If your head is back on straight after last night’s huge mythological download known as “Across the Sea,” here’s a recap of the episode and my thoughts plus one big theory.A pregnant woman (Claudia) comes to the island after her ship wrecked, and she is taken care of and fed by another (nameless) woman who says she also came to the island by accident. The pregnant woman has her baby and names him Jacob. Then, she realizes that the birth is not over; another baby comes out, but she only picked one name so the second twin remains nameless. She asks to see her children and the woman immediately bashed in her skull with a rock. This is the third woman (though chronologically she was the first) to come to the island pregnant, give birth, and then have her child(ren) raised by someone else. (Rousseau & Claire are the others, although Rousseau had a short period of time with Alex and Claire had some time with Aaron. Claudia never even got to hold her twins.)
Then we see the boys in their teens. The boy in black finds a game on the beach and lets Jacob play but makes him promise not to tell their mother. The mother can tell that Jacob is being untruthful, and he ends up telling her. She then walks down to the beach to talk to the boy. She says that “Jacob doesn’t know how to lie, he’s not like you…you’re special.” She then says that she left the game for him, because it couldn’t come from anywhere else. “There is nowhere else. The island is all there is.” She then says that “dead” is something he’ll never have to worry about. Remember that piece of information for later.
The boys chase a boar through the jungle until they come upon some strange men who kill the boar. They report this to their mother who is very concerned and says that they are bad people. “They’re not like us, they don’t belong here. We are here for a reason.” When asked what reason, she says “it’s not time yet.” When asked again, she blindfolds the boys and takes them through the jungle. On the way, she says that the people come, destroy, corrupt and that it always ends the same. Sound familiar? The boy asks where they come from, and she says across the island, but we know that’s not true. They come from across the sea, but she doesn’t want them to know there is anything across the sea. She says that she’s made it so they can never hurt each other. Is that what set the rule, or was that already set? She shows them a cave with a glowing yellow light inside and says that’s the reason they’re there. She tells them not to go in, and that it’s the “warmest, brightest light you’ve ever felt” and that they need to “make sure that no one ever finds it.” She says that a little bit of that light is inside every man but they always want more, but they can’t take more and if they tried they’d put the light out, which would put the light out everywhere. She says that she’s protected it, but she can’t protect it forever, and that one day, one of the boys will need to.
One day, while the boys are playing their game, the boy in black says “one day, you can make up your own game and everyone will have to follow your rules.” Just then, he sees the ghost of his dead mother who tells him to follow her. Jacob is unable to see her because she’s dead. She leads him to a hill where they can watch the other people on the island. She explains that those were the people on their ship, and that she is his real mother. He sneaks back home, collects his things, wakes Jacob up and they leave. Jacob is angered by the things the boy says about their fake mother, and he starts punching him until fake mom pulls him off. The boy says that he knows now that he comes from across the sea and he wants to go back there and he’s going to live with the other people. He asks Jacob to come with him, but Jacob refuses. Fake mom is very upset that the boy she thought would take over for her is gone, and says she doesn’t think he’ll come back. She admits to Jacob that she did kill their real mother. He asks why she loved the other boy more than him, and she says that she loves them in different ways, but Jacob still agrees to stay with her.
Continued belowThe next time we see Jacob, he appears as we’ve seen him before on the show (played as always by Mark Pellegrino) and his mother still looks the same, so it appears that she doesn’t age. 20-30 years have passed. Jacob watches the other people of the island, and the boy in black has become the man in black, played by Titus Welliver. They play their game. Man in black says that their mother was right, and the people he lives with are “greedy, manipulative, untrustworthy and selfish” but Jacob says they don’t seem so bad. MIB says they’re a means to an end, and that he’s found a way to get off the island and go home. He takes out a knife and throws it towards a well. It sticks to the rocks magnetically. (‘Fuckin’ magnets, how do they work?’ Jacob thinks.) MIB says they have found a few places like that on the island where metal acts strangely. Jacob goes home and tells his mother that his brother found himself a way off the island, so she goes to investigate. She climbs down into a well to confront him. There is a slit in the wall and the donkey wheel is leaning up against the side of the little cave. (This is presumably the future site of the Orchid, though that was deep below the ground and this is not.) He removes a rock in the wall and the yellow light shines through. He explains that he’s going to use the wheel by attaching it a system they’re building, and then he’s going to turn it and he’ll be able to leave. He says he knows it will work because he’s special. She asks him not to go, but he says he has to because he doesn’t belong on the island. She hugs him goodbye and then pushes him head first into the wall behind him.
She then goes to wake Jacob up and tells him “it’s time.” She takes him to the light cave and tells him that he’s going to protect it now. He asks what’s down there and she says “life, death, rebirth. It’s the source; the heart of the island.” She makes him promise that he’ll never go down there. He asks if he’d die, and she says it would be much worse than dying. She pulls out the wine jug we saw in “Ab Aeterno” and pours him a cup of it while chanting something under her breath. She tells him to drink it, and by doing so he’ll accept the responsibility of protecting it. He says that she wanted his brother, but she says that it was always supposed to be him and that he didn’t have a choice. He drinks it, and she says “now you and I are the same.” It seems like she knew she was going to die, and that’s why she made him her replacement. Did Jacob know when he was going to die? That could explain why he went around to find candidates for his position so far in advance. So this is how Jacob came to be the next guardian, but what about her? Did someone perform this wine ritual with her or was she the original guardian? Either way, where did she come from? Now, earlier I told you to remember the detail about MIB never having to worry about dying. This was because she always thought that he would be the one to take over because she loved him more because he was special, so she just lied to Jacob.
MIB wakes up to find that his well has been covered and filled with all kinds of rocks and dirt. He turns around and looks up and sees black smoke in the distance. Smoke monster hint? More on that later. He runs towards it and finds that his camp has been burned and the people have all been killed. He picks up his game, looks around and curses her in his mind, while plotting revenge.
The woman tells Jacob he should go get some firewood, and tells him to “be careful.” Again, I think she knew what was about to happen, so she wanted him to be away from their home so that she could die. “Be careful” was her wish for him for the rest of his life, not just during his trip to pick up firewood. She returns home to see her tapestry has been destroyed. She finds the game on the ground, picks it up and takes out the two stones. Just then, MIB comes up behind her and stabs her. Remember that thing earlier this season about making sure to stab someone before they could speak? He did just that, and for that reason, she was able to die. Did this event set that rule in effect, or was it already a rule? He asks why she wouldn’t let him leave, and she says “because I love you…thank you,” and she dies.
Continued belowTheory: She wanted to die. She had grown tired of being the guardian of the light, and when she saw Claudia wash ashore pregnant, she knew that if she could help her give birth and then kill her, she could raise the child (in this case, children) to take over for her so she wouldn’t have to anymore.
Jacob then takes MIB to the light cave and throws him into the water. “She brought you back here?” he asks. Jacob then explains that he has to protect it. “You wanna leave this place brother, then go!” he shouts as he throws MIB into a rock, which leaves him lifeless as he drifts into the light and over the waterfall. The light then goes out, and the smoke monster comes flying out from below. Here’s where things get tricky. Jacob washes his face in the stream and then sees his brothers lifeless body on some rocks just downstream. Are we supposed to think that the smoke monster is a semi-physical representation of evil? Is it MIB’s soul + evil? We know that when the monster took Locke’s form, Locke’s dead body was still there, just as MIB’s was. However, Christian’s body was nowhere to be found when he was appearing as him. Was it not actually him, or is there another reason for that?
The episode ends with Jacob going back to the cave and laying his brother and mother next to each other, plus some footage from “House of the Rising Sun” that shows Jack and and Kate finding the bodies, and Locke calling them “our very own Adam and Eve.” That mystery has been solved, but now there are even more questions because that’s just how Darlton rolls.
BONUS THOUGHTS!
Was she the/a smoke monster? What else could have filled in MIB’s well with all those rocks? I think she could go smokey and threw those rocks there (MIB was knocked unconscious during this event) and then killed all the other people. She wanted to die (and was able to because he stabbed before she spoke) because she was tired of people coming to the island and trying to find a way home and/or exploit the source. MIB can’t be the only one who found out about it, since she mentioned people coming, destroying and corrupting and how it always ended the same. Has she always been killing the people who got too close to the secrets of the island? Is that why Ben had to execute the purge?
Now, what the hell happened when MIB went into the light? Is the smoke monster it’s own entity completely? Was it the soul of MIB plus something else? I think it could be either. It would make sense as evil that was trapped by the cork (aka the cave) but it would also make sense that his soul was trapped on the island forever, which would be worse than death, as the woman had said. Perhaps he was cloned. The Orchid station orientation video mentioned a Casimir effect and showed a bunny be sent through time and cloned. Though this is not the Orchid site, perhaps the energy the island harnesses is just as strong there and can have the same effect?
If the monster is an entity of it’s own that just adopted MIB’s thoughts, it’s possible that he’ used the ‘I had a body and was a real person and want to go home’ to gain sympathy when really he is just an evil entity that wants to ruin the entire world.
I would have liked to see two things in the episode. The first might be a little farfetched, but I was hoping to see something about the Egyptian writing, or maybe the statue being built. The second thing I would have liked to see? Jacob finding out that something that looks like his brother is walking around the island, shapeshifting between the black cloud of smoke that rushed out of the cave and knocked him over and a dead ringer for his dead brother. I think that would have been really cool. “Yeah, that smoke was me” or a line like that would have been a great way to end the episode on Jacob’s stunned face.
Continued belowFinally, I’m okay that MIB was not given a name. I’m fine calling him MIB, or even “Adam.” His name really doesn’t matter to me.
AND NOW, MY BIG THEORY!
In “Happily Ever After” Widmore wanted to test Desmond (“That man is the only person I’m aware of, in the world, who has survived a catastrophic electromagnetic event, I need to know that he can do it again, or we all die” was his exact quote) but why? I think Desmond is going to have to go into the light cave like MIB did, except he’ll survive and somehow ‘fix’ things.
Alright, that’s all from me. Three and a half hours remain. Two more sittings remain. I’m nervous. I’m anxious. I’m excited. I’m ready. I’m not ready. Bring it on.
