LOST - Where Are We? - 6.09 – Ab Aeterno

After an episode as rich with both character and mythology as this week’s installment, it’s a bit tough to know where to begin. But my job on this blog has always been to condense and distill the show’s sprawling mysteries into as few talking points as possible in an attempt to show how the ultimate answers are only narrowly out of reach, so it’s a bit reassuring that while there were MANY issues of note in Ab Aeterno, most of them added either further clarification to things we thought we might already know or otherwise connected dots between things we had previously hoped were related and now can rest at ease that they are…

What I mean to say is: It’s all comin’ together!

The Island:
We’ve known the Island was special from day one. Through the years, we’ve learned it stores a crazy amount of electromagnetic energy that can crash planes, heal cancer, and bend time itself. We’ve discovered how hard it is to find the Island since the location of access to it on Earth moves from place to place, and even when you know approximately where it is, a proper compass bearing is required to access it successfully, otherwise your zapped through time in unexpected ways. We’ve seen the Island imbue characters with incredible powers: Desmond could see the future for a while and still remains a man free from the rules of time; Miles was born on the Island right around the time the Dharma Initiative began drilling into the electromagnetic stores, and as a result can read the minds of dead bodies; Hurley, at an unknown point, gained the ability to talk to the dead themselves. We’ve been told, and seen examples, that the Island can pull physical manifestations from its inhabitants minds out of a “magic box,” creating interactive group hallucinations such as Kate’s horse and most recently the bloody-handed Kid in 6.04 (The Substitute). And finally, we’ve encountered sporadically (and now more intimately), the two most powerful men on the Island – Jacob and the Man In Black – who seem to have access to the Island’s powers and the ability to channel them in various ways. But what IS the Island? What is its function?

Well, it’s a cork, silly.

Jacob’s bottle metaphor might seem brand new and like the biggest revelation of the night, but it’s been a long time coming. What Jacob refers to as evil/darkness/malevolence trapped in the bottle is, in this viewer’s opinion, precisely the Island’s stores of electromagnetism we’ve learned so much about through the series. Referring to it as evil/darkness/malevolence might just be Jacob’s way of explaining it in terms the pious Richard will understand, but if this energy is the source of all supernatural occurrences in the world of the show, then there may be a tinge of moral corruption to it as well. The point is, this isn’t the first time the Island has been indicated to be a preventative force. It isn’t even the first time the Island’s function has been compared to a liquid-stopper. In Desmond’s flashbacks in 2.23 (Live Together, Die Alone), a drunken Kelvin Inman dangled the failsafe key over its slot in the Swan Hatch and asked Desmond if he was man enough to stop holding his finger in the dam and rather just blow the whole dam itself. By the end of that episode’s present-day plotline, Desmond did just that. By ceasing pushing the button he pulled his finger out of the dam and rather than letting the electromagnetic energy bottleneck to a point utter destruction, he turned the key, blew the dam (the Swan hatch), and let that energy free into the world. The immediate results were that both Penny and Charles Widmore were able to spot the Island and locate it for a brief time, the Others lost their ability to communicate off Island via technology, and Desmond (at the focal point of the blast) became the Hero of Time. The long term results? Could it be that the thing Jacob had devoted his life to preventing actually already occurred in the Season 2 finale? More on this in a future topic…

The Island’s Rules:
There’s pretty clearly some force governing the actions of both Jacob and the Man In Black, or else the MIB would just kill Jacob himself. Likewise, chances are the MIB would have killed Richard (after Richard had been touched by Jacob) had he been capable of doing so. But the same Rules that I’ve speculated keep the MIB from physically harming the Candidates in the show’s present seem to have been firmly in place even before Jacob developed his band of followers with Richard as his intermediary. These are likely the same kinds of Rules that Jacob and Richard pass down to the Others: don’t kill other Others; don’t leave the Island without permission; (perhaps) don’t help/harm the Candidates, etc. The difference seems to be that the Others ARE capable of breaking these rules (though are subsequently punished) while Jacob and the MIB are bound by whatever Island authority gave them their powers.

Jacob & His Agenda:
Jacob’s mission is to protect the Island. To protect the Island he must keep the energy/evil/darkness/malevolence properly corked. The easiest way to keep it corked would SEEM to be to keep people as far AWAY from the Island as possible. But since Jacob has made a habit of subtly manipulating all sorts of people to the Island, either there’s more to his mission than meets the eye, or Jacob is so bored with his job that he frivolously endangers the world to play his game with the MIB… OR (and most likely, in this viewer’s opinion) Jacob’s not so sure humanity deserves his protection, and wants us to prove it.

While we as modern television viewers want to automatically group things into categories of good and evil, LOST has gone out of its way again and again to thwart viewer expectations. Seasons 1 and 2 made a habit of turning our expectations for spiteful characters (Sawyer, Jin, Shannon, Anna Lucia, Eko) upside down. Characters whose actions we were initially repulsed by, were very soon drawing tears of sympathy from us. Likewise many of our stalwart heroes (Jack, Kate, Sun, Sayid, Charlie, Hurley, Boone) were revealed to have darker, muddier pasts with each successive flashback. And of course Ben is the coup de grace of the series: the ultimate villain, a man who condones genocide, breathes lies, thrives on the manipulation of others, ordered the death of Charlie, and VERY RECENTLY strangled Locke to the grave in cold blood… and each season we’re given an episode that makes us hope for the best in him. Just like Jacob hoped right before Ben stabbed him in the chest.

So on a show that’s practically written the book on shades of grey, it should come as no surprise that the man on the side of White (versus Black), the man who is Protector (versus the Destroyer), the man paced on the side of Good (versus Evil) is, in fact, a man like any other. He may have a noble job, and he may have high hopes for humanity, but that certainly don’t mean he’s going to keep on performing his job without proof we’re worth it. I posit that the only way Jacob’s willing to keep protecting the Island is if the people he “brings” there (as well as any others who find the Island themselves) can prove themselves capable of getting along, taking care of the Island, and choosing what is right. Through Richard, he formed a very narrow line of communication with his people, and they joined him in protecting the Island, but much like their leader, the Others hold a haughty regard to their Island duties, and thus the cycle continues. Exactly how the Others are instructed to treat new arrivals, and what lists Jacob passes down, and what purges he’s ordered remain question marks, but the purpose of the group has never been clearer, and I just might get clearer yet!

The Man In Black & His Agenda:
Well, the MIB definitely seems to want to leave that Island. He clearly thinks the whole thing’s a sham: Humanity’s a mess, and there’s nothing his freedom or the Island’s uncorked malevolence can do to mess humanity up any more than it already is. Last week I suspected that the MIB wanted the Island unprotected because he wanted something BAD to happen to the world, but now I suspect he wants it unprotected because he doesn’t think there’s anything BAD enough that could happen that won’t just happen anyway because mankind is (in his view) inherently corrupt. In other words: he doesn’t KNOW the precise effects of unleashing the Island’s power – he just doesn’t give a damn what they are.

The Others:
So they were formed as recently as 1867! Now with Richard as his intermediary, Jacob can began recruiting people to his Island-protection cause, making lists, and playing a larger role in the goings on of his little moral battlefield. Previously he seemed willing only to GET people to the Island so that they might play out their true natures in harsh circumstances, but now he’s knocking things up a notch. Since people on the Candidates list don’t appear to have begun their on-Island lives as recruits of the Others, it seems pretty clear that there’s a distinction between the Candidates and the Others. The Others help Jacob perform his tests on the Candidates morality. So actually being on Jacob’s initial lists (such as the one Anna and Eko found when their fellow tale section survivors were being kidnapped in 2.07 [The Other 48 Days], or the one Danny Pickett groused that “Shepard” wasn’t on in 3.06 [I Do]) seems to be a bit of an insult: it means you’re not Candidate material – your simply easily manipulated into helping Jacob find his replacement. And none of you even know what or who the Candidates are. I guess the joke’s on the Others! No wonder they all tend to be either douchebags or mindless followers!

The Shadow of the Statue Folks:
I wonder how long this little band of Candidate-knowledgeable Jacob-protectors has been around? We’ll get our answer when we’re granted more info on Illana, hopefully, but for now we know that they already existed around the time Flight 815 crashed (since Bram and Co. tried to dissuade Miles from joining Widmore’s freighter expedition in 4.02 [Confirmed Dead]). And we also know that at some point after there were only Six Candidates left, Jacob visited Illana to upgrade her mission.

Visions: Magic Box, Man In Black, or The Actual Dead?
You could make a pretty good game show out of this mystery. Island visitors have seen a long string of crazy crap on its shores, and it would be the simplest explanation if it all came from the same source, but this is LOST, so of course there are MULTIPLE ways someone can experience the impossible.

------The Magic Box: Using the metaphor Ben did in 3.13 (The Man From Tallahassee) there’s a “Magic Box” on the Island and people can subconsciously pull things from their lives out of it (Kate’s Horse, Sawyer’s Boar, Ben’s Mother). These things can usually be interacted with (though they don’t say much), and frequently (though not always) multiple people can see them. This is what I also personally refer to as the Island’s interactive power separate and perhaps above Jacob and the MIB. Other than suspicions and “what feels right,” the only proof I’ve got that this power exists above them is that the MIB experienced The Kid in 6.04 (The Substitute) against his own will and after Jacob (who can now only influence things via conversation with Hurley) was killed.

Examples (In My Opinion): Jack’s Suited Dad (in 1.04 [White Rabbit] and 4.10 [Something Nice Back Home]), Sawyer’s Boar (in 1.16 [Outlaws]), Kate’s Horse (in 2.09 [What Kate Did]), Sayid’s Cat (In 3.11 [Enter 77]), Ben’s Mother (In 3.20 [The Man Behind The Curtain]), Possibly Harper (In 4.06 [The Other Woman]), Possibly Antony Cooper (In 3.13 [The Man From Tallahassee] and 3.19 [The Brig], though chances are the Others just kidnapped the poor bastard and dragged him to the Island.

------The Man In Black’s Dream/Visions: The MIB can give people visions. We saw pretty clear proof in this week’s episode when Richard lost consciousness, had a vision of Isabella returning to him on board the Black Rock and being swept away by Smokey, and then regained consciousness with the MIB in the room beside him. The MIB then proceeded to use this vision to manipulate Richard into attempting to kill Jacob. So if he can give visions to the people he’s scanned as Smokey, who else has been scanned by Smokey and then had Dream/Visions that influenced their behavior? We at least can give a “hell yeah” to Eko and Locke.

Examples (In My Opinion): Locke’s Dreams/VIsions (in 1.19 [Deus Ex Machina], 2.21 [?], 3.03 [Further Instructions], and 4.11 [Cabin Fever]), Eko’s Dreams/VIsions (3.05 [The Cost of Living]), Possibly Charlie’s Dreams/Visions (2.12 [Fire+Water]), Possibly Claire’s Dreams/Visions (unseen, but referred to in 4.10 [Something Nice Back Home])

------The Man In Black HIMSELF: Different than a vision, the MIB himself has the ability to actually appear physically in the form of a dead person whose body was left lying about the Island and was then taken by him. When he does this, everyone can see him and he usually makes requests and asks for things: He’s appeared as the non-suited version of Jack’s dad Christian, Eko’s brother Yemi, Locke, and possibly Alex. Of the first three in particular, a big deal was made of the availability of their corpses for his use. Christian’s and Eko’s bodies were dragged away somewhere. Locke’s was used while it was very insistently/purposefully stored in the Ajira 316 cargo hold.

Examples (In My Opinion): Jack’s Non-Suited Dad (in 1.04 [White Rabbit] and 4.10 [Something Nice Back Home]), Yemi (in 3.05 [The Cost of Living]), Locke (starting in 4.07 [The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham]), Alex (in 5.12 [Dead Is Dead])

------The Actual Dead: Hurley’s power to speak with the dead – both on and off Island – adds a whole new dimension to these visions. They’re easy to spot, though… since no one sees them but Hurley, and only Hurley speaks with them. Confirmation these aren’t MIB manipulations? Jacob himself is one of those speaking to Hurley; The MIB seemed pretty pissed at the result of Isabella’s intervention this week.

Examples (In My Opinion): Charlie (in 4.01 [The Beginning of the End]), Eko (in 4.13 [There’s No Place Like Home, Part II]), Anna Lucia (in 5.02 [The Lie]), Jacob (in 6.01 [LA X] and 6.05 [Lighthouse]), Isabella (in 6.09 [Ab Aeterno])

------Exceptions: And of course, there have to be oddball occurrences as well in order to avoid all this getting too simple. The most impactful of these are Desmond’s Flashes of future and past events, which I hold to be actual time travelling of his consciousness and not visions. Also of interest is Dave, Hurley’s imaginary friend from 2.18 (Dave), who could easily have been a “Magic Box” pull-out from Hurley’s subconscious, or even the ghost of Libby’s dead husband (if Hurley’s power was with him even back before the crash of Flight 815), but in all likelihood is just an honest-to-god genuine trauma-induced hallucination.

The Dharma Initiative, The Importance of the Incident,
& The Consequence of Blowing The Dam:
Let’s wrap this week up with a big one! I constantly bump into people online worrying if this or that from Seasons 1-5 will ultimately prove to have been an important storyline now that everything is being whittled down to Jacob vs. the Man In Black. One of the story lines is that of the Dharma Initiative – at one time thought to be behind EVERYTHING crazy that happened on the show. As I speculated earlier in my section on “The Island,” when Desmond turned the failsafe key, he may have uncorked the Island’s store of energy/evil/darkness/malevolence way back at the end of Season 2. If this is the case, then responsibility for uncorking the evil actually belongs to the Dharma Initiative itself, which means the Dharma storyline is nothing less than mankind’s final blunder onto the Island, undoing Jacob’s mission, and unleashing the very energy that had been pent up to protect it. Kind of important I’d say. And who led Locke to both the Swan and the Pearl, stations, resulting in the Swan’s destruction? Oh, yeah: the MIB through Dream/Visions!

So if the cork is already blown in the present time of the show, maybe the only thing that can be done to help humanity/the world is to keep the Man In Black on the Island as it slowly crumbles in on itself. What happens next we can only speculate.

At least, we COULD only speculate, if the show weren’t already (in theory) showing us a timeline in which the Dharma Initiative were unable to finish building the Swan Hatch! So if the Altered Universe is a world in which the Island has long since been uncorked, and at some point ended up on the ocean floor as a result, then maybe all the flash-sideways stories are building to something very cataclysmic. Something that proves once and for all the importance of keeping the Island safe and keeping the MIB on it. And why is such proof necessary beyond providing a cool what-if scenario for us viewers? Ask Jacob. After all, he created it by fetching back the Oceanic Six and sending many of our heroes back to 1977 to add an H-Bomb to the Incident. So, whatever the AU is, perhaps it’s Jacob’s loophole. Even as the MIB commandeered the Oceanic Six’s return to take Locke’s form and murder Jacob, the creation of the AU was already long-since successful, and will somehow prove to be Jacob’s ace-in-the-hole.

And that’s where we are!