LOST Season 5 Finale
What lies in the shadow of the statue? Locke's hidden pot plantation?
WOW. After watching Wednesday's penultimate season finale, "The Incident," I'm almost at a loss for words. It literally blew me away. I watched it at 11 pm after my big fancy graduation dinner, and I barely got any sleep due to the adrenaline pumping through my veins. The season, arguably the best since Season 1, went out with a bang, albeit an abrupt one. I almost want to say it's the best season finale of the show so far... it's definitely the most cryptic, and the most revealing at the same time. But some minor flaws still put it behind the Season 3 "oh my god they get off the island" reveal.
I really dug this season, at least the majority of it, probably because I like time travel so much. But to be honest, the whole "let's drop a nuke into the Swan and reset our lives" shtick was a little silly. It worked out in the end- due in great part to the fantastic acting abilities of the cast. For instance, more or less every single character's reasoning for why they wanted to go along with Jack's blatantly insane plan was completely ridiculous, especially Juliet, who pretty much just changes her mind because she had a fleeting memory of her parents' divorce. But the actors are so good... I bought it. I totally bought it.
But what I really want to talk about is the man of the hour, Jacob. That character MADE this episode. The way his story was handled was awesome, and I really dig that he has been revealed to actually be the benevolent good guy, and not creepy cabin specter. It's a testament to Mark Pellogrino the actor portraying him- just the look in his eyes every time he touched one of our main characters- you could see he really cared about them, that he wanted them to be happy. But what I really liked is that the little bits of mythos we got concerning Jacob really confirmed a theory I've been having for a while.
I consider myself to be pretty awesome at LOST theorizing. I don't do it too often, and my ideas are never something ridiculous like, "LOCKE IS JACOB!!!!!!!" But when I make a theory, 9 times out of 10 it's in some way proven true. And I believe the theory I came up with a couple episodes ago to be one of those. I came up with this idea that the Island manifests itself in three separate fashions- I called it the "Holy Trinity" theory of the Island, although, really, there's nothing particularly holy about it. First, there's the Island itself- an unseen, conscious entity that seems to only manifest itself in people's dreams (i.e. Locke's acid trip in Season 3, Charlie's vision of Claire and his mother as saints in Season 2, etc.), or merely in statements usually given by Locke: "The Island told me." Then there's Jacob, the leader of the Others, a benevolent, Jesus-like immortal who seems most interested in the lives of the Island's inhabitants. Last, but not least, is the Smoke Monster, the morally ambiguous amorphous blob of soot that we've so far been told is a "security system," a Cerberus charged with protecting the Island from wrongdoers like Keamy and his mercenaries.
Or so we were lead to believe.
My theory was that these three entities all represented different sides or factions of the Island, and while all play a role in its destiny, they are not necessarily on the same side. I felt strongly that Jacob and Smokey in particular, were not allies. And the episode's teaser and penultimate scene seem to confirm my theory. To me, it seems completely obvious that Jacob's unnamed enemy from the episode's teaser (who's called Samuel in casting calls) is in fact the Smoke Monster. How he gained the ability to turn into smoke or take the shape of people who've lost their lives on the Island I don't know, but once it was revealed that said enemy had taken the form of John Locke, it seemed more or less blatant that Jacob's nemesis is Smokey. If you think about it- put all the pieces together- it really makes sense. Does it seem really convenient that once Ben fell into Smokey's lair in the tunnels, Locke went looking for rope, and while he was gone Smokey appeared both in his smoke form and as Alex, then once it receded back into that grill, Locke reappeared? And that Zombie Alex told Ben to do whatever Locke asked? Or that Zombie Christian Shephard told Sun and Frank to wait for Locke to show up and follow him? And remember how when Ben told Richard he had seen his dead mother on the Island, but that she had died off-Island, Richard grew really intrigued? See, Smokey can only take the shape of people who've died on the Island, which is why getting Locke killed was so integral to his plan, and why Zombie Christian told Locke he was going to have to sacrifice himself to save his friends.
The question really is why Smokey couldn't kill Jacob in the first place, and why he needed Ben for his "loophole." He's been manipulating Ben his whole life, starting from when Richard brought Ben to the Temple as a boy to save him, preparing him for the day when he would kill Jacob.
So, my theory for Season 6? Well, Juliet's going to get vaporized. Sad, I know. The detonation of the nuke, or the "Incident" as they cal it will send anyone in its vicinity back through time to 2007. Jacob's last words were "They're coming," a portent of the DHARMA castaways' return. The ones he touched in the flashbacks- Kate, Sawyer, Jack, Sayid, Jin, Sun and Hurley- will return and bring about the downfall of Smokey (note that Juliet wasn't shown being touched by Jacob, and she died). The only real hole in this theory is that Zombie Christian also told Locke to bring all his friends back to the island, but perhaps he knew they would be stuck in 1977, where they would not be able to stop him.
More and more LOST is becoming a Christian allegory- I wouldn't be surprised if either Jacob or Locke are actually resurrected next season. But I dig it, they're doing it all in a really cool way, and it feels much more philosophical and less spiritual. Still though, it does seem to be shaping up into an epic battle between good and evil, a la Stephen King's The Stand, doesn't it?
