“See you in Los Angeles.”
Another theory goes by the wayside. I was wrong. Again. Let’s move on and pretend it didn’t happen. Again. This was an awesome episode and an excellent set up for the last season. Diving in now:
A long, long time ago
Two guys, one in a white shirt, one in a black shirt. The guy in the white shirt is spinning, weaving some Egyptian tapestry. We next see him on the beach fishing, with primitive equipment. He’s sitting on the beach, eating fish when the black shirt guy comes up. They’re contemplating the ship. “How’d they find the island?” White shirt shrugs, “You’ll have to ask when they get here.” “I don’t have to ask. You brought them here, didn’t you? Still trying to prove me wrong, aren’t you?” black shirt accuses. “You are wrong,” White shirt says. “Am I?” Answers black shirt. “They come, they fight, they destroy, they corrupt. It always ends the same way” “But it only ends once,” White shirt says “Anything that happens before that is just progress.” Black shirt turns around and looks over his shoulder at White Shirt. “Do you have any idea how badly I want to kill you?” he asks. “Yes,” answers White shirt. “One of these days, sooner or later, I’m gonna find a loophole, my friend,” Black shirt promises. “Well when you do, I’ll be right here,” White shirt replies. “Always nice talking to you, Jacob,” says Balck shirt. “Nice talking to you, too,” Jacob White Shirt agrees. The camera pulls out and we see the full Statue is of Anubis, not just the four toed foot, holding the Ankh.
Flashbacks
A very young Kate gets caught shoplifiting a lunchbox (is it the lunchbox that she buried the little time capsule and airplane in from season 1? My guess is yes.). Rather than let her get in trouble, Jacob appears pays for the lunchbox. “You’re not going to steal anymore, are you?” Kate says no. But we remember that one of Kate’s first back stories shows her robbing a bank.
We see a young Sawyer at his parents’ funeral. He’s writing THE LETTER and his pen is out of ink. And Jacob appears and gives him a pen. Another adult tells James to move on and let it go. “What’s done is done.” The guy makes Sawyer promise not to finish the letter. Lil Sawyer lies and agrees not to. Meanwhile, Jacob, by offering the pen, has encouraged Sawyer to hold on to his vengeance.
Sayid and Nadia are in LA. They are crossing the street, when Jacob stops Sayid and asks for directions, leaving Nadia to get rundown in the middle of the street while Sayid remains unscathed. Jacob has just created the incident that created the bitter killing machine, Sayid.
Alana in a foreign hospital bed having suffered some kind of facial injury. She has not had any visitors, so when the nurse comes in and tells her that someone is there to see her, and she thinks it will do her good, Alanna agrees. It’s Jacob. They exchange greetings in another language then Jacob asks for Alanna’s help.
Jacob is sitting on a park bench reading a Flannery O’Connor book when we hear breaking glass and see Locke fall out of the eighth story window. Jacob comes over, squeezes his shoulder and tells him not to worry; everything is going to be alright. “I’m sorry this happened to you.”
Sun and Jin’s wedding. Sun vows to “love the man Jin will become.” Jin is reading his vows, “We will never be apart, because being apart would be like the sky being apart from the earth.” Jacob comes up and in perfect Korean, says, “I come to offer blessings. Your love is a very special thing. Never take it for granted.”
Jack in surgery, living out the story he told Kate on the day they met. “Count to five.” He cuts the patient’s dural sack. Christian Sheppard is in the OR with him. “The only way you’re going to do it is to not be afraid. Close your eyes, count to five, then fix her, Jack or I’ll have to.” After surgery Jack goes to the vending machine for an Apollo bar, but it gets stuck in the machine, even though jack pounds on it pretty good. Christian comes out to tell Jack that the girl is ok, but Jack is pissed because Christian embarrassed him. “You put me in a ‘time out’ in front of my entire team. It’s like you don’t have any faith in me.” “Are you sure I’m the one who doesn’t have any faith in you?” Suddenly Jacob walks up with the Apollo Bar (the one with the cookie crunch!) “One of these yours?” Jacob asks. “I guess it just needed a little push.” IS he talking about the candy bar or Jack?
Juliet’s parents are telling her and her sister that they are getting a divorce. “Even when people love each other sometimes they don’t belong together. Sometimes, they aren’t meant to be together.” Her mother explains. “But what if you ARE meant to be together?” Juliet cries. “We’re not.”
Hurley is getting out of jail for killing the people . He comes out to share a cab with Jacob. When he finds out that Jacob didn’t just get released, Hurley wants to know, “What were you doing sitting outside the prison in a cab?” “I was waiting for you, Hugo.” “Oh. Then you must be dead.” Jaconb assures Hurley he’s not dead. “I want to know why you won’t go back to the island.” “Because I’m cursed. My plane crashed. My friends died. And now I can talk to them.” “What if you’re not cursed, what if you’re blessed? You can talk to your friends after they’ve died? I’d say that’s a pretty good gift.” Jacob gets out and tells Hurley that he has a choice. He goes to leave and Hurley calls after him, “You forget your guitar.” Jacob smiles. “It’s not my guitar.” This is the guitar that Hurley brings on the plane. Anyone want to bet it’s Charlie’s?
1977
On the sub, Kate wants Sawyer and Juliet to help her stop Jack from blowing up the island. Juliet decides for all of them that they are going back to the island. They quickly overpower the Dharma sub crew and get the sub to surface and let them out. A little Kate and Sawyer flirty banter on the raft and Juliet is feeling like her life with Sawyer is over. Kate thanks Juliet for having her back.
They land on the North Shore where Vincent runs out to greet them. Followed quickly by Rose and Bernard who are none too happy at being found. Quite frankly, I’m not too happy to see them either, at first, but since their appearance is short lived and important, we had a nice visit with them. “Why didn’t you all come in with us?” Sawyer wants to know. “Because we’re retired,” Rose snaps. Kate tells them Jack’s got a bomb, but Rose and Bernard want nothing to do with the plan. They don’t care. “You all are going to start up the fighting and the shooting again. The only thing that is important to us is that we are together.” This idea appeals to nobody except Juliet. Rose and Bernard ask everyone to stay for tea, (and perhaps a little more zen and the art of living alone in the jungle with a yellow lab) but Juliet is the only one who actually thinks that sounds like a good idea.
Jack and Sayid begin to dismantle the bomb and it is revealed that Ellie is pregnant. Richard is musing with Jack, “20 years ago a man named John Locke walked right into my camp and said he would be our leader. I’ve been off-island three times to see him and he never seemed particularly special to me.” Richard is surprised that Jack knows Locke. “Well what do you think of him?” Jack smiles. “If I were you, I wouldn’t give up on him.” They break through a wall, to reveal a passage to one of the Dharma huts. Ellie wants to go first, but Richard knocks her out and says he’s taking her back for her own protection. Jack and Sayid go on through and find Dharma on full alert. Sayid grabs a Dharma jumpsuit and they blend in to the evacuation. But Roger recognizes Sayid as “the sonuvabitch that shot my kid!” and shoots Sayid!
In a nick of time, a Dharma hippie bus with Miles and Hurley rides up. Jack and Sayid get in, but they haven’t exactly explained their mission to Miles and Hurley. Sayid is bleeding and Jack can’t stop it. He’s desperate to get to the Swan in time for the Incident so he can drop in the bomb. Suddenly Hurley steps on the brakes. “Why the hell are we stopping?” Jack wants to know. “That’s why.” Kate, Juliet and Sawyer are blocking the road.
Phil warns Radzinski about Sayid and Jack and the bomb. Why’d you make me promise to never ask about Aaron. I was so angry with you for making come back. “If the plane never lands then Claire can have her baby and raise him like she’s supposed to.” “She was going to give him up for adoption,” Kate counters. “Maybe, but it will be her choice. Nothing in my life has ever felt so right. I need you to believe that. Are you with me on this?” Yes.
Sawyer wants just five minutes in the jungle with Jack. Sawyer tells Jack the story of his parent’s death. “It’s 1977. That happened last year. I could have stopped my daddy from killing anybody.” “So why didn’t you?” Jack wants to know. “Because, what’s done is done.” Sawyer explains. “What did you screw up the first time so bad that you’re willing to blow up a damn nuke to get a do over? A man does what he does because he wants something for himself. What do you want Jack?” After a pause, Jack says, “I had her. I had her and I lost her.” As Sawyer points out, Kate is right over in the jungle, he can just go over and tell her how he feels. Jack shakes his head. He knows he’s screwed up with Kate beyond redemption. “It’s too late to get her back. Your five minutes is up.” “If what you do works, you’ll be strangers and she’ll be in handcuffs,” Sawyer says. “Nothing I can say will change your mind?” Jack says no, so Sawyer punches him. They beat the crap out of each other for a little while then Juliet walks up and tells them to stop. “Jack is right,” she tells Sawyer. “We need to do this.” Sawyer is all WTF? And Juliet says, “I changed my mind.”
Sawyer wants answers from Juliet. “What’s up with you? Why did you change your mind?” “I changed my mind when I saw you look at her.” Sawyer says, “I don’t care who I looked at. I’m with you.” Juliet scoffs at the prospect of the happily ever after “And you would stay with me forever if I let you and that’s why I love you.” Then she repeats the line her mother gave her, “Just because we love each other it doesn’t mean we were meant to be together. If I never meet you then I never have to lose you.”
Sayid has rigged to go off on impact. “Sayid,” Jack reassures him, “This is going to work and it can will you.” Sayid looks at jack with dead eyes. “Nothing can save me.” And he’s not talking about just dying, either. After jack leaves, Miles brings up an interesting point. “Has it occurred to anyone that maybe your friend is about to cause the thing he’s trying to prevent?” Then Phil’s security team rides up and Kate says if they find Jack they will kill him. Sawyer looks to Jules for guidance. She says, “Live together die alone.”
A scuffle ensues as Jack is discovered but our Lostaways handily overpower the Dharma security detail. Jack looks around for verification. Kate nods yes with tears in her eyes. Sawyer tells him to get it done. So Jack throws the bomb in……
……..
….And nothing happens. That is until the drill hits the pocket and everything metal gets sucked into the hole. We see how Dr. Chang loses his hand and we see Phil come to a nasty end. Juliet gets tangled up in some chains and is pulled into the hole. Sawyer runs to grab her, but she is barely hanging on. “Don’t you leave me!” Sawyer cries. They cannot get the chains unwrapped and Jules is sucked down into the hole and Sawyer, and the rest of us, are devastated.
Others
Richard wants to know how John is alive. Locke tells Richard that he is going to see Jacob, ”so I can thank him.” Locke then tells Richard, “We’re going to have to deal with the rest of the passengers from the Agira flight.” “Deal with?” Richard asks. “You know what I mean,” Locke says. Locke later wants to know why Ben hasn’t dimed out Locke’s intent to kill Jacob to Richard. “I thought you wanted to keep it a secret.” Ben simpers. Locke observes that never stopped Ben before. “I started thinking differently about things when my dead daughter threatened to destroy me if I didn’t do everything you said,” Ben explains. This is great news to Locke, because now he doesn’t have to convince Ben. “I’m not gonna kill Jacob, Ben. You are.”
Back at the old beach camp. “You mind if I ask you a question?” Locke asks. “I’m a Picses,” Ben quips. Ben finally fesses up about his relationship with Jacob. “You know that I was pretending.” “Why would you go to all the trouble to make something like that up?” Locke wants to know. “I was embarrassed,” Ben explains. “I didn’t want you to know that I had never seen Jacob. So yes I lied. That’s what I do.” Awkward silence. “So why do you want me to kill Jacob?” Ben asks. “Because despite your loyalty to this island, you got cancer. You had to watch your daughter get gunned down. All in the name of a man you’ve never met. Why the hell wouldn’t you want to kill Jacob?”
Sun finds Aaron’s crib and Charlie’s ring.
They come to the foot of the statue. The foot is where Jacob lives. Richard tells Locke, “If you waited, Jacob would have eventually came to you.” “What happened to the rest of the statue?” Sun asks Ben. “It was like that when I got here.” “You expect me to believe that?” Sun asks. “Not really.”
Once again, Richard tries to divert Locke from his task. “I’m beginning to think that you make these rules up as you go along, Richard.” Hey, us too, John! “Ben is coming with me and if that’s a problem, I’m sure Jacob and I can work it out.” Once they get inside the footlocker, Locke tells Ben “Things will change once he’s gone.” Locke gives Ben the knife—the same knife that Richard once said did not belong to him back when he visited Locke as a child. “Can you do this, Ben?” Locke asks. “Because once you kill him, everything will change.”
Shadow of the Statue gang
“What lies in the shadow of the statue?” Frank didn’t know the answer to the question, but he might be a “candidate”. For what, we don’t know. Who these guys are, we don’t know; but they are “friends”; they are the “good guys”. At least that’s what they tell Frank. “Soooo….what’s in that box?” Frank wants to know. Bram tells Alannah that’s it’s her call to tell Frank, so she opens the box. Frank looks inside and says, “Terrific.” “We need to show it to someone so that they know who they are up against,” Alana explains. The party arrives at the cabin and Alanna goes in. She finds a printed piece of cloth stuck to the wall with a knife. She comes out and tells Bram “He isn’t there. He hasn’t been there for a long time. Someone else is using it.” “So what do we do?” Bram asks. “Burn it,” Alana decrees. And they head off to where the printed cloth directs them: the four toed statue of Anubis, carrying their Ark of the Covenant Cargo Container with the mysterious contents.
Alana arrives at the statue and asks for Ricardos. “It’s Richard, actually.” “What lies in the shadow of the statue?” Richard answers in another language (Sig, get on this translation, will you?). “There’s something you need to see,” Alana tells him and opens the Ark of the Covenant, dumping out the body of Locke. WTF’s all around. Sun, our captain obvious this year, says, “If that’s Locke, then who’s in there?”
Indeed.
In the footlocker, we see Ben and Locke. Locke is admiring Jacob’s tapestry and Jacob tells them how long it took, especially since he had to make all his own thread. “I see you found your loophole.” Jacob observes. “Indeed I did,” Locke answers. “You have no idea what I’ve been through in order to get here.” “Have you met before?”Ben asks. “In a manner of speaking.” Locke tells Ben to “Do what I told you to do.” Jacob tells Ben “You have a choice. You can do what he asks, or you can go and leave us to discuss our…issues.” At this, all of Ben’s insecurities are unleashed. Ben is angry that he was ignored for 35 years but when Locke asks to see him, he gets marched straight up here “as if he was Moses.”
“Why him? What was it that was so wrong about me? What about me?” Ben cries.
“What about you?” Jacob replies. And Ben stabs Jacob. Jacob, gasping for breath, says, “They’re coming.” Which seems to alarm Locke. He kicks Jacob into the fire and he and Ben leave.
Boom
Meanwhile, poor Jules is broken and bleeding at the bottom of the hatch. All of the metal has been pulled down the shaft. She opens her eyes and sees the bomb. She picks up a rock and starts hitting it, crying and cursing. Finally….Boom.
Thoughts on the finale….
Is the Ship that Jacob and Black shirt see the Black Rock? And is Richard on it? Is that why Jacob brought it there?
The exchange between Jacob and Black shirt sounds like a discussion for the battle of men’s souls. Like they have a cosmic bet on whether man is essentially good or evil. Pretty sure the Black Shirt is betting against man, because he is very cynical as to the outcome, which always ends “the same”.
So who are Jacob and Black shirt? Jesus and the Devil? Moses and Pharoah?
This episode revisits the black and white theme first introduced over a game of backgammon between Locke and Walt.
I loved the flashback episodes tonight, which took us back to pivotal plot points for the main characters, many of which were first addressed in season one. I loved how Jacob was there to influence a critical time in each character’s life, except Juliet.
Anubis is the Egyptian god of Death, but the statue is holding the Ankh, which is the Egyptian symbol for life. “Death holds the key to life”? Hmmm… whatever. But I’ll bet the statue got blown away when the bomb went off.
Did Jacob actually bring Locke back to life after the eight story fall?
Is there any significance to the fact that Jacob physically touched every single person in the back story?
There are many issues of free choice versus destiny. Sawyer’s line “I don’t speak destiny” was great, but a little too obvious for the quote of the episode. Jack’s tossed off, “See you in Los Angeles” was a better choice, especially given the ending.
I loved the five minutes in the jungle with Jack and Sawyer. Classic LOST.
The scene with Rose and Bernard was excellent. Two characters who I thought had outlived their usefulness had a pivotal and touching scene tonight.
Juliet and Sawyer. I have no words.
Finally, who the hell is Locke? Is it still Locke? Or has our black shirted friend somehow taken Locke’s body? Locke was the one character I was always sure about his moral compass. Now I can’t even be sure if it’s Locke anymore.
