We only have one night of Lost left this season. It’s a sobering fact, and if there are any typos in this article, please have mercy, as my eyes are filled with tears and the gentle sobbing is making it difficult to type.
This past week’s episode was the typical penultimate episode of Lost. There was a lot of positioning our players to get them into the right spot for the big poop to hit the fan. Judging from “Follow the Leader,” some huge things are definitely going to go down. Most of them seem to be centered around two characters: Jack and Locke. Both of them seem to be up to their old tricks, and both of them are complete and utter morons.
What struck me, after thinking on this week’s episode a little more, is how Jack and Locke have become so similar. They are both convinced that they are doing the right thing, no matter how insane it may seem. For Jack that is blowing up “Jughead” the leaky H-bomb, in hopes of changing the future and preventing 815 from ever crashing on the island. For Locke, it’s hunting down “Jacob,” the mysterious, possibly non-existent leader of the others, and killing him. To both these goals, I must ask the question: Are these two guys idiots?
Now perhaps they are both in the right, I’m accepting that as a possibility, but to me, it seems like killing Jacob and/or blowing up an atomic bomb both seem like horrible ideas. Let’s look at each separately:
Blowing jughead:
Jack, Jack, Jack. Throughout the run of the series, it seems like he’s always made the wrong decision. Why should we believe that his newest obsession is any different? After all, this is the guy who saw the island go poof right in front of his eyes and then denied that Locke moved the island. Plus there was that whole thing with letting the freighter people onto the island, and leaving the island…. Suffice it to say, the guy doesn’t have a great track record. I would like to say that this time is different, but I just don’t see it.
For a “man of science” he’s certainly putting a whole lot of faith into Daniel’s crazy ramblings. Let’s face facts: Faraday was not the most stable of individuals. If he came around ranting about time travel and nukes, I think I would pat him on his hairy head and send him on his way. Not Jack though, he’s completely on board, so miserable in his own life that he’s willing to risk it to change his future (and past, I suppose).
My prediction is that Jack will end up blowing the bomb, in a tense crazy, faith-based standoff reminiscent of Locke and Ecko in the Swan station at the end of season 2. My feeling is that this season Kate will be playing the role of Ecko, begging Jack not to do it. Ironically enough, I think the bomb going off is going to end up being the catalyst for the “incident” that leads to the button pushing in the Swan station, which will lead back to that exact scene between John and Ecko thirty years later. Fun how that works out.
Killing Jacob:
There is a whole lot more mystery surrounding Locke and Jacob. The entire nature of Jacob is still unsettled. I hope to get a little more information from this week’s episode and then write a post about possible answers to the Jacob mystery. For now, though, my best guess is that “he,” as I don’t really believe he is an actual person, is a personification of the island and all of its powers. If that is the case, wouldn’t John be doing an incredible amount of harm by killing him? Isn’t the island the one thing that Locke loves in this world? Does he really think this could be a good idea in any way, shape, or form?
Is Lock still convinced that Jacob is some fake entity that Ben and Alpert made up to control the others? This can’t really be true, can it? I mean, Jacob spoke to Locke. He saw him rocking in that chair back in “The Man Behind the Curtain.” My guess is that he is not intending to actually kill the entity, but instead kill the idea of Jacob (as a commenter “captain ron” pointed out), breaking the control of Alpert and Ben. To this I ask, simply: why? Is Locke so arrogant to think that he can come in to a society that has worked one way, successfully, for many, many years and completely change it? Are the others really clamoring for a change? Is he that arrogant? I fear that he is….
In any case, I think both of these events are going to play into each other. Once the bomb blows, I believe that the time displaced characters will find themselves back in 2007, most likely walking right out of Jacob’s cabin to meet Locke and the others.
What do you think?
Clacked by Bob Degon
on May 11, 2009 @ 13:00 EST5EDT
In defense of Jack:
Hindsight is 20/20, making it easy to paint Jack as a bad decision maker.
However, when you look back and really think on most of Jack’s decisions across the series, a number of the choices he’s made couldn’t really be labeled as being clear cut wrong at the time he made them. In fact plenty of them (though NOT all of them) seemed logical and sound at the time even if later events went against them.
The example you cite is letting the freighter people onto the island:
Jack didn’t exactly let them onto the island. They were coming there anyway, and Jack wasn’t the first of the survivors to encounter the freighter folk and entertain the idea that they meant salvation. That honor goes to Desmond, Charlie, Hurley, Jin and Sayid. More to the point, the plan to take out the “Looking Glass” station and contact the freighter was crafted and promoted by Sayid not Jack. But Jack as leader conceded to and followed through on that plan so now the fallout from it gets put on him.
We regard the decision to contact the freighter people as bad, but why? Because of what happened afterward, not because the decision seemed wrong or unwise when he made it. They’d been stranded on an island for three months with hostile inhabitants and a deadly smoke creature, and this was the first opportunity for them to contact someone who could potentially get them back home. Would it have been logical for Jack to conclude that the ship must be carrying mercenaries looking to kill the people on the island? The only people putting up opposition at the time were Locke (who had previously blown up the sub that would have gotten Jack off the island) and Ben (who’d never proven to be all that trustworthy).
If Jack had decided to forego contacting the freighter and we’d heard nothing more on the freighter or its people, we’d probably be labeling that as a bad decision on his part as well. Jack just seems to be one of those characters who’s damned no matter what he does (something emphasized since his first centric episode in season one).
As for the decision to detonate the bomb:
Yeah, I also think the plan is not going to go the way Jack thinks it will. I don’t come to that conclusion because the character himself is a particularly bad decision maker but because I’m skeptical that the writers are going to let him have that kind of victory at this point.
I don’t think his rationale for following through on this plan is simply about erasing his misery as you put it. Jack himself makes a valid point as to why it might be worth trying. Beyond the notion of his personal misery there’s also the fact that if the plan worked, he could potentially avoid the deaths of a lot of people. According to what was said in an earlier season, 324 (“108″ x 3) people were onboard Oceanic 815 before it crashed. Less than 100 of those people survived the crash (at this point it seems like less than 20 of those people are still alive). Part of Jack’s motivation seems to be the idea that he could save all those people.
As for the craziness of Faraday’s plan, how crazy would it sound if you said someone could disappear off a plane in mid-air in 2007 and time-travel 30 years into the past onto an island? Yet, that’s what happened to them. Jack had already been moving towards the idea of having more faith (something which the episode “316” highlighted). The events of this season seemed to have further loosened his previous skepticism about fate and destiny.
*POST AUTHOR*
Thanks for the great comment. You bring up a lot of great points, particularly in regards to Jack’s decisions. I mostly like to pick on him because… I hate him. Doesn’t everyone at this point? He’s sort of pathetic and sad. When he refused to admit that the island moved… AFTER HE SAW IT, I had pretty much had enough of him.
As for Daniel, it’s a matter of examining the messenger. I think Faraday came off as even crazier than Locke, who Jack refused to believe for so long. I also think that it was clear if you examine Daniel’s motivations, that his change of heart wasn’t really based in any science. His arguments were weak and based mostly on desperate emotion. He was just trying to find a way to bring back the woman he loved.
Also, I appreciate your point about Jack wanting to save people who were on 815, but I’m a little more cynical. I don’t believe that he truly cares about any of them, or only a few of them, anyway. I think 95% of his motivation comes from self pity. Again, though, that could be coming from my bias over the character.
I know some people around here have a similar loathing over Kate that I don’t share. ;-)
“I know some people around here have a similar loathing over Kate that I don’t share.”
I’m not a hater of Kate…
…but I’m not sure I buy that she’s concerned that the people on the island will be killed by the bomb. If I’m not mistaken she already knows that all the Dharma people who stay on the island will eventually be killed by the Others if the timeline goes unchanged.
However, if the “detonate the bomb” plan works the way Faraday said it would, then the plane crash never happens and she ends up spending potentially the rest of her life in jail. I think that’s her chief motivation to stop Jack and NOT because she thinks Faraday is crazy. She’s afraid Faraday’s plan might work!
I’m guessing from what I saw in the brief preview, but it looks like she’s going to come between Sawyer and Juliet (if not completely end their chance at happiness together) and lure Sawyer into trying to stop Jack (with fatal consequences if necessary), and I think for her this is now chiefly about HER survival not everyone else’s…
…but we’ll see.
*POST AUTHOR*
Yeah, I wasn’t picking on you, I was picking on bsgfan, she’s an unapologetic Kate hater.