"I Hope You're Happy Now, Jacob"--The LOST Season 5 Thread

little Kate was so dead-on, btw. The way she held the backpack, the eyeroll.. That actress is incredible!

Actually thought Juliet's sister was Kate for a second and was like OMG THEY'RE SISTERS before my friend was like "uh, no"

better hope nu-Locke is not Smokey, otherwise smokey cannot be revealed as Ian MacShane when he is surely hired fresh from the cancellation of Kings.

Smokey seems to have access to people's memories ... and the apparitions are also manifestations of those memories. So they're related, I think. I think all the apparitions are Smokey to some extent.

little Kate was so dead-on, btw. The way she held the backpack, the eyeroll.. That actress is incredible!
Amazing casting there.

Loved the initial scene - it's like an overture; it makes no sense, but it's crammed with information and themes.

Confused as to why Jacob has a cabin when he's been under the statue this whole time. Was Titus/Esau in there instead?

Jacob's touching the 815/316ers - reminded me of Christian's not touching Locke just before he turned the wheel.

Have to rewatch all the TitusLocke scenes now! Are all the possessions/apparitions Titus? It would seem like it. Titus is evidently looking for someone to kill Jacob for him, since he can't do it (a la Ben not being able to kill Widmore) - so TitusAlex pushes him to it, and Christian tells Locke he has to die to bring the O6 back. Can Titus possess as many dead as are lying around at one time?

anyone find a transcription of the opening scene dialogue online?

so my post got deleted?

d'oh wrong thread :)

a friend of mine just posted some thoughts to his facebook page, it's good stuff:

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=604087574&ref=profile#/note.php?note_id=76640447886&ref=nf

***SPOILER*** if you have not seen the season finale, read no further. also there will be a small spoiler about stephen kings' THE STAND. i'll let ya know when i get there. ****

so, it all comes down to what john locke told walt in season one. the black rock vs. the white rock. good vs. evil. jacob vs. esau. we now have in place the pieces of the final war. we also have the shucking off of the sub-plots that have made the story so mind bending. of course that could be a bad thing for those of us who love that aspect of the LOST game. anyway, some observations.

RELIGION & PHILOSOPHY
we now know why egypt has been so important to the storytelling in lost. the egyptian book of the dead is the foundation of all the worlds dominant religions (i know some will debate its' importance to buddhism but heck, most folks who follow it don't consider buddhism a religion anyway). so, LOST is exploring the very nature of our religious tendencies. jacob as a christ like benevolent god. esau as the serpent. the island the garden of eden (or mu, or atlantis), a place of alchemy where scientific, magical, & spiritual properties co-exist.

the philosophy part is as simple & complex as free will versus pre-determination. jacob placed our heroes in their spots giving them the chance to make the right choices that will lead to their redemption. the choice is always theirs. esau manipulates the weak, seeing the human animal as a fixed system that will always make the same choices over & over again.

WHAT ILANA SAID TO RICHARD ALPERT
"what lies in the shadow of the statue ?"
alpert: "he who will protect/save us"
(thanks to all the latin scholars over at darkufo for that quick translation last night)
so, my take on this is that jacob is not only our heroes redemptive figure, he is humanity's redemptive figure. the island itself is the reset button or lynchpin for the entire world. jacob & esau fight not just for the souls of the castaways but for the fate of the entire world. will humanity break the cycle of constant war or find some form of redemption (what this redemption will look like i'm not sure of yet).

A MAN WHO THOUGHT HE WAS A GOD
eloise, widmore, ben, the so called leaders of the others have all thought themselves masters of the game. they have all tried to take control of the island. they are just wannabes. the chumps in the casino thinking they've got a system, when the house always wins. each was exiled in some manner for their hubris (though we have not witnessed eloise in this manner, so i'll reserve judgement on that one).

and anyone remember wtf was going on with ghost horace last season?

he was in a dream, can't remember whose, building Jacob's cabin. Then he started time looping and got a nosebleed.

That was Locke's dream, pointing him toward the Dharma mass grave, which got him the map that led him to Jacob's cabin. Horace repeated the same action again and again, which foreshadowed the island timeloop I think.

anyone find a transcription of the opening scene dialogue online?

No, I was looking as well because I have trouble hearing Titus' line about finding a loophole/killing Jacob/something about a final duel from the beach.

jacob placed our heroes in their spots giving them the chance to make the right choices that will lead to their redemption. the choice is always theirs. esau manipulates the weak, seeing the human animal as a fixed system that will always make the same choices over & over again.

That's a really nice summation.

lostpedia should have a transcript up soon-ish. just keep checking.

NAMELESS: You're trying to prove me wrong.
JACOB: You are wrong.
NAMELESS: They come, they fight, they destroy, they corrupt. It always ends the same.
JACOB: It can only end once. Everything before that is progress.

The EW recap is very good, btw.

Am reading that now, in fact.

Any thoughts on the bomb? Life goes on after 1977, we know that. Or since there's a timeloop, is 'the future' just 'the past' that leads to the Indicent? Is the Incident the-end-that-comes-once that Jacob talked about? Is Jacob creating and maintaining a timeloop and Esau out to break it?

I feel that the current activities of the Shadow of the Statue crew are such that I don't think we will leave that story unresolved, so I think that ultimately we'll return to that developing situation in S6. And if that's the case, I think that means that The Incident either is unaffected by the bomb, or only slightly so. That maybe small changes have happened, but not enough to result in the Jack & Kate popping up anywhere other than back in 2007 on the island.

all the losties will hav goatees

RE: Esau

Uh, correct me if I'm wrong, but in the Bible Esau isn't representative of the "serpent"/devil/evil, is he? As I remember, he is Jacob's older redheaded hairy brother, who loses his firstborn status because he's so goddamn hungry that he trades it away to Jacob for a bowl of fucking soup (unbelievable bible story #123402, or at least proof that Esau was the dumbest man who ever lived). Jacob and Esau were antagonistic after that, but they eventually made up: correct? It's been a long time since I read through Genesis, but it seems like everyone is mixing up Esau with Cain, or maybe Joseph's older brothers who sold him into slavery.

He came, Esau, he conquered

Just to push back against the apparently widespread nickname of Esau, I'm going to start referring to Jacob as Abel.

I have faith that there will not be a straightforward biblical allegory at the center of the lost storyline. Echoes of, sure, but not a straight crib.

I really hope the bomb sends them all back to 1977, except Rose and Bernard who I suppose are Adam and Eve after all? That seemed to be the writers drawing a line under their characters.

I enjoyed this mostly because of the 'OMG Jacob' reveal and the 'OMG statue' reveal. I doubt Sayid isn't dead but I think Juliet probably is. Amazed that Lapidus made it through the episode alive actually, I thought they were going to go for a mass cull at one point.

Best bits were Juliet falling down the shaft and, especially, the bit where Sawyer kicked the shit out of Jack in that "are you seriously going to detonate an atomic bomb because you're emo about your ex? WTF is wrong with you?" Kate-Sawyer-Jack-Juliet stuff all terrible obviously.

Starting to think Hurley is actually the key to the whole thing.

I doubt Sayid IS dead, even.

i am just glad to know that vincent is ok

He was always destined to be Adam & Eve's dog.

was trying hard to remember where i'd seen jacob recently. i think it's cuz he was rita's creepy convict husband on Dexter.

i think i'm bummed at the jacob reveal in that he's really no different than several characters we've already met who are ageless time/space jumpers who turn up at points during the characters' lives. oh boy, another one!

jaymc how fucking psyched were you to see rose and bernard

rose and bernard out-hippied the hippies man

i just loved that they were like 'oh come on, fuck this shit'

yeah me too, I think that was actually significant.

the flaming arrows sealed the deal for them

I wouldn't mind seeing a Bernard flashback incorporating Perfect Strangers footage showing him as a miserable management type before he met Rose.

lol nobody just "retires" from the island... definitely shades of rousseau, how they evaded encounters with both dharma and the others

then again, the producers do get sick of calling actors back for things, so... also V is probably going to series so chances that Juliet is really dead are high

liked the mirror redshirt deaths, Frogurt vs. Phil

all this crazy, Stand-esque good vs. evil ultimate confrontation for the ages over space and time thing, i'm totally down for this S1-mirroring final S6

was the white flash at the end basically the same kind of flash that occurred when they time jumped earlier in the season?

It was the same color, but I think that's all we know for sure.

I doubt Sayid is dead but I think Juliet probably is.

I'm just the opposite here, but with no rational reason for being so. There's no way all of the characters present at the Incident are going to be killed out of the show by the bomb, so it's a matter of whether they die or not from the injuries they sustained before it went off: Sayid being gutshot vs. Juliet having massive internal injuries from falling...how far down was the hole, 60 ft? Seems like they said the distance at some point. It would be a nice concession to common sense for both of them to be gone next season.

was trying hard to remember where i'd seen jacob recently. i think it's cuz he was rita's creepy convict husband on Dexter.

I missed the first five minutes of this episode where they reveal that he is Jacob, so when he started showing up at random times in the 815ers' pasts, I was thinking "I know Lost has shown us this guy before, but when??" Racked my brain for a while before realizing Jacob was shown on a different show.

jaymc how fucking psyched were you to see rose and bernard

Haha, the one spoiler I grant myself is the ABC press release for the following week's show, so I knew in advance that they were going to show up.

i imagine you doing a fist clench at their appearance

"YES!!"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sobek

dear people with office jobs who are probably watching this on abc's website at work right now and making it impossible to load abc's streaming video player,

stop it and get some work done. please. thx.

titus esau welliver

I don't have enough Biblical knowledge to really get a handle on the Esau concept - the first thing I thought of was Cain and Abel in the DC 'House of Mystery' comics, in which Cain would kill Abel over and over again - timeless antagonists. They showed up in Gaiman's Sandman as well as Moore's Swamp Thing.

i just loved that they were like 'oh come on, fuck this shit'

That was their redemption - I saw it as that Buddhist idea of exiting the wheel of rebirth. Though I was totally off base thinking Locke was out to kill the idea of Jacob rather than Jacob himself, so ...

The running theory around the internet seems to be that Locke is now the Man in Black, but if that's the case, why would Jacob heal him younger Locke and help him on his journey?

Present-day Jacob is hanging out in the shadows, and whatever was confined to the circle of ash and Jacob's cabin is no longer there. Seems just as likely to me that Locke is actually Jacob, and shapeshifter-Jacob is actually the man in black.

Doesn't seem like real Jacob would be so mean to Ben, imo.

-him

[i]why would Jacob heal him younger Locke and help him on his journey?<i/>

When did this happen? Widmore and Abbadon helped out Locke, as far as I can recall. I think Jacob was invested in keeping Locke alive, whereas Titus was out to have him end up dead so he could serve as host ...

When did this happen? Widmore and Abbadon helped out Locke, as far as I can recall.

Locke fell out of a window, and was seemingly dead on the ground. Jacob was reading Flannery O'Connor. Jacob walked over and touched John on the shoulder, and his eyes opened immediately.

The Black Swan Theory as coined by Nassim Nicholas Taleb refers to an event in history that might by it's sheer unlikeliness change the course of history, and might come as a surprise even though in hindsight, it all appears to be plausible and foreseeable. The unlikely events during The Incident, the name of the site being The Swan and the surprising (in an empirical sense) change of the title card from black to white echo these assumptions. See also the related black swan problem and it's application in everyday science.

Locke fell out of a window, and was seemingly dead on the ground. Jacob was reading Flannery O'Connor. Jacob walked over and touched John on the shoulder, and his eyes opened immediately.

Oh, I see - I didn't see that as Locke being healed but just as being visited. My takeaway was that Locke would have lived regardless.