"Across the Sea" Discussion

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the JoshMeister, Alex aka Congested, and other fellow LOST fans discuss Season 6 Episode 15, "Across the Sea".

Season 6 Episode 15 "Across the Sea":
Flashback:

• A woman (Claudia) comes out of water gasping - she's pregnant and wounded
• Another woman says in Latin, "You hurt?  Let me help you."
• Claudia and the other woman both speak Latin and English
• Woman: "If there are other people on the Island, I will find them."
• Claudia gives birth - "His name is Jacob."
• She didn't pick a name for the twin - Esau?
• In the Bible, Jacob and Esau were twins, but Esau was born first (not the other way around as in the LOST story of Jacob and his brother)
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esau
• I called him Esau in my notes since the young boy was never named in the show and I needed something to call him other than Man in Black since he wasn't a man.  In the script he's called "Boy in Black" according to Kenton Duty, the actor who played young Jacob (see interview link in spoiler section; some of the interview may contain spoilers)
• Woman kills Claudia with a rock
• How does she expect to feed the babies without their mother's milk?
• "boar milk" -kane
• This must be the mother that the Man in Black was telling Kate about
• Her name is apparently just "Mother" in the script; we never get her name in the episode, either
   
• Esau teaches Jacob how to play a game - it has light and dark pieces like Backgammon, the game Locke taught Walt
• This young Jacob, by the way, is the boy that the MIB saw in the jungle in previous episodes
• Why did the MIB see young Jacob, rather than seeing Jacob at the age when he died?
    
• Woman: "Do you love me, Jacob?  Then tell me what happened."
   
• Woman to Esau: "Jacob doesn't know how to lie.  You're... special."
• She says she left the game for Esau, refuting his belief that it came from "across the sea" (the episode title)
• Woman: "There is nowhere else.  The Island is all there is."
• Esau: "What's dead?"
• Fake Mother: "Something you will never have to worry about."
• Why do Jacob and the MIB seem to be (mostly) immortal?
• Was Mother lying, or wrong?  MIB looked like he died when he became the smoke monster; his body was left behind, and Jacob buried him.  Is he supposed to not be dead, even though he no longer has a body?
• Is Mother currently immortal because she's the current "Jacob" (Island protector)?
• Mother doesn't seem to be immortal because she was impaled by MIB
• Jacob was immortal but was impaled by Ben because MIB found a loophole; if Mother was immortal like Jacob, what was the loophole MIB used to kill her?
   
• Jacob and Esau chase a boar - a scene straight out of the book "Lord of the Flies" which Sawyer has mentioned before
• Natives kill the boar
   
• Mother: "We are here for a reason."
• "What reason?"
• Mother: "It's not time yet. [She gives into pressure from Esau.] Come with me"
• Mother: "They come, they fight, they destroy, they corrupt, it always ends the same."
• Same line as MIB used in Season 5 finale
• Mother: "I've made it so you can never hurt each other."
• How?
• Was this a lie?  Jacob was able to bloody his face, and threw him into the light which seems to have (apparently, sort of) killed MIB
• Glowing tunnel in the stream
• Mother: "This is the reason we're here.  Don't go in there."
• Mother: "A light.  The warmest, brightest light you've ever seen or felt.  And we must make sure that no one ever finds it."
• Mother: "A little bit of this light is inside every man.  And they always want more."
• Mother: "If the light goes out here, it goes out everywhere."
• "there's a theory, that's it's the garden of eden down there,lol" -kane
• She says "It will have to be one of you" who protects the light forever
   
• Playing game
• Esau: "You can't do that Jacob.  It's against the rules.  One day you can make up a new game and everyone else will have to follow your rules."
• Esau sees a manifestation of his real mother, Claudia, but Jacob can't see her
• Hurley can do this too
• Esau is "special" -- and Jacob is not?  Esau has communion with the Island and can see dead people --congested
   
• Claudia leads Esau across the Island to the natives' village
• "They came here 13 years ago.  The day before you were born."
• Claudia tells Esau the truth that he comes from "across the sea" (the episode title again)
   
• Fake Mother tells Esau "You will never be able to leave this Island."
• Esau vows to prove it one day, and goes off to be with the other people
• "i wonder how mib introduced himself to that camp. hey hows it going i been wondering around in the jungle for 13 years and taught myself english" -mibmadedonkeywheel
• Fake Mother tells Jacob she couldn't let him go with Claudia and her people because "I needed you to stay good."
• Jacob: "Then why do you love him more than me?"
• Woman asks Jacob to stay with her, and he says "Yes.  For a while."
• At the time I wondered: Does he plan to go with the other people when he leaves her?
       
• Older Jacob building a tapestry on a loom, still with his fake mother
• Jacob watches MIB with the other people and plays the game with him away from the others
• Jacob frequently watches and visits MIB
• MIB says he found a way off the Island and throws a dagger at a magnetic well
• Jacob doesn't want to leave the Island because it's his home, and MIB says "Well it's not mine"
   
• MIB is a blacksmith, making weapons
• Fake Mother visits him
• MIB says he's searched for the light for 30 years, and figured out another way to reach it
• Esau pulls a stone out of the wall and the light shines through onto a wheel
• The wheel (apparently the frozen donkey wheel) is part of "a system that channels the water and the light.  I'm going to turn it and when I do I'm finally going to leave this place."
• "the light went out so it got cold" hence the freezing of the wheel -mibmadedonkeywheel
• "the light can't go out" -kane
• Mother said earlier: "If the light goes out here, it goes out everywhere."
• Fake Mother bashes MIB's head against the wall near the light opening
• Was she trying to kill him to stop him from leaving the Island?
       
• Fake Mother wakes up Jacob and said "It's time."
• Mother: "You're going to protect it now."
• Jacob: "What's down there?"
• Mother: "Life, death, rebirth, its the source, the heart of the Island.  Just promise me, no matter what you do, you won't ever go down there."
• "before jacob and his brother there was no balance. she said it herself the light is life, death and rebirth  all in one. i think now the light is only life and rebirth" -mibmadedonkeywheel
• Jacob: "Would I die?"
• Mother: "It would be worse than dying, Jacob.  Much worse."
• How does she know?  Were there already smoke monsters prior to the MIB?
• She pulls out a bottle, says something in Latin, and gives it to Jacob to drink
• She says he'll protect this place as long as he can
• Mother: "Please, take the cup and drink" - Biblical reference?
• Taking the cup is a metaphor for committing to a task or duty, especially a difficult one
• Jacob was uneasy about taking the cup, similar to Jesus:
• Luke 22:42 "Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done."
• Mother: "Now you and I are the same"
• Both protectors of the Island
• This may also be another scriptural reference/metaphor.  See this passage in which Jesus prays to the Father that the disciples may become "one" ("the same" in Mother's terms) "even as we are one" (being perfectly united in purpose; in the case of Jacob and Mother, their purpose is to be protectors of the light):
• John 17:21-23 "That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.  And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one..."
   
• MIB wakes up above ground, back of head has blood on it
• The well has been covered up with dirt and rocks, and there's a fire elsewhere on the Island - all his people are dead and their structures are burning
• How did Fake Mother kill all those Other People?!  Is she a smoke monster?  
• "i think she was a smoke monster" -kane
• Does being a smoke monster explain how she knows what entering the light will do to you?
• She can't be a smoke monster because MIB killed her by impaling her - MIB can't be killed that way as we know from when Sayid tried - no blood
• "sayid was a candidate. maybe he [Sayid] couldn't kill him [MIB]" -kane
• However, Bram shot MIB and he didn't bleed then either, and Bram was not a candidate
• Maybe there's another smoke monster on the Island, and that's how she knew what going into the light would do, and also how the other people died
• MIB recovers his game board and gets very angry
   
• Mother finds her camp, loom, etc. destroyed and Esau's game is there
• She opens it and finds a white and black stone.  She examines the black one and is impaled from behind by MIB
• Is she Eve from the caves?  Then who's Adam?  (We find out later)
• Jacob throws the MIB into the light and he comes out as a blast of black smoke - the Smoke Monster
   
• Jacob later sees MIB's dead body at the stream and brings it to the caves next to his fake mother's body - Esau is "Adam" from the caves
• So he no longer has a body - this must explain what the MIB meant when he said Jacob had taken away his humanity
• This may also explain why the MIB can't be shot/stabbed… although he does still seem to have some physicality because he can hold guns, he carried Richard and later Sun, etc.
• Flash to when Jack and Kate found the bodies and the stones in the bag
• They didn't show that Jack guessed they had been decomposing for something like 50 years
• "the episode was supposed to be named 23 A.D." -mibmadedonkeywheel -- if that was the original title of the episode that would mean it's been nearly 2000 years but Damon Lindelof said in an interview (linked in the spoiler section because the interview may contain spoilers) "it's several thousand" years

Other questions, comments, and theories discussed in the chat:

• Did the smoke monster exist prior to MIB being thrown into the light?
• Looked to me like the MIB became the smoke monster immediately after entering the light
• "like it took his mind maybe" -mibmadedonkeywheel
• Very interesting theory!  This makes sense because we know the smoke monster has John Locke's memories.  Perhaps the smoke monster already existed before, but it just took the MIB's memories
          
• Alex (congested) thinks that the MIB/smoke monster wants to get into the alternate timeline where there is no cork because the Island is sunk
   
• What happened to the light in the alternate timeline?  It's under the ocean with the Island, or was it extinguished?
• Mother: "A little bit of this light is inside every man.  And they always want more."
• Mother: "If the light goes out here, it goes out everywhere."
• So if the light goes out, what happens?  Everybody dies?  Becomes corrupt?
• Did the light go out in the flash-sideways timeline when the Island sunk?
   
• "now the question is who found out the pylons would keep smokey out" -mibmadedonkeywheel
   
• "i just wish I knew half the stuff she knew. seems like there was a lot she didn't share with Jacob when turning over the job." -cliftongibbons
   
• "i bet locke will come from the sideways and battle mib to see the light" -mibmadedonkeywheel
   
• "oh one more thing when mib went to live with the camp he learned greed,mistrust and all the other bad things from them. and it was like their mother knew that he had to take in all that bad energy. jacob stayed pure" -mibmadedonkeywheel

Screenshots and Easter Eggs:

• Congested's alternate version of the scene where Jacob buried Mother and Man in Black (with Jack, Kate, and Locke clips cut out): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bn0wo5P4x30

SPOILERS:

Preview for next week's episode:

• Various clips of Jack, Ben, Sun and Jin, the temple, clips from the flash-sideways (James punching the mirror), MIB breaking the bottle, Locke (both in casket and alive)
• The Doors song "The End" plays
• "The End" is the title of the final episode of the series finale according to The Official LOST Podcast
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTMGCvPeY18 

Geronimo Jack's Beard:

• After Sayid tells Jack that Desmond is in the well, he also says "It's going to be you, Jack."  According to GJB, "you" is underlined in the script.  When I watching this scene, I assumed that Sayid meant that Jack would be the one to save Desmond.  However, Beth Shady (aka Sidekick22) from GJB points out that in the script, the stage direction just after this line says "And Jack's just as confused by that as we are."  Jorge Garcia and Beth Shady both believe that Sayid meant that Jack was the candidate who would replace Jacob.  This theory would seem to fit with the episode title ("The Candidate") as well as the centricity of the episode (Jack-centric), even though Jack called Locke "a candidate" for reconstructive spinal surgery in the flash-sideways.  Perhaps the remark about Locke being "a candidate" was a red herring, and the candidate is Jack.  On the other hand, how would Sayid have known that Jack would be the candidate to replace Jacob?  Sayid was infected and on the MIB's side.
• Alex (congested) doesn't think Jack replacing Jacob is going to be the main ending of the show

The Official LOST Podcast:

• Carlton Cuse said the issue of Kate apparently not being a candidate will be addressed in the show.
   
• Not all people who are dead on the show are manifestations of the Man in Black.  Hurley sees dead people on a regular basis because he has a special ability, so he can see genuine dead people such as Isabella.
   
• Not all of the "rules" (e.g. Ben and Widmore's rules) will be revealed.  Carlton Cuse: "Some of them will become clear.  Others you as an audience member are gonna get to speculate about after the show is over."
• Maybe this has to do with the rules that Esau said in this episode that Jacob would get to make up
   
• Carlton made a casual comment about the Egyptians building the Taweret (four-toed foot) statue, but Damon seemed surprised so this may or may not have actually been decided by the writers
   
• Next week's episode is titled "What They Died For" and Damon said that after watching "The Candidate": "Now you understand, perhaps, what that title means."
  

Interviews:

• HitFix interview with executive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse:
• http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/whats-alan-watching/posts/exclusive-interview-lost-producers-damon-lindelof-and-carlton-cuse-talk-across-the-sea
   
• Comic News Insider interview with Michael Emerson ("Ben"):
• http://www.comicnewsinsider.com/2010/05/episode-258-michael-emerson-returns-part-1.html
• Ben has scenes with Widmore this season
• Flash-sideways?  Flashback?  Or just on the Island?
• Alex (congested) speculates that Ben and Widmore see each other on the Island - maybe that's where Ben and Richard have been
• Michael Emerson also said that he filmed a 14-minute epilogue that's apparently going to be on the Season 6 DVD
   
• Lost Causes interview with Kenton Duty ("young Jacob"):
• http://www.blogtalkradio.com/lostcauses/2010/05/13/lost-causes-ab-aeterno
• The actor said he will be back on the show in at least one scene with a number of the main actors
• Based on Congested's recollection of the interview, it sounds like Ben's group may reunite with Jack's group... but how does the young Jacob character tie in with them?

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