Ab Aeterno

Tonight brought a fantastic episode of Lost, finally bringing us the story of Richard Alpert... or should I say Ricardo?

The Richard back story was a powerful one, taking us through the grief of losing his wife despite doing the unthinkable to try to save her life. We saw the suffering he had to endure chained in the hold of the Black Rock. And we got to see exactly how the Man in Black played upon his vulnerability and almost claimed Richard as a servant. Twice; for one of the few moments to take place in the "present" showed Richard almost giving in, only to be pulled back from the brink in an outstanding scene with Hurley serving as medium.

Of course, there were plenty of little details about the history of the Island filled in for the people most interested in such things -- how the Black Rock came to rest in the middle of the Island; how the statue was destroyed. Fun stuff there too.

And yet there was another great facet to the episode as well, the further illumination of the struggle between Jacob and the Man in Black. This episode really showed just how similar, yet opposite, the two really are. Both can apparently be killed by the very knife that Dogan gave Sayid to use against MiB a few episodes back... but neither can be allowed to speak even a "single word" before you plunge the knife in, or else they work their charms upon you.

Whoever or whatever these two figures are, it has now been made expressly clear that one has dominion over life, and the other over death. The Man in Black has been manifesting in the forms of people who have died; Jacob tells Richard that he cannot bring his wife back to life, though he can extend Richard's eternally. According to Jacob, the Man in Black seeks to corrupt people, while Jacob believes in the core good within them.

And while I do believe Jacob's explanation of the Island being a prison for Ol' Smokey (who himself has all but said as much in his actions this season), there is still something of a gap between the Jacob of the past and the one who apparently decided to get out into the world and start influencing people after all. He told Richard that this is something he did not want to do, and expressly "hired" Richard for the job. And yet we saw in the season five finale how Jacob himself went out into the world and touched the lives of the "candidates" that would eventually end up on Oceanic 815.

Was this a violation of "the rules?" Is this how the Man in Black was ultimately able to find his "loophole," get Jacob killed, and assume the form of Locke?

Questions still abound, but the stakes of Lost have never been more explicitly stated. Good stuff.

And here's one last parting thought. Though the "Sideways World" took a week off, that storyline is still alive. And now I have to wonder... if a world in which the Man in Black escapes the Island really is a world in which hell comes to Earth, just what exactly is the Sideways World? After all, we saw the Island, sunk to the bottom of the ocean, in the season premiere. Is Smokey still imprisoned there on the ocean floor? Was he killed? Or is he out roaming free? Perhaps that last scenario is the real thing that all of the Sideways storyline is leading to?