Editor’s note: post Crit’s write up, I have some thoughts on LOST and last night’s episode.
The fifth episode of the final season of LOST (“Lighthouse”) featured a Jack revelation, an old school jungle trek co-piloted by Jacob, crazy jungle Claire and a new building with a mysterious mirrors.
We open with Jack at his house, and he’s on the phone with his mother. She’s having trouble finding Christian’s will. He asks when he had his appendix taken out (his mother says he was 7) and looks strangely at the scar on his midsection. On the island, Juliet took out his appendix…but that was then, and this is now. So what does that scar mean? At one point in this sequence, he’s in the bathroom and looks into the mirror. In “LA X” he looked into the mirror in the plane’s bathroom. In “What Kate Does,” she looked into a mirror at the car shop. In “The Substitute,” Locke looked into a mirror in his bathroom. And now this. Is this a subtle hint just to the fact that this is a new timeline, or a hint about something else, or nothing at all? I don’t know, but it’s curious. I bet next week when we see Sayid’s flash sideways, he’ll look into a mirror at some point. Watch for that.
Back on the island, Dogen realizes that those who left probably aren’t coming back. Hurley goes inside to find that Jacob is hanging out at the spring, and he tells Hurley he needs him, and that he’ll need a pen to write it down because someone is coming to the island and Hurley has to help them find it. Sayid is concerned because everyone is staring at him, Jack tells him it was poison. Jungle Claire helps Jin out of his beartrap and we find out that she has been running around the jungle for the three years they were gone. She says she’ll bring him somewhere safe. Hurley is reading the instructions that he wrote on his arm (he must have magically had a pen!) when Dogen approaches and asks what he’s doing and tells him to go back to the courtyard. Ghost Jacob instructs Hurley to tell Dogen that he’s a candidate, and Dogen is taken aback. He then tells Hurley (in Japanese) “You’re lucky that I have to protect you. Otherwise I’d have cut your head off.” and walks away. I loved Hurley’s line to Jacob: “I just lied to a samurai.” Jacob then says that Hurley needs to bring Jack with him, but he knew it would be hard so Jacob armed him with a phrase that would make Jack want to make the trek. “You have what it takes.” Jack is confused, and now he wnats to know how Jacob knew that, os when Hurley says that Jacob will be at the place they need to go, Jack agrees and so begins Jack and Hugo’s Bogus Island Adventure.
Jin wakes up in Claire’s little hut, and discovers her squirrel baby that she’s made. She then brings Justin in who was only pretending to be dead. “We gotta get that cleaned up; if there’s one thing that will kill you around here it’s infection,” she tells Jin, before saying that she hasn’t been by herself all this time. While she prepares her instruments to fix Jin’s wounds, Justin tries to urge Jin to leave, but he refuses.
Jack tries to help his mother because she’s had trouble finding Christian’s will, and refuses a drink when offered. I guess he’s not a crazy-beard-growing drunk in this timeline. She gives him some advice on fatherhood, and then the will just happens to be right on a shelf, not very hidden at all. She looks at Jack and asks “Did your father ever mention a Claire Littleton?” I guess mama Shephard didn’t know about her, but the real question here is does Jack know about her in this timeline?
Jungle Claire stitches Jin up, and says that two people told her that the Others had her baby: her father and then her friend. We know someone appeared to her as Christian when she walked off, and at this point it was pretty obvious who her friend was: FLocke. This revelation in the last scene of the episode was not very shocking at all, and an extremely weak way to end the episode.
Continued belowThe Great Inhaler Mystery of 2004 is solved as Hurley and Jack continue through the jungle and find themselves back at the caves where they find Shannon’s inhaler. Hurley stands over Adam and Eve and wonders aloud if they might be some of the Losties, while Jack sees his dad’s coffin and admits that when he found the caves he wasn’t searching for water, he was chasing the ghost of Christian. It was nice to see Jack acting calm and showing some feeling, and it was nice that Hurley again acts as the voice of the fans, asking some of the same things we are. I’m not sure what the point of Hurley’s monologue was though. Why talk about Adam and Eve again without telling us who they are? I hope this isn’t the last we see of our skeletal friends.
Jack returns home to find that David is gone. He goes to David’s mothers house and finds no one there. Her identity is a mystery, and all we know is that he only sees Jack about once a month, which means that he lives with his mother and her and Jack are separated, if they were even ever married/divorced. He listens to David’s messages on his machine and finds his whereabouts this way.
Hurley tells Jack that he came back because Jacob hopped in his cab and told him he was supposed to. Jack says “I came back here because I was broken, and I was stupid enough to think this place could fix me.” So the man of science turned man of faith has now shunned that faith. Interesting. Then they arrive at their destination: the lighthouse. “How is it that we’ve never seen it before?” asks Jack. Is it possible that it moves like the cabin? It’s very strange that they’ve never seen it. What’s the point of a lighthouse on an island that no one can find anyway?
Claire is about to take an axe to Justin when Jin stops her. She says that stuck her with needles and branded her and that if she hadn’t escaped from the Temple they would have killed her. Justin keeps denying that they have Aaron, and then Jin tells her the truth: Kate took Aaron when she left the island. Claire then kills Justin anyway with a swift axe to the gut. Jungle Claire is crazy Claire.
Jack arrives at the music hall and sees the sign that cleverly welcomes the “candidates” to the auditions. He sees David playing and feels immensely proud of his son. He then has a conversation with Temple Master Dogen, who says “your son has a gift.” That sounds like a line that might have another meaning sometime this year.
The Adventure Team climbs to the top of the lighthouse and finds a mirrored contraption. It appears to be more about surveillance then helping people get to the island. As Hurley pulls the chain and turns the mirrors, Jack notices things in the mirror and realizes that they’re obviously not behind him. The first thing that appears is the place where Sun and Jin were married, which is where Jacob met them. The second thing he sees is the chapel where the service was held for Sawyer’s parents, which is also where Jacob met him. Jack sees his name at 23 degrees and immediately turns it there, and sees the house he grew up in. Now, since the first two places where places that Jacob interacted with Losties, does that mean that perhaps Jacob went to Christian at that house in the past? Maybe 23 is Christian Shephard, not Jack Shephard. Upset that Jacob isn’t there, Jack wants answers about why he was being watched. Jacob doesn’t show, so Jack smashes the mirrors.
I liked the scene where Jack explained how Christian and had made him feel and how he would always love his song and how he could never fail in his eyes. It was great to see that Jack, tortured for so long because of his father, working to make sure that process didn’t repeat.
The fact that promo had Jacob saying “someone is coming to the island” had be excited for who it could be. Desmond! Widmore! Someone else! But, as it turns out, that was just a ruse. Jacob explains that he needed Jack and Hurley to get away from the Temple to protect them, because he knew that someone bad (FLocke) was about to head there. I think this may spell doom for Miles, Sayid and everyone else inside the Temple. Jacob knew Jack was going to smash the mirrors and he’s okay with that; he needed Jack to see what he saw to learn how important he is. It will be interesting to find out just what it is that Jack needs to figure out on his own by staring out at the ocean.
Continued belowOverall, not as exciting as last week’s episode, and a bit of a letdown considering it was written by Darlton and directed by Jack Bender, but I think it’s setting us up for some real action next week and beyond. We’ve heard talk about a war for a long time, I think the lines and sides are still to be drawn. We’re nearing checkmate in this chess match; we’re just a few moves away. Bring it on.
You know, while Crit and I were watching last night’s episode, I was sitting here and thinking: my God. This is seriously one of the best shows ever. The absolutely intense emotional connection developed between you and I, the viewer, with the wide array of characters is so incredible, and it’s never been done before. Last night, having Claire back in the show was such an exciting thing, as well as all the new developments to the plot. I have been big fans of television shows before, but I can’t honestly think of one that I’ve put such an emotional investment in that I find myself covering my mouth in excitement as I gasp and sit on the edge of my seat.
We as LOST fans, who have watched this show for six seasons now, are being treated to one of the biggest payoffs of any television show ever. This is bigger than Battlestar Galactica, and hopefully it’ll be even better. I have 100% faith in the crew behind this show, and with The Lighthouse and the Substitute, I couldn’t be more excited to see how this all plays out.
