Season VI, Episode 15 – Across the Sea

Line of the night – “Every question I answer will simply lead to another question.” – Psycho Mom

The line of the night actually did make me laugh. Every time we get an answer to a burning question on this show it simply leads to more questions. For example, after 6 complicated seasons and 6 to the 10th power of theories, it is revealed that "Adam and Eve" are really a Mother Earth figure and the former body/corpus delicti of Smokey the Black Smoke Monster...which leads to even more questions. Questions like who did "Mother" replace, how did she end up on the island, and how long has she been there? Questions like, what the hell is Flocke/MIB, a ghost, the actual spirit of Essau, a phantom?

The episode starts out with wreckage in the ocean near the island, and for a moment I believe that we are going to see Frank Lapidas rise from the depths…but instead we find a very pregnant damsel in distress floating to the surface. The young woman receives care from Claudia Jean "C.J." Cregg of the West Wing. It’s kind of ironic that Allison Janney’s character “Mother” finds out that the young pregnant girl is named Claudia. They begin their conversation in Latin. Then I noticed a weird ringing sound, and all the sudden they were speaking English? (I guess that was for our benefit, gratias tibi ago LOST writers). Mother informs Claudia that she is all alone and she was brought to the island by accident, just like her. Claudia goes into labor and out comes a 14 pound, two month old baby covered in little to no vernix/amniotic fluid. How nice.

Mother seems elated and relieved that it is a boy! When all of the sudden Claudia begins to scream...which causes me to scream…”Holy S- they are twins!” Essau/MIB/Flocke is the brother of Jacob! This time Mother is not so happy to see a second boy come into the world. I love the imagery of Jacob all nice and clean wrapped in light swaddling clothes, and Essau (as I’ll refer to him the rest of the episode) / MIB is screaming as he is covered in a dark loin cloth that looks like it’s made out of thorns and burlap. “I’m sorry!”, says Mother as she nails Claudia with a grapefruit-size rock in the skull. And we have a WTF moment (Why the Face). Well that sucks, and I guess we are seeing why Flocke told Kate in the episode "Recon" that his mother was crazy.

Flocke had said to Kate, “My mother was crazy. A long time ago, before I... looked like this... I had a mother, just like everyone. She was a very disturbed woman. And, as a result of that, I had some growing pains. Problems that I'm still trying to work my way through. Problems that could have been avoided had things been different.” Maybe if Mother was honest with him from the get go, maybe he wouldn’t have murdered her?!? Thoughts on this?

Transition to the beach and I hear the melody to "We're all in this together..." from High School Musical. Next we see a young Zac Efron on the beach picking up a box that appears to have washed ashore. Are we going to see more Wildcats from East High? Yes, I’ve seen High School Musical approximately 37 times thanks to my daughter’s new obsession with everything Disney, and 4 times because it’s just a good movie…alas young Zac is joined by his brother, a young Matt Damon. It should be noted that this younger Jacob has appeared only to Flocke in 3 separate episodes earlier this season.

MIB/Essau doesn’t want to let Jacob play the game because he’s afraid Jacob will rat him out to their Mother, and she’ll take it away from them. Indeed Jacob does snitch on his brother’s game (snitches get stitches Jacob), and Mother playfully confronts Essau on the matter. She tells Essau that she left the game there for him to find, and she also tells Essau that “You’re Special!” Hmm we’ve heard that before,Walt and John Locke were special too.

We segue to Jacob and Essau hunting boar in the woods, and they spot other humans. “We saw people, they looked like us!” Mother responds, “they are not like us, they don’t belong here…we are here for a reason!” Essau asks her my same question, “What reason???” There is a long pause, and Mother takes her sons away without answering the question, darn it. She blindfolds both boys and leads them through the jungle to a stream leading to a glowing cave of light. On the way she says, “they come, they fight, they destroy, they corrupt, it always ends the same.” Again, a line we heard from MIB/Essau in the Season 5 season finale. Mother goes on to explain that the people will hurt the boys, because that’s what people do, but she adds, “I’ve made it so you can never hurt eachother.” A rule of the island has been confirmed.

At the end of the stream is a golden cave of light, and THAT’S the reason they are on the island. The light is the warmest, brightest light you’ve ever seen or felt. This is "The Source". The tribe of people on the other side of the island will seek out this light because there is a little bit of this light in every man, but they always want more (man’s inherent greed). “If the light goes out here, then it goes out everywhere.” Everywhere? Like the island, or the whole Earth? So if we lose power at this one transformer, the whole neighborhood is screwed until Delmarva Power gets the power back on? Mother tells the boys that one of them will have to protect the island when she is gone.

Segue again to the boys playing the Pokemon stone game, Jacob calls out Essau for breaking the rules. “One day you can make up your own game, and everyone else will have to follow your rules.” Nicely said MIB. Essau sees the figure of Claudia, his birth mother and pursues her. It should also be noted that Jacob cannot see her because she is dead. Claudia reveals the truth about their origins, and she shows Essau the original “New Othertown”. She explains that this village is comprised of survivors from a shipwreck that occurred 13 years prior (the day before he was born). Essau later confronts Jacob and attempts to shed some light on the situation regarding their "Mother’s" lunacy and how she killed their birth mother. Essau leaves to go live with the tribe, and Jacob stays behind. Mother does reveal that she killed his birth mother because, “if I let her live, she would have taken you and I wouldn’t let you become one of them, I needed you to stay good.”

Jacob’s all grown up now, and he’s spying/watching Essau and some of his tribe working on the well (near the Orchid Station). Jacob and Essau play Essau’s black stone / white stone Husker Du board game. Essau explains that, “She may be insane, but she’s most definitely right about that.” (the fact that the people are greedy, manipulative, untrustworthy, and selfish). Essau exposes that he’s found a way off the island via the use of the electromagnetic fields at certain locations where metal behaves uniquely. When the tribe finds places like this, they dig into the ground. Jacob goes back and tells Mother about Essau’s plan to leave the island. Mother seeks out Essau and confronts him at the bottom of the well where it looks like he is working on something. Essau explains that he’s spent the last 30 years of his life trying to find the golden cave of light she had once shown them as boys. Then he realized that if he couldn’t find the cave of unearthly light, maybe there is another way to gain access to The Source!

Holy crap – it’s the donkey wheel! So another big reveal is that Essau (or Essau’s villagers) created the frozen donkey wheel mechanism. He plans to make an opening to the light, attach the wheel to a system that channels the water and the light, “and when I do, I’ll finally be able to leave this place”. I have an idea, Essau, why not just make a freaking boat like Michael did in Season I? When Mother asks how he knows that he’ll be able to leave, he responds with “because I’m special Mother!” Ooohhh burn.

Mother hugs her adopted son, and slams his head into the rock covering the source of the light. “I’m so sorry!” Mother leaves Essau and returns to Jacob. She informs Jacob that it is time, and she takes him back to the golden glowing cave. “You are going to protect it now.” Jacob asks her what’s down in the light and she says, “life, death, rebirth, it’s The Source, the heart of the island.” She also explains to him that if he were to go into the light, he would be worse than dying it would be much worse. She speaks some more latin (anyone know what she’s saying under her breath?) and shares a cup of wine (I think) with him. She pressures him into drinking from the cup much like Michael being forced to drink from David’s cup in The Lost Boys. By drinking from the cup he has accepted the responsibility to protect the island as long as he can until he, in turn, finds a replacement…hence the candidates. “Now you and I are the same.”

So does this mean that Mother and Jacob are both immortals/demi-gods? Essau wakes up and finds the well filled in with rubble and dirt, and his village has been torched to the ground. I wonder how Mother pulled that off? He looks pisssssed. Mother’s back at the caves where Jacob and her reside, and she finds the cave in shambles. Mother picks up a light stone and a dark stone from the cave floor, and WHAMM she gets a dagger through her heart. Essau is to blame, and he asks her as she’s dying, “why wouldn’t you let me leave mother.” With her dying breath she says, “because I love you…thank you.” She’s already passed the matrix of leadership onto Jacob, so I guess she can move on to the next life. Jacob returns to the cave from collecting firewood, “what did you do?” Jacob pounces on his brother and starts to beat the snot out of him.

Jacob leads Essau through the jungle to the stream going towards The Source. “You want to leave this place brother, then go!” Jacob forces Essau into the stream and his body floats down the waterfall and into the glowing golden light. I can hear the pissed off ticka ticka sound and smokey emerges from the cave. Jacob finds his body and it appears he is dead. A very upset Jacob returns to the caves and puts the black stone and white stone into a pouch…and now we know who Adam and Eve are.

It was a nice touch that they edited scenes from Season I into this portion of the episode. Jacob places the bodies of his Mother and Essau next to eachother in the cave. We see quick transitions between this scene and the scene from Season I where Kate, Jack and Locke discover their very own Adam and Eve. “Goodbye brother, goodbye.”

BAMMM…..LOST


So did you notice that once Smokey came out of the 'cavern of light' it was no longer emitting a heavenly golden glow?

Is this the Pandora's Box that Ben Linus explained to Locke back in Season 3?

Is this the portal or pathway that caused Anthony Cooper, Locke's Dad, to show up on the island?

Where did "Mother" come from? Is she supposed to be Mother Earth? Did she also share a glass of wine with someone at one point to become the protector of the island?

How is it that the younger version of Jacob is able to appear and scare the crap out of Flocke/Essau/Smokey throughout episodes of this final season?


People, we are down to our very last 1 hour episode. I still can't believe it. So post your theories and questions and let's trying and figure out as much as we can with so very little time left on the LOST clock.

Until next week, Namaste and Good Luck!

-Slice