Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand we're back. Many apologies for the long lay off. I feel like as we head into the final three plus hours of Lost we should get this thing up and running again. I am going to avoid the episode recaps because by this point I'm going to assume that you guys have watched the episode. I will focus more on what we now know, what big questions we still have, and what people are thinking. So lets go.
First, R.I.P. Sayid, Sun, Jin, Ilana and maybe Frank. I was confused with Sayid. He was playing zombie for the entire season and then in the wake of his encounter with Desmond he seemed like old Sayid again. He completed the Jesus symbolism that we first encountered as he was carried out of the pool. He sacrificed himself to save the others. Sun and Jin. Eh. I had really grown tired of them. I thought they should have been reunited about six episodes earlier. It was a heartbreaking scene and I'm sad when any Lost mainstay is killed, but I could live with it. Fewer loose ends to deal with in the final episodes.
I'm going to skip most of what we learned in the episodes I missed, mostly because I can't coherently assemble it all right now. If you want to discuss please feel free. I want to concentrate mostly on last night's episode, "Across The Sea."
First and foremost, I loved the episode. I think Mark Pellegrino and Titus Welliver have turned in some top notch performances this season. Plus, it's always good to see Press Secretary C.J. Craig again. I thought the episode started off with a great quote from "Mother" which was basically aimed at the fans. "Every question I answer will simply lead to another question." The writers just aren't going to be able to answer everything. And even if they tried, people would have more questions. So at this point I'm going to stop begging for answers and just enjoy them as they come.
There were a few big reveals in this episode. The biggest of course being what the island is. The "heart" of the island is a light which is "the warmest brightest light you've ever felt." While not exactly very clear as to what this light actually is, it seems to represent purity, goodness, sort of like Adam and Eve before the fall. I think of it like Eywa from Avatar (see I wasn't so far off on my Tree of Souls reference). Mother must protect this light because if man discovers it he will exploit it and the light will go out. And if the light goes out on the island is goes out everywhere. Mother gives the line that men come, they fight, they destroy, they corrupt and it always ends the same. I guess MIB took this to heart.
We see the origins of the donkey wheel. It's not exactly clear to me how this was going to work (the water and the light were somehow going to get him off the island) but eventually someone does figure out how to get it to work.
Another reveal was the origin of the smoke monster. After MIB kills Mother, Jacob is so enraged that he drags him to the light and throws him in. Out comes the smoke monster and to me it appeared that the light didn't come back. I could be mistaken. It is also interesting to think about Jacob's line from Ab Aeterno that the island is like a cork keeping all of the evil bottled up. Doesn't sound like the great light to me.
As an aside, I really came around on MIB this episode. He really wasn't all that bad. He got along with Jacob and they seemed to really love each other. He seemed to also really care for his mother. The massacre of the people he was living with really changed him though. Even after he killed Mother he was pretty upset about it and tried to justify himself to Jacob. After Jacob discovers MIB's body he is genuinely sad. Some really touching but heartbreaking scenes.
We also found out who Adam and Eve are. Mother and MIB were laid to rest in the cave with the black and white stones. "But how can MIB's body be in the cave the whole time if we see him in bodily form later in the timeline, like with Richard in 'Ab Aeterno'?"
When Jacob threw him into the light, he ceased to be the MIB and became the smoke monster. The smoke monster can take the form of dead people on the island. I suspect he was still MIB in a sense. He had the same memories and experiences, but he had no permanent body. He could take the form of his old body, which we see he did later in the show. But the person who was Jacob's brother is no more and all that is left of him is the smoke monster.
I don't pretend to completely understand everything that we learned last night but I am confident it will be clarified in the next three hours. The series is really ramping up heading into the series finale event. As I start to come to grips with the fact that there are only two more episodes it makes me a little sad, but I can't wait to see how everything plays out. I'm interested in what people have to say so please comment away.
Good to have the commentary back! A few random comments from me:
ReplyDelete- I thought Sayid's character-arc was interesting, and seemed to suggest that there is a possibility for redemption even after one has supposedly "sold one's soul" (i.e. the Sickness and Sayid's deal with the MIB in order to have Nadia again). Maybe this is a hint that man truly isn't bad at heart, and that everyone has the ability to be good? I heard the producers say that Sayid was a character that was evil when he was told to be evil (e.g. the torturing and assassination careers) and good when he was told he could be good (e.g. Nadia's love helping him to do the right thing and help her escape Iraq). However, what was he truly? Having him decide to sacrifice himself for his friends in a split-second decision was a good way to suggest that perhaps he truly was a good man at his core. (Although in LOST, I'm sure that no one is ever FULLY good or FULLY evil).
- Although it was heartbreaking, the Sun & Jin ending was fantastic for me. I actually really liked their story from the beginning, and their death was emotionally tolling. Whenever you can get that kind of reaction to stem from the death of a fictional character, you've done something right as a writer/storyteller, I think. And while some have complained that they didn't decide to have Jin leave to raise their daughter, given the circumstances (split-second decision, hadn't seen each other in 3 years, etc.), I fully sympathize with Jin's decision and Sun's inability/unwillingness to get him to leave her side. Honestly beautiful stuff.
- The reaction to "Across the Sea" has been extremely mixed, but I would tend to agree that I enjoyed it (especially after a rewatch). In the end, I'd rather have an interesting, emotionally developed resolution to LOST than a simple checklist of "answers." They could have gone with a more straightforward approach, but even with what we've been given, I believe there is enough there to allow us to put the pieces together. This might be annoying to many viewers, but I actually kind of like the risk that's being taken. LOST has always felt like an epic novel to me, and few epic novels--even classic ones--offer a neat, tidy wrap-up at the end. That's up to us, and in a way, that means that LOST won't truly end this Sunday. It only ends when we let it end.
Haha, what a cliche comment.