Across The Sea

Come up to meet you, tell you I'm sorry

When I first learned that this weeks episode wouldn’t have any regular cast members in it I was a little worried. I felt it was a little late in the game to introduce new characters. Eventually I found out the episode was a Jacob/MIB flashback and I was less worried and a lot more excited. Across The Sea has received mixed reviews and I fall right in the middle with it. While I didn’t dislike it as much as some did, (some have placed it as being one of the worst episodes of the season if not the series) I certainly didn’t enjoy it as much as I had hoped I would. I equate seeing this episode and getting answers to some of the shows mysteries with the exact moment I learned that my Christmas presents didn’t come from a fat guy in a red suit shimming his way down the chimney every December 24th. It’s true that it really isn’t the end of the journey that is the most fulfilling but the journey itself. If you thought you were going to be completely satisfied with the ending of the show then this week should have helped prepare you with the hard fact that you probably won't. Will you accept it? Unlike a lot of people we have seen on this show, you don’t have a choice.

Tell me your secrets And ask me your questions

LOST Island - Bringing pregnant women to it’s shores for over 2000 years. Not only was she very pregnant she very conveniently came to the island with a red dress on so we would know not to get too attached to her. While she is getting a drink at a stream she sees a woman’s reflection. This scene called to mind Mr. Eko seeing the smoke monster back in The Cost of Living. The two women converse in Latin. AJ (short for Allison Janney who the part was written for even before the producers and writers knew the actress would be playing the part) takes the pregnant woman back to her cave. The pregnant woman says her name is Claudia which would probably make her Roman as the name leads me to believe she was named after Claudius who was the Roman Emperor from 41 - 54 AD. At this point the women speak English but I think that was just for our benefit. I don’t think they just suddenly changed to speaking English it was so we didn’t have to read subtitles the entire episode. Claudia asks AJ where the rest of her people are she tells Claudia she is alone. She tells Claudia that she got to the island by accident just like she did. AJ tells her that she should stop asking her questions and rest. Claudia tries to get up to go look for her people who was with her when she crashed onto the island. AJ tells her that if there are other people on the island, she will find them.

Claudia goes into labor and gives birth to a boy. Watch as AJ helps deliver the boy and states; “It’s a boy.”, she already has plans for the baby. Claudia says his name is Jacob then has some more labor pains and soon gives birth to a second baby. This one, another boy, comes into the world a bit different than his brother did. Jacob was quiet and seemed at peace while his brother, The Baby in Black, was quite the opposite. He was crying and fussing the whole time. The second birth throws a monkey wrench into AJ’s plans as now she has two candidates to take her place. (Twin boys being born reflects back to The Bad Twin which was a book that Sawyer found the manuscript for in the plane wreckage. It was written by Gary Troupe who was a survivor of 815 and was the man sucked into the jet engine in the pilot episode.) The second baby Claudia says she doesn’t have a name for because she only picked one name so he is forever to be called Baby in Black or Boy in Black and later Man in Black. Couldn’t someone have given him a name? Is that too much to ask? Maybe AJ wasn’t able to give him a name, perhaps that is one of the rules she has to go by. Claudia asks if she can see the babies. AJ apologizes to her before hitting her in the head with a rock. Claudia was never to know how important her two boys would become to our story. Claudia is the third woman who is brought to the island to give birth only to have her children taken from her and raised by someone else. Does this put the “Aaron is important” ball back into play?


Some years pass and the Boy in Black finds something on the beach. The BIB tells Jacob it is a game and the two of them can play it together. The game is called Senet. It is an Egyptian game and may just be the oldest board game known to man. The game contains black and white rocks. Jacob asks the BIB how he knows how to play and he says that “I just know”. The writers made sure we knew this as a sign that the BIB was the special one of the two brothers. BIB tells Jacob to promise that he won’t tell their mother because if she knew she would take the game away from them. The brothers have been playing one sort of game or another for quite some time it would seem. Seeing Jacob as a boy shows that it is indeed the ghost of Jacob that the MIB is seeing in the jungle but why does he appear as a child to the MIB but then as an adult to Hurley?


AJ works the loom back in the cave making a tapestry. She would eventually pass this ability on to Jacob it seems but for now she just wants to know what Jacob and his brother were doing on the beach. Jacob lies and says they were just walking. She asks Jacob if he loves her and he says he does to which she responds by saying to Jacob to tell her what happened. Jacob spills the beans and AJ goes to the beach to speak to the BIB. The BIB guesses that Jacob told her about the game and she says he did because Jacob does not know how to lie. She says that Jacob isn’t like the BIB that he is special which we have heard describe a few people before. He asks Mother if he can keep the game and she says he can and that it was her that put it there. I think this might be a lie because she didn’t want the BIB to know that it did indeed come from across the sea as he says he though it may have. Or if not and she did in fact put it there it could infer that an Egyptian ship crashed onto the island in the past and she found the game in the wreckage. The BIB asks Mother about other places and she tells him that the island is all there is. She says she came from her mother like he came from her and that her mother is dead. Her voice sounded a little cold when she said her mother was dead. The BIB asks what dead is and she says that dead is something he will never have to worry about. This leads me to believe that the BIB was who she had in mind to become the next guardian of the island but more on this later.

Running in circles Coming up tails

The boys are out hunting for boar and as the boar gets away, the boys hear it being killed by someone else. They hide and see three men in the jungle. They run back to tell Mother what they saw. Jacob says that the people looked like them but she says they are not like them. She says that they don’t belong on the island. She says that the boys and her are on the island for a reason. The BIB asks why they are there and she says that it isn’t time yet which is a statement we have heard before. Mother blindfolds the boys and takes them through the jungle. She tells them that she did know about the other people on the island and that they are dangerous. She didn’t tell the boys about them because she didn’t want the boys to be frightened. She says that they are dangerous because “they come, they fight, they destroy, they corrupt and it always ends the same.". This is a statement that ingrained itself into the BIB’s memory as it is the same thing he tells Jacob many years later when they see the Black Rock approaching the island.

Nobody said it was easy It's such a shame for us to part

AJ tells the boys that people hurt each other. The BIB asks if they could also hurt each other and she tells him that she made it so the two could never hurt each other. She removes their blindfolds and turns them around. We see a stream that goes into a cavern and emitting from inside is a warm bright light. Mother tells the boys that “this” is why they are on the island. She says the light is the warmest and brightest they have ever seen or felt. They are there to make sure no one ever finds it. The BIB says it is beautiful (remember that it was John Locke who said the smoke monster was beautiful when he saw it but Eko said what he saw was not beautiful) and seems very interested in the light. Mother says that inside every man is a little bit of the light but they always want more. Although they can’t take it they could put it out. She says if the light goes out on the island then the light will go out everywhere. She says that she can’t protect it forever and one of them will have to do it some day. Notice she says one of them will, not both of them. Was she trying to place a wedge between them?


Once again the boys are playing a game of Senet and Jacob tries to make a move (it seemed he tried to move sideways which made me wonder if it is Jacob and not the MIB that made the sideways universe) and the MIB says he can’t make that move. Jacob gets snarky about it and says that the BIB made up the rules. He tells Jacob that some day he can create a game and make up the rules for them to play by. Watch Jacob’s face when the BIB says this. Jacob seems very determined to do just that as people would later play his game on the island for a long time. The BIB sees Claudia but Jacob cannot see her. She tells the BIB not to be afraid. She tells him that Jacob cannot see her because she is dead. Is this the same ability Hurley has? She tells the BIB that she wants to show him something. She says she wants to show him where he came from. She takes him across the island and shows him the small village of people that she came to the island with. She says they came from across the sea and that there is much more to see. He says that his mother didn’t tell him that. Claudia tells the BIB that she is his mother.

Nobody said it was easy No one ever said it would be this hard

The BIB decides he is leaving and he asks Jacob to come with him. He tells Jacob they are leaving and they will never come back. He says they are going to live with the other people who, it turns out, are their own people. Jacob reminds the BIB that their mother said they were dangerous and the BIB says that their mother lied about everything. Jacob says they can’t leave because their mother loves them and the BIB tells Jacob that she isn’t their mother. Jacob attacks the BIB who doesn’t try to defend himself. Jacob kicks the BIB’s ass pretty good for them not being able to hurt each other. Mother tells Jacob to stop who is quick to tell her what the BIB is planning to do. The BIB tells her that he wants to leave the island and go home. He tells her that he knows she killed his real mother. The BIB asks Jacob one last time to go with him because they don’t belong there with her. Jacob says no. Mother tells the BIB that he will never be able to leave the island. He says that is not true and one day he will prove it. So begins the MIB’s long quest of trying to leave the island. It’s actually Jacob who eventually proves you can leave the island as we have seen him off of the island. Perhaps the rules are different for him though.


The next day, back on the beach, Mother tells Jacob that she doesn’t think the BIB will come back. She tells Jacob the truth about killing their real mother. She says that if she had allowed her to leave she would have taken them back to live with her people. She says that then Jacob would have become like them and she needs him to stay good. Jacob asks if he is good and she says he is. Jacob asks why she loves the BIB more than him. She says she loves them in different ways and then asks Jacob to stay with her. He says he will; for a while. LOST has always been about choices. The BIB had choices to make and so did Jacob. As we saw the BIB chose to go back and live with his people. Jacob chose to stay with Mother. As much as it pained her to choose to allow the BIB to go (because I think she could have stopped him from leaving if she wanted to), she allowed him to make his own decisions.

Questions of science Science and progress Do not speak as loud as my heart

More years pass and the boys are now adults. Jacob is now weaving a tapestry. He asks his mother if she is OK and she says she is just tired. Jacob goes to see his brother who is working in the village with his people. The two play a game of Senet. Jacob says that their mother never asks about the MIB who then catches a case of sour grapes and says “I’m sorry I asked about her.”. Jacob says he watches the MIB because he wants to know if their mother was right about the people. The MIB says that their mother may be crazy but she was definitely right about people being bad. MIB says he has spent the past thirty years with them and during that time he has learned that they are manipulative, greedy, untrustworthy, and selfish. He says that they are a means to an end and that for him they are a way off of the island. He tells Jacob they have discovered something very interesting about the island. He pulls out a dagger (the same one we saw him give to Richard to use to kill Jacob and later Dogan gave it to Sayid to use to kill UnLocke) and throws it. (The MIB throws the knife like Eko threw Charlie’s belt when they were in the hatch back during Live Together, Die Alone.) The dagger sticks to the concrete blocks around the well. MIB tells Jacob that there are places on the island where metal reacts funny this would have been the first time the MIB would have seen magnetism at work so it would seem like quite a discovery. They found the places while they were digging. MIB asks Jacob to come with him and asks what he is going to do when she dies. Jacob says she is not going to die. MIB tells Jacob everything dies. Jacob says that the island is his home and he doesn’t want to leave. An emotional MIB says the island isn’t his home. The MIB, who has had contact with people seems to despise them. Jacob, who doesn’t seem to get out much, looks for the good in people. Jacob is shown to be a little bit on the pathetic side in this episode instead of being the great all-knowing Jacob we thought he was.

Oh tell me you love me Come back and haunt me Oh and I rush to the start

Jacob goes back to his cave and tells Mother that the MIB has found a way off of the island. She goes to his village to see him. The MIB is down in the well (burning rocks? yeah I have no idea what he was doing) and feels her presence. He pulls his dagger and turns to see her standing in a bright light. She asks if she can join him and tells him she is worried. He says she should be worried. He tells her that he has looked for the cave with the light for thirty years but couldn’t find it anywhere on the island. He then thought that he could get to it another way. The people he lives with have seen the light as well. Mother isn’t too happy to hear that. He says they have an idea about what they can do with the light. She says they have no idea what they can do with the light which the MIB says is only because she wouldn’t tell him what to do with it. As the camera pulls back and we see more of the chamber they are in we see the frozen donkey wheel leaning against the wall. MIB pulls a rock from the wall and the warm light can be seen shining through the chamber from the other side. (I wondered why the light looks blue instead or yellow when Ben turns the wheel and why was it so cold in the chamber) MIB says he will attach the wheel to a system they are building to channel the water and the light together. He says when the wheel is turned he will be able to leave the island which is exactly what will happen many years later to Ben. Mother asks him how he knows all of this and he says because he is “special”. (Being special allows him to know that turning the wheel would shoot him out into a dessert in Tunisia? Maybe that’s not how the wheel originally worked but the MIB was right in theory at least.) She begs him not to go but he says he has to go because he doesn’t belong there. She says that this is goodbye and she hugs him and the MIB hugs her back. She says she is sorry and then she bashes his head into the wall. Before we leave this scene lets think about this in another way. Here we see that the MIB was a man of science and Jacob was the man of faith. It is John Locke, a man of faith, who the MIB gets to be his replacement.


Mother goes back to her cave and tells Jacob that it is time. She tells him that she let his brother go because she didn’t have a choice. Why did she lie about this? She takes Jacob to the cavern of light and tells him that he will be the one who will protect it now. She tells him that in the cavern with the light is life, death, and rebirth. She says that it is the “Source” or the heart of the island. This is something we have known but now we see it as something tangible. In six seasons we have watched as people were healed, brought back to life, and killed when the island was done with them. (It also might be the light in the briefcase we see in the movie Pulp Fiction but that’s a thought for another day) She says he is to never go down there, he did he would suffer a fate worse than death. How does she know? Because she already did it I think. She pulls out a bottle of wine and tells him to drink a glass of it. She says something over it in Latin which could have been something or just possibly it was all for show. She tells him that drinking it means he will now protect the island for as long as he is able to and then he will have to find his replacement. He tells her he doesn’t want to protect it and she says that someone had to. She says her time is over and it now has to be Jacob to protect the light. Jacob tells her that she originally wanted the MIB to protect it. He says that the only reason it is his job is because he is all she has left. She says it was always supposed to be Jacob and that she didn’t see it before (As her death approached she told Jacob that it was always supposed to be him as Sayid told Jack “It’s going to be you” right before he died.) and eventually he will see it as well. She says that he doesn’t have a choice. She tells Jacob to drink the wine and so he does. She tells him that now they are the same. What does that mean? Other than they are both immortal and in charge of protecting the island; I have no idea. I think that Jacob is right and originally the MIB was supposed to be the replacement. Mother said he was special and she even told him that he wouldn’t have to worry about what death was because she thought it would be him she would later share the wine of immortality with. It would appear that Mother has discovered that sometimes the candidate that looks best on paper isn’t always the one you get. Locke would have been the best candidate to take Jacob’s place but MIB made sure that didn’t happen.


The MIB wakes up outside of the well. The well is filled in, his village has been destroyed, and all of his people are dead. Looks like we have our first purge! He sees the Senet game in the ashes and pulls it out. He cries in anger. How did the well get filled in? How was all of the people killed and the village destroyed? Mother was the smoke monster before the MIB was I would guess. The first time we see her in the episode is similar to the way Eko say the monster reflected in the stream for a reason. She tells Jacob that going into the light would be a fate worse than death because she already did it. Later on we will find out just what that "fate worse than death" would be.


Jacob tells Mother that there is a storm coming (in more ways than one) and she agrees. She tells him to go get some firewood before it rains and tells him to be careful. She seems to know this is goodbye and the end for her. She goes back to the cave and she can tell that the MIB has been there. The loom is broken and the Senet game is on the floor of the cave. She picks up the black and white rocks as she is stabbed by the MIB. He asks her why she wouldn’t let him leave. She says because she loved him. She says "Thank you." as she dies. Did one of the brothers have to kill her while the other one took her place? Up until now the MIB was shown to be loving and caring. Jacob is shown to be the vengeful and wrathful brother. Jacob is also supposed to protect the island from people yet he thinks people are good and goes as far as bringing people to the island to prove this. Seems like a conflict of interest.


Jacob comes back to the cave with firewood and sees the MIB with the dagger dripping blood. “What did you do?”, he asks the MIB who tells Jacob to wait and listen. Again, Jacob attacks the MIB who again does nothing to defend himself. MIB tries to tell Jacob what their mother did to his village and his people. MIB tells Jacob that he can’t kill him that she made it that way. Jacob tells him he isn’t going to kill him. Jacob drags him to the cavern with the light. MIB asks why she took Jacob back to the light and he says because he has to protect it now. He tells MIB that if he wants to leave so bad than to go and smashes his head on a rock. The MIB floats into the cavern of light. The ground shakes and the smoke monster pours out of the cavern. Did we just watch Jacob create the smoke monster? I say in some form or another it already existed. What we do know is that Jacob and the MIB continued to age until about the age of 42. Jacob became ageless when he drank the wine and the MIB was forever to appear as he was at his death after he turned into the smoke monster.


Jacob finds his brothers body lying on some rocks by the stream. Jacob carries the body and places him in a cave. He places his mothers body next to him. Jacob puts the black and white rocks into a bag and leaves it with his dead brother. So MIB and Mother are “Adam and Eve”. Jacob cries as he says goodbye to his brother. So what did I learn from this episode? I learned that the MIB was telling us the truth when he said his mother was crazy and she made his life “difficult”. Saying that Jacob stole his humanity is true as well and while I can’t give him a free pass for what happened to the sub, I do give him (and I think I am expected to) some sympathy. I also don't believe there is a purely good being nor is there a complete evil entity either.


And now let the theories commence:

Jacob and his brother are both the candidate Mother needed. They are each a half of the perfect whole. Jacob is honest and good but that’s not enough to make a good candidate. The MIB tempers this with his ability to lie, to be deceitful, and to be able to do whatever is needed to get a job done. Maybe Mother pulled off her own long con by getting Jacob to take over for her as well as getting the MIB to release her from this life. She clearly didn’t want Jacob to go into the light but maybe she did want the MIB to go into the light. Did she need someone to take over the job of watching over the island as well as the job of the smoke monster? Did she split the responsibilities between the two since it would seem that each one was perfectly molded for each job?


So what the hell really happened in that cavern? I’m going with the idea that the little bit of light that was in the MIB went out which Mother said would happen if someone was to go into the cavern of light. She also said it would be a fate worse than death. Maybe turning into the smoke monster is what happens when the light goes out inside of someone. If the MIB/smoke monster is allowed to leave the island maybe the light goes out all over the world and would that mean all we would have is a world full of black smoke monsters? This is what will make Desmond special and so important. He can go into the light. He already has gone into the light when the hatch imploded. And when he did his light didn’t go out and he didn’t turn into a smoke monster.


Maybe Mother had intended for MIB to get thrown into the light all along. She introduces the light to both the boys, then tells Jacob that entering the light would be worse than death. She then provokes MIB to kill her by murdering all the red shirts. MIB kills her, which gives Jacob a motive to hate his brother. Jacob obligingly throws MIB into the light, an action entirely precipitated by his mother who told Jacob it would be a fate worse than death. Maybe Mother wasn't dead after MIB stabbed her, and she was only released and died after he was thrown into the light. I believe she was the smoke monster, and then MIB took her place. Maybe this was a ruse all along. Perhaps the candidate we are looking for is not a replacement for Jacob, but a replacement for MIB. The other thought is that maybe Mother wasn’t the smoke monster but she was able to summons it like Ben did back in season 4 which I believe happened in The Shape of Things to Come.


This episode raises some doubts about Jacob and MIB's morality and asks us to sympathize with MIB rather than with Jacob. While young MIB was smart, contemplative, independent, curious and the possessor of some kind of mysterious gift, young Jacob is shown as slow-witted, sheep-minded, prone to violent outbursts, with deep mommy issues and in the end, cruel and merciless. Time after time, MIB shared his plans and discoveries with Jacob and every time Jacob betrayed them to their mother or simply lashed out at him. Unsurprisingly, time after time, Jacob's followers (the Others, Widmore, Bram) have presumed of being the "good guys" while letting their actions speak the opposite. Interestingly, MIB shared his mother's belief in the inherent badness of people. What if their mother did not prefer MIB? She says she loves them differently, but what if we compare them to the biblical Jacob/Esau story? She seems to trick MIB and ultimate bless or gift Jacob, which is what happens in the biblical tale. As Esau was about to be blessed by his father, their mother tricks him and gets the father to bless Jacob. Here, MIB is about to finally get to the Source and change things so she hugs him and then smashes his head into a wall and goes on to bless Jacob.

I’m going back to the start

Lastly, maybe Jacob knew he was going to be killed so he created the alternative time line. In this time line he still lives and this is his loophole to get back to the normal time line.