In this video podcast, Damon, Carlton, Matthew Fox (Jack), Terry O’Quinn (Locke and notLocke), Jorge Garcia (Hurley), and Josh Holloway (Sawyer) talk about the sideways flashes and about some of the large questions of the season.
The most interesting things said on the video:
On the timelines
Carlton said the two timelines are related, and the way in which they are related is one of the big mysteries of this season.
On good versus evil
Damon said that it’s all about good versus evil, and we will have to decide if Jacob is the good guy and the Man in Black the bad guy, or if they have done a “switcheroo.” Both Jacob and the MiB are going to get a chance to make their case.
Carlton echoed that it comes down to good versus evil.
My theory had been that the show wasn’t going to draw clear lines between good characters and evil characters, but instead show something more ambiguous, with characters who were neither totally good nor totally bad, but instead a mixture of both. Going from what Darlton said here, it appears that may not be the case.
Getting in one last theory right under the wire before the new season begins …
We know that Jacob brought the LOSTies to the Island, and before that, he brought the Black Rock ship, and before that, he brought other people — the ones who came, fought, destroyed, and corrupted, in the words of the Man in Black.
The big question, of course, is why is Jacob bringing all these people to the Island?
One thing we know about the LOSTies is that, as a group, they have an extraordinary number of Daddy issues.
What if that were actually the reason that Jacob chose them?
And if that were the case, then why?
Suppose that Jacob himself has Daddy issues. Suppose, also, that Jacob is on the Island not because he wants to be, but because he has to be. There’s a hint of that, I think, in Jacob’s oddly impassive reaction to the Man in Black when the MiB said he wanted to kill him.
Combine the two ideas: Jacob having his own Daddy issues, and Jacob being stuck on the Island for centuries against his will. That suggests some sort of crime and punishment, with the Island being a place of exile, a prison. Because of the Island’s strange time-warping properties, Jacob’s sentence spans far more than a normal single lifetime.
Such a long sentence implies there must have been a horrible crime. And the worst crime that exists that involves Daddy issues would be patricide. Maybe, like Oedipus Rex, Jacob — way back in his original life, eons ago — had killed his father.
And now he is stuck, seemingly forever, on an Island prison. Maybe there is only one way for him to end his sentence — by restoring some balance to the world by doing something that would counteract his terrible crime. Only in that way could he atone and be forgiven.
Maybe Jacob’s task is to heal people who have been harmed by terrible rifts with their fathers. More precisely, maybe he is trying to show them how to heal themselves. Success in this task would be the only thing that could release him from his centuries-long sentence.
Perhaps he has tried, and failed, with all the previous groups he brought to the Island — which is what was frustrating the Man in Black. But the current LOSTies do seem to be responding to Jacob’s guidance, and many of then have, while on the Island, come to terms with their Daddy issues and grown beyond them.
Two possible holes in the theory: (1) If the Island is a prison, how did Jacob get off so many times? and (2) What is the role of the Man in Black?
Perhaps Jacob was able to leave only when certain conditions were right, and only for the purpose of choosing people to bring back. As for the second question, maybe the MiB was a participant in, or at least an accessory to Jacob’s crime. Since the MiB does not believe that Jacob will ever be successful in his task, maybe the MiB sees killing Jacob as the only way to bring his own long exile to a close.
And perhaps Jacob could not succeed in his task of guiding enough people beyond the Daddy issues which had warped their lives. At the end of “The Incident,” when Jacob told Ben that he had a choice — he could choose to listen to notLocke, or he could choose to walk away –Ben was so caught up in his Daddy issues, projecting onto Jacob all the rejection he had felt from his own father, that he could not make the right choice. Ben, at that moment, could not get past his Daddy issues, and for Jacob, that meant both failure, in his task as a guide, and death.
Picture of Oedipus Rex from an 1896 production, via Wikipedia
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 missed the big group rewatch put on by DocArzt and Lostpedia, but I’m going to be starting my own little private rewatch this week, when I’ll be getting the DVDs from the library and watching LOST all over again from the beginning. I probably won’t be writing a lot of commentary (see Fishbiscuitland and the sites listed on the Lostpedia rewatch page if you want to read some terrific rewatch analysis), but one thing I want to do is keep track of all the references that are made to the LOSTies being brought to the Island “for a reason.”
“For a reason” is the phrase that inspired the name of this blog, and I think, more than any other LOST catchphrase, it captures what the central mystery of LOST is all about.
Whenever I come across a character saying that phrase while I’m rewatching the show, I’ll make a note of it here on this post.
I’m curious to see how many times the phrase will pop up.
We first hear Locke talking about “destiny” in his flashbacks in 1×04 Walkabout. It’s not quite “we were brought here for a reason,” but it’s working up to it.
1×05 White Rabbit is the first episode where the actual phrase was used, when Locke asked Jack “But what if everything that happened here happened for a reason? ”
“Everything happens for a reason” was the official slogan of Season 2! You can see the full Season 2 poster (from which the image on top of this post was taken) on Lostpedia.
This post is a work in progress. Check back for updates.
TV Overmind has posted a transcript of the July 3 London panel discussion with Damon Lindelof, Carlton Cuse, and Jack Bender that I mentioned in my last post.
Highlights:
Season 6 will have 16 episodes, with the first and the last each being two hours.
They will start shooting Season 6 soon — on August 24.
Producer/writer Damon Lindelof
Damon, on Jack and Locke and things happening “for a reason” (give that man a duck with $100):
I’m a huge fan of whenever Jack and Locke talk to each other. We’ve been very judicious in having those guys talk to each other. It happens very rarely. I go back to White Rabbit and that six or seven minute long scene where they’re just sitting in the jungle. And Jack says he’s following the impossible, and Locke says what if it’s not impossible and we were all put here for a reason. And that scene is the genesis for those guys’ relationship. And if you think about how that was the third episode shot out of the pilot, here we are now, 100 episodes later, and now Jack is finally saying “Y’know, Locke might be onto something.”
(I think this is the scene in White Rabbit that Damon was talking about):
Producer/writer Carlton Cuse
Carlton, on how they write an episode (I love these little glimpses into the screenwriting process):
We spend a lot of time breaking each aspect of the story, and once we have the story worked out from beginning to end, we’ll put it up on whiteboard and then pitch it back to ourselves. And we’ll have scenes in different colors, with an on-island story, an off-island story, and a C-story, split it into six acts for the commercial breaks, and structure it so you’ll want to come back after each act. Then we’ll give it to some writers to rewrite and send back, and we’ll give our notes, make some changes.
Carlton, on destiny and how it relates to the writers themselves:
Q: You make a lot about the characters searching for their destiny and their purpose. Do you feel that you yourselves had a purpose in your own lives being involved in the show, or you’ve learned something about life from doing it?
Carlton: I think as writers we use the show to explore personal issues, spiritual or otherwise. We’re mainly concerned by how much faith and how much control do you have over your own destiny, something which is very fascinating to us… The writers’ room is diverse and that diversity gets worked out in the characters.
Damon, on the ending:
Q: I want to know about the end of LOST. Michael Emerson said in an interview this week that he suspects it will be quite bittersweet or melancholy. Is it going to be an upbeat ending or ambiguous? Just any kind of hint to the flavor of the ending.
Damon: All of the above. We are aspiring for an ending that is fair. Bittersweet comes with the territory. The ending will be different as for once, we won’t leave you on a cliffhanger. You will stay on the cliff this time.
Did you ever see the old Groucho Marx TV show, You Bet Your Life? It was a game show where contestants answered questions in various categories. In each episode, there was also a “secret word.” A toy duck was lowered from the ceiling with the secret word in its beak, so that the audience could see what it was. If any of the contestants said the word while chatting with Groucho, the duck would come down again and give them a prize of $100.
Ever since I decided, on a whim, to name this blog “For a Reason,” I’ve become hyperaware of that phrase. Now, whenever I hear one of the characters say “for a reason” on the show or hear one of the actors say the phrase in an interview, I feel as if they had just uttered the secret word. I think “Ding ding ding!” and wish that a toy duck would descend from the ceiling bearing a prize.
While watching this video, the sixth in the “Ask Lost” series, I had one of those wishing-for-Groucho’s-duck moments, because Matthew Fox does indeed say the secret phrase “for a reason.” Give that man a hundred dollars!
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?
. 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.
