LOST Revisited: Season Five, Post-Game
It’s clear that Silas is the fake Locke, based on the way Jacob talked to him. (“You finally found your loophole.”) Based on what we’ve seen, Locke died when Benry strangled him, and every time we’ve seen him on the Island since the crash of 316, he was Silas.
Now, I’m convinced that Silas is also Smokey. Smokey takes on the forms of others, as we saw him do with Alex and Eko’s brother. Smokey ordered Benry to listen to everything Locke says, which fit Silas’ plans. And most importantly, Fake Locke conveniently disappeared in the Temple right before Smokey showed up, and he came back as soon as the fog dissipated. Funny how you never see Clark Kent and Superman in the same place, right? This is what the aforementioned Amy also suggested, several weeks ago. (At least, I assume that she’s the same Amy. If not, I apologize for being presumptuous.) This all advanced his goal of having Benry kill Jacob. Silas can’t directly harm Jacob, for reasons we don’t yet know, so he needs to manipulate somebody into doing it for him.
By the way, spunkybuddy Jennifer wondered how Fake Locke was able to act like Locke and knew very specific details of his life and death. Well, one of the things Smokey can do is envelop somebody and determine their entire past, as it did with Eko. I don’t know when it would have been able to do that with Locke’s body, but it’s certainly not outside Smokey’s wheelhouse.
If Smokey and Silas are one and the same, that casts most of its actions in a new light. We’ve been told that Smokey judges good and evil, and for what it’s worth I believe that Benry and the Others think that’s the truth. But what Smokey was doing was looking for somebody it could use to kill Jacob. Somebody who could be bullied and manipulated. When Eko stood up to it, he was clearly too strong to fit the plan, so he had to die. And that’s why Smokey tore apart Keamy’s crew without doing its usual judgment – it had already picked Benry as being his guy, and it was protecting him.
I’m also quite certain that Island Christian was also Silas. Sure, he’s seemed benevolent, but mostly what he’s accomplished has been to separate Claire from Aaron (which we’ve been warned could prove disastrous), and got Locke to turn the wheel and leave the Island, which is where everything started going wrong.
Of course, the idea that Silas is Christian makes him really powerful. Remember, Michael couldn’t die until the Island was done with him. Who appeared to let Michael know that he was done? Christian. And Michael couldn’t die until the freighter was ready to explode, thus preserving the secret of the Island from outsiders. Based on the finale’s opening scene, we know that Silas would rather not have any people on the Island ever, so that fits. But this means that Silas was able to keep Michael alive (even off the Island). That’s some power right there. Also, remember that it was Tom, a loyal Other, who told Michael that the Island wasn’t done with him. It seems to me that Silas managed to pass off his own agenda as coming from Jacob on occasion. Considering that we don’t know how Jacob passed his messages on to Richard “Batmanuel” Alpert, that’s certainly plausible.
Now, there are obvious questions. Where did Jacob and Silas come from? Why do they hate each other and why can’t they harm one another? All we can do is speculate at this point, since we haven’t even scratched the surface of this mythology. Jacob seems bound (mostly) by physical limitations, so why doesn’t Silas have a physical form of his own anymore? And who was it that was in the cabin who asked for Locke’s help?
I can at least speculate on that last one. I do think it was Jacob in the cabin. Why he was spectral instead of physical, I don’t know. And yes, the quick shot we saw of a bearded man way back then looked more like Silas than Jacob. Still, and bear with me because this is nerdy, in the season finale, Ilana noticed a circle of ash around the cabin, broken in one spot. In magic, a ring around something is used to bind a spirit within those confines. Breaking the circle ends the spell. Now, Silas certainly wasn’t bound to the cabin. Smokey’s been around the whole time. While we saw Jacob before the crash (sometimes long before) as well as after the Oceanic Six had left the Island, there’s a gap there. He could have been trapped in the cabin for years there until somebody broke the circle.
Now, we need to consider Jacob. We saw him in multiple flashbacks, shaping the destinies of the Lostaways. Sometimes he was there for major events, turning them into the people they are, and sometimes it was subtle. Clearly, what he was doing was making sure that these specific people ended up on the Island one way or another. Interestingly, he appeared to Hurley and Sayid after they’d already left the Island. In Hurley’s case, he flat out told him to return. He must have had a reason for choosing the people he did, so he’s working toward something. And Hurley and Sayid, at least, haven’t necessarily achieved what they need to yet. Let’s face it, Hurley hasn’t done anything except be hilarious since he returned to the Island. That means whatever Jacob has planned, it’s still in progress.
In fact, Jacob could probably have defused the confrontation with Benry if he’d put any effort into it. If he’d told Benry how special he really was, there wouldn’t have been a stabbing. Instead he answered “What about me?” with “What about you?” You don’t need to be a thousand years old to know that wasn’t going to go over well. And when his last words are “They’re coming”, you have to know it’s not over yet.
You know how in Star Wars, Ben Kenobi and Darth Vader are fighting, and then Ben says “If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine”. And then Darth Vader kills him, and Ben, well, dies. That part about “becoming more powerful” didn’t actually end up happening. That has bugged me for almost three decades now. But maybe that’s actually true of Jacob. Maybe Silas played right into his hands. Heck, maybe he did freeze out Benry just to give Silas an effective weapon. I don’t think it’s over for Jacob. As for who’s coming, well, I’ll get to that a little later.
The finale made it pretty clear that Ilana and Bram and the rest of Team 316 work for Jacob directly. Heck, Ilana actually knows him. Now, I still think Benry hired Ilana to bring in Sayid, but I don’t think he had any idea that they were going to be making a beeline for the statue. See, even Benry doesn’t plan for everything.
And before we get to the 70’s Lostaways, I firmly believe that Locke isn’t gone for good. “What lies in the shadow of the statue?” “He who will save us all”. Locke’s body is literally lying in the shadow of the statue as of the moment that Jacob dies. Heck, maybe Locke is the new Jacob. This isn’t just me pulling for my favorite here – what we’ve seen over the last several seasons is that Locke is absolutely right about destiny. I don’t believe that he will be rewarded for his faith with death. In the end, I don’t think Lost is that cynical.
As for the gang in the 70’s, we have the question of just what happened at the end. Did the bomb go off? Did they change time? I’m going with “no” on both counts. I’m going to take the second point first, because that’s the kind of thing I do here in the off-season. So far, all of their attempts have resulted in things turning out exactly the way they did before. White Oracle knew that Faraday would die on the Island. Charlotte remembered Faraday telling her younger self to leave the Island. We all knew Dr. Marvin Candle would lose an arm before the Swan was completed. These things happened as a result of the Lostaways trying to change the past. I don’t think anything they did in the 70’s changed the future one bit.
I do, however, have a new theory on one of the older Island mysteries. In the video for the Flame, the people were told that they were monitoring the Swan, where people believed that they were doing something vitally important. Now, the Flame video indicates that what they’re doing doesn’t actually matter, but actual facts indicate that pressing the button is indeed a very important thing to do. So why the discrepancy?
Remember how they were supposed to put their observation journals into those containers and send then through a pneumatic tube? And then we saw those tubes emptying out into a clearing? I think the Dharma leaders tried to keep the Incident under wraps as much as they could. Most of the people who were present ended up dead, and the rest had leadership roles. They obviously needed people there to push the button, but once you put somebody in the Swan, they have at least some idea of what’s going on in there. Word spreads fast in Dharmaville. The Orientation film indicates that the Swan crew were intended to serve a finite stint and then return to civilization. (And Dr. Marvin Candle actually refers to “The Incident” in that film. Way to plan!) The people of Dharmaville would probably wonder about people who came over on the sub and were never seen again until they got on the sub to leave. So that’s where the story of the Flame comes about. Those guys? They’re part of an experiment. Keep an eye on them! So the button’s getting pushed and nobody realizes they’re missing key bits of information. The notebooks and pneumatic tubes never meant anything – it was all Dharma’s cover-up.
I’m also willing to bet that The Incident had something to do with White Oracle’s abilities. Also, when we saw Horace’s ghost, he had a bloody nose which indicates that he was unstuck in time. When Desmond didn’t push the button, he got unstuck and developed the ability to see the future, so White Oracle and Horace may have caught some temporal backwash from the original Incident. Of course, Horace died during the Purge in 1992, so being unstuck in time wasn’t fatal or even crippling for him. Did somebody find Faraday’s notebook and learn that he needed a Constant? It’s possible.
This isn’t finale specific, but I’m saving my bomb theory for the end, and this has been a source of contention for some time. When Richard “Batmanuel” Alpert offered to save young Benry’s life after the shooting, he said that Benry wouldn’t remember that any of this had happened. Some people (Hi, Sam!) thought that this was a way to cover their butts on a continuity issue, since Benry didn’t indicate that he recognized Sayid when he met him in 2004. I was not convinced, since Benry is good at lying and wouldn’t have indicated that he recognized him anyway, so it seemed like a continuity fix when there was nothing to fix. But now I think I know. Bear with me. If Benry always knew about the shooting, that would mean that Sayid hadn’t succeeded in changing the past. If he suddenly remembered it (like when Faraday talked to Desmond in the past, and Desmond woke up with new memories), that would mean that Sayid had changed the past. Either way, they would have tipped their hand too early as to whether it was possible to change the past. Benry had to forget his shooting so that we, the viewers, wouldn’t find out whether the past had been changed or not.
Finally, what about that bomb? Since I don’t believe that they can change the past, I can’t really accept that the hydrogen bomb went off at the end. I think that the screen went white because of a time jump. I think that was the moment when the Lostaways jumped back to the present. They made sure the past turned out correctly in spite of themselves, and now it’s time for Phase Two of Jacob’s plan. When Jacob says “They’re coming”, he’s referring to the Lostaways. The people he chose are going to be instrumental in his battle with Silas. It’s not over, people.
By the way, the promo for Season Six ends with a tight shot of somebody opening their eye. There’s no indication as to who it is, but it’s a green eye. The color works for Jack, Juliet, and Locke, and probably some other people. Of course, it might just be symbolic, as I don’t think they’ve actually shot any footage for next season yet. Still, it’s worth thinking about.
All right, that’s it for Season Five. If you get any great ideas or spot any viral websites, let me know. No reason I can’t write about Lost in the off-season, right? And yes, I’m planning on rewatching the entire series before the final season. Hopefully, I’ll have more insight coming your way.
Thanks to everybody who contributed over the season. You people are awesome, and all the support and theories and insight are deeply appreciated. You guys, you’re the real heroes!
