Tonight’s LOST Recap – Ab Aeterno

If you are not yet caught up on LOST, then cease and desist from reading this post as you will be spoiled!

I haven’t moved from my spot on the couch since watching tonight’s episode.  Yes, I am not ashamed to say that I watched it twice, back to back.  I l-o-v-e-d this episode.  You already know that having Richard Alpert in a episode “makes it” for me.  Imagine my rapt attention to a whole episode about him   It certainly answered a lot of questions, but in typical Lost fashion, it raised about a million more.  So, as usual, I’ll just get on with my realizations, loves and questions:

Do we know what happened to Ilana that she is so wrecked in the hospital?  How has she been “preparing” (Jacob says this is what she’s been preparing for)?  I feel like I didn’t pay enough attention to Ilana before and maybe a bit of her backstory had been shared when she was capturing Sayid.

So the captain of the Black Rock was Magnus Hanso, obviously curious since we know Alvar Hanso from the Hanso Foundation & the Dharma Initiative.

We have an “answer” to why the Black Rock is deep in the jungle; it would appear that it was a tsunami that brought Richard & the ship to the island.  Imagining the Black Rock breaking the statue of Anubis was a little ridiculous until after I watched it the second time and I guess it could be explained by the combined force of the waves & ship.

The big question that kept popping in my head is, who/what is manifesting the ‘dead’ people?  I wonder if it is Jacob, the Man in Black/Smocke or if they just pop up on their own (or any combination of the three).   It was bothering me to see Isabella run off when she hears the smoke monster overhead just to be “killed” all over again.  Any ideas on that?

How awesome was it to hear MIB say “it’s good to see you out of those chains”?  Remember Smocke said that to Richard after he killed Jacob and exited the statue?  I can see why Richard has been such a spazz ever since.

What does MIB mean when he says that Jacob “took my body…my humanity”?  Was he originally just a man and Jacob actually made him a shape-shifting smoke monster?

So Jacob tells Richard that he can’t do anything for his wife, then what makes Jacob tell Dogen that if he works for him then his son can live?  It really seems like poor Richard gets the short end of the stick in every way.  I was really disappointed to see him completely lose faith at the scene where he digs up his wife’s cross.  It was also painful that he couldn’t see his wife himself, that Hurley had to narrate the whole thing to him.  That scene really made me cry; Nestor Carbonell really gave an awesome performance in this whole episode!

In the final scene where Jacob hands the bottle of wine to MIB, I thought it was very telling that he smashed the bottle of wine instead of pouring it out.  It kind of proves Jacob’s analogy;  when MIB smashes the bottle he’s proving that there is no way he is getting “out”, he will be destroyed along with the island itself.  Ok, did that make any sense?  Pretty much there’s no way the cork will come off and he will “escape”, instead he and the island will be destroyed.  Better?  Oh and I like how Jacob pretty much said exactly my “final thought” last week!

Getting some more answers & coming to the close of this obsession series is definitely exciting, but more confusing than ever.  If you have any thoughts or comments, I’d love to hear them!  And if you already talked Lost on your blog, be sure to leave me your link in the comments so I can come and chat with you