This is the tapestry that Jacob was weaving in the Season 5 finale. The photograph is another sneak peek from the Season 5 DVD set. I don’t know where the photo was taken — on the set? in the prop room? — but wherever it is, you can see the details on the tapestry very clearly if you click through to the larger picture.
The hieroglyphics are Egyptian, which is odd because the writing is Greek. Why does Jacob combine the two in a single tapestry? Is it possible he lived in both Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece during his supernaturally long life — and is now telling his own story through the tapestry, using weaving as a form of autobiography? Or is Jacob simply an inventive artist, the kind who likes to create something new by mixing bits of different cultures together?
For more info about what’s known, so far, about the tapestry, see Lostpedia.
I’m working on a new grand theory of almost everything (ha!), and when I think about that, I find myself drawn back again to the first scene of the Season 5 Finale. There’s so much packed into that scene which seems to provide critical clues to what LOST is really all about.
In particular, I wanted to look more closely at one bit of the scene, the part where Jacob and Esau (the Man in Black) talk about the approach of the sailing ship.
Jacob: I take it you’re here because of the ship.
Esau: I am. (Pause) How did they find the Island?
Jacob: You’ll have to ask them when they get here.
Esau: I don’t have to ask. (Looks at Jacob) You brought them here. (Pause) Still trying to prove me wrong, aren’t you?
Jacob: You are wrong.
Esau: Am I? (Pause) They come, fight, they destroy, they corrupt. It always ends the same.
Jacob: It only ends once. Anything that happens before that is just progress.
What conclusions can be drawn from that?
1. Jacob has the power to bring people to the Island — or at least Esau thinks that he does.
2. This is not the first group of people to come to the Island. Esau, sounding weary, says it “always ends the same,” which implies that similar scenarios have happened many times before.
3. Either Jacob and Esau are in a time loop, and the fighting, destroying, and corrupting groups that Esau refers to are groups from the future (the Others, the Dharma Initiative, the 815-ers), or else Jacob and Esau have been on the Island for a very long time, long enough to see many other groups come and go in the past. I’m betting on the second scenario.
4 There is some sort of linear progression. Jacob says “It only ends once.” Even if time loops are involved, we are still dealing with a story that has a beginning, a middle, and most importantly, an end.
5. Jacob believes that Esau is wrong about something, and though we don’t know exactly what, we know that Esau is cynical, world-weary, and resigned, and expects nothing but trouble from the many visitors to the Island. Jacob expects something more. But what is it that he expects?
I believe that LOST is a story about redemption and atonement. I think that is what Jacob is working towards, and that is why he keeps on bringing groups to the Island, over and over until some group finally gets it right. (I’ll be writing more about this later, as I work out my theory.)
Here’s a clip of the scene. Each time I’ve watched it, I’ve noticed something new:
In the first scene of the finale, we heard Esau (the man in the black shirt) say that he wanted to kill Jacob, but he couldn’t. That scene reminded me of an earlier one, from Season 4, where we heard Ben say that he wanted to kill Widmore — but couldn’t:
Widmore: Have you come here to kill me, Benjamin?
Ben: We both know I can’t do that.
Ben told Widmore that he was going to kill Penelope, and that after she was dead
You’ll wish you hadn’t changed the rules
Here, again, is the opening scene from the Season 5 finale:
Esau: Do you have any idea how badly I want to kill you?
Jacob: Yes
Esau: One of these days, sooner or later, I’m going to find a loophole, my friend.
Ben couldn’t kill Widmore, but he could (in theory) kill Penny. Widmore was able to kill Alex, but apparently only by breaking the rules. Esau needed a loophole to kill Jacob. A loophole suggests there is a law — a set of rules — that has to be circumvented.
A law or a rule may be natural: What goes up must come down. It may be written and enforced by an individual or institution that possesses power: a monarch, a warlord, a constitution, a legislature. It may be supernatural: a God or a strange electromagnetic force.
When we saw Ben and Widmore last season, they were the most powerful forces we had seen up to that point, appearing to control, between the two of them, almost everything that happened on the Island.
This season, it was as if a camera had pulled back and given us a wider shot, showing us the forces behind Ben and Widmore, forces even more powerful than they are. Jacob and Esau are now the most powerful people we have ever seen on the show.
But even Jacob and Esau cannot do everything they want. So there is someone or something powerful enough to make and enforce the rules that limit what Jacob and Esau can do. It may be a law of nature, it may be a person or group of people, it may be a supernatural force or being.
Perhaps next season, after we find out who or what it is, we will discover that it’s just another intermediate layer, and the camera will pull back yet again, to reveal the power behind the power behind the power.
Fire in Jacob's room in the first scene of The Incident
We see fire in The Incident almost immediately, just a few seconds after the episode begins. This is the fire in the open pit in the center of Jacob’s room, and the camera lingers on it, then turns back to Jacob — and then fire is back in the shot, behind Jacob, and then the fire is again in the foreground, and then it fills the frame.
Cut to Jacob wading waist-deep into the ocean. We’ve gone abruptly from fire to water, which together make up two of the four classical elements — earth, air, fire, and water — of ancient philosophy.
Aristotle assumed all substances to be compounds of four elements: earth, water, air and fire, and each of these to be a combination of two of four opposites, hot and cold, and wet and dry.
Jacob walks back to land with his fish. And there’s a fire. We didn’t even see him making it. When the camera catches a glimpse of it, it was already there.
Almost at the very end of The Incident, we return to where we began — to Jacob’s room, with its central fire, the fire this time augmented with torches ringing the walls. At the end of this scene, after Ben stabs Jacob, NotLocke pushes Jacob’s body into the fire, and then fire fills the frame.
What does the fire mean?
If the four classical elements have anything to do with this story, could the Island be the earth element, and Flight 815 represent the air?
Does the Smoke Monster tie into this in any way? Where there is smoke, there is fire …
The first several minutes of the Season 5 Finale, The Incident, were amazing. So many exciting things happened in such a short time — we saw Jacob for the very first time, we saw the Black Rock sailing off in the distance, we heard some puzzling dialogue, and we finally got a glimpse of all of the four-toed statue — all in the first three-and-a-half minutes.
Now, looking back, we can see that those short minutes were tightly packed with clues, hints, symbols, partial answers, and new questions.
I’m going to go back and look more closely at the opening sequence. I want to break it down and look at different aspects in different posts. So it will take longer than just today. But there’s no hurry, right? We have all the time in the world — eight long months (sigh).
Here’s the opening:
Jacob is weaving a tapestry in a room, with a fireplace in the center, that we now know is in the base of the statue. He goes out to the beach, cooks a fish (now we’ve seen fire inside and fire outside), and spots a ship which is too small, at this point, to see clearly.
He is joined by another man. They greet each other. “Morning.” “Morning.” They seem friendly, casual, polite, and evidently quite used to each other, as if this greeting were a part of their daily routines, like co-workers who greet each other every morning when they arrive at the office.
More small talk follows, and now we can see the ship, which has come closer. It’s an old-style sailing ship, most likely the Black Rock, and this is the first definite clue we’ve had that we are now centuries in the past.
And yet, something doesn’t seem right about the time period. There is something about the two men that seems like they belong in the 21st century, not hundreds of years in the past. Maybe it’s their hair styles and the way that they speak. That greeting they just exchanged — “Morning” — seems so casual and contemporary.
Now the dialogue, previously so full of comfortable small talk, gets weird:
Black shirt: How did they find the Island?
White shirt: You have to ask them when they get here.
Black shirt: I don’t have to ask. You brought them here. Still trying to prove me wrong, aren’t you?
White shirt: You are wrong.
Black shirt: Am I? They come. Fight. They destroy. They corrupt. It always ends the same.
White shirt: It only ends once. Anything that happens before that is just progress.
To paraphrase Bill Clinton, maybe the meaning of this depends on what “it” is. It always ends the same. It only ends once. What is it? Outsiders coming to the Island? What is the progress — what are they moving from and what are they moving to?
Now the dialogue gets even weirder … which means it is very weird indeed:
Black shirt (in a casual tone, as if he were talking about what he wants to have for lunch): Do you have any idea how badly I want to kill you?
White shirt (as if he were saying that he does want anchovies on their pizza): Yes
Black shirt (as if saying the pizza place might be crowded): One of these days, sooner or later, I’m going to find a loophole, my friend.
White shirt: (as if asking Black shirt to save him a seat): Well when you do, I’ll be right here.
Do you have any idea how badly I want to kill you?
Yes.
And then before we can make any sense of that:
Black shirt: Always nice talking to you, Jacob.
Boing!
Then the camera pans up the statue.
Boing! Boing! Boing!
The pacing of this scene is very interesting. It starts off slowly with the scenes of Jacob weaving and with leisurely shots of him preparing the fish. Then there is that one-two punch at the end, which comes so quickly after the mysterious dialogue that there is no time to even begin to process the dialogue on first viewing.
Black Shirt, who appears only in this opening scene, is never named. While he says, “Always nice talking to you, Jacob,” Jacob simply replies, “Nice talking to you too.”
Around the internet, people have dubbed Black Shirt “Esau,” a clever reference to the Biblical story of the twin brothers. From here on, I will do the same.
So who or what are Jacob and Esau? What kind of beings are they who act so friendly and polite to each other, yet seem to take it for granted that one wants to kill the other?
Is it possible to come up with any theories, or will we just have to wait until Season 6 for more clues?
After I posted my “Who is Jacob?” post (directly below), I started thinking that Jacob might be John Locke.
In Follow the Leader, we saw present-day Locke, using Richard Alpert as his messenger, give instructions to time-traveling Locke to bring everyone back to the Island. In other words, Locke was giving (and getting) his marching orders to (and from) himself.
Many times over the seasons, we have seen Locke attribute his actions to orders from Jacob. But now we know that Locke can (also?) get orders from himself. Could it be that Locke’s encounters with Jacob were really encounters with himself, that Jacob was really Locke from a different time? Were the meetings similar to what we just saw in Follow the Leader, with Locke meeting a time-traveling Locke from the past and giving (and receiving) his orders to (and from) himself?
Since I didn’t think of this until after I posted my earlier poll, I didn’t include Locke as one of the choices. So let me ask you that now:
Here’s the scene from Follow the Leader of present-day Locke telling Richard Alpert what to say to time-traveling Locke:
Notice that when Ben says to Locke, “Your timing was impeccable, John. How did you know when to be here?” John answers, “The Island told me.”
Could “the Island” also be Jacob? Would that make the Island = Jacob = John Locke? Has everything that has happened so far been the result of John Locke talking to himself across time?
And when we last saw John, marching down the beach, saying he wanted to kill Jacob, was he really setting off on a quest to kill a time-traveling version of himself?
At the end of Follow the Leader, John Locke, trailed by his entourage of Others, set off to find and kill Jacob. Earlier, we learned that no one had ever seen Jacob before — or at least that’s what they said.
I’m getting a Wizard of Oz vibe here. Is there really a being named Jacob, so powerful that he controls all that happens on the Island? Or is there just an ordinary man pulling levers behind a curtain?
