Lost - Episode 6:9 (3/23/10) - Ab Aeterno

[Thinker]

A thought I had about Jacob. In this episode, and in one other flashback set way back when, he claims that 'nobody comes to this island unless he brings them'.

That might have been true...until the Dharma Initiative turned up. Now, for the first time ever, Jacob was confronted with a group that could not only access the island at will - regardless of his wishes in the matter, but also had the know-how and equipment to systematically investigate the island, including many aspects of it that both Jacob and the Man in Black regarded as privliged information.

Now...during all or most of the Dharma Initiatives stay on the island, Widmore was the leader of the others, which, if I understand their leadership structure correctly, means he was taking his orders from Jacob, either directly or through Richard Alpert. My guess would be that once the Dharma Initiative's investigations started to cut a bit too close to the bone, Jacob basically decided it was time to get rid of these meddlers once and for all. Or to put it another way:

It was almost certainly Jacob who gave the order to wipe out the Dharma Initiative.

One other point to ponder. The Dharma people had free access to and from the island, more or less independant of Jacobs manipulations. It seems to me that this might have provided Smokey with a way to leave the island as well. Probably the only reason this didn't happen was because Jacob was alive. But the temptation for Smokey must have been enormous.

 

[USincognito]

I've given up on speculation period (actually did so about mid-season 4).

I realize that we're talking about a show that started with a Boeing 777 breaking up and crashing with 60 odd survivors, but didn't it seem strange that the Black Rock not only took out most of Tarawet, but then stayed mostly intact while being hurled a lengthy distance inland.. oh, and with a number of crew and slaves surviving.

I caught that too, and also wondered if the dagger MIB gave Richard with instructions to stab Jacob in the middle of his chest, was the same dagger that Dogan gave Sayid with instructions to stab Locke in the middle of his chest.

It was. Looked like a Roman gladius.

On the "don't let him speak" thing...

My husband and I were talking about this last night. He said...I just KNOW I've heard that from somewhere else (meaning other literature, not the show) and once he said that, it rang a bell for me too. The only thing I could come up with (and both of us think there's something else we're thinking of as well) is from mythology with the Sirens. Sailors were wooed and brought to ruin by their songs. They would crash their boats on the rocks.

Siren - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia is an article on them...and about their song it says : "The term "siren song" refers to an appeal that is hard to resist but that, if heeded, will lead to a bad result."

Odysseus, had all his crew block their ears and he was bound to the mast of the boat. He was curious to hear their song.

Maybe it's just a similarity, but...hearing Smokey has been doom for everyone who listened to him.

Great catch. There's a lot of mythology from all sorts of sources so I wouldn't be surprised if they got, what seems like a throw-away line, to have such a deeper meaning.

Also, in case anyone is interested, there's a similar tale from the Rhine of a being called Lorelei.
Lorelei - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[* kittie *]

Why did he kill off all the surviving crew on the Black Rock? What made him spare Richard? I'm guessing Jacob somehow stopped him from killing Richard,too.

I thought that too. Maybe that's why MiB tried to manipulate Richard instead.

 

[diychristian]

I noticed that Jacob dunked Alpert three times to prove he was alive. Alot like baptism!

 

[diychristian]

Is it a Tarawet or Anubis?

 

[USincognito]

Is it a Tarawet or Anubis?

I stand by my earlier assertion that it looks more like Sobek (based on the body shape and snout), but the official word is it's Tarawet.

 

[Thinker]

I find myself wondering more and more about Jacobs morality here:

He has been bringing people to this island for a long time - people, who for the most part, had no intention of coming to the island in the first place. These people then become toys or pawns in some sort of game of morals between Jacob and Smokey, and with a few possible exceptions almost always end up dead. That is bad enough - yet Jacob, according to his speech towards the end of this episode - was not in the habit of letting these people know what was going on! Real tought to play a game when

A) you don't know the rules;

B) the guy who does know the rules and brought you here to play it hides from you; and

C) you don't even know your in a game to begin with.