I’m going to do a little “Lost” blogging mainly so I can say, I told you so, when I proven right. 
Anyway, I think the show has been coming to an interesting climax this season and the producers have pulled off the trick of revealing answers to the questions we have while giving us even more questions to keep us hooked.
If you’re not a “lost” fan, then I’m sorry, but it’s too complicated to explain all this for you so skip to the next blog entry.
In last night’s episode, “The Man Behind the Curtain,” (yet another “Wizard of Oz” reference), Locke and Ben traveled to see the mysterious “Jacob”, also called “the Great Man” who apparently only Ben ever talks with. Apparently he’s also the only one who can see him … until Locke catches a glimpse. In the “poltergeist” scene in the lonely cabin, just as Ben is thrown against the wall and as the camera pans back we see 11 frames of Jacob. Look carefully at the profile: That’s Locke.
And the voice that spoke to Locke, that said “Help. Me.” It was the same voice as Locke in the mass grave repeating it to Ben.
This is what I’ve been saying for weeks to Melanie: Locke is Jacob. He is the man of mystery around whom the island’s secrets revolve.
What about the obvious head of hair on “Jacob” while John Locke is bald? Recall the biblical story of Jacob and Esau. Jacob wore a sheep’s skin to fool his half-blind father that he was his brother Esau and thus receive the eldest son’s blessing. I think something similar is happening here.
So I think this is a Locke from another time, another timeline, another causality, whatever sci-fi mumbo jumbo you want to use.
A couple of other thoughts: Ben’s father, Roger, is obviously “Roger, Work Man” that Hurley and Sawyer found in the VW microbus in the jungle. The “hostile” that the young Ben saw in the jungle was the “Other” Alpert who apparently has not aged a day in several decades. Note that all of the Others are wearing 19th century style clothing and that even their tents are old-fashioned; I think that they are the survivors of the slave ship “Black Rock” that crashed on the island and they haven’t aged since then. Ben’s young friend was probably the woman in the painting in his living room (or maybe it was his mother).
Next week is the season finale. It should be very interesting.
Very interesting theory, Dom!
FYI, the 2 hour season finale is in two weeks… next week is a one-hour non-finale
Granted, I’m not the best with faces, with I don’t see Locke in those frames of Jacob. But the “parallel universe” theme does fit—it is clear that, in another reality, the plane crashed (though how a plane from Sydney to LAX gets anyway near Bali puzzles me…) And, of course, Desmond seems to be stuck in a time loop. Maybe Jacob is at a more advanced stage of this kind of loop that leaves him trapped in some netherworld?
Morning’s Minion,
Put your hand over Jacob’s hair in the frame and you will definitely see Locke.
Next week isn’t the finale. It’s a Charlie-centered episode called Greatest Hits. The finale is the week after that.
Yep… 2 wednesdays left of LOST.
I have a theory… I think that you can see Jacob if you’ve killed someone on the Island. Thats why Ben told Locke that he had to kill his father in order to discover the Island’s secrets. So… I think that Sawyer will be able to see Jacob.
Should be a great last two weeks.
Does anyone think we’ve seen the last of John Locke? Chances are that if you shoot someone in the chest and leave they in a ditch they are pretty much dead. however, somehow I think the island will “heal him” and he’ll be back. Locke will probably be part of the cliff-hanger for next season.
I’m not convinced it’s Locke. Only the last frame resembles him. And sorry, I really don’t think he sounds like him either.
I had this thought before I went to the site: if it were Locke, don’t you think Ben would say something? He would be much more afraid of Locke, thinking Locke is Jacob….alive, in the present dimension.
Locke will come back. He’s Locke. He’s reason. He is the man of solid things.
Joe, Locke was still alive when we left him, and given his propensity to heal (as you noted), I think he’s alive.
I love Lost, and I haven’t minded waiting as they’ve raised the questions and presented the mysteries, but if they killed Locke off at this point, I’d have a *real* hard time with the show. But then, I have more faith in Cuse & Lindelhof, and don’t expect that to happen.
What got me was the Ben’s story. Yet another innocent young soul who was damaged by an emotionally abusive Father. Just off the top of my head that list includes Locke, Jack, Hurley, Ben, Kate, and Sun (probably forgetting a few). Not to mention several abusive father figures. What is the deal?
Grace and Peace,
Joe
Great observation, Joe S. You may have cracked the Lost code. Charlie had a very abusive father. Jin’s father hasn’t appeared to be abusive as of yet, but that Jin has distanced himself from his father out of a shallow form of shame might play into it. I can’t recall well, but didn’t Desmond have a problem with his father? Certainly Penny’s dad was an SOB. Remember Shannon and Boone? They had father issues as well. At a minimum, Anna Lucia had an absent father. Too many daddy issues to be a coincidence I think.
It’s been apparent for some time that this is a show about “daddy issues”. In fact an early episode was called “All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues.”
Count em up: Locke’s dad stole his kidney; Jack’s dad was emotionally abusive; Kate’s stepdad turned out to be her bio-dad and was physically abusive; Claire’s dad (who is Jack’s dad) abandoned her and her baby’s daddy abandoned her too; Charlie’s dad was an SOB and his brother was a drug-addicted dad (who later cleaned himself up); Hurley’s dad abandoned him and came back when he won the lottery; Sun’s dad is a mobster and Jin’s ashamed of his dad who may not be his dad and is shielding Jin from knowing his mom is a prostitute; Sawyer’s dad killed his mom and himself; Shannon and Boone had a dead dad and Boone was a surrogate father; Michael and Walt are obvious in their father-son issues; Ben killed his father and also has issues with his daughter; Eko’s dad was absent and his brother was a priest, i.e. spiritual father; Ana Lucia’s dad never showed up, but we only saw her mom, and she was pregnant (lost the baby) and obviously not married.
The only characters who, so far, don’t have daddy issues are Sayid and Desmond, although Desmond has issues with Penny’s dad.
Good summary Domenico. We haven’t really heard much about Sayid’s early life, but I bet he may be in the same boat.
So what do you thing that they are getting at? Certainly this is fertile ground to explore spiritual issues, but I doubt that they’ll go there, at least in any overt sense.
Grace and Peace,
Joe
I think part of the literary mission of the show is to explore concepts of fatherhood and how we relate to fathers and what it means. I think there is still an as-yet-to-be-realized element of the mythology that will tell us why all these people with daddy issues are all on this island together.
I had to watch the show a second time on the VCR to see the appearance of Jacob – that scene happened so fast.
My first impression is that Jacob is the man behind the curtain – that Jacob is the force behind (drum roll) the Smoke Monster. Ben sees a guy in a rocker that Locke doesn’t see. Where has this happened before? In the episode “Dave,” where Hurley sees a guy that Libby doesn’t.
Smokey is the prime suspect behind the apparitions on the island. If so, the Monster must have access to some sort of telepathic ability; this seems the likeliest explanation for the fact that the Monster has appeared as a person (or a horse) known only to one person on the island.
This could explain how the Others were able to collect highly detailed dossiers on the Flight 815 survivors – Jacob is their source. The Others may have no idea how Jacob is getting that information; if Ben connects the dots between Jacob and the apparition of his mother, he may know a lot.
But why does the Monster behave differently toward different people? It leaves Eko alone on one occasion and kills him on another. As “Dave” it tried to get Hurley to kill himself. In smoke form it hovered over Kate and Juliet without harming them. It appears in dreams. It left Locke unharmed on one occasion, tried to drag him down a hole on another, and as Jacob spoke a couple of words that Ben couldn’t hear. All those years it ignored those microbuses that drove around the island.
(How could those VWs drive around the island unmolested by the Hostiles? And how was DHARMA able to build all those installations with the Hostiles present? Maybe DHARMA lied about who got to the island first.)
I have a working theory. The Smoke Monster was originally just what Rousseau said it was – a security system, most likely built by DHARMA and preprogrammed to ignore sonic barriers and vans. One day Jacob took it over.
But who and what is Jacob? One of DHARMA’s fields of study was parapsychology; maybe Jacob is a parapsychology experiment gone wrong. He/it could be something along the lines of the thought monster in the old movie Forbidden Planet, for all I know.