Some slightly belated thoughts on the pop-up hints in the enhanced version of “The Incident” shown on Tuesday:
Nemesis
The Man in Black
That still leaves the question of why Jacob seemed so calm when the MiB said he wanted to kill him. Could it be that Jacob had heard the MiB say the same thing so many times before that it didn’t even really register any more? Or, perhaps, did Jacob believe that it was his fate — his destiny — to be killed by the MiB, and therefore it would be pointless to get all worked up about it? Or was he so blasé because he thought the MiB was incapable of carrying out his threat?
The Ship
The sailing ship
But another hint said the scene was taking place over 140 years before the present day. If by “present day” they meant 2010, rather than one of the many “presents” in LOST time, that would put the scene at approximately 1870. That’s a little later than the last known slave ship headed to the U.S.
Perhaps the ship was heading elsewhere, or perhaps it is meant to be the real last slave ship, unrecorded in the history books because it disappeared on the Island.
The Tapestry
Jacob's tapestry
There is some connection between the two. Wikipedia says “There is a possibility that Aten’s three-dimensional spherical shape depicts an eye of Horus/Ra.” Don’t know what to make of any of that, except that life, prosperity, and sunshine are all very positive, and Jacob seems like a positive kind of guy.
The Feud between Jacob and the Man in Black
The hints say that Jacob and the MiB have a long history between them, and that the exact nature of their feud has yet to be revealed.
My guess is that they are brothers, and that the fans who dubbed the MiB “Esau” were really on to something.
A transcript of the pop-up hints is available on Lostpedia.
You can watch the entire enhanced episode on abc .com
Regarding the ship…
If the “present day” on the show is 2007 (Ajira survivors, Sun, Frank, Ilanya, Ben, Flocke timeline), then the opening scene of The Incident was sometime before 1867. This matches with what we know about the Black Rock from the only real source of solid information on it: the auction for the journal in “The Constant”.
When Widmore bought the journal of the Black Rock, we learned that the Black Rock set sail from Portsmouth, England; March 22, 1845 on a trading mission to the Kingdom of Siam (which is now Thailand) when it was lost at sea.
Other than that, we’ve had a characters guessing about the Black Rock, but the only non-hypotheticals we’ve learned is during that auction.
Interesting. I wonder, though, if the opening scene was taking place in 1845, why the pop-up hint said it took place “more than 140 years ago.” Technically, that’s true, but wouldn’t it have made more sense to say “more than 160 years ago” which would have been a closer estimate?
Anyway, assuming the ship in the opening scene was the Black Rock (and I think it has to be, right?) I bet the notation in the journal, about the ship being on a trading mission to Siam, could have been a ruse.
The slave trade became illegal in the UK in 1807. If the Black Rock was actually sailing from England to pick up slaves illegally in Africa, it would have had to have been a pirate ship — and it makes sense that they would have written a phony journal entry to cover their tracks.
Just a thought.
We don’t actually know for a fact that the Black Rock was a slave ship. John Locke said it, but he was guessing because he saw a few chained skeletons in the hold. For all we know, there was a mutiny onboard and the mutineers were chained up and starved to death. Until they go into more detail, we simply don’t know the scoop there.
As for why it said “more than 140 years ago”, I think they said that because it could be technially accurate while still getting fans to endlessly speculate and split hairs until the flashback episode with the Black Rock. 😉
Ha — I think you’re right.