a man of faith. He also says that it’s because they were kind enough to bring him in a wooden box. Now obviously the fact he was dead is a big part of it, but is the “wooden box” important? I think so.

Confirmation that Christian was indeed Fake-Locke. Interesting. I wanted it to be a lot more than that, a third faction possibly. But I guess not.

I really don’t buy into Fake-Locke’s belief that Locke was a sucker. He WAS a believer, and I think it gave him a new strength – but that strength didn’t last when he left the island.

I know some people thought that perhaps the John Locke that got hit by the car in the flash sideways was actually Fake-Locke, but I don’t think that’s the case given the way he’s talking about getting married.

The proximity of Sun and Locke is more evidence, I think, that the candidates are coming together in both timelines.

Interesting that Claire knows Fake-Locke was “pretending” to be Christian. If she knew that then why did she refer to them as separate people when telling Jin that the others had Aaron? I don’t know. Maybe she didn’t know at that point, and off-camera they talked about it since that point. Or maybe it was something to do with the inhabited body actually having some kind of influence on him. She mentions again that talking to Fake-Locke means that Jack is “with him” now. Thing is, Richard talked to him – but then went to Jacob.

Jack and Fake-Locke return to the camp in the day time, how much time has passed and what did they talk about? How much does Jack know now?

Sawyer and Kate’s conversation brings us the question we asked when we found out that Sawyer is a cop – why didn’t he arrest Kate at the time? Kate gives us a good potential answer, that Sawyer didn’t want anyone to know he went to Australia. We know that’s true, and that he was searching for “Sawyer”, but I kind of wonder if he ended up shooting the shrimp salesman guy in this timeline too.

We’ve been hearing about the upcoming “war” for some time, but the “warning shot” bombardment is the first true sign of it. Interesting that people keep talking about letting Fake-Locke talk to you being a bad thing – but here’s Whidmores number two chatting away. Will that have implications?

Fake-Locke seems to act as if he’s some benevolent ruler, and blames all of the issues on Whidmore and co – but the reality is that he hid Desmond from them, and provoked Whidmore. But he won’t tell his group – this isn’t honest and doesn’t appear to be in the best interest of the group. It seems like he’s trying to protect his own secret, he thinks that Desmond knows something about him that he doesn’t want exposed.

Seems a little too convenient to me that Fake-Locke is happy to get Sawyer to go to a boat with others. It’s like he’s giving him a good reason to escape – I wonder if it’s all part of a bigger plan.

When we see Desmond in the well it seems less deep than we were led to believe. But that said, we had no real idea. The torch Fake-Locke dropped into it would have gone out as soon as it hit the water. Desmond seems remarkably unscathed by the fall though – I wonder if that has something to do with Fake-Locke not being able to kill them (I know Desmond isn’t a candidate, but still..), which is why he’s sending Sayid.

Claire points out that she’s been with Fake-Locke since the Losties left. We know that – she left with Christian, who we now know is Fake-Locke. She says that she trusts him because he didn’t abandon her. I’m not sure she’d feel that way if she had heard Fake-Locke’s crazy mother speech.

We didn’t see Sayid shoot Desmond, but I doubt he did it, if they were going to kill Desmond off I’d think they’d make a bigger deal out of it than for it to happen off-camera. But we can’t be sure, and we also don’t know whether Fake-Locke believes him or not.

It’s good to see Kate stepping up to neutralise the situation with Claire catching them on the boat, and making good on her statement that the reason she came back was to find Claire. Looks like she really did believe that.

We still don’t know who Davids mother is! I think it’s Juliet, since there’s no good reason we haven’t seen her in the flash-sideways yet.

Interesting comment by Jack in the normal timeline, he wonders if Fake-Locke is trying to make them all leave because he’s scared of what would happen if they stayed. That’s an interesting point. It’s against the rules, apparently, for him to kill them – so maybe making them leave is the only thing he can do.

Jack in the hospital, in the flash sideways, preparing to operate on Locke. Guess what, the reason he’s in a wheelchair appears to be his dural sack. Yup, it’s the dural sack again. Think right back to episode one, where he tells the story about ripping the girls dural sack, and her nerves spilling out like angel hair pasta. Maybe that didn’t happen in this timeline, and he’s about to go through all of that for the first time? Is this Jacks redemption? Whatever this is, it’s significant. There’s a good chance that after this surgery Locke will be able to wiggle his toes..

Jin and Sun’s reunion was excellent, but I was sure they were going to get fried by the sonic fences, bad positioning there! Sun can speak English again, is it the fact that she’s with her “constant” or is it just something to do with the emotion? No idea.

The end of this episode is fascinating. Jack is caught in an explosion, thrown quite far, carried away by Fake-Locke and told “you’re with me now”. My question is – did Jack just die? The same way Sayid died, and Claire probably died. Coming back “wrong”, going straight to Fake-Locke’s side. It’s possible.

He’s got an injury on his neck which is consistent with the injury he spotted in the mirror back in episode one of this season. So I’m wondering – what if everyone in the flash-sideways is dead? What if someone made a deal to bring them all back and give them what they wanted?

In my recent episode blog posts i’ve been talking about the fact that the flash-sideways world feels very much like it might be the result of a wish, or a pact. It’s reminded me of that cliche “deal with the devil” or genie wish, asking for something but not getting it in the way you expect. Asking to be a millionaire – becoming a drug baron.

In the flash-sideways it seems like the Losties are getting what they wanted:
* Desmond is liked and valued by Whidmore.
* Hurley is very lucky.
* Kate didn’t kill her father.
* Ben’s father doesn’t hate him.
* Locke is married to the woman he loved.

But none of these things seem to be working out.
* Desmond never met Penny.
* Hurley never reunited with his father (guess).
* Kate killed someone else instead.
* Ben never got a position of power.

Could it be that the flash-sideways has indeed come about because someone has made a wish, or a pact? To give them all what they wanted? To bring them all back?

We’ve seen Fake-Locke make promises like that, he told Sayid that he’d bring Nadia back. So what if someone’s made a deal with Fake-Locke?

Even if you didn’t read the synopsis before watching this episode, the little Desmond-reveal should’ve made it fairly obvious that this episode would revolve around my fellow countryman. The title “happily ever after” of course reminds us of Desmond and Penny’s wonderful reunion, and their time spent hiding from Whidmore and yachting around the world. Seems that they were happy enough to procreate, but it quickly came to an end. Desmond suddenly gains a memory from the island, goes to see Eloise, gets shot by Ben and then apparently kidnapped by Charles Whidmore!

Desmond’s incessant “Penny! Penny!” reminded me of “Waaaaalt! WAAAAALT!”, we’ve had enough of that – thank you very much. But it was nice to see Whidmore get a smack in the head.

We get another mention of schedules, how long have people been planning these events? If events are so important why are they being rushed now? Can they afford to make mistakes, really?

We’re seeing a white bunny again, did they bring it with them? Does that reinforce my idea that Whidmores crew is actually Dharma? Re-creating the experiments that they used to do on the island. Who else would know that all of these devices were here, how they worked, and how to test them? Bringing a bunny is just the icing on the cake. A bunny who was spared by an accidental human test – awesome, they have a death ray, one that doesn’t phase Whidmore in the slightest, and Jin doesn’t seem to be as keen on saving Desmond as I thought he might be!

Interesting point. They ask Desmond if he has metal on him, and Whidmore replies “course he doesn’t, you idiot”. Why is the guy an idiot? Simply because they searched him before? At this point we’re curious as to why they’d even include those lines in the script if they weren’t important.

Amazing smackdown by Whidmore. Desmond asks “what the bloody hell do you know about sacrifice?” and Whidmore replies that his son died for the sake of the island, Penny hates him and he hasn’t even met his grandson. His point made and an important comment for us: his son died on the island. We all guessed that Faraday was his son, but I guess it’s confirmed now. Even though when I first watched this I got all excited about Charlie possibly being his son, silly me.

So what they’re basically doing is sticking Desmond inside a electromagnetic emitter, to re-create the events of the Swan hatch being destroyed. They need to make sure he can survive it – but we don’t know why. Easy assumption is that whatever the energy under the island is, he’s going to end up being exposed to it a second time, in order to achieve something. Desmond is our Dr Manhattan, it seems.

I think that a lot of viewers will have been asking “has he moved into the flash-sideways?” as soon as we saw him in the airport. Especially seeing as he appeared to “vanish” from the plane at the beginning of the series, and because we’ve seen him time travel before. I’ve written several times now about unconsciousness allowing our Losties to see themselves in this flash-sideways, and the question I was asking myself in this scene was “is he seeing himself in the flash-sideways?”. I liked the “I’m not a big fan of surprises” line – life on the island must’ve been hell for you then Desmond!

Minkowski (aka The Plague) waiting at the airport. I don’t think that his presence is important in any way.

Desmond words for Whidmore, as if we didn’t expect it. They seem to really like each other, despite the ominous music. We learn that Whidmores son (Faraday) is a classical musician, who’s combining his music with some rock for an event hosted by Whidmore’s wife (who we correctly assume to be Eloise Hawking). The rock part will of course be performed by Driveshaft, whose bassist (Charlie) has been arrested. Whidmore wants Desmond to fix this. Desmond appears to be a “get things done” type chap in Whidmores company. You’ve got to wonder how dirty his hands get, since we’ve got to at least suspect that Whidmore is into some bad stuff. I like that Whidmore suggests that his wife will “destroy him”. I like seeing the MacCutcheon whisky pop up again, accompanied by “nothing’s too good for you”. Everything is backwards in this timeline for Desmond. Since Whidmore made a point of saying it wasn’t good enough for Desmond before.

Telling line from Desmond: “Well I’ve got a great job, lots of money, get to travel the world.. Why wouldn’t I be happy?”. That’s fairly obvious to us, because it was his main character concept on the island – he was utterly in love. The only thing stopping him from going back to his soul mate was _saving_the_world_. But he desperately needed to be back with her, and his love for her kept him going. So now we’ve got flipside Desmond, who has everything he could want – except love.

At this point I’m thinking back to the idea that this flash-sideways world is like some stereotypical genie wish. That Desmond has had some kind of reward, which had a bad side. He got Whidmore to like him, but lost Penny. Suggesting that the only reason Whidmore didn’t like him was because of Penny.

Not to stray from the topic, but it’s impossible to mention genie’s without reminding everyone that there’s till a good chance that Smokey is actually a Genie/Djinni. Some kind of free-willed creature who can become smokey, lives in an isolated place, and likes to try to influence humans towards evil. Just putting it out there..

Anyway.

Charlie points out, much to my enjoyment, that while he was unconscious on the plane he saw Claire, and felt like he was in love with her. Suggesting that while he was unconscious he could see the normal reality. I’m now utterly convinced that I’m on track with that theory.

I enjoyed Charlie launching the car into the water, reminded me of the scene in Fight Club where they lets the car zoom down the motorway. We get to see our first proper flash-sideways -> “real life” vision, Demond remembering the Not Penny’s Boat moment. Does this shake up my unconsciousness theory? He’s clearly not unconscious.. But I guess he’s fairly close to it. Not sure. Regardless, he’s seeing an event from our timeline.

Here we return back to the “do you have any metal objects” line from the beginning of the episode, and things become clearer. This scene is lifted right out of an episode of the Sopranos, telling Desmond not to press the panic button because they’d just have to start again.

He has further visions of Penny while in the machine, something to do with the electromagnet?

Another telling line, from Charlie: “none of this matters”. It does seem like all of “this” is some kind of pocket dimension, like they’re not really in it, like it’s in their minds. Charlie is deciding that it doesn’t matter, that only the “real” existence matters – because he has (or had) something better there.

When Desmond introduces himself to Eloise, it’s clear that she knows who he is. But she’s always seemed to know what’s going on. When we first met her in Desmonds time-travelling bit it was like she was some kind of “time cop”. But now here she is, living out her life, but knows who Desmond is. How? Why? She’s not angry about Driveshaft not making it, and seems like she’s trying to get rid of Desmond. Whidmore gave the impression that she’d be very angry about it – so we have to wonder why not.

Note that Penny is referred to as Penny Milton, not Penny Whidmore. Why is that?

Eloise: “I want you to stop. Someone has clearly affected the way you see things, this is a serious problem – it is, in fact, a violation”. This sounds like something incredibly ominous. As if she’s about to quote the prime directive. As if she IS some kind of “time cop”. It also reminds us of the truces and rules we’ve seen elsewhere. She continues to say “I don’t know why you’re looking for anything, you have the perfect life, on top of it you’ve managed to attain the thing you’ve wanted more than anything: my husbands approval”. Going back to the “reward” stuff I mentioned before.

We know something that could find out what Desmond desired, Smokey. This whole thing could be some kind of illusion that he’s living, a test by Smokey. Judgement. Is this the “end of days”? Is it connected to the sacrifice he has to make? Is it a sacrifice like Dogan, not being able to see his son again? Does he have to lose Penny?

Faraday woke up (from unconsciousness) and knew some extreme equations. He remembered things to do with the explosion. When he was last around.. He talks about changing things, he wonders if this reality is because he set off a nuke and changed everything. Which might be the case. I wrote about diverging timelines near the beginning of the season, perhaps Faraday is reinforcing those points.

Desmond goes to meet Penny in a stadium, where she’s running. I was just sitting waiting for her to say that she was there training for a boat race (and still think she’ll say that at some point). But when he shakes her hand he apparently blacks out. Remember – Penny is his constant. I guarantee we’ll be returning to that concept!

So back in the real timeline, Desmond understand what is going on and wants to help. What changed? Is it because he witnessed the flash sideways unconsciously? Perhaps that’s NOT Desmond anymore? Perhaps he just realised there’s something bigger going on? I’m guessing it’s the first, I’m guessing he saw himself.

Ninja Sayid appears, and Desmond appears to go with him willingly, after a moment to think about it. I wonder why.. Maybe he’s just interested to see what will happen, maybe he just didn’t know what else to do.

The episode ends with Desmond asking Eugene Belford for the passenger manifest from flight 815. He wants to show them something.. Is it that he wants to show them what they’d see if they were unconscious? I wonder..

Save for the season opener, this was the episode I most looked forward to. The long promised Richard reveal, and it was worth the wait. Richard has been one of the most enthralling mysteries in Lost, a man who does not age but who is not presented as one of the main antagonists or protagonists. He’s simply the islands Egor, running around doing the little things. We’ve seen him in feral clothing and we’ve seen him immaculately dressed. We’ve seen him leave the island, we’ve seen him visit young Locke. But we’ve never really known who he is, or what his role is.

We’ve also heard him referred to as both “Richard” and “Ricardus”. But in this episode we learn that neither of those are his actual name.

The episode opens with a return to Illana in the hospital, being visited by Jacob. I’m still keen to know when exactly this takes place. There’s nothing in the scene that obviously dates it, at this stage we have no idea whether Illana ages or not, so all bets are off. This could be the 80′s, the 90′s or it could be a week before she met Sayid – I personally can’t tell. Illana knows Jacob, she’s pleased to see him, and she agrees to help him without question. But something doesn’t sit right with me about this. She’s acting as if she’s either utterly overjoyed with his visit, or utter mortified. The vibe I got from their interaction was that he was responsible for her hospitalisation and she was afraid to do anything other than agree, it felt like spousal abuse! Now I’m not suggesting that’s anything like what’s actually happened, he says he wishes he could have come sooner, it’s just the overall feeling I got watching it.

Her facial bruising is quite severe and looks like she’s been severely beaten, perhaps something to do with her training, perhaps she was in some conflict but if memory serves we saw her talking to the nurse last time and the nurse inferred that Illana had been in the hospital for a long time. I’m a little worried that Jacob is wearing black clothes here, complete with black gloves. Is he intentionally trying not to touch her? Or touch other people in the hospital? Or maybe it’s just cold wherever the hospital is? The scene finishes with Jacob referring to the six people she has to protect as “the remaining candidates”. She reacts to this in a way that seems to clearly show us that she knows all about the candidates. I’m still getting a whole “Jacobs Secret Society” vibe from her. But I really don’t think her relationship with Jacob is a simple one. She later refers to him as “the closest thing I ever had to a father”, and this IS a show about daddy issues..

After a brief interlude, Jacob and Illana’s interaction continues. It seems like very little time has passed, but Illana is fully healed. I think it’s safe to say that Jacob was entirely responsible for that.

I think this next scene contains one of my most favourite Lost moments. Illana asks “Ricardus” what they’re supposed to do next, and Richard giggles. He giggles in childish disbelief. I laughed like crazy when I saw that, this man whose mystery we’ve invested so heavily in, this man we assumed held all the answers, he has absolutely no idea what to do.

One of Lost’s biggest frustrations is that the characters rarely question the things going on around them. We’ve only heard “what is the smoke monster?” a couple of times, stuff like that. Well, we now know that Richard is the most guilty of this. He really doesn’t know much about what’s going on, he doesn’t appear to have asked many questions, and he’s been on the island a long, long time.

I spoke before about the Lost writers and producers adding layers and elements to the show for all the different types of viewers. Hardcore and casual alike. This is a great example. Richard shares a “secret” that he’s known for a long time. He tells Jack that they’re all dead and in hell. While our Losties don’t really seem to react to this little nugget of philosophy, I can only imagine the viewer reactions.

Some people will have never considered that idea before, literally proclaiming “oh my god”, some people will have been sitting thinking “yeah, that explains a lot”, some people will have fired back “no way, they said on the podcast that it wasn’t hell!”, some will make the Cerberus connection from the hatch door map, some will comment on Anthony Coopers realisation that he was already dead, and some of us will say “well that’s interesting, I wonder why Richard thinks this is hell”. Thankfully, that last question is one they chose to tackle in this episode.

It interests me that Jack thinks Richard must have “lost his mind” because he thinks they’re in hell. For a guy who sat in front of lit dynamite because he was sure he wouldn’t die; Jack seems to have closed his mind a fair bit. I also love that everyone except Jack knew about Fake-Locke.

So, yes, I eat humble pie once again. I was wrong about Dogan being a WWII officer, and now I’m wrong about Richard. I thought they’d end up saying he was Egyptian, but here we see him in Tenerife, in 1867. I assumed that they would use Richard to explain some of the Egyptian themes on the island, painting him as an Egyptian slave on the Black Rock. But they’ve haven’t, and I’m glad. Nestor Carbonell isn’t Egyptian, and although he’s interesting looking it’d be wrong of them to cast him as an Egyptian. It’d also be an obvious character concept and they’ve got an excellent track record of breaking the mould with their characters archetypes. Why stop now? So it turns out that Richard is 137 years older in the Lost main timeline than he was in 1867. I think we can say he’s roughly 170 years old. We also learn that his real name is Ricardo.

We learn that Ricardo killed a man. A “bad man”, sure, he still killed him. He later claims it was an accident and I’m sure his intention wasn’t to kill the doctor, but if you watch the scene you can clearly see that he pushes him violently. He’s getting aggressive, even if the doctor hadn’t hit his head you have to wonder what would have happened next.

The confession and (lack of) forgiveness shown in the scene with Ricardo and the priest is of course a recurring theme in Lost. Redemption, mercy, forgiveness, judgement. I’m sure some people will say “the priest was smokey!” but at this stage who knows. He ends up on the Black Rock, and the Black Rock could be the ship we saw Jacob and the Man In Black discussing. A discussion which seemed to show us that Jacob brought the ship to the island. Did he bring Richard? Was Richard just an accident? We don’t know. One thing that does please me is that they namedropped Magnus Hanso again. We’ve got to wonder if the Black Rock was intentionally sailing to the island. Was Magnus searching for the island, just as the Hanso Foundation did later, via DHARMA? We learn that the crew of the Black Rock all die, so it’s not as if one of them went back and told tales. Then again, the ships log ends up at auction. Curiouser and curiouser.

The storm battering the Black Rock around as it approaches the island of course reminds us of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, a tale which has been long connected to Lost. Not something i’m going to go into detail about here, there are plenty of well written comparisons out there, I’m sure. I think everyone loved seeing the statue again, and seeing it get destroyed by the Black Rock. Seems a bit strange to me, that a huge statue would succumb to a wooden ship, but then again I’m not really sure about comparative scales.

Love hearing that Smokey still made the same New-York-taxi-and-chains noises in 1867 as he does now. He appears to judge Richard, but doesn’t kill him. Interesting that Richard closed his eyes and so we can’t know whether he would have seen images in the smoke. Since Smokey “scanned” Richard he was able to appear as Richard’s wife, the same way he later appears to Ben as Alex.

Man In Black’s conversation with Richard brings us back to the “Hell” situation. I will say here and now that the island is NOT Hell. The reason Man In Black tells Richard that it’s Hell (both as himself, and as Isabella) is because he judged/scanned Richard and learned that it is his biggest fear following the discussion with the priest earlier, and learning that he was going to Hell. What better way to motivate someone than to tell them they’re living their biggest fear?

We see the dagger again, and it’s still that Roman dagger, the one that Dogan tries to convince Sayid to use on Fake-Locke. I think that it must have some serious significance to both Jacob and the Man In Black, and possibly even age them. Man In Black tells Richard that he’s the smoke, and explains it as “the devil betrayed me, he took my body, my humanity”. Does Man In Black have a “gift” from Jacob, just like Richard has his lack of ageing? Like a cliche movie genie, perhaps these gifts have backfired.

Love seeing Jacob actually fight Richard. He’s not against physical violence then. Nor is he apposed to a bit of anger, and doesn’t seem to know everything either. He does seem like “just a man”, as we assumed.

Interesting that Jacob says “no one comes in unless I invite them in”, regarding the foot of the statue. Thing is, Fake-Locke and Ben both went in, were they invited? He also confirms that he brought the ship to the island. I guess someone on that ship was a candidate, we haven’t seen Hanso on any of the candidate lists.

His explanation of the cork/island thing troubles me. He’s suggesting that the island keeps some evil force at bay. Is it the physical island, or is it something on the island, or is it something different? Does the island hold something like pandoras box? Are we literally talking about a force below it, like the magnetic energy? I’m sure this is all going to come back to “The Hatch” and it’s purpose. Did Jacob help the remaining Dharma folks to build The Hatch, either directly or indirectly? To make sure that it could keep a cork in things? What exactly IS this “evil” force? He compares it to hell, because that’s Richards way of understanding it, but I don’t think he’s talking about an afterlife, just a kind of… evil energy.

He states that the Man In Black believes everyone has evil inside them, and that the evil makes them corruptible. Sounds like a tempter, like the snake in the garden of Eden. Jacob says that he brings people to the island to prove the Man In Black wrong. He suggests that the island redeems their past, gives them a blank slate. The inference is that their actions on the island are the only thing that matters, whether or not they’re corrupted. But I’m thinking about Eko, and how Man In Black killed him after judging/scanning him. Eko didn’t take responsibility for the bad things he had done, he blamed them on situations he was forced into. But Man In Black killed him, if his past didn’t matter he wouldn’t have been killed.

Jacob also makes it clear that he’s not helping people tell right from wrong, he wants them to do it themselves. He brings people to the island and then leaves them to make their own way. It’s like some Star Trek plot, a race of Aliens abducting people and putting them in a lab to see what they do, giving them challenges but never helping, playing God.

Richard points out that the Man In Black doesn’t have Jacobs scruples, and that he will interfere with these people, try to make them fail. As a result, Jacob asks Richard to help, to be a go-between. I can’t see the distinction between him “stepping in” and Richard doing it in his name.

Jacob’s powers have some obvious limits, he can’t bring Richards wife back (but we saw him appear to bring Locke back from the dead – perhaps all he did for Locke was heal him). He also can’t absolve Richard of his sins (so guess what, Richards past obviously still matters too!). So Richard goes for option 3 – never dying.

Man In Black doesn’t seem angry that Richard chose Jacob’s side, he’s understanding – almost as if he too made that decision once. He mentions the fact that Richard let Jacob talk to him, and that he can be “very convincing”. He has instructed Richard to stab Jacob before hearing him, and this goes back to the things I said previously about Sayid trying to kill Fake-Locke in a similar way.

Glad the episode almost ends on a Hurley Richard scene. They have a great dynamic (in the show, and in real life – Nestor was a guest on Jorge’s podcast recently). It’s an awesome scene, initially Jorge is translating, but then he stops as if Richard can hear her. Perhaps he can. It worries me that she says he needs to stop “The Man In Black” or they will all go to hell. Makes me wonder if that WAS Isabella, or if it was actually Jacob, or neither.

Love Jacob and Man In Black having their little chat. Man In Black explains that he wants to kill Jacob (and whoever else) so he can “leave”, but of course Jacob won’t let that happen. Jacob hands him the bottle and explains that it’s something to pass the time. He is starting to sound very much like a jailer. After Jacob leaves, the Man In Black upends the bottle. This suggests that he either watched Richard and Jacob interacting on the beach, or that he’s seen Jacobs little explanation before..