Lost – S6 Epis 13 & 14 “The Candidate” and “Across The Sea”

Observations, theories, questions and points for discussion are in bold.

Previously, on Lost.

And now…

In Los Angeles, Locke wakes up in the hospital after being run down by Desmond, and operated on by Jack. Jack tells Locke that he is a candidate for a procedure that may restore feeling to his legs. Locke refuses. Locke’s fiance arrives and thanks Jack for saving Locke.

On the island, Jack wakes up on the beach, in a boat. Sayid is there. He welcomes Jack to Hydra Island and tells him, “At least you didn’t have to paddle.”

Oh, Sayid got jokes still?

On another part of the island, Widmore’s peeps march Sun, Jin, Hurley, Kate, Crazy Claire, Sawyer, and Lapidus to the bear cages. Sawyer refuses to get in and snatches a gun. Widmore shows up with a gun of his own and puts it to Kate’s head. He says that Kate’s name isn’t on the list so he has no problem popping a cap in her ass. Sawyer, having been to the cave and seen the names that are crossed out, knows this is true and drops the gun. After they’re in the cages, Widmore tells them he’s doing this for their own good.

Yeah, Widmore, my Mom used to say that before she beat my ass and it really didn’t make me feel any better.

In Los Angeles, Jack shows up at Bernard’s dental practice. He wants to look at Locke’s medical records. Bernard did some emergency dental surgery on Locke. When Jack explains that he met Locke on a flight from Australia, Bernard informs him he was on the flight too. Jack swoons from the coincidence. Bernard won’t tell him Locke’s business, but he tells him that another man was in the accident as well and gives Jack the name: Anthony Cooper. He tells Jack he hopes he finds what he’s looking for.

Is it me or does Bernard already seem enlightened? Did Desmond get to him already? He said that like a man who has already found what he’s looking for.

On the island, Sayid explains to Jack that there was a mortar attack that took out most of Locke’s followers. The rest scattered into the jungle. It’s just Sayid, Locke, and Jack now. Locke shows up and tells Jack that they need to rescue his people from Widmore. Jack is down with that, but says he’s still not going to leave the island. Locke says that’s fine, he still hopes to change Jack’s mind, but for now his friends DO want to leave and he needs Jack’s help in gaining their trust. Jack wants to know why he should trust Evil Locke and he explains that he could kill him and all of his friends, and ain’t shit he can do about it, but he hasn’t.

O-KAY.

We know this isn’t true. He can’t kill the candidates.

In the nasty ass bear cages where Sawyer and Kate did the nasty that first time, Sawyer tells Kate that her name was crossed out in the cave so that means she’s not needed. Kate, for once, is speechless.

Anyone have a guess as to what Kate did or didn’t do to knock herself out of the running?

In another cage, Sun and Jin reconnect. She learns that he saw pics of their daughter on Sun’s camera left with the Ajira stuff. She returns his wedding ring and then all hell breaks loose…

The power goes out, the sonar pylon thingies that keep the smoke monster out are useless and here comes Old Smokey. He starts tossing Widmore’s men around and chases others into the jungle. Kate tries to reach the cage keys that are on a dead man’s hip, but can’t. Lapidus starts kicking at one of the doors. Jack shows up and unlocks the cages.

“What are you doing here?” Kate asks.

Jack nods towards the jungle where the smoke monster is fucking shit up. “I’m with him.”

It’s now morning and the gang is trekking through the jungle. Jack tells them he’ll take them to the plane, but he’s not going with them. Sayid shows up and finds about 2,389 guns pointed at him. Jack tells everyone to lower their weapons – Sayid is with them now.

He is?

Sayid tells them that they need to go. Locke is waiting.

In Los Angeles, Jack shows up at an old folks home and wants to see Anthony Cooper. Locke’s fiance, Helen, arrives and tells Jack to leave well enough alone. He won’t. She takes him to Anthony who is pretty much a vegetable who can’t even wipe his own drool. She tells Jack that he’s Locke’s father.

Can I just say: in flashbacks, flash forwards, or sideways world, fuck Anthony Cooper!

On the island, Locke approaches the plane. Widmore’s men open fire on him. They are either sucky shots or the bullets bounce off. Locke snaps one guy’s neck and shoots the other. Then he takes his watch. Damn.

Locke boards the plane and finds it rigged with explosives.

When the gang arrives at the plane, Locke tells them that Widmore knew they were going for the plane and knew that Locke would kill his men. He rigged the plane (he shows them the C4 and puts it in his backpack) and wanted them all on it so they’d die. The plane is no longer safe, they have to take the submarine.

As they head off, Crazy Claire apologizes to Locke. He says he understands why she went with them.

Goodness, sometimes it’s like he really IS Locke.

Sawyer pulls Jack aside and tells him that if he doesn’t want to leave, that’s fine with him, but he doesn’t trust “that thing” (Locke) one bit and he needs Jack’s help in making sure Locke doesn’t get on the sub. Jack is all, “You saw what he did? How the hell am I supposed to do that?!” Sawyer tells him to get Locke into the water and he’ll take care of the rest.

Knowing how everything played out, I have to say, I don’t know what Sawyer’s plan could have possibly been.

In Los Angeles, Locke is talking in his sleep at the hospital. Jack hears him say, “Push the button” and “I wish you believed me.” (The latter is what he wrote in his suicide note to Jack.)

Claire comes to the hospital looking for Jack. He gets an Apollo bar from the vending machine (Dharma candy!) and they sit down to talk. Christian specifically wanted her to have a music box and she wondered if Jack knew why. Jack looks at the music box and says he has no idea. She asks how he died and Jack tells her he drank himself to death in Sydney. He mentions flying back with his body only to find that the airline lost it. Claire tells Jack that she just flew in from Sydney and they realize they were on the same flight.

I’m sorry, but Jack doesn’t look nearly as WHAT THE FUCK? as he should.

He asks to see the music box again and she opens it. It plays that creepy ass song she was singing in the temple and the song that played after the smoke monster fucked shit up there. She goes to leave and Jack offers to let her stay with him… because they’re family.

Also, maybe, he’s starting to realize the what the fuckness of the situation.

On the island, the sub seems unguarded, but they’re taking no chances. The gang quickly hustles to get aboard. Sawyer and Lapidus go first and put a gun to the captain’s head. They instruct him to fire it up and then signal to the rest it’s safe to board. As they head off, Locke switches backpacks with Jack and Jack doesn’t notice.

Locke asks Jack if he’s sure he won’t go. Jack says yes. Locke says whoever told him he needed to stay, had no idea what they were talking about. Jack is all, “John Locke told me I needed to stay, bitch!” and pushes Locke in the water.  Widmore’s men show up and shoot Kate.

Everyone starts shooting and Sayid and Jack get Kate in the sub.

Locke climbs out of the water and starts fucking shit up. Bullets are definitely bouncing off his ass. Sawyer goes back up for Claire, but when Locke advances on him, he realizes he has to leave without her. When the sub starts to leave, Claire makes a run for it, but Locke stops her telling her that she doesn’t want to be on that sub.

On the sub, the gang discovers the C4 hooked up to the watch Locke stole and it’s in Jack’s backpack… well, Locke’s backpack. They realize they’ve been puh-layed.

Sayid is his old self again and explains the goings-on of the bomb. He says they could possibly disarm it by removing two wires at the same time. Jack tells Sawyer, who rushes to pull the wires, that they should wait. Locke can’t kill them and he wants them to fuck with the bomb and technically kill themselves. He says if they do nothing, everything will be okay. Sawyer ain’t tryna hear that shit. He pulls the wires. The timer stops momentarily, then speeds up.

No time for “I told you so.” Sawyer has radioed for Lapidus to have the captain raise the sub, but it wasn’t raising fast enough. They’re screwed.

Sayid tells Jack that there’s a well near the camp they just left and Desmond is in it. Locke wants him dead which means that Jack is going to need him.

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because it’s going to be you, Jack.”

Yes, I believe it’s going to be Jack, too.

Sayid takes the bomb and runs off, trying to put as much distance between the explosion and his friends. And my heart aches as he blows up. No, really, I am profoundly sad.

The explosion knocks doors off hinges and Lapidus is taken out. Jack instructs Hurley to take Kate to the surface. (Really?) Hurley says he has to go after Sayid and Jack tells him, “There is no Sayid.”

The sub starts to take on water and Sun is pinned by a cabinet. Jin, Sawyer and Jack remove it, but then Sawyer is knocked out. Sun is also still pinned from the waist down by pipes.  Jin tells Jack to save Sawyer and he will save Sun. They share a look that says they both know this isn’t going to happen.

Jin can’t save Sun and she tells him to go, but he refuses. He tells her in Korean, “I won’t leave you. I will never leave you again.”

Then I proceed to lose my shit. Big old baby sobs.

They declare their love and kiss. The submarine is completely filled with water and the last we see of Sun and Jin are their hands as they unlock in death.

Fuck you, Lost. Fuck you for real.

In Los Angeles, Locke is being released from the hospital. Jin walks by him on his way to see Sun in her room. *SOB*

Jack stops Locke and asks him to reconsider. He tells him he knows about what happened with this Dad. Locke says he had just gotten his pilots license and took his Dad up in a plane and it crashed.

I am so not into this storyline right now. GET BACK TO THE FUCKING ISLAND!

Long story short, Locke won’t do the surgery and it ends with Jack telling Locke, “I wish you believed me.”

Creepy.

NOW BACK ON THE ISLAND,

Jack comes ashore with Sawyer who is coughing and will apparently be just fine. Hurley and Kate are there. Jack tells them that they didn’t make it. Hurley breaks down and then I break down again.

I can’t believe we lost Sayid, Sun and Jin, but Kate’s useless, non-candidate ass is still around.

Jack looks out at the ocean and cries too.

At the dock, Locke says the sub has sunk and Claire asks if they’re all dead. Locke says, “Not all of them.” He leaves to “finish what he started.”

Episode 14 – “Across the Sea.”

A woman washes up on the island. She’s very pretty and very pregnant. Another woman finds her and takes her to a cave where she feeds her and tends to her wounds.

The pregnant woman’s name is Claudia. She says there were others on her ship that crashed. She asks the island woman how she got to the island. She tells Claudia, “The same way you did. By accident.”  She won’t answer anymore questions and Claudia goes into labor. The island woman helps her deliver a baby boy that Claudia names Jacob. Claudia then delivers ANOTHER baby boy, but she only picked one name.

I hate when that happens.

The island woman wraps Jacob in white fabric and the other baby in black. Jacob is all peaceful and cute. The other baby is crying and scrunchy face.

Talk about foreshadowing.

Claudia asks to see her son (yes, one because she’d already gotten a peek at Jacob) and the island woman apologizes before beating her head in.

Years later, the boy in black finds a “game” on the beach. Jacob shows up and asks how he knows how to play it and the boy in black responds, “I just do.” He agrees to teach Jacob how to play as long as Jacob won’t tell their mother.

Of course, as soon as Jacob gets back to the cave he drops a dollar worth of dimes.

At the beach, the mother tells the boy in black that Jacob can’t lie. He’s not like him. He wants to know what the hell that’s supposed to mean. She tells him that he’s special. He questions where they came from and she tells him that he came from her and she came from her mother who is dead. He wants to know what dead is and she tells him it is something he’ll never have to worry about.

Jacob and the boy in black are hunting a boar when they come across other men who kill the boar. They rush to tell their mother who explains that they must never seek these “others” out. She says that people come to the island and they fight and destroy and it always ends the same. She leads them through the jungle blindfolded. They ask if people can hurt each other, does that mean they can hurt each other. She explains that she made it so that they could never hurt each other.

She leads them to a waterfall with a tunnel of light at the bottom. She explains that it is the warmest, brightest, light they’ll ever feel. A piece of that light is in everyone. They have to protect the light from other people because if people try to take it, to get more light, it can go out and if it goes out there, it goes out everywhere. She tells them that one day one of them will have to protect the light.

Personally, I think it looks like a whole bunch of people pissed in the pool.

The boys are in the jungle playing the game (with white and black stones) and Jacob complains about the rules. The boy in black tells him that one day he can have his own games where he can make up his own rules.

The boy in black sees Claudia in the distance, but Jacob can’t. He tells Jacob he’ll be right back and follows her. She shows him the camp where the “others” are living. She tells him that they came to the island 13 years ago the day before he was born. She says they came on a ship that crashed and that there are many things from across the sea. He came from across the sea. She also tells him that she is his mother.

The boy in black creeps into the cave at night and convinces Jacob to follow him. He tells Jacob they’re leaving and repeats everything Claudia told him. Jacob flips out and starts beating his ass. The mother shows up and is confronted with what Claudia told the boy in black. She tells him that no matter what he was told, he will never be able to leave the island. He doesn’t believe her and says that one day he will prove it.

On the beach, Jacob asks if what his brother said was true and the mother confesses. She says she had to stop their real mother from taking them to her people because they wouldn’t remain good and she needed them to. Jacob asks if he’s so good, why does she love the other son more. She says she loves them in different ways. She then asks if Jacob will stay with her and he says yes.

As an adult, Jacob watches his brother as he lives with the others. They meet to play the board game and he wants to know why Jacob watches them. Jacob says he wants to know if what their mother says about the others is right. He says that they don’t seem to be so bad. The brother says that he has lived with them for 30 years and they are greedy, manipulative, and selfish. Jacob asks why he lives with them if they’re so bad. The brother explains that they’re a means to an end.

He tosses a knife at a well and it sticks to it. The brother tells Jacob that there are smart men living amongst them that are curious about how things work. They find places on the island where metal reacts strangely, and when they do, they dig. Jacob says he doesn’t want to leave the island. His brother asks what he’s going to do when the mother dies because everything dies. When Jacob returns to the cave, he tells the mother that the brother says he finally figured out a way to leave the island.

She goes to their camp and waits till the others leave. She goes down the well and finds the brother. He removes some rock from the wall and reveals some of the light. He explains that they built a wheel attached to a system that triggers the water and light and they’re going to make a big opening in the wall and turn the wheel. Then, he’ll be able to go. She wants to know how he knows all of this and he says, “Because I’m special.”

She hugs him goodbye, then apologizes before ramming his head in the wall.

She returns to the cave, wakes Jacob, and takes him back to the light – this time letting him see how to get there.

She tells him that the light is the source, the heart of the island. Light is down there. Life is down there. Death is down there. Rebirth is down there.

There’s a lot going on down there!

She makes him promise that he won’t ever go down there. She said if he does, it would be much worse than dying. She chants over a glass of wine (I think it’s wine) and tells him he has to drink it in order to accept the responsibility of protecting the island for as long as he can… then he’ll have to find a replacement.

Jacob don’t wanna! He knows that she wanted it to be the other brother all along, but she says it was always supposed to be Jacob – she sees that now. Besides, he doesn’t really have a choice. He drinks and she tells him they are now the same.

The brother wakes up at the well which she has filled in. How the hell did she do that? Also, she burned down the others’ camp, killing them all. He flips out and goes all crazy-eyed.

The mother and Jacob are headed back to their cave when he comments it’s about to rain. She tells him he should gather firewood before it does. He says he’ll see her back home, but she knows he won’t. When she gets to the cave, she finds it trashed. The brother stabs her in the back.

He wants to know why she wouldn’t let him leave and she says because she loves him. She thanks him, then dies. Jacob comes back and starts kicking the brother’s ass again. Apparently they can hurt each other, just not kill each other. He drags him to the waterfall and he tries to get Jacob to listen to reason saying their mother killed everyone at his camp.

Jacob tells his brother if he wants to find the light and leave the island, he can go. He pushes him in the water and the brother is knocked out by a rock. His body floats into the light. A few moments later, the smoke monster comes roaring out. Jacob follows the stream and finds his brother’s body. He carries it back to the cave and places it with the mother’s body. He says, “Goodbye, brother.”

Now we know who the two skeletons found back in season 1 are. We also know how the satchel with the two stones got there.

First, let’s talk about some stuff that I’ve neglected since I’ve been too busy to recap every episode the next day:

• It seems near-death experiences in the sideways world is one way to trigger the … let’s call it “awakening.” I say one way because Libby and Hurley weren’t in any danger, but just seeing each other, spending time, and then kissing seemed to be enough for them to get flashes of their prior (true) lives. It seems to work the same way on the island as well. Did Juliet get flashes of her “sideways” life before dying? Is this how she knew to tell Sawyer via Miles that “it worked?”
• Since it’s getting late in the game I guess we’re to assume that Desmond is off doing his spiritual duty and setting people on their true paths. These people were meant to be in each other’s lives. Was he going to hurt Hurley, but didn’t once Hurley confessed to his strange meeting with Libby?
• We finally have an explanation to the whispers heard around the island. They are heard right before a dead person appears. This seems right, but doesn’t explain why they were heard by Shannon right before she and Sayid saw Walt.
• Now that we know what the smoke monster is and what his motivations are, I think it clears up its two encounters with Mr. Eko. He seems to have spent all of this time trying to figure out a loophole around the rule that says he can’t kill Jacob and killing Jacob is the key for him to leave the island. I think he spent all this time trying to find his own “candidates.” Someone who could get close enough to Jacob to kill him. We saw him try this back in the 1800′s with Richard and it didn’t work. But when did he try? After “scanning” Richard and realizing what he’d have to do (or I should say, who he’d have to appear as – Richard’s dead wife, Isabella) in order to manipulate him. He played off of Richard’s love of his dead wife and his deep religious beliefs. I think when he first encountered Eko, he “saw” (as those of us with TiVo slo-mo capabilities did) what kind of man Eko was/had been. I think he thought he would be able to manipulate Eko which is why he didn’t kill him. Remember, he also didn’t kill Locke after their first encounter back in season 1. This is what led Locke to foolishly believe he’d be okay if Jack had just let old smokey pull him down the hole back in season 3′s finale. Once he realized that Eko had indeed become a righteous man (after appearing as Eko’s brother), he killed him.
• The latter part of my above point puts serious doubts on my theory that EVERYONE that has been brought to that island (and we know now that the only way to go is to be brought there by Jacob) was a candidate. He spent centuries trying to find just the right replacement. Someone that would protect the island at all costs. If Evil Locke can’t kill the final six (now three) candidates, then he shouldn’t have been able to kill the pilot, Eko, and the numerous others he has killed over the past six seasons. But if they’re not candidates, then why were their names on the lighthouse wheel and on the wall?

The Candidate:

• I have a tiny complaint on how Sayid has been treated this season. I’m okay with him becoming infected. I’m even okay with (somewhat) him dying. I mean, it’s the end and this has been a life and death show. To think that everyone we like was going to make it to the end (Hello! Boone, Shannon, Charlie, Eko, anyone?) would just be plain naive. But I do feel like his storyline this season has been rushed. He was infected after being dunked in the waters of the temple, I get that. He went all “I will do your evil bidding to see my lady love again” and I get that too. Then he spent two episodes or so being a zombie. He sat by and watched as Claire almost slit Kate’s throat. After one come to Jesus meeting with Desmond, he proved that he still had free will and though I love that he did the right thing before and at the end, I wish we would have a little acknowledgment of that amongst his friends. I think that if he had explained what had happened to him it would have made it so that maybe, just maybe, Sawyer wouldn’t have pulled those wires. Maybe, just maybe, if Jack had told EVERYONE about his experience with Richard and the dynamite and the lighthouse, Sawyer would have had more faith. Maybe, just maybe, if Hurley would have told EVERYONE about Jacob coming to him, off-island, and giving him the guitar case, Sawyer would have realized there is something bigger at play… and not have pulled the wire.
• Sun not invoking their daughter’s name surprised me, but I understand it. She knew her husband and she knew his mind was made up. You think he didn’t remember they had a daughter he never met? Of course he remembered. Why voice the guilt he was already feeling in his last moments alive?
• It should be very obvious to everyone right now that Evil Locke didn’t need all of the candidates to leave, he needed them dead. I told Donny weeks ago that the only reason it made sense for him to need them all to leave is that there would be no more candidates. But it makes MORE sense that would need them to be dead.
• He’s lucky his plan semi-worked. If Kate hadn’t been shot, no one would have had cause to look in the backpack and tamper with the bomb. If Jack was right (and I think he was) it would have never gone off.
• OKAY, you know what? I just answered my own question from above! EVERYONE that comes to the island is a candidate! And everyone that is left on the island WAS a candidate. Like, Kate. She was one, her name is crossed off, and Locke can kill her. Widmore can kill her. Anyone can kill her (someone, please kill her!) because she is no longer a candidate. What we need to figure out is how do you get your name crossed off without dying? Were people like Eko, the pilot, etc. already crossed off so that made them fair game for old smokey? If so, what did they do or didn’t do to no longer be eligible?

Across the Sea

• I think that the woman who raised Jacob and the brother in black (not be confused with brotha in black) was “brought” there by the person she eventually replaced. She knew good and damn well there was life across the sea because that is where she came from. Telling the boys otherwise kept them from getting curious.
• REVELATION!!! Okay, so what if when Jacob put his brother into the light he didn’t turn into the smoke monster, but RELEASED it? Hear me out: she already warned that the light was many things. Not just good things. It was EVERYTHING. And that to try to fuck with it could put it out and then it would go out everywhere. What if putting his brother in there (his brother that had just become a murderer) unleashed this smoke of evil which has the power to look like any dead person on the island (what I’ve been saying since season 1) and it chose to look like the brother to torment Jacob, the one thing keeping it from being unleashed into the world. It just so happens that it’s goal is the same as Jacob’s dead brother – to leave. When it said to him (at the end of season 5) “Do you know how badly I want to kill you?” it wasn’t his brother, but the evil that knows it needs Jacob to die in order to leave. It looked like his brother that day, but who is to say it hasn’t looked like Claudia, or their mother that raised them, or any other dead person on the island, fucking with Jacob over the years? Just a thought. Of course, it could be as cut and dry as it appears: the brother (who wasn’t a bad guy until the moment he killed his mother) was knocked into the light and it took the evil out of him and unleashed it onto the island. The evil part of him still wants to leave. That hasn’t changed and now it will do anything, to anyone, to make that happen. What do you think?
• Notice how EVERYONE on this show is neither all good or all bad? Think about it: if you were an Oceanic 815 survivor and made a list of those you wanted to hang out with, those you trusted to help you survive or get off the island, everyone on that list has some dirt. Charlie was awesome, but Charlie also knocked Sun out to make everyone think there was another others’ attack. Sawyer can be a hero. He looks out for women and children (took a bullet for Walt, took care of Aaron when Claire disappeared, and jumped off the helicopter to make it the Oceanic 6 instead of 7), but he also killed Anthony Cooper in cold blood. Kate is a murderer. Sayid is a murderer AND a torturer. But they were all candidates. There is nothing saying that this is necessarily all about ALL GOOD VS. ALL EVIL. Hell, Jacob killed his brother AFTER he became the island’s protector. I think it’s about who can do the job, at all costs. You don’t need to be the most good to be Jacob’s successor. That said, I think it will be Jack who isn’t the MOST good of everyone left… that title definitely falls on Hurley.
• I think the final ISLAND scene will involve Jack in the role of Jacob, the island protector, making peace with the fact that the island will forever be his home… until it’s time to pass the torch to someone else and Locke (as he is now evil brother/smoke monster) much like the first scene we ever saw with Jacob and his brother. “Do you know how badly I want to kill you?” Like Battlestar Galactica, this has all happened before and it will all happen again. I think the cycle will start over. I think the FINAL OFF-ISLAND scene might very well be a montage of how life works out for the survivors in their alternate/new lives. Will Locke allow Jack to fix him? Will Claire raise Aaron? Will Jin and Sun live happily ever after with their daughter? I think so.

What do you think?