Many spoilers ahead. If you have not watched all of LOST including last night’s episode, “Ab Aeterno,†you should move along. There’s nothing to see here.
If you did not enjoy last night’s episode of LOST you truly have no soul. Between a stunning performance from Nestor Carbonell (who knew he could, you know, act…have you seen Smokin’ Aces?) and great support from Titus Welliver and Mark Pellegrino, fans were treated to what was easily one of the five most captivating episodes of the entire series. For me, no episode could match the wonder of “Walkabout,” but “Ab Aeterno” was fantastic from start to finish. What’s more, I don’t think we’re done having our minds blown yet. Now, I do my best to steer clear of LOST spoilers, but from what I’ve heard from folks more connected and more insane than myself is that there is an episode coming up in a few weeks that will redefine “awesome” in terms of LOST episodes. (Hint: The episode title shares its name with a popular Beatles tune). So yeah, that one by all accounts will blow even last night’s stunner out of the water…much like the tsunami wave that launched a slave ship all the way into the middle of the jungle, leaving a mammoth four-toed statue destroyed in its wake.
Speaking of which, who wants to lay odds that the destruction of the Taweret statue marks the moment childbirth became impossible on the island? I mean, you can’t break a monument to the goddess of fertility into a million tiny pieces without some kind of bad luck, right? RIGHT!? Wait, Ethan was born on the island. Nevermind. Strike that comment from the record.
Let’s talk about Candidates, because that was the conversation I found myself engaged in after the conclusion of “Ab Aeterno.” I’ve been going on for weeks now about how Jack is eventually going to win the role of New Jacob on LOST island, as if it was fated to happen and there was no question about it. And since theories were made to be scratched out and re-written, I’d like to bestow this new theory upon you: It’s Hurley. If ever anyone on the island could secretively and frustratingly inspire those around him while maintaining superhero-like ties to the natural and unnatural worlds, it’s Hugo “Hurley” Reyes. The most sane character LOST has given us has so far this season lead Jack on a influential and eye-opening voyage to the lighthouse, communicated with the dead to help keep Richard Alpert on Team Good Guys and done nothing short of proven Jacob’s theory that people are capable of choosing to do good on their own. If that doesn’t set him up to be the leading candidate to succeed Jacob as island protector, I don’t know what does. Also, if they ever run out of boar on the island Hurley would be best suited to endure a food shortage. That’s a fat joke. I’m sorry.
Titus Welliver as the Man In Black — I’d call him the O.G. MIB but he hinted last night that even that body wasn’t his — owned it last night. Any more screen time we can see of him and Jacob will only serve to tie together most of our remaining questions leading up to the finale. I still think one of the biggest questions is also one of the most basic: What’s his name? At this point we are safe to assume that the people responsible for LOST are taking great strides to hide this potentially crucial fact from being revealed. And that means it has to be important. Very important. This ain’t no “is the statue Taweret or Anubis” bullshit. This is, “Who the fuck is this second most important character in the island’s history?” At this point I don’t really know who he is. I don’t think he’s Lucifer, or Esau, or any known biblical entity. I think he has to be tied to a character on the show that we already know. And I don’t mean he’s Jacob’s brother. What I mean is, he’s Aaron. Maybe he’s not literally Aaron, but if the producers really want to mind-fuck us then the original incarnation of the Man In Black should be someone with a firm and close relationship to one of the characters involved in this story. Grandaddy Shephard. Jin and Sun’s little girl. It has to be a really close connection like that. I can’t see the producers and the writers being so painstakingly tight-lipped about it without there being a heart-stopping reveal coming up soon. Or maybe his original name was Dikembe Mutombo or something, and it won’t matter and no one will give a shit. Either way, we’ve now seen two incredible one-on-one scenes where MIB refers to Jacob by name and Jacob just calls him “you” in return.
And what the hell was up with that line the Man In Black (I should start calling him Mutombo in all my recaps from now on) fed Richard about how Jacob stole his body and his humanity. Did he literally mean, “Dude, Jacob stole my body” as in, he’s supposed to be the tall blonde guy wearing white? Or was it supposed to be taken more figuratively? More and more, these vagaries seem to hint that maybe these two men are two sides of the same coin. As in, they formerly inhabited the same body and have now splintered into two beings. If that sounds complicated to you, well, it’s because it is. But hear me out. Locke-as-MIB laid out some of his mommy issues last week, which — along with other conversational nuggets we’ve heard thus far — taught us that he once had a real human form. Now we know that he holds Jacob responsible for stripping him of that form. Maybe Jacob took the face and the physical abilities of the body they once shared, leaving MIB with the special Smokey powers and the ability to manifest himself as human-like apparitions. Human enough to touch others, but not human enough to…I don’t know…swim his way off the island. What would you rather have, the human form that gets to eat fish and hang out weaving tapestries beneath a statue for almost an eternity, or the spiritual form that can scan people’s memories and then appear to them as someone they loved in an attempt to manipulate them or prove that we’re all capable of corruption and sin? Me, I’d take whichever one got the working penis! Island life could get seriously lonely, you know?
By the way, I like the idea of the man in black latching onto Ben as far back as his childhood to start laying the seeds for what would be his moment of glory: killing Jacob. A young kid who is abused and berated by his father sees his dead mother in the woods and runs into Richard, who seems to know why that child is seeing his dead mother on an island far, far removed from where his mother actually lived. If this is true, I think the Man In Black wins the LOST award for longest-running con ever. It took (presumably) less than a week to break down Richard Alpert, but it took like forty years to break down Benjamin Linus to the point where he could unflinchingly kill Jacob. Awesome.
Did anyone else think the last moment of the episode, where MIB wastes a perfectly drinkable jug of wine, was a bit cheesy? I get the analogy. I get the imagery it’s supposed to evoke, but c’mon guy…how often do you get to cut loose on the island, get drunk, and run around naked without the cops showing up to throw you in the tank for the night? Other than that, I liked the description of the island as the cork that keeps in evil. It’s the lock (pun intended!) on Pandora’s box. It’s the…hatch door on the…well, the hatch, I guess. But it’s also a place where miracles happen. It is a place where hope still exists. There’s a pool of life there. Dead people can come back to give you important bits of information. It’s not all bad. I mean, the Man In Black is totally bad, but the island still has some good to it.
Which brings me to this week’s final theory. And this one is the one that my friend Tom has been pleading for to come true for weeks now. The John Locke in the sideways flashes is the Smoke Monster. And on the date of his wedding, he’s going to unleash his true form and destroy all humanity. Apocalypse. Everything we’re seeing now in the rebooted lives on the survivors has occurred because they sided with the monster and shunned the island in favor of his bold promises. Now he is leading them on a path to John Locke’s wedding, and once they’ve all congregated there together (with Boone catering the event, duh!), we’re going to see the actual transformation of Locke into Smokey (something we’ve never truly seen) and he’s going to kill them all. To be honest, I don’t believe that is the case at all. But it would finally make me look at the sideways flashes with some respect, because right now I fucking hate them. And what’s more, we’re going to see a lot more of them next week with a supposed Kwon-centric episode. We’ll finally get a reunion of Sun and Jin, and it will totally fall flat, and the couple’s official death clock will begin ticking towards midnight. And then we will all celebrate the loss of two utterly useless characters. Next up on the list of people who need to die before the series ends: Kate.
