Lower Decks

What kind of show would make an episode where absolutely zero main characters appear in any new footage?  Where the main plot takes place entirely in a period thousands of years before any of us were even born?  What kind of show formally introduces characters that are immensely tied to the mythos with only three (and a half) hours left in the show?  If you answered “LOST” – you’re absolutely correct.  And I think LOST might be the only show that could get away with such a thing.

Let’s start with the thing that everyone seems to be talking about – what is the Man in Black’s true name?  It’s something that’s bothered people since he was introduced (and not named) in the season five finale.  He’s been called Jacob’s Enemy, the Man in Black, MiB, the Monster, the LockeMonster, and a handful of other monikers.  And we all assumed that, since we were going to get an entire episode devoted to Jacob and his apparent brother, we’d learn the guy’s name once and for all.

Nope.  In a way that only LOST seems to be able to do, we never learn his name.  In a way of teasing the fans, Jacob and MiB’s mother claims that she only came up with one name (Jacob) and doesn’t name the other baby.  And when the Mother character (also unnamed and played by West Wing alumna Allison Janney) kills Claudia (their biological mother), any chance of getting a name seemed to fly out the window.

The explanation that seems to be coming out of this is that the Man in Black simply doesn’t have a name.  It seems strange, but we’re talking about an Island where only three people exist.  There’s simply “Jacob” and the other boy.  It’s not like there would be a lot of pronounal confusion going on, especially since they all seemed, as they were growing up, that they were the only humans in existence.

Now would he have been given a name while he was living in that civilization?  Probably.  But the writers decided not to tell us, and I’m guessing they’re never going to tell us.  And, honestly, if “what is the Monster’s name?” is the biggest question that is left unanswered, I think we’ll be in great shape in two weeks.

That all being said, we did get a lot of stuff answered.  Let’s break it all down.

Is Jacob human?  Was the Monster human?

The answer to both questions is an obvious yes.  Jacob is in charge of the Island simply because he was born in the right place at the right time.  He’s not omnipotent or omnipresent, and he seems to simply be ageless as much as Richard was.  This power seems to have come from his mother, and considering what’s happened, she can only assumed to be human too.  After all, both were killed relatively easily (and in the same way).

The Monster was also human, but that question is a bit trickier.  We know that Jacob killed his brother by throwing him into that mysterious cave (more on that in a moment).  And we know that as soon as he fell into the light, the Smoke Monster emerged from the cave.

However, we aren’t really able to put two and two together to say that Jacob’s brother is the Monster.  I know we’re asking more questions in the answer, but we can’t say that definitively.  Because we know that the Monster is capable of mimicking the dead – how do we know that the Monster is regaining his old form and not simply choosing the right form to fight against the Island’s protector?  He’s done it before by mimicking John Locke – he does whatever he needs to do to escape.

Maybe the Monster is a completely different entity that simply escaped when Jacob’s brother was thrown into the cave.  Of course, maybe they’re the same creature.  There’s really no way of saying one way or the other is right at this point.

With LOST, every answer brings another question.  Mother was right.

Who are Adam and Eve?

This one is a pretty big one.  Adam and Eve were forgotten for most of the show, but they were always significant to the people that matter.  I read an interview once that said that Adam and Eve were clues that the writers threw into season one to let us know that they had a plan all along.  That, when it was all said and done, Adam and Eve would connect season one to season six.

And there were tons of theories that people had about them.  Even before time travel came to the Island, people assumed that Adam and Eve were Jack and Kate.  That they were Sun and Jin.  That they were Rose and Bernard.  These theories were played upon earlier this year when Hurley suggested that they might travel through time again and end up as Adam and Eve.

But, no.  Adam and Eve end up being the Monster and his mysterious adopted mother.  When we first saw them way back in season one, we wondered if we knew the identities of Adam and Eve.  Well, the answer is “yes” – although, it was also a lot more complicated than we originally thought.

What’s so special about this Island?

This is another one that we “kinda” answer.  Apparently, the Island is the source of the “light” in the universe.  That it’s the source of life, death, and everything in between.  It all feels a little bit Star Wars-ish, and it turned off a lot of people who don’t like the supernatural side of LOST.

So apparently this light is very important and has to be protected – that explains the role of Jacob’s adopted mother, Jacob, and his eventual successor.  Why does it need to be protected?  Man’s greed of course.  And since men keep ending up on the Island accidentally, someone has to make sure they don’t try and steal it.

What do I think of that whole premise?  I think it makes a lot of sense, story-wise.  A magic light would certainly explain a lot of the crazy things that have happened on the Island, and the scientists can explain away the “magic” side with some kind of technobabble about electromagnetism.  At the end of  the day, I don’t think it really matters.  I was hoping that the show would lean a little more towards “science” than “faith” because I’d read an interview that said that all the crazy stuff on the Island could be explained scientifically.

But the whole show is based on the idea of science versus faith.  Why is it so bad that the show straddles the line between science and magic?  After all, someone once said that science, at a certain point, becomes indistinguishable from magic.

In addition to those questions, we still have a lot of questions…mainly stemming from the characterization of Jacob.  He’s not painted in the best of light here, as he’s a bit of a momma’s boy, and he has a heck of a temper.  He attacks his brother twice in the course of the episode, and he ends up killing his brother as an act of revenge.  Not exactly “godly” works from the perceived deity of the Island.

But what’s odd is that the villain, the Monster, doesn’t fight back either time.  He seems to love his brother enough not to try and hurt him in any way.  Even when Jacob drags him to his death, the Monster never makes a move to fight back.  He does kill his adopted mother, but that’s about the only violent thing he does in the entire episode.  Most of the time, he’s simply trying to get home.

Then there’s Jacob’s view on people.  In the flashback, he seems to be anti-people.  His mother teaches him that people are trustworthy, and she even uses the same exact words that the Monster used to describe people in the season five finale.  It’s the brother who goes to live with people, although he has less-than-great things to say about them after living with them for a couple of decades.

And by the end of the episode, there’s not a whole lot that happens to change either of their minds.  The brother goes crazy when he finds his people slaughtered, but Jacob doesn’t really seem to care that their mother killed them all.  In fact, he makes almost no interaction with the people at all.

And, yet, years later, Jacob is bringing people to the Island with a huge faith in them, and it’s the Monster who kills most of them with no faith that they’re anything but violent monsters themselves.

What changed?

It’s hard to say, and I’m not even sure we’ll get the answer.  Maybe he softened on people at some point between this episode and the arrival of the Black Rock.  It’s possible that, after a couple thousand years of people arriving on the Island, he realized that we’re not all that bad.  And I guess the Man in Black, after his transformation into the black smoke, started seeing the dark side of everyone and everything.

I’m sure the last three and a half hours of the show will continue to delve into the motivations of both Jacob and the Monster.  But I think it’s safe to say that these aren’t your stereotypical depictions of good and evil.  Jacob is probably good, and the Monster is probably bad.  But I think they’re both capable of either – after all, they’re both human.

One of the things that kinda bothered me about the episode was the flashback to season one and the discovery of Adam and Eve.  This show has, for the most part, done a pretty good job of respecting the intelligence of the audience.  There have been hundreds of connections and continuity items that have been subtly done over the course of the series.  And, for the first time, the show really went out of its way to shove down our throats that these were the same Adam and Eve that we met.

And I just didn’t think that was necessary.  The people that remembered Adam and Eve on the show were almost certainly going to get it, and the people that didn’t remember probably wouldn’t have cared that much in the first place.  It just didn’t seem like LOST‘s style to be so obvious, and it felt a bit out of place.

Although the nice little subtle stuff was the idea that Jacob and the Monster both lived in the caves when they were growing up.  So when the Monster drew Jack to the caves, he actually drew Jack to his own home.   And to his own body.   That’s a pretty cool little connection, and it continues to slightly alter what really happened way back in season one.

And there you have it.  A unique episode that really showcased Jacob and the Monster, just in time for the last true hour of the show.  I can’t believe that’s all that’s left, and it’s really starting to feel real now.  Pretty soon, it will all be over, and that’s honestly a really strange feeling.