LOST Revisited: 6-15 “Across the Sea”
Mom brings Claudia back to her camp and assures her that there’s nobody else on the Island. She also explains that both of them ended up there by accident, as she tends to Claudia’s injuries. I like the bit where Claudia keeps asking questions until Mom cuts her off. “Every question I answer will simply lead to another question.” That was sort of the mission statement of Lost for a couple of years there. Claudia has a contraction and cries out “It’s coming!” Obviously, this is a reference to Jacob’s last words (“They’re coming”). Variations on the phrase pop up from time to time, including the very first episode when Shannon assures us that “They’re coming”.
Crazy ladies make the best midwives, and Claudia eventually gives birth to the baby she names “Jacob”. But there’s another one, and I assume back in the days before ultrasound, this kind of thing surprised people all the time. Claudia only had one name picked out, so this second dark-haired baby doesn’t get a name right way. Mom wraps the babies, Jacob in a light-colored cloth and Baby No-Name in a black cloth. And then she beats Claudia to death with a rock.
I love the detail that Claudia hadn’t picked out a second name. Clearly she would have, but she was busy getting bludgeoned. Mom apparently didn’t see a point in coming up with another name, and that’s what stuck. It helps set up the binary equation that’s been in place all along. Dark and Light – opposites. Black is the absence of color, White is a combination of all colors. And they’re exemplified by Jacob and non-Jacob. Silas is literally defined in their family as “the one who isn’t Jacob” – he’s defined only by what he isn’t.
Thirteen years later, the Boy Who Would Be Silas finds a box on the beach. When he opens it up, it’s a primitive version of backgammon. Young Jacob finds him, and yes, Young Jacob is the boy who’s been popping up in the jungle and freaking out Look-a-Locke. That’s been suggested by a few people along the way. Silas offers to teach Jacob how to play, because he “just knows” the rules. They’re afraid that Mom will take the game away, and it’s an interesting little bit, because we’re going to see that Mom denies that anything exists outside the Island, but the boys seem to realize on some level that the game had to come from somewhere, and Mom probably wouldn’t be happy about it.
Also, we’ve already got “the rules” coming up. When I was working on the Pre-Game and trying to list the rules about the Candidates, it made me think about the way kids make up games, where there are a thousand rules because they can’t think in any sort of meta-terms – they have to make up a separate rule for every eventuality rather than something that encompasses multiple situations. And now we’ve got kids talking about the rules.
Jacob returns home and covers for Silas by saying he’s out on the beach, “staring out at the ocean”, which is exactly how Jacob described what Jack had to do after destroying the mirrors in the Lighthouse. Crazy ladies aren’t easily fooled, though. She goes out to find Silas and explains that “Jacob doesn’t know how to lie – he’s not like you.” She also describes Silas as “special”, which sort of invokes Walt. Mom also claims that she left the game for them, but she sort of has to – if she wants them to believe that there isn’t anything outside the Island, she has to commit to the lie. She continues messing the poor kid up by dodging his question when he asks about death. “It’s something you will never have to worry about”.
We’ll see more of this, but Mom is the old Jacob. She’s able to bind them with statements like that, somehow. She has power. Much like Jacob’s power to keep Richard alive forever. There may not be a good answer to where it begins, but Mom was doing Jacob’s job, more or less.
Later, the boys chase a boar. You can imagine their surprise when a group of hunters catch and kill it. These kids didn’t know that there was such a thing as other people This has to blow their minds. When they tell Mom, she simply assures them that they are on the Island for a reason (sounds like Locke), but she can’t tell them everything. It isn’t time yet (sounds like Eloise X).
She blindfolds the boys and leads them through the jungle. Finally, she takes them to a spring and a shining cave. “This is the reason we’re here”. She describes it as “the warmest, brightest light you’ve ever seen or felt”, and also that “A little bit of this same light is inside every man. If the light goes out here, it goes out everywhere.” It would seem to me that this light is the energy that makes the Island unique. It even accounts for the Island’s healing powers – it’s the light inside every man, after all. And also, keep in mind that in Timeline X, there is no Island. It would seem to me that the light went out there. Finally, she says that one of them will have to protect the light. That’s a heck of a thing to tell your two kids, right?
Some time later, the boys are playing pre-Backgammon again, and Silas accuses Jacob of breaking the rules. (The rules that Silas made up, of course.) And then Silas sees Claudia. Jacob doesn’t see her, though. Either Silas has the same ability as Hurley, or her presence is a result of the Island attempting to create a balance. Silas follows her, and she explains that she’s his mother, and leads him to the camp where the original Others live. They’re the survivors of Claudia’s ship.
That night, Silas wakes Jacob and tells him to follow along. Man, you know Crazy Mom sleeps with one ear open. On the road, Silas tells Jacob that they’re leaving and never coming back. Jacob doesn’t want to hear any of this, and he punches Silas. He beats on his brother until Mom breaks it up. Silas decides to go live with the Others, while Jacob wants to stay with Mom. She tells Silas that he’ll never be able to leave.
So get this. The one think Look-a-Locke wants is “to go home”. He has never left the Island. He was born on the Island, and his only experience with the rest of the world is what he’s seen when he reads people in smoke form. One would think that having lived on the Island forever, that makes it his home by default. But in his mind, any place that isn’t the Island is “home”. Once again, it’s a binary equation. There’s the Island, and there’s everything else.
Mom admits to Jacob that he really did kill his mother, but her people were bad. Remember the old separation between “good people” and “bad people”? That goes way back for Jacob. Mom needs him to “stay good”, and Jacob wonders why she loves his brother more than she loves him. See, I would have assumed that Jacob was the favorite, if only because he’s the one that actually has a name. But it would be too easy to have somebody go bad because he didn’t get enough attention as a kid. Mom has the worst answer of all time, by the way. “I love you in different ways.” No, no. “I love you equally” is how you answer that one.
And now we have adult Jacob. By the way, Mom’s grinding with a mortar and pestle. We saw that happen earlier in the episode, and it’s one of the first things we ever saw Jacob do – grind up some corn and cook a fish. He goes off to see Silas – apparently this is a regular thing, but Mom doesn’t know. If only because she never asks about Silas. Jacob’s fascinated by people – he’s been watching the Others to find out if his mother is right about them.
To my initial surprise, Silas confirms that she is right. People are awful. They’re greedy and cruel and stupid, but they’re the means to an end. To demonstrate, he tosses a knife and it’s drawn to a well. We already know what those wells are about – Look-a-Locke explained to Desmond that they dug those wells in all the places where their compasses went crazy. Those are pockets of electromagnetic energy. Silas says that he can use this to leave, but Jacob doesn’t want to leave the Island.
In a scene that I find to be strangely hilarious, Mom appears to be shaving her legs using mud and a piece of string. Just because you’re a crazy lady on an Island is no reason to let yourself go, after all. Jacob tells her about what’s happening, and Mom swings into action.
She finds Silas in one of the wells. It’s the first time they’ve seen each other since the day he left. He explains that he’s never been able to find the light that she showed them, so he decided to try and approach it from underneath. He pries a stone loose from the wall and the golden light bursts out. Oh man. I absolutely love this. Silas has made a big wheel as part of a mechanism to channel the water and the light. This should allow him to create an opening and leave the Island. And yes, this is pretty vague, but it’s not like they’re going to be able to explain it in a way where it’s going to make logical, scientific sense. At this point, you’re either going with it or you’re watching a different show. (But why are you reading this recap, then?) Mom reaches out to give him a hug, and then bashes his head against the stone wall, knocking him out. Mom’s only real move is to slam somebody’s head with a rock. If they ever made a street fighting video game out of Lost, Mom would be that character who seems lame because she only has one attack, but you’d have that one friend who practiced with her all the time and just got to be completely unbeatable. (For the record, if they ever make a Lost fighting tournament game, I will buy it in a heartbeat.)
Mom wakes up Jacob – it’s finally time. Time to say good-bye to his brother, and time to return to the light. They return to the spring, this time without the blindfold. She explains that it’s life, death, rebirth. “The source, the heart of the Island”. I’ll admit that when she said “The source”, I immediately thought of it as a capital-S Source, and thought they were building a key episode around a full-fledged Jack Kirby reference. She explains that he can’t enter the cave – going down there is worse than death.
Mom has a wine bottle – it looks exactly like the one from Richard’s flashback episode. She pours out a glass and asks Jacob to accept the responsibility to protect the light. He really doesn’t want to, especially since he’s clearly the second choice. Mom acknowledges that he wasn’t the one she picked, but “it was always supposed to be you”. He finally drinks the wine and she says, “Now you and I are the same”. It’s a communion scene, in which Mom passes the torch and Jacob takes on her powers and responsibilities. Because, after all, with great power comes great responsibility.
Two thoughts here. First, there’s a little bit of a parallel to Jacob’s relationship with Benry. Jacob was the second choice, even after Silas left. But when it come down to it, Mom counted on Jacob to make the right choice. And if you’ll recall, Jacob’s last thought was that he hoped he was wrong about Benry. Whether he was consciously trying to recreate that relationship, or whether he just learned some of Mom’s lessons too well, Jacob but himself in a position where everything depended on the guy who wasn’t the first choice.
Second, where on the Island is this spring? Has something been built over it, like perhaps the Temple? Or is it one of those things like the Lighthouse or Jacob’s cabin that you can’t reach unless you’re supposed to?
Silas wakes up outside – the well has caved in, and I can’t even guess how Mom pulled that off. He sees black smoke in the distance – the fires from the village. Mom killed them all and burned it to the ground. The black smoke is a precursor to the Smokey we know and fear, but it’s also a reference to the end of Season One when Rousseau tried to kidnap Aaron after distracting the Lostaways with a signal fire. Now that I think about it, Mom’s kind of a mix of Jacob, Rousseau, and Eloise.
Jacob is out with Mom, and they realize that a storm’s coming. She sends Jacob off to find firewood, and she goes out to meet her destiny. I think it’s clear that she knows what’s coming, in much the same way that Jacob met his fate with an air of resignation. Or Obi-Wan Kenobi, if you want to get all Hurley with it.
Mom finds the backgammon board, and shakes out two of the stones – one white, one black. And then we hear the most gruesome sound effect in TV history as Silas stabs Mom in the back. As she dies, she tells Silas that she wouldn’t let him leave the Island because she loves him. Her last words are “Thank you”. How long was she alive? Was she ready to leave and relinquish her duties? What gets me is how Silas clearly regrets what he’s done. He and Jacob both make bad choices in the heat of the moment in this episode, and it’s hard to really think of one as the good guy and one as the bad guy.
Jacob discovers her body, and he’s crushed. He beats on Silas and drags him back to the spring. Jacob says “I’m not going to kill you”, but when he tosses Silas, it looks like he might have broken his neck on a rock. They can’t kill one another, but an accident could well be one of those loopholes. Or else Silas was alive when he went into the cave.
Yeah, Silas goes into the cave, but what comes out is Smokey. It’s a great moment – terrifying and sad all at the same time. That’s the fate worse than death that Mom mentioned. Jacob tries to follow the smoke and finds Silas’ body. So even when we’ve seen him in that form, he hasn’t been human. His body is long dead (Remember when Look-a-Locke said “I used to be a man”?).
And in a moment that’s really touching and perfect, and incredibly exciting for the viewers, Jacob puts the black and white stone in a pouch, and lays it with the bodies of Mom and Silas in the caves. And we see the scene from Season One again, the scene where Jack and Kate find the skeletons. Only now, we know their story. And just look at the way Locke looks at the bodies – there’s something amazing about Terry O’Quinn’s face here. It looks like something that they shot recently, with Terry knowing exactly how important these bodies would become to his character specifically. But that’s a shot from five years ago. I don’t know what instructions they gave him for this scene, of if he just managed a reaction that managed to fit perfectly with a story that hadn’t been told yet, but it’s just amazing.
I need to sleep and think more about the mythology at a later date, but here’s something that’s worth mention. Based on what we see in this episode, Jacob and Silas are more or less value-neutral. They both made good choices and they both made bad choices. With just this episode as a guide, you can’t necessarily pick the villain. Let’s face it, the way they were raised, it’s a miracle they both didn’t turn out to be serial killers. It’s all about what they did afterwards, though. Silas will kill anybody who crosses his path if it gets him closer to his goal. Jacob is more of a philosopher – he wants to give people the chance to be redeemed. It’s interesting because Jacob sort of plays the role of God in the Book of Job, but Silas isn’t participating in the experiment. It’s not a retelling of Job, because there, the Devil actually had a vested interest. Here, it’s more like “Yeah, redemption. Great. Have you seen my giant wheel?”
And the bottom line is, Jacob’s the one who’s protecting the world. “If the light goes out here, it goes out everywhere” is one thing. But even more than that, Smokey hates humans – every single one of them is weak and dishonest and useless. If he leaves the Island, it’s going to be a massacre. An unstoppable plume of smoke that believes that people don’t deserve to live should probably be prevented from having access to, you know, people. Jacob may be flawed, but he’s doing what he can to save the world.
That’s all for tonight, but there’s still a lot to think about. Feel free to blast your thoughts straight into my head, and we’ll meet back here for more analysis as we head into the last week of Lost.
