BACK TO THE ISLAND: LOST: SEASON 6 EPISODE 16

Ben: “He doesn’t get to save his daughter.”

• In an episode with no shortage of great lines/scenes, this is right up there. It’s chilling. My question to all of you: Did Ben shoot Widmore purely out of anger and vengeance? Or did he shoot Widmore to prevent him from telling Anti-Locke more than a sentence or two about Desmond’s apparent “Failsafe” status? Anti-Locke announces that he knows everything he needed to know, but I’m not convinced of that. What do you think? Did Widmore tell Anti-Locke everything? Or did Ben cut him off? Does Widmore even understand the “whole” plan?  Or is this playing into what Jacob is hoping will happen? Whatever his motives, I’m thrilled that they’ve kept Ben’s essential unknowability in play, and in play convincingly, this far into the show’s end-game.

That said, I’m fairly certain that Ben’s committed himself to a suicide mission here. He’s gotten his vengeance on Widmore, and now he knows that Anti-Locke has no intention of leaving him the Island. It’s a great place to have moved this character to – a place of awareness of the possibility of forgiveness and Tabula Rasa, and of simultaneous awareness that such a thing for such a man as he is difficult/impossible to accept.

Kate: “I want to know why. I want to know that Sun and Jin and Sayid didn’t die for nothing.”
Jacob: “Come and sit down and I’ll tell you what they died for.”

• Some of the back-and-forth between the Castaways and Jacob comes across as a little on the nose for me, but I suspect that’s because I’ve been working on the idea of Jacob-as-metaphorical-deity for some time now. I suspect that there are vast swathes of people who haven’t made that overt connection yet, and for them, this kind of dialogue is probably exactly what’s needed. Either way, despite the fact that the Castaways literally sat around while someone explained things to them I found this pivotal moment of exposition very satisfying.

• The funniest moment of this episode? For me it’s the laughter that’s shared between Jack and Locke right after Locke enters Jack’s office. It’s awkward in the best way, and feels incredibly natural.

Locke: “I think I’m ready to get out of this chair.”

• What a great line. Locke takes his own leap of faith, connecting the dots between the string of coincidences that have been dogging the Castaways and making the decision to let Jack help him. His words here are stirring in the best sense of that word. I cannot wait to see what happens with this storyline.

Jacob: “I didn’t pluck any of you out of a happy existence. You were all flawed. I chose you because you were like me – you were all alone, you were all looking for something that you couldn’t find out there. I chose you because you needed this place as much as it needed you.”

• Isn’t that what this show has been saying from day one? It’s certainly what I’ve been saying about these characters from day one, and what many of you have been saying/thinking as well. Jacob’s reasoning feels entirely appropriate, and very satisfying to me. Sometimes the simplest answer is the best answer, and Jacob’s answer cuts straight to the heart of the reason for why we watch this show to begin with (most of us at any rate) – because we’re invested in these characters, first and foremost.

So now we know. We know why these people were brought to this Island, and we’ve heard Jacob’s justifications for doing so. Some of you don’t seem to be buying it. And that’s good, I think. I think a story as narratively and morally knotty as Lost demands you scrutinize the hidden motivations of its characters, and I think that featuring a human-sized version of a god (which is what Jacob has been, thematically, metaphorically, and in some senses, literally, throughout the show) who interferes with the totality of people’s free will naturally invites twice the scrutiny.

That’s as it should be. When a show is asking you to simultaneously consider both the straightforward implications of Jacob’s decision to interfere as well as the larger thematic implications of a “god” interfering with humanity (something made all-but-explicit through the rather pointed dialogue directed at Jacob – especially Sawyer’s line about suffering) then it hasn’t done its job as smart, adult entertainment unless it leaves you in a gray area. If you’re not asking yourself the same question that Sawyer asks (namely, what gives Jacob the “right” to interfere) then you’re not thinking about the thorny mixture of free will and Determinism that Jacob is ultimately peddling here.

And this is exactly what the show seems to want you to ask. Is this “right”? Is this “good being”? Sawyer is absolutely correct to question the “right” of Jacob to do what he does. It’s right and good to question, because these questions matter on a scale that extends far beyond a television show about Smoke Monsters and Mystic Islands. What gives a government the “right” to go to war? What gives “God” the right to care about us/watch over us/create us/mess around with us at all? What gives Science the leeway to change our lives in ways that we don’t necessarily want, or need? What gives ANY authority “the right”? What should our response be to Deterministic systems that provide some choices while maintaining an overall-illusionary sense of Ultimate Choice?

Here are some of my thoughts on the matter: In a sense, Jacob’s choice of these people as Candidates ensured that they would be “invited” to the Island. But (and here’s where things get intriguing, and why I love this show) it’s also true that each of these Candidates, living and dead, have only themselves to blame for Jacob’s choice. Because, for all of the discomfort about Jacob’s right or lack thereof, it’s the very fact of each of these characters and their fundamental, near-total pre-Island unhappiness that resulted in their being chosen. Didn’t they all have choices they were capable of making leading up to their arrival which would have made them happier, more content, and thus, ineligible for Candidacy? At what point should they concede that none of them would be on the Island at all had they lived their pre-Island lives in ways that gave them purpose and meaning and contentment? That’s what Jacob told the Candidates last night – he picked them because they needed the Island as much as it needed them. And he’s inarguably right about that as far as I’m concerned. How would Sawyer’s life have ended, had he NOT crash-landed on the Island? It would have ended badly, in all likelihood – with our favorite con man bleeding out in an alley, or locked in jail again, or pursuing Cooper ‘til they were both dead, literally and/or figuratively.

And then there’s the question of “goodness” and of what it truly means to be “good.”

“Most of us have learned to be dispassionate about evil, to look it in the face and find, as often as not, our own grinning reflections with which we do not argue, but good is another matter. Few have stared at that long enough to accept that its face too is grotesque, that in us the good is something under construction. The modes of evil usually receive worthy expression. The modes of good have to be satisfied with a cliché or a smoothing down that will soften their real look.” – Flannery O’Connor

If Jacob truly is on the side of the righteous, then this quote acts as an answer to Sawyer and Kate’s questions. Sometimes good isn’t “good.” Sometimes people who act for a “good” are awful individuals, or use awful methods to accomplish their goals. As O’Connor observes, we’re enured to that kind of awfulness when it’s related to something we can call “evil,” but we’re curiously uninterested/afraid of considering the full spectrum of what a “good” act/person can be.

After all, sometimes you have to make difficult, even horrific, decisions in order to accomplish what you hope to be a “good” end. War is one evident and suitable example. Even “good” wars aren’t good. If Jacob is simply a man, and ultimately indefinable as “good” or “evil” then that’s right to me on a lot of levels. It also seems right to me to dramatize the fact that sometimes people have no choice but in how they decide to confront what they are faced with. Some fates are unavoidable. Some burdens can’t be refused.

Put another, nerdier, way: Why is it that people seem to have such enormous trouble with the notion that Jacob may have “good” intentions, yet no apparent trouble at all with the following:

Frodo: “I wish the Ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.”
Gandalf: “So do all those who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide.”

• I love that Jacob crossed Kate’s name off because she became a mother. It’s so simple and makes so much sense, both on a character level and on a larger thematic level. The crossing out of her name wasn’t about some test she failed, or some unexplained metaphysical transformation. It was about her personal choices – about her making the choice to become a mother, and Jacob’s respect for that choice. Once that choice was made Jacob crossed her name off preemptively, but he also tells her that the choice is still hers if she wants it. That’s kind of beautiful, in my opinion, regardless of what you think of Jacob’s choices.

Jacob: “You must do what I couldn’t – what I wasn’t able to do.”
Jack: “You want us to kill him. Is that even possible?”
Great Jacob Line: “I hope so, because he is certainly going to try and kill you.”

• Here’s another instance where you might argue that Jacob is pushing these characters around and telling them where to go or what to do. But I’d disagree, because this episode makes a careful point of having Kate and Jack agree at the start of the hour that they need to kill Locke. Their free will and Jacob’s apparent needs match up. The choices that are offered to the Castaways aren’t easy choices. They are “Lady or the Tiger”-esque in their apparent mortal importance and in their veiled quality. I like that a lot. 

Jack: “This is why I’m here. This is what I’m supposed to do.”
Jacob: “Is that a question, Jack?”

• In all my theorizing and rambling I’d never considered the idea that the passing of Jacob’s torch would happen at this point. I’d taken it entirely for granted that this would be something featured in the finale. Seeing it here has cleared the figurative decks of my expectations. At this point, at least in my loco cabesa, anything can happen. Jack can die, protecting the Island/his friends, and the torch can be passed again. Jack can die having been duped, and be avenged by his friends. Jack can live, and protect the Island/his friends while retaining the title of protector. Jack can potentially appoint all of his Castaway buddies as fellow protectors, making a community of the position that Jacob held in solitude. Or Jack and the Castaways can make a choice to safeguard the Light in other ways, or choose to somehow release it from the Island, mirroring the ways that they themselves have struggled like Moths to be free.

It’s all possible. And that makes me very, very happy as a viewer.

• Jacob tells Jack that the heart of the Island isn’t far from the field he landed in when he first crashed on the Island. This tells us something fascinating about Jacob – he’s potentially “Island Omniscient.” After all, Jacob wasn’t physically present when Jack landed on the Island. So how does he know that it’s where Jack first touched down?

• We also get confirmation that only the guardian can find the Light. Keeping with the themes of higher consciousness, Jack’s “sight” is apparently augmented by participating in Jacob’s ritual, allowing him to find The Source. You could say (and, hey! I’m saying it!) that Jack’s consciousness has been expanded – that he’s “awakened” to something new/unique/powerful.

A LITTLE MORE LESS CONVERSATION, A LITTLE MORE ACTION, RIGHT AFTER THE PAGE BREAK!