Category Archives: Jacob (Mark Pellegrino)

Films with LOST alumni Black Friday week sale

Amazon is having a big Black Friday week sale that is going on all week, starting today, Monday, November 21, 2011. I looked through the virtual bins, and found several items featuring LOST actors that could make great gifts (or to give to yourself). Continue reading

New LOST footage!

Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse were surprise guests at Jeff “Doc” Jensen and Dan Snierson’s “Entertainment Weekly Presents Totally LOST One Year Later” panel at the 2011 San Diego Comic-Con yesterday afternoon.

Darlton said they had a scene from the Season 1 finale that had never been shown before — and that it would prove, once and for all, that they had planned the ending from the start.

It was actually a joke, as the footage was shot last week. It’s pretty funny, though:

“Yahoo for you and your light.” LOL.

The new footage was shot by Jack Bender on a back lot at Disney.

Here’s a good write-up of the event: LOST producers reunite at Comic-Con.

The last official ABC LOST audio podcast

In the last (so sad!) official audio podcast, Damon and Carlton talk about listening to the scoring of the music for the finale, the polarized fan reaction to Across the Sea, “this is what answers look like,” “every question will lead to another question,” that they just did a DVD commentary for Across the Sea which will explain why they made the decisions they did for that episode, and the alternate endings that will be on the post-Finale Jimmy Kimmel show.

They say that they are done with the mythology — Across the Sea was the last of it. From now on, it’s going to be all about the characters. Damon said “Everyone you know and love is going to feature prominently in the next three-and-a-half hours of the show.”

Damon mentions how Across the Sea was a departure because it was about a bad Mommy when so much of the show before had been about bad Daddies. He says that one of their jokey titles for the episode had been “I’ll Just Sit Here in the Dark.” Ha!

They answer (and sometimes sidestep) viewer questions of varying seriousness: What did Locke say when he was unconscious in the sideways world? How could Jacob kill his brother if they were unable to hurt each other? (The answer was that he didn’t hurt him directly.) Did Smokey kill the author of “Bad Twin”? Is the water in the pool in the temple the same as the water in the cave that Jacob is protecting? Was the tortoise on the beach an incarnation of Vincent? Was the drawstring in the last episode an anachronism? Do Damon and Carlton secretly hate each other? What is their favorite podcast moment?

Great podcast, worth listening to: May 14, 2010 official audio podcast

A bit more on my theory, plus thoughts about 6×15, plus still unanswered questions

The Man in Black still doesn't have a name

Earlier this evening, before 6×15 Across the Sea came on, I took a look back at my Oedipus Lost theory.

How does it stand up after 6×15? (Warning: 6×15 spoilers ahead, so close your eyes if you haven’t seen the episode yet).

Like many other fans, I was right in thinking that Jacob and the MiB were brothers — twins, like the Biblical Jacob and Esau.

I was wrong in thinking that the Jacob-MiB saga would be rooted in patricide. This dysfunctional family had brother killing mother, and brother killing brother, but nobody killed a father because there were no fathers to be found.

I was right in originally thinking that Jacob was a prisoner, of sorts, of the Island, even though I later came to doubt that.

Well, enough about theories. Some random thoughts about the episode, along with some still-unanswered questions:

Amazing opening. When Mommy Dearest picked up the stone and attacked Birth Mother, I did not see that coming.

Quibble: Why was Mommy Dearest so surprised that there was a second baby? Did she not see Birth Mother’s belly?

Oh, and another quibble: Kid in Black said he didn’t know what death was, but then in the next scene he was running after a boar with a spear. What did he think he was going to do to the boar?

So Smokey will eventually inhabit his own dead body? Hmmm.

What gave Mommy Dearest, Jacob, and the MiB the ability to live so long? What gave Mommy Dearest the power to prevent Jacob and the MiB from hurting each other?

Who was the guardian of the light before Mommy Dearest?

If Mommy Dearest was the power behind Jacob and MiB, who was the power behind Mommy Dearest? Who started the chain of guardians of the light, and why?

And what is the light, anyway?

What was in that wine?

Who would have thought that Jacob could be so whiny and petulant! (“I don’t waaaaana guard the light.”)

Not sure how I feel about having the MiB revealed as a sympathetic character — not after what he did to Sun and Jin, and the 815 pilot, and the people in the Temple, and all the random strangers who got in his way.

How did the nice light turn him into such a mean monster?

When Mommy Dearest said “Thank you,” to the MiB, was she thanking him for killing her (thus ending the curse of immortality)?

The screenshot is from the Season 5 finale, from when the MiB asked Jacob, “Do you know how much I want to kill you?” Now we finally have some idea why he felt that way, and also why he needed a loophole.

The Question of Free Will in LOST

Flocke and Sun 6x10 The Package

Flocke gesturing at Sun in 6x10 The Package

Did you notice how in the last episode, 6×10 The Package, Flock said that he wanted Sun to make a free choice to join him?

Sun, to Locke: You killed those people at the Temple.

Locke: Those people were confused. They were lied to. I didn’t want to hurt them. Any one of them could have chosen to come with me. And I’m giving you that choice Sun, right now. I would never make you do anything against your will. I’m asking you. Please. Come with me.

That reminded me of the way that Jacob had talked about choice:

Jacob to Hurley, in The Incident: All you have to do is get on that plane. It’s your choice, Hugo. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.
—————-

Jacob to Ben, in The Incident: Benjamin, whatever he’s told you, I want you to understand one thing. You have a choice.

Ben: What choice?

Jacob: You can do what he asked, or you can go.

We saw something similar with Dogen, Lennon, and Jack in What Kate Does:

Dogen wraps a capsule in a piece of paper, and says something in Japanese.

Lennon, to Jack: He says you have to give your friend this pill.

Jack: Are you serious? Why don’t you give it to him?

Lennon: Because it won’t work unless he takes it willingly, and he won’t take it willingly from us.

What are we to make of this? Could it be that the MiB/Flocke, Jacob, and Dogen were all equally bound by some rule which says they should not force people to do anything against their will? Does forcing people to take action somehow undermine the validity or power of those actions, as Lennon suggested? What is so special, in the Island world, about choices that are made freely?

Or was Flocke just b.s.-ing Sun? After all, when Sun did make her choice — to turn Locke down — instead of accepting her choice, Flocke ran after her, which suggests he might have intended to try force instead.

Flocke running after Sun LOST 6x10 The Package

Flocke running after Sun

Also, to what extent can Zombie Sayid be said to have made a free choice to join Locke?

Screencap of Locke gesturing at Sun is from Lost-Media.com. Screencap of Locke running after Sun is from Lostpedia.

Oedipus LOST — a theory about Jacob

Oedipus Rex

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

(edited 1/31/10)

The Enhanced version of “The Incident” (opening scene)

Some slightly belated thoughts on the pop-up hints in the enhanced version of “The Incident” shown on Tuesday:

Nemesis

The Man in Black

A pop-up hint said the Man in Black is Jacob’s nemesis. You’re probably all thinking, “duh, no kidding,” but I had my doubts. I had been struck by how Jacob didn’t seem to mind that the MiB wanted to kill him, and I thought that the black shirt/white shirt contrast might have been a trick by the writers to fool us. But I was wrong. The MiB is definitely, officially, inarguably the nemesis of Jacob.

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

A pop-up hint said the ship was an early 1800s sailing ship. That would be consistent with it being a slave 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

Jacob's tapestry

The hints told us that Jacob’s tapestry contained the Egyptian Eye of Horus, and that surrounding it was a sun disk representing the sun god Aten — a name that was new to me. The hint describes Aten as the symbol of life and prosperity.

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

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