Previously on Lost: Two men sit on a beach. Two men sit on a beach, one wearing a white ensemble, the other dressed in black. Two men sit on a beach, chatting with an undertone of mystery and menace. Two men sit on a beach, and one of them is all, "I'm gonna learn some loopholes, and then I'm going to kill you!" And the other one's like, "Go right ahead, brah. I'm mostly unkillable!" Then the two men Indian leg-wrestle, with the one in black throwing in some illegal noogies. "Bah! I'm gonna kill you, you'll see!" he says. "See you in Hell, or on another Purgatory island or something, tough guy!" Eventually, an atom bomb explodes.
Let's cherish this time together, as we have only two more episodes to raise our Questions, and search for our Answers. Like the ones we're about to ask concerning "Across the Sea," right now!
Is this going to be one of those episodes where we don't spend any time with the main characters we've fallen so deeply in love with over the past six seasons, so that we can explore the backstory of characters relatively new to the Lostiverse?
This is exactly one of those episodes.
But...but...don't these people realize that there are only two more episodes left, ever?
Oh, they realize it:
[sputtering noise, followed by a deep breath, and then a high-pitched whine that is, somehow, recognizable as a question struggling to escape]?
It's going to be OK. You'll get some answers to a lot of nagging questions! Sure, maybe some of those questions might have been dealt with in the context of an episode that involves the main characters, and maybe some of those questions might have been more satisfying if left unresolved. Here, take one more deep breath, calm down a little, and then look at this cave with the golden light pouring out of it.
Whoa. What's the golden light?
Ssssh. Just look at it. It's pretty special. We'll get to it later.
Isn't "Jacob" a bit of a strange name for a Latin-speaking lady to give her child?
It is. You'd think she'd go with Antonio, or Pablo, But look at that kid. He's pretty Nordic looking. Borderline Albino. His dad's probably a Swede or a German or a Viking or something. Maybe he picked out the name.
Didn't Claudia have a second-place name picked out, so that in the unlikely event the baby didn't look like a "Jacob," or, say, she gave birth to twins, she could maybe use that name for the other child?
We have only two episodes left, and you want to thumb through the baby name book? You're worse than Carlmon Lindecuse!
So what's the Man in Black's name? Surely they'll tell us his name!
Let's just call him MiBby for now. (It seems wrong to call him Smokey as a child.) And do the capitalization in exactly this annoying fashion, as a kind of symbolic (and, quite frankly, sort of pathetic) protest about having his name withheld yet again. Though it's entirely possible he has no name! Maybe Allison Janney decided that since his bio-mom didn't give him one before she murdered her, he wouldn't get one. And this lack of a name, and the subsequent centuries of his pals calling him "Hey You," added extra fuel to MiBby's centuries of bitterness.
As long as we're talking names, why don't MiBBY or Mother have actual ones?
Because archetypes don't get real names, sillypants!
Is it midwife custom to smash the mother's head with a rock after she gives birth?
No, that's usually more of a doula thing. But when a Mother needs to raise a Protector for the Golden Light, sometimes she needs to smash a pregnant lady's head and steal her oddly mismatched twins. Ships are only wrecked off the coast of the island every ten years or so.
Is this the baby-stealingest island in the history of islands?
Everyone's always stealing babies! Maybe one day some scientists will come to the island to study the phenomenon, and then suddenly switch their focus to the weird infertility of women who live there. Then they'll get bored of that, too, drop the whole project, and throw their best fertility doctor down a hole with an atomic bomb.
What's the Golden Light?
It's the warmest, brightest light you've ever seen or felt. It's the light inside every man, and even though this light is already inside them, they ALWAYS WANT MORE LIGHT, because people are bad and greedy. If the light goes out in this cave with this quite beautiful, babbling brook feeding into it -- really, who are your landscapers, they're f*cking spectacular -- it goes out everywhere. Got it? Because Mother's feeling very head-smashy after answering all these questions. Figure out the rest of it for yourself while she hunts for rocks she can use to crack the skulls of that pesky village of Original Others.
What's a "ship"?
It's the thing that brings pregnant ladies to the island, their swollen wombs bursting with deliciously stealable future Light Guardian babies. And also bad men who want to steal light and discover magnetism.
What's magnetism?
It's when you throw a knife into the air, and it turns sharply for no apparent reason, and then sticks to the side of a rock, as if by magic. Ask your brother with no name in about thirty years, he can show you.
What's a year?
Why do you kids ASK SO MANY DAMN QUESTIONS? Is it because you're some kind of stand-in for the audience, who are always demanding that every little thing be explained to them, rather than just allow yourselves to be entertained by an unfolding mystery that sometimes doesn't provide neat answers? Is that your game, kids?
Why does Mother love MiBby more than Jacob? It's painfully obvious there's some serious favoritism happening in that family.
She, uh, ummmm, uh loves them both equally! But in different ways! For example, she loves Jacob in the way that a mother loves her second-best option for Guardian Of The Golden Light when her first choice has left home, determined to escape the island that she has explicitly told him he can never leave. It's not that she loves Second Choice less, she was just hoping to maybe leave him in charge of something a little less vital to the survival of humanity, like the spring they use for drinking water, that's all. Guardian Of The Golden Aquafina, that has a nice ring to it, right?
What's the donkey wheel all about?
When MiBby couldn't find his way back to the cave where the Golden Light lives, he (very cleverly) decided to look for a back door to the Golden Light. And he found one! So he built a giant donkey wheel that would mix the Golden Light with the Magic Water, allowing him to escape the island. Later, when this method proved ineffective, he would experiment with freezing the donkey wheel, which did not get him off the island, but instead got the island off time and space.
If Mother tells MiBby that his donkey wheel is very nice (what a special boy!), will he let her hug him, even though he's recently learned that she killed his bio-mom and stole her adorable twin babies, and he suspects that there's a high probability that Mother's going to smash his head against a wall?
Of course he will. All he ever wanted was to be loved, and Mother always loved him the most. That's why she doesn't want him to leave the island.
What would happen if someone ever went down into the cave where the Golden Light lives?
They'd worse than die. They'd be "killed," their immortal soul commingled with some foul, magic ash, and then the whole smokey mixture would be violently farted out through the Devil's cave-anus, where it would wreak havoc upon the island for hundreds of y
ears.
Does Mother have a bit of a drinking problem?
Why do we have to look at it in terms of a problem? Like any other single mom trying to juggle the demands of parenthood, she occasionally likes to unwind with a little wine. Her problems -- a needy kid who's always demanding her love, another one who never writes, never calls -- melt away for a moment, and she feels immortal. Sure, drinking straight from the decanter isn't the classiest thing ever, but it's not worth the hassle to carry around a stemmed glass just for appearances. Who's she got to impress? That village full of bad, light-stealing men she just slaughtered? Please. She just so tired sometimes. Maybe it's time to share a drink of Immortality Merlot with Jacob, tell him he's going to have to start pulling his weight.
What was with all the "take this cup and drink from it" business? Does she think she's Jesus?
No, no! Sometimes when Mommy's got a good buzz going, she likes to pretend that she's at church, giving out Communion. Catholic school can really mess you up like that.
Why does Mother thank MiBby for stabbing her?
Because she knew she'd need a Loophole to finally get some peace because of the No Suicide rule, and MiBby helpfully obliged because he was angry she wouldn't let him leave the island. (And also because she killed his bio-mom. Children of homicide-induced, forced adoptions always have complicated issues to work through.)
So... Mother and MiBby are Adam and Eve?
They are. We know this for sure because of the flashback where Locke -- real Locke, not Smokey Locke -- says, "These two dead bodies, which you just saw Jacob lay in this very cave we're now standing in, centuries later, are like our Adam and Eve." Also, just in case you had the sound muted at that moment, there was a subtitle that read, "Locke explains that Mother and the Man in Black are Adam and Eve, tidily resolving a mystery introduced back in Season One."
Great, but who shot at the canoe?
Tune in next week, when we'll spend the second-to-last episode thoroughly exploring the mythology of the Outrigger Marksmen, a shadowy clan of rifle enthusiasts who patrol the island's perimeter in search of other canoeists upon which to fire their weapons at long distance. Don't worry, with two-and-a-half hours devoted to the series finale, there will be plenty of time to wrap up the stuff with Hurley and Sawyer and Whatsherface.