'Lost' season finale fades to white

 Genesis, Sigmund Freud, the Odyssey, Flannery O’Connor, Carl Jung, “Dr. Strangelove” — Wednesday night’s season finale of “Lost” was so chockablock with archetype, mythology and cultural references it was like watching Joseph Campbell on crack.

It opened with a man (in a cave, so throw in Plato) hunched over a spinning wheel (Ghandi? Penelope at her loom? Or just a reference to the Blood, Sweat and Tears song?), then cut to two men on a beach. Their garments vaguely period, their speech decidedly modern, they argue over a frigate in full sail on the horizon. One man (in black) says in disgust that he knows they are coming because the other man (in white) brought them.

 “They come, they fight, they fight, they destroy, they corrupt,” Black says bitterly. “It always ends the same."

"It only ends once,” says White serenely. “Anything that happens before that -- it’s just progress."

 “Do you have any idea how badly I want to kill you?”

“Yes.”

“One of these days, sooner or later, I’ll find a final loophole, my friend.”

“Well, when you do I’ll be right here.”

“Always nice talking to you, Jacob.”

Cut to a very impressive CG statue standing like the Colossus of Rhodes, only with what appears to be the head of a crocodile. While not, perhaps, “Waiting for Godot,” it was one of the more powerful opening scenes of a season finale and begs the professorial question: So, class, what have we learned?

Clearly Jacob (Mark Pellegrino who is pictured), previously a mysterious authority figure (Boo Radley meets Moses), has been around for a while. (We later learn that he has in fact visited each of the key characters at significant moments of their life.) But who is he really? God? And does that make Mr. Black some incarnation of Satan, the two perpetually battling over the basic nature of the human soul? Is the island then Eden, existing outside space and time to serve as a kind of spiritual laboratory?

The rest of the episode never quite lived up to the opening, but certainly those and similar issues were addressed. When Sawyer (Josh Holloway), Juliet (Elizabeth Mitchell, who is pictured) and Kate (Evangeline Lilly) decide to ditch the sub and row that boat ashore, the first people they meet are Bernard (Sam Anderson) and Rose (L. Scott Henderson), who quickly inform them that they are not at all interested in either the Dharma/anti-Dharma, the hydrogen bomb/no hydrogen bomb or even the old favorite Jack/Sawyer conflict. They are “retired” and disappointed to find that their old beach comrades are still looking for ways to shoot each other. Bernard and Rose, the island’s John and Yoko, just want to be together.

Most everyone else, however, remains happily locked in one conflict or another, most of which boil down to the old “just because you can, should you?” conundrum. Jack (Matthew Fox) believes that following Daniel Faraday’s plan to detonate the hydrogen bomb will erase everything that happened after he got on that fateful flight to Los Angeles. Sayid (Naveen Andrews) is all for it, Hurley (Jorge Garcia) is happy to drive, while Miles, as usual, gives voice to irritated reason but takes no action. Kate and Sawyer and Juliet, meanwhile, think the bomb is a Very Bad Idea, until they change their minds — Kate for love of Jack, Sawyer for love of Juliet and Juliet because she realizes Sawyer still really loves Kate and she will Do Anything to avoid heartbreak.

That the epic events of this show seem to hinge on stolen glances and other hallmarks of high school love is rather disappointing, except of course that’s precisely what drove much of Shakespeare.
Fortunately, Ben (the unflappable Michael Emerson) and Locke (the indefatigable Terry O’Quinn) are providing an antidote to every romance and bromance on television. Locke, with a newfound swagger and most alarming grin, is off to kill the Wizard (that would be Jacob), except he’s going to make Ben do it. And Ben, who has been told by his dead daughter he must do whatever John Locke says, may grow paler and more weasely-looking at the thought but does not falter.

Except, it turns out that Locke may not be Locke. Because look, there’s his body in a box carted around by a subset of the Others, and when "Locke” finally confronts Jacob, it is with dialogue most reminiscent of Mr. Black. But Ben, a bitter Cain to “Locke’s” Abel — why did Jacob never let him into his holy presence until now? — dutifully wields his knife. Meanwhile, over at the Swan, Jack has dumped the bomb into the power pit, except it doesn’t do much but turn the hole into a giant magnet that sucks up every bit of metal, including a chain that somehow gets wrapped around Juliet’s waist. Sawyer catches hold of her but to save the man she loves (and because we hear Elizabeth Mitchell’s already signed onto another show) Juliet lets go and falls, like Alice to the bottom of the rabbit hole, where, choosing grief and frustration over gratitude that she is miraculously still alive, she beats on the hydrogen bomb until it finally explodes. Or at least it seems to explode. In a negative reflection of “The Sopranos” finale, the screen goes white.

Certainly it was a thought-provoking finale to a fairly great season in which the writers did things like have a mother kill her own child (Faraday) while she is pregnant with him, which is the literary and psychological equivalent of a turn-around jump shot and nothing to sneeze at. But there were times in these overly stuffed two hours when you couldn’t help but laugh as images of a "Lost"-ian writers room rose in your mind — oookkkaaay, so that’s what the hatch was for, why there’s a bomb on the island, how Locke was resurrected. It’s good to know that the creators have a (fairly) clear vision of where they’re going, and if the Jacob of the spinning wheel doesn’t quite fit the Jacob of the messy shack and creaky chair (didn’t you visualize him as more of a Bruce Dern guy back then?), well, it only ends once and everything that happens before that is just progress.

-- Mary McNamara

Photos: ABC

Comments

[Zoro 1998]

You should try and be a bit more descriptive and a little less wordy..... Stay on topic

[Lauren]

Really great take on it, except for one thing. It's not "Just because you can, should you?", it's "Just because an authority figure told you to, should you?"

Whether it's God or Daddy or Jacob, or for that matter, Jack, Sawyer as LaFleur, the Smoke Monster, even Ben when he was the "leader" (and I could go on, but you get the point), we have a theme here of powerful and utterly flawed authority figure. The characters are asked, one by one, and at times, over and over again, to have faith in what they cannot see and have no reason to believe. They are also asked to do that which they would not do but for the fact that they are being asked to do it by The Authority Figure.

And guess who loses? Those who do just because they are told to. Those who follow reason over faith fare much better on Lost. Locke - the original man of faith - is dead. Jack's crucial error was following Farraday's directions, when he should have questioned them as Miles did. We DO have free will, and it is a mistake not to exercise it.

This is not the battle of good versus evil. This is the battle of faith versus reason. And reason will win, I am betting on it.

[Jacob]

Mary, Kudos on well written, thoughtful, grown-up review. "Gina-the-teen-aged-witch" over at the NYT didn't quite hit the mark, or really anything of substance at all. You understand the reader's want to bounce their own reflections off someone else's, rather than to be bludgeoned over the head with banal proselytizations from a snot-nosed "art critic".

[John K]

Actually the bomb did not cause the giant metal-sucking magnetic effect, that was a result of their drilling. It released electromagnetic energy -- the same kind of incident that brought down Oceanic 815 and later destroyed the Hatch. The bomb simply landed and didn't go off, until Juliet went all Sheriff Brody on it.

@ Zoro: huh?

[Kim]

Faith and reason can and do co-exist. Each character exhibits faith in their own understanding of the chain of events that leads them to where they are.

[Lauren]

With ALL due respect, I don't see that at all. Faith and reason coexisting on Lost, that is. And each character exhibiting faith in an understanding of the chain of events. Can you elaborate?

[debbie]

Jacob doesn't fit the vision of the character from the shack because it hasn't been Jacob in the creeky chair all along. As the leader of the other "Others" said upon visiting the shack, "Jacob hasn't been here in a long time. Someone else has been using it." Makes you think the man in black was using it, perhaps inhabiting the Christian Shepherd character prior to Locke?

[Matt]

Actually, this is incorrect: "if the Jacob of the spinning wheel doesn’t quite fit the Jacob of the messy shack and creaky chair (didn’t you visualize him as more of a Bruce Dern guy back then?)"

The other others said that Jacob hadn't been in the cabin for quite some time, that someone else was using it. The someone else is the guy you called Black, and I think he's been impersonating every dead person on the island (Christian and John, specifically) to manipulate the characters to finally kill Jacob. Pretty elegantly plotted, actually. Now I have to re-watch the season ;)

[andrea]

The man who wants to kill Jacob in the first scene is the same person as "Dead Locke" in the final scene. In the first scene, the man says he wants to kill Jacob, and the necessity of finding a loophole to do so is discussed. In the final scene, Jacob points out that Locke found his loophole, and Locke says how much he had to go through to get there.

[Craig]

@Lauren. I like your reasoning, and hope that's the case. Because if this is leading to the kind of "God did it" ending we were forced to suffer through on Battlestar Galactica, I will be extremely disappointed.

[Pavlos]

Apparently the "loophole" was that although archenemies - Jacob and "Locke" (who is really now an avatar for the man in black), cannot kill each other.

The "loophole" could very well be an elaborate scheme orchestrated over the eons after that sail-boat approaching the beach incident, to have someone else kill Jacob.

Which would explain the man in black's phrase to Jacob "You have no idea what I've gone through to be here" shortly before Jacob is killed. Let alone what the people he used in his scheme had to go through.

With the revelation of a shape-shifter on the island (man in black) though, it is a little disappointing to believe the "dead people who re-appear" (like Ben's daughter and Jack's father) could very well all have been - the man in black.

Dead is Dead after all - and so is the real Locke.

But who is Jacob and the man in black? Avatars for God and Satan? Because it would be hard to believe Ben managed to kill God.. Any God. Perhaps it was a wager, between two Gods of some ancient culture. "Oh I'm bored on this island, let's see who gets the other's avatar killed first".

Anything can be expected now. Everything is so mixed up, any kind of twist in the story can stand. What really is puzzling (everything is but this strikes me as particularly puzzling), is why Jacob would want everyone to be at the island. He met everyone at various times in their lives, but he specifically told Hugo, he should not be afraid to go back to the island.

Something which led me to believe he wanted the oceanic six to be there. Why? Perhaps so they can detonate that bomb before the fake Locke has him killed? Would that validate Faraday's theory?

I have to agree on one thing. Jacob is not coercing anyone to do anything at this point. As if he has to finally let everyone make their own choices. Including the freedom of choice he allowed Ben..

[blake]

you know how there always talking about the good people and the bad people? i think the bad people is the smoke monster, the guy who locke is currently right now, the guy who was at the cabin, and the ghosts that appear to people. I believe there all the same entity. I also believe this evil entity has been planning how to take over the island and needed to look like locke in order to kill jacob because jacob has been gathering people in order to stop the evil entity from taking over.

[blake]

one more thing the lost sign after a msyery alays has a black background symoblizing that evil is still working behind the seens. so at the end it faded to white to show like a reverse symbol that the good side has lost to evil.

[Max]

Lauren,

What an incredibly lucid, intelligent assessment. I really hope you are right. It would be a crime if the creators of such a sophisticated show wound up subscribing to a simplistic, George Bush-ian, good/bad world view.

The real victory would be not good over evil, but the liberation of humanity from the wagers and manipulation of the forces on the island. In essence, a humanistic victory.

For me, the moment leading up to Mr. Eko's death is the unsung pivot point of the show. It is humanity taking a stand. And it is perhaps the moment where the writers of the show tip their hand.

If you'll recall, Eko refuses to repent. The reaction of the smoke monster to his defiance? Petulant rage. But Eko's argument is unassailable. He has nothing for which to repent. He did what he needed to do to survive. Indeed, we all do what we need to do in order to survive.

[RhettRO55]

The finale in itself was a grand masterpiece at what a finale should be, leave us trying to decipher what has happened (at least in the spirit of this particular show) and causing us to want more. It left a huge opening for speculation, theorizing and any kind of thought process.

The man in black at the beginning could very well indeed be a portrayal of Satan, or the black side of the Yin/Yang, quite obviously countered by Jacob in his, traditionally viewed as good, white attire.
They could both be easily viewed portrayals of their respective sides of the coin, Satan Vs God. The comment at the beginning, "Anything before that is just progress." could very well be a slight reference to the concept of evolution and that as a species, humanity will eventually come to its pinacle and then it will end, and everything up to that one point will have been nothing but progress/evolution.
The concept of them both being viewed as religious entities is further explored by the concept that Mr Black is constantly using the tool of temptation to fuel his needs and control the inhabitants of the island. This can be validated if we choose to believe that he is in fact using dead people as pawns to control others, which can be speculated to be true with Locke actually being shown as dead at the end of the episode. People, such as Ben, Richard and to a lesser extent, due to him being dead, Locke himself, need to believe in the Island and its abilities, which again is another point directly at the concept of the faith of the inhabitants. Belief is much easier to twist and manipulate than reasoning becase faith is simply based on that, the lack of proof and the desire to believe in something without any kind of hard concrete evidence that what you are believing in is actually real. And since Satan himself cannot directly exert control over those he wishes to manipulate and use to his own advantage, he must use influence instead (further shown in Constantine, "God & The devil made an agreement, no direct control, only influence). This can be seen even more so with Mr Black/Lockes statement of "You have no idea what I've gone through to be here", expounded in the concept of first having Alex killed, and then the entire charade to get Ben back to the temple to summon the Smoke Monster only to have what I can only speculate as Mr Black/Alex tell him "You are going to do everything that John Locke tells you to do". This is then followed up with the statement of Mr Black/Locke telling Ben "You are going to kill Jacob", and then is concluded by Mr Black/Lockes reminding Ben that "Because despite your loyal service to this Island you got cancer, you watched your own daughter gunned down in front of you. You reward for those sacrifices? You were banished. And you did all this for a man you hadn't met. So the question is, Ben, why the hell wouldn't you want to kill Jacob?" showing just how powerful that faith and influence can truly be.
The concept of Mr Black & Jacob being viewed as portayals of Evil & Good, respectively, is even further shown in the small details that can slip through unnoticed. For instance, when Jacob is shown "influencing" each characters life, he does nothing to actually deter or further any of their ambitions and futures, mearly provides a plausible faith for them to believe in. He tells Lock "Everything is going to be ok", he more or less proves that kindness does not go unnoticed when he saves Sayids life by asking for directions on a map while his wife continues to walk forward and is killed by an oncoming vehicle. Even more so it is shown that Jacob is trying his best to help the people get to where they need to be by giving Jack his candy bar (which I find even MORE meaningful that he gave him an Apollo candy bar, Apollo being the Greek god of healing and medicine) and stating, "I guess it just needed a little push", which could VERY easily be interpreted as what Jacks father, the oh-so appropriately named Christian Shephard, had been trying to do with his reassuring Jack by telling him to count to 5, just giving him a little push.
Even further along the line of small details is the clothing. Jacob is ALWAYS seen in light clothes, traditionally referring to his white light attire, while Mr Black, especially when he is influencing other people, is always seen wearing black, or dark colors. This is helped along by the fact that John Locke, the constant man of faith upon the island, is always wearing light colors and the closest he comes to dark clothes are olive green, but once Dead Locke is actually dead, and Mr Black/Locke is found, he is always wearing black/dark colors, even the sheet he is covering himself in when he is shown to the rest of the survivors is black.
On a final note to show how the story is showing the concept of Good Vs Evil and balance, is the 4 toed statue. Now, we are not given a very clean shot of the actual front of the statue, but due to the ankh on the side, as well as the crocodile face/head, and the sun disk over his head, I at least feel that it is safe to say that the statue is meant to portray the Egyptian God Sobek. Sobek was viewed in Egyptian religion as being overly ambitious in nature, which led the Egyptians to believe he was a repairer of the evil that had been done onto the world. Now since the statue has been destroyed, I can only assume by the inhabitants of the ship seen at the beginning, which is more than likely The Black Rock, the question is constantly asked “What lies in the shadow of the statue?”, and Richard is the only person who can give a satisfactory answer to this query. Now it took me a long time to actually translate his answer into something I felt halfway comfortable with, and it was “those who will be able to watch over all of us”, which is even further in keeping with Jacobs positive influence of everyone he comes into contact with, and Jacob living underneath what I believe to be a statue of Sobek, a god viewed to help correct the chaos in the world, would help to fit the entire scheme of good vs evil.

A final thought, which was helped by Blake. The end of each episode of Lost is accompanied by the Lost logo coming into view with a sudden boom, but it is always a black background with white lettering, possibly showing good shining through the cloud of evil, but at the end of the season finale, it was a white background with black lettering showing through. A possible forshadowing of things to come, with evil possibly overcoming good?

[Joe]

I have read all of your posts and although I agree that any of you may be correct, I believe you are wrong about "Where" they are... It seems quite evident to me that they are in Purgatory... Each of them have done something wrong in their life, but they also each have an excuse.... The reason that they do not go to hell at the onset of their arrival, is that they have all been forgiven, except for Locke, who does not need to be forgiven... The animals on the island are people that each of them had wronged.. Jack sees his father instead of an animal... Kate sees the Black Stallion, which is her stepdad (she was trying to save her mom from abuse), Sawyer sees the Boar, which I believe is the woman he swindled (this act was imbedded in him from his parents dying from being swindled)(not his fault), and the smoke is God's fury... It is also my belief that dying on the island can only happen to one who continues to make bad choices in this new life... John Locke does not make a bad choice... He is killed off of the island by Ben... He still deserves his chance to continue and is revived... Ben loses everything, because he kills Locke... His sentence is given to him by his daughter and is elaborated on further by the man he killed (Locke), finally turning into Ben not having any free will left (when he had free will, he failed to use it properly)(he also lied about who he was)..
Children should not be borne into Purgatory and it is Jacob that wants the children to stay with the others and protected from those that may still make bad decisions...
Claire's baby, being the exception to the rule, reminds me of John Locke, as he is also the exception to the rule, and it would not surprise me if John Locke and her baby were connected strongly somehow...
So, my contention is that Jacob is the Good Spirit of the Island and will deserve to continue living, as John Locke had, because Jacob did nothing wrong.. The island, in my opinion, may allow Jacob to be revived... Ben, will probably die... John Locke, may also die for being the one to cause Jacob's Death indirectly... That is the one uncertainty that I have... Will John Locke die permanently because of his mutiny against Jacob? My guess, however, is :Yes he will die", because he chose the knife as his, when Richard visited him while john Locke was a child... This is a prophecy that has come true, in my eyes, and the transformation of John Locke into "Ben" is just beginning... Claire's son may very well come to the island to be killed by John Locke and then Resurrected..
I know, it may be a stretch, but I figured I'd share !!!!
Maybe Richard would be the one to take Jacob's place if Jacob is not resurrected.....
People that detonate Bombs in suicidal frustration are not likely to be welcome to live on the island, so I can see why Juliet may have needed a new role...
This is what happened to my time, just because I was searching for information on the final season... LOL
I have read my preview and my final statement is this:
John Locke makes a bad decision when wanting to have Ben kill Jacob... It is my opinion that John Locke may be an Angel that falls from grace and his decline starts at the end of the finale we are discussing...