Television fans can be amusing and in some cases aggravating. There has been no shortage of weepy complainers over recent revelations in Lost. In some cases, this has been due to some long-standing mysteries being answered with a nod and a shrug, as opposed to a ten-minute soliloquy. The writers are not at fault here, for that you can blame ABC for limiting the final season to eighteen episodes as opposed to the standard twenty-two episode season. The traditional back nine is now the back five and one half. The writers are doing the best they can with what Disney has given them to work with.
Thus we learned, with what amounted to throwaway lines, that-
*The whispers heard on the island were the spirits of the dead who were damned by their crimes and stuck forever on the island-revealed to Hugo by one of those damned spirits, Michael Dawson.
*The reasons for the numbers assigned to the castaways and the "candidates" (to replace Jacob as guardian of the island) were because "Jacob has a thing for numbers"-as revealed by the Smoke Monster-as-John Flocke to Sawyer.
(so why do those numbers keep cropping up all over the place)
*Kate's names was crossed off the cave wall because she became adoptive mother to Claire's son Aaron, according to Jacob, who went on to tell Kate that "it's only chalk lines on a wall" and that she could have the job if she wanted it.
(So why wasn't the name Kwon crossed out, since Sun and Jin also became parents? To their own child, at that.)
There have been other inconsistencies. If MIB and his adoptive mother died two thousand years ago, why were their skeletons described by Jack Shepherd as fifty years old, based on the way they were dressed?
If Jacob was born two thousand years ago, to a Latin speaking Roman mother named Claudia, why was he named Jacob-a Christian and/or Jewish name? If he was born more like fifteen hundred years ago or so, this would be more consistent.
But there's no way to explain how the Black Rock could set sail in 1843, be ransacked by pirates and disappear in 1845, yet somehow turn up to bring a bound Richard Alpert to the island in 1867.
This is not just writing by committee, this is a rush job, and again, its the fault of ABC and Disney, not the writers.
Still, there are some things that are just what they are, and the fans should chill out. The most vociferous objections has been as to the identities of Jacob and the Man In Black. It turns out they are not the same schizophrenic entity, as I had speculated. Nor are they gods, as many felt they must be. Nor are they the Biblical Jacob and Esau, as a good many others were convinced. They were simply fraternal twins who were in one case blessed, the other cursed, with an awesome power and responsibility.
We have yet to determine what the island is, or what its power and purpose is. Is it really a spiritual place, a metaphorical cork to keep evil contained and prevented from ravaging the world? Or is it just a place of awesome electro-magnetic power, one that can do amazing things when tapped into, even to the point of absorbing a person's essence as in the case of MIB? Yet at the same time, a natural and scientifically explainable though currently misunderstood and unknown phenomenon.
I am hoping is is the later, and that Jacob has been misled by his deluded mother, which owing to the times this all began would be perfectly understandable.
Jack is the new guardian of the island. He is presumably Jacob's replacement, if we take the events of the last episode at face value. So much for my theory of Sun and Jin taking on the mantle of Jacob and MIB and then making peace between the warring and opposite energies of the island. Then again, I keep coming back to what MIB told Jacob during the season finale of season five.
"it always ends the same".
And Jacobs reply-
"It only ends once. Everything before that is just progress."
Is it possible that Kate could take on the mantle of the Smoke Monster and reach that accord with and through Jack, thus bringing the seemingly eternal struggle to an end at last?
Or is it possible it could end up as a twist, with Jin and Sun, or their ghosts, taking on the mantle after all? Or is it even possible that their Sideways time counterparts could end up taking it on? After all, Jacob didn't put any limits on Jack's acceptance of the responsibility. When Jack asked him how long he would have to do this, Jacob replied, "as long as you can". That might not be long.
He's also decided that Jack and the others can kill MIB, though he's not sure how they're going to do that, of even if they can. But he is certain MIB is going to try to kill them, and now that the choice has been made, the other castaways no longer are protected by Jacob's rules pertaining to MIB killing the candidates. Now he can and will try to do so.
Ben is obviously working to gain MIB's trust in order to betray him. Miles has the walkie talkies taken from Widmore, whom Ben killed in the last episode in order to keep Widmore from spilling the beans about how important Desmond Hume is.
And in another inconsistency, Flocke promised Ben he would give him control over the island in return for his help, and then later told him he intended to destroy the island using Desmond in some unclear manner. Of course, first he has to find out where he is.
That leaves the Sideways World. It's not an alternate universe at all, you see, its the world as it would be if Jacob has never become involved with the lives of the losties, and it exists precisely because of the explosion of the nuclear bomb at the end of the last season, which resulted in the destruction of the island before the time of the initial crash of the airline that brought the Losties to the island. This was accomplished through the magic of time travel, and created a kind of wrinkle in time.
There, in that seemingly alternate universe, Desmond is trying to get all the sideways world losties to remember their island lives. In the case of Hugo, he has successfully given him total recall, of everything that happened on the island universe. It will be interesting to see how Desmond goes about bringing them all together, but what will be even more interesting to find out, is why. Is his actions really all that benign, or is there a more sinister motivation?
Regardless of what questions are or are not answered, it should be something to see. I just hope people aren't too disappointed. After all, you can't please everybody.
