Lost: Season 5 Finale

(SE05E16/ SE05E17) – “Are you sure I’m the one who doesn’t believe in you?” – Christian.

I’ve not blogged for months, and the last time I blogged about LOST was back in July last year, but the season 5 finale of LOST has left me mind boggled. So I thought I’d throw my thoughts and opinions down here….although I might ramble a bit, sorry.

There’s so much new information to get through, and lots of new theories to validate and discard. Lets start right at the beginning of ‘The Incident’ where we are finally introduced to Jacob and Jacob’s Adversary (which I’ll reference as JA for this post), whom many are calling anti-Jacob. The first thing that entered my head when I watched this was the symbolic reference between light and dark, good and evil. Jacob was wearing a light coloured top, JA a dark coloured top.

There have been many theories as to who Jacob and JA actually are, including Apep and Ra, from Egyptian mythology, or Jacob and Esau. The key point for me is the theme of immortality and eternal life. This is a constant theme throughout LOST.

Continuing along this line of thinking, if Jacob and JA are some kind of immortal beings, this would mean they don’t age, and can live in a physical OR spiritual form. Two things here – one, JA could be a shape-shifting immortal, in that he can take the form of dead beings. You could therefore logically apply that JA could also be the smoke monster (who has taken the form of Christian, Ben’s daughter and now John Locke, amongst others) to help manipulate situations to his advantage. Secondly, I’m sure there is some myth which states two immortals cannot kill each other, and immortals can only be killed in a certain way. Hence why JA recruits Ben to kill Jacob.

Looking at Jacob’s side of this, he visits Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Hurley, Sayid, Sun and Jin and Locke at different points throughout their lives. Many questions here. Does he indirectly cause Nadia’s death? I think Jacob brings Locke back to life after his window fall too.

On the latter point, Jacob touches each of the Oceanic 815 survivors he visits…..angelic touches perhaps? If he gave Richard eternal life, he possibly passed some sort of power onto the Oceanic survivors. In fact it’s been noted on many blogs that the only flashback that didn’t contain Jacob, was Juliet’s…who Jacob never physically touched. Is this also why he didn’t try to touch Ben before he stabbed him?

The book he was reading on the bench by the way was entitled ‘Everything That Rises Must Converge’, by Flannery O’Connor. “The story exemplifies her ability to expose human weakness and explore important moral questions through everyday situations.” This relates to Jacob’s initial conversation with JA at the start of the episode.

Fast forward to scene with Ilana and ‘Jacob’s’ cabin. I don’t think this cabin was ever Jacob’s. I think it was JA’s. And I think the circle of ash was a formed some sort of containment for JA. This can be backed up from commentary by the producers from the episode “The Man Behind the Iron Curtain“. From what I can remember, the circle of ash was never broken until the 316 crew encountered it.

I’m guessing this means JA found his “loophole” and escaped when the ash was broken – either when Locke died, or when the Ajira flight crashed, and JA took the form of John Locke.

Fast forward again to Ben and Locke (JA)’s encounter with Jacob beneath the statue. The statue by the way has been confirmed by ABC as being the statue of Taweret, the Egyptian goddess of fertility. Did you notice the look of sarcasm/irony on Locke’s face when Ben said “…like he’s Moses or something”? Which leads you to think Jacob and JA knew Moses in some way….

Right before Jacob died (this also seems to be confirmed by ABC), he said: “They are coming”, and JA looked fearful. Does that mean the other Lostie’s are coming back, or is it more sinister (i.e ‘the war’)?
If the Sawyer, Jack and Co. do make it back to 2007, it shouldn’t take long for them to discover the walking talking John Locke is not John Locke. I’m thinking we’ll have an episode in Series 6 which shows Miles talking to a dead John Locke….

I agree with Ryan’s comment that JA has been manipulating Locke since the first season, and all the time Locke thought the island was communicating with him, it was actually JA/Esau.

Getting to the Incident itself, I’m going along the lines of what happened, happened in that the drill hit the pocket, but Juliet’s detonation of the bomb quite possibly changed the past. Saying that, how was the Taweret statue destroyed? Great point by Miles too – perhaps the efforts of Jack to stop the events that caused the Oceanic 815 crash actually ensure that they do happen. I’m in two minds on this one!

Lastly, on a more sober points to note – one: I quite liked the Rose and Bernard interlude. You guys always have a drama….running round shooting people and burning things…me and Rose? We’re retired from all that. We’re happy regardless, even if we die together.

Two: Sun finding Charlie’s ring with the initials ‘DS’. Charlie named Drive Shaft after the initials on the ring.

So there we have it. January can’t come round soon enough!…..