LOST thoughts

[shipperx]

I don't do this. I never do this. Usually my reaction to a LOST episode is to squee or to be bored. I don't theorize because, quite frankly, I've been there and done that sort of thing with X-Files and BtVS, and though the theorizing can be a heck of a lot of fun, I think it also frustrates the viewing experience. We come up with ideas and when the show doesn't match them, we tend to feel they've failed us or something. Besides, one of the primary joys of LOST is to simply enjoy the WTF ride.

But, dude. DUUUUUDE! The ending... It's got questions of fate, free will, time travel, redemption, damnation, death, and starcrossed lovers! These are my fiction kinks, ya'll! I can't help it. I've got thinky-thoughts.

"I overheard a conversation between God and the Devil..."

That (possibly apocryphal) quote is part of the flotsam and jetsam floating around my head since the opening scene of last night's LOST. I had thought the quote was from Anne Rice's Memnoch the Devil, a perfectly terrible book by a perfectly batshit author. But I've Googled and thus far have found nothing, and nothing will induce me to hunt down the book. But there you go, properly attributed or not, that's the quote bopping around my head. That and the Barenaked Ladies song "It's All Been Done..."

And I'm grossly oversimplifying. I doubt it's supposed to be the Judeo-Christian God vs the Devil. Or at least not exclusively God vs the Devil and, perhaps, it isn't even Good vs. Evil, though I think we're being led to think so. At the very least, the writers are playing with the concept. Lots of concepts, actually. And I think it's a mistake to take any of the allusions to be an absolute X=X. I do think, however, it's fair to think that the writers are deliberately making the allusions to expand the storytelling.

First shot of the episode seems to be a faded image of Horus, sun god (hang onto that one), an almost Christ-like figure in Egyptian mythology.

Then we have Jacob, spinning thread and weaving a tapestry and it's difficult to not think of the Fates, the white-robed figures of Greek mythology who spun the threads of life, measured, and then cut them.

Jacob is dressed in white. His companion (following the examples I've seen in episode recaps, I'll refer to as Easu) is dressed in black. However, I think as obvious as the color code is, that it may be too literal to think this is simply a black and white struggle of good versus evil. It may simply be yin vs. yang (and I don't have a problem with a bunch of mismatched mythologies being thrown at us, because I don't think it's intended to be any one of them. I think the show is just using various mythologies to inform the story. And, with that in mind, there are a number of similarities between the myth...er... Bible story of Jacob and Easu and the myth of Osiris and Seth (and we've been hit over the head with the Egyptian god motif lately). Both of these myths are stories of brotherly betrayal, fatricide, and power struggles.

And, since I'm mucking about in mythology, just one other bit. The Egyptian Book of the Dead. Egyptians believed that when someone died, they went to the hall of judgment where the person's soul was weighed. If the weight of the sins in the persons heart was heavier than a feather, their souls were tossed to Ammit -- the eater of souls and hearts -- who was represented by a shape-shifing demon often depicted as part crocodile.

If a person was judged unworthy, their heart devoured, they would cease to exist... even in the afterlife.

And now I ask... what lies in the shadow of the statue?

ETA: which, after further review is quite clearly a statue of the Egyptian god Sobek (another crocodile headed god) Though, I still think smokemonster fits a description of Ammet, as Smokemonster seemingly is the one that judges before it devours... or at least it looked that way with Echo. But, the statue is definitely Sobek, complete with holding the ahnk of life. Sobek--sometimes a god of fertility (so who has babies...) and god of healing the dead (Locke could walk again). Sobek became merged with Ra (the sun god) being seen as an avatar of Amun-Ra, and that brings us back to the Apollo bar (another sun god) handed to Jack. And, it's a lot of mythology rolled together isn't it? I kind of love the show for that.)

Jacob: Want some fish?
Easu: I just ate
Jacob: I take it you're here for the ship.
Easu: How did they find the island?
Jacob You'll have to ask when they get here.
Easu: I don't have to ask. You brought them here. You're still trying to prove me wrong, aren't you?
Jacob: You are wrong.
Easu: Am I? They come. They fight. They destroy and corrupt. It always ends the same.
Jacob: It only ends once. Anything that happens before that is just progress.
Easu: Do you have any idea how badly I want to kill you?
Jacob: Yes.

In my head, the Barenaked Ladies are singing "It's all been done before..." while on screen we get a shot of the 4-toed statue. And it is not Anubis, Egyptian God of the Dead. It is an Egyptian god with the head of a crocodile holding an ankh... Oh, hai. Bet UR Smoke Monstr!

And it's really easy to see why the quote: "I overheard a conversation between God and the Devil" popped into my head. And it wasn't the only quote to pop into my head. Einstein's "God does not play dice" quote also came to mind along with Stephen Hawking's decades later retort "All evidence shows that God was actually quite a gambler, and the universe is a great casino where dice are thrown and roulettes spin on every occasion."

And I'm being sucked down the rabbit hole of Lostee navel gazing. But, the thing is this has been the tug of war of the entire series. Is it fate or happenstance? Do they have free will? Or is everything that happened meant to be? Are our Lostees playthings of the Gods? Well, clearly they are. But are our Lostees only the playthings of gods? The jury is still out on that one, but I'm betting the answer is actually... no. And I'll tell you why -- her name is Juliet.

We're being led merrily down the road to thinking "Fate!" After all, we're shown Jacob visiting the primary Lostees.

Little Kate steals and Jacob covers for her, touches her nose, and tells her to "Be good."

Little Sawyer sits dejectedly at his parents funeral, pouring out his anger in The Infamous Letter of Vengeance... until the ink runs out. Jacob hands him a fresh pen (and we see their fingers touch), and tells "James" that he's very sorry about his parents.

Sayid and Nadia are crossing a street, and Jacob recalls Sayid back to the sidewalk with "Can you help me?" Causing Sayid not to be creamed by the same truck that killed his wife. And Jacob places a comforting hand on Sayid's shoulder...

Locke is pushed out of the window and... it's unclear whether Jacob actually resurrected Locke, but he did grip his shoulder and tell Locke that everything will be alright.

Jacob visits Sun and Jin on their wedding day and wishes them well... and touches them both.

And we have Jack and his daddy issues in his very first surgery, after which we have Jacob in the hallway, giving Jack a "push" and handing him an Apollo bar. (Oh and their hands touch). Oh and remember that whole thing about Osiris's heir being Horus the sun god... and Apollo is a sun god (and a BSG character, but whatev) and... *sigh* In all of Ben's, Locke's, and Jack's jockeying to be the very most special snowflake, I groan and think that we're doomed to Jack being the very most special snowflake of all. *sigh*

Jacob is Hurley's flashback. Mentions of Charlie and Libby. Jacob gives Hurley (Charlie's?) guitar... and touches Hurley. Telling him "It's your choice. You don't have to do anything you don't want to."

And there's Juliet's flashback. Poor, heartbroken... romantic(?!) Juliet wanting to know about whether people are meant to be together. You want to know who isn't in Juliet's flashback? Jacob. And who doesn't touch Juliet? Jacob.

And in the whole thing about "The Incident", the thing that Miles points out... what if Jack's 'brilliant' plan to blow them all to kingdom come actually is "The Incident"? What if all of this has already happened. (After all Richard said that he saw them all die, right?) Well, then from the Jacob stuff, the only one "untouched" is Juliet, and she's the pivotal cog her. She is the one who brings Sawyer and Kate back to the island. And she is the one who set off the bomb. And if something goes differently "this time"... perhaps she is the one acting in the 'non-fated'/free will only sort of way.

And, honestly, I'm going to go into theorizing here (which I shouldn't but can't help myself) I think Jack's plan both is and is not going to work. Which is to say, I don't think it's going to work the way that Jack wishes/wants it to. I don't think it "changes" anything. I think the bomb is "The Incident." The timeline is unaltered. However...

Jacob, like Cylons, has a plan. (Except Cylons apparently didn't have a plan. It was all a freaky time looping experiment by God... Hello, Jacob? Easu? Is that you???)

Easu found a 'loophole' and got Locke killed and manipulated Ben into killing Jacob. In fact, I'm thinking it was Easu alllllll along. Not!Locke is the one who convinced Richard to tell Locke that he must go back and die. Not!Locke is the one who convinced Richard that Locke was the one the "Others" had been waiting for. Not!Locke used Locke to make Ben jealous enough to "kill" Jacob. Because, god knows, Locke, Ben, and Jack are quite concerned with who is the very most special snowflake of them all.

But, again, Jacob has a plan. And in a time-slippy universe, we can't be sure exactly when/how/on what reiteration of time that Jacob went to the Lostees at various points in their lives. Maybe this is the first time. Maybe it's not. It doesn't really matter, because as he told Hurley, it's all up to him. His choice. Free will. It's all of their choices.

So what if "The Incident" has happened before? And, like Richard said, killed them "before"... and what is different this time? The bomb went off... because Juliet acted on free will. She is "The Variable" just as Daniel predicted free will being the variable. But (now to something worse than theorizing... predicting! Ugh! You know I'll be wrong)

I think Jack is going to be seriously disappointed because I don't think that what "changed" is that the plane doesn't fall out of the sky and they all land safely at LAX. I'm thinking that time proceeds along the exact same course, unaltered... except by free will.

I think, guess, have seen theorized, that Jacob's trips to the Lostees were at critical junctures in their lives, places where they chose their fates. And what if, because of the bomb, what if at these "touched" junctures... they chose different fates? What if (big what if) they remember the previous timeline that they just blew the hell up and know that it's all been done before?

And, one more wrinkle, what if nothing else changes. The flight is still scheduled, the unknowing are still going to be on it, and they either choose or don't choose to reboard? Or maybe we're go back to the time before the Donkey Wheel of Alternate Timelines? There are multiple points they could re-enter the timeline, but have the timeline essentially unchanged.

The thing that intrigues me about that particular theory is, I think, they'll still have motivation to go back, yet again, to the island. Because even if they remember enough to know what happens, others do not. And to change things... they have to go back. It's the flaw in Jack's plan all along. He's deciding that he just wants to fix all his mistakes, but what if he can't? What if he's doomed to remember them? What if Claire still got on that plane, then what Kate wanted isn't fulfilled? She wants Aaron's mom back. Jack wants Kate back. And the route goes through the island. Sun and Jin would have each other... but not their daughter. Because that daughter only existed because of the island. Locke would be alive again, but paralyzed and not the most special snowflake. And I'm still tempted into believing that there is some way for Hurley to get both Libby and Charlie back. Oh, and Juliet was not touched by Jacob. There's nothing about the flight that would change her life. She'd still be stuck on that damn island with Ben... so if Sawyer really does love her... he has to go back to the island? (And if she wasn't touched... will she even remember?)

I don't know. It's a theory.

And if Smokey is Ammet/Ammit... well, I think maybe we could see Charlie and Libby again, but I'm betting that Mr. Echo is truly and most sincerely dead because Ammet ate his soul.

And as I write it down, it all sounds freakily insane. I'm probably wrong about a bunch of stuff and it won't work at all as I'm thinking. But, as of this moment, these are some of the thoughts bopping around my brain. I think that in the end there will be both fate and free will. They can't change fate, but they have the ability to choose whether or not they participate.

Well... it's a thought, anyway. And I'm now going to stop theorizing and go back to remembering that the best way to enjoy the show is simply to embrace the WTF.