AB AETERNALLY AWESOME

Good smoke monster almighty, what an episode! Some observations:

- We finally got a reference to Magnus Hanso being the captain of the Black Rock. This was first mentioned on the blast door map way back in season two, which has a notation stating that the Black Rock is the final resting place of Magnus. His great-grandson Alvar would go on to fund the DHARMA Initiative and eventually locate the island.

- The statue collapsed due to being struck by a tidal wave carrying the Black Rock, which was washed inland. For four or five years fans have been whining and moaning about knowing why the ship was in the middle of the jungle and why the rest of the statue is missing, so this was a kill-two-birds-with-one-stone kinda thing. (Black stone or white stone? Tee hee).

- Some people have pointed out that, in last season’s “The Incident,” the ship was headed towards the island during early morning with clear skies, whereas in this episode it was in the middle of the night during a tropical storm. I’d imagine the ship we saw during the beginning of “The Incident” was either not the Black Rock, or we’re dealing with the fact that day/night can change suddenly when entering the electromagnetic field, not to mention that storms seem to materialize out of nowhere.

- The scene with Richard left in chains for several days was a nod by the writers to a scene from Stephen King’s THE STAND, where a character named Lloyd is trapped in his jail cell after everyone else in the prison has died of a plague. On the verge of starvation, the story’s villain, a shapeshifting demon calling himself Flagg (also known as the Man in Black in King’s “Dark Tower” series), arrives with a key and promises to free Lloyd in exchange for loyalty. He becomes Flagg’s right hand man, just as Richard becomes Jacob’s.

- I interpreted the scene with Isabella on the ship to mean that she was actually a projection of the smoke monster, which had scanned Richard’s mind several days earlier. (Notice that the flashes it produces are probably the “very bright light” which Locke saw in the first season). The Man in Black left Richard alive so he could manipulate Richard into killing Jacob. Some have questioned how it’s possible that Isabella could be inside the ship when we heard the monster outside, but seriously, it’s a freaking cloud of psychic shapeshifting black smoke. I think it makes perfect sense. The smoke was conning Richard, as it’s wont to do.

- Interesting that Jacob told Richard he couldn’t reunite Richard with Isabella and that he couldn’t save Richard’s soul, whereas the smoke had no problem promising those things.

- Jacob’s explanation of the island being a containment system for the black smoke was interesting. It’s difficult to know how literally to interpret his comments. Is the black smoke really a force of darkness and maybe evil? One thing to note is that we’ve seen how proximity to the smoke leads to a kind of infection, something which can corrupt people seemingly irrevocably. If it did get to the outside world, it would theoretically be a bad thing for humanity.

- I like that with Jacob, Richard was dunked into the water (the second weird-ass baptism this season) and then they share wine, whereas with the Man in Black, Richard ate a cloven-hoofed animal. The Biblical imagery this week was far from subtle, not that I'm complaining. But it did seem that a lot of the Biblical imagery was there because Jacob and the Man in Black needed Richard to understand what they were talking about, and Catholicism is the lens through which he saw the world.

- One topic of discussion after this episode is just how was Isabella able to appear to Hurley. She didn’t die on the island, as was the case with all of the people Hurley has seen. This really begs the question as to whether or not Hurley really speaks with the dead. Admittedly, until this season I was pretty sure the ghosts Hurley sees were manifestations of the island, generated to manipulate him, but now am not so sure. This season has pretty heavily implied that Jacob chose Hurley specifically because Hurley can see things that others can’t, and we know the island is able to enhance the abilities of people who have special powers. So I’m now more open to the idea that Hurley is being helped by the spirits of the dead. (On the other hand, they pretty heavily implied that Miles can commune with the dead, only to take that idea away pretty quickly and basically make him an empath instead).

As for where exactly Isabella came from at the end of the episode, we have three options: she was a manifestation of the smoke monster, she was a manifestation of Jacob, or she was really the spirit of his dead wife. I don’t really buy that she was the black smoke. We know that the smoke is now stuck in Locke’s form, whenever it appears in physical form it seems that anyone can see it, and if these spirits were really the monster, it would suggest that the ghost of Jacob is really just the black smoke. None of that makes any sense in my book, not to mention it neutralizes any sense of real drama if Jacob isn’t even really Jacob. So I don’t think it’s the monster.

Isabella could have been Jacob, though. It would make sense, given that her message was that Richard needs to stop the black smoke. Also, it would make sense on the level that Jacob appeared as Isabella in order to offer some comfort to Richard, who was suffering (and, it’s worth noting, was also about to switch sides). Jacob heals people spiritually, not just physically. The idea that Jacob can appear as phantasms that only certain people can see also fits with why the Man in Black and Sawyer saw that blonde kid back in “The Substitute”. However, it does remove a little of the impact of Isabella passing a message to Richard from the other side; it would be like if the scene where Desmond calls Penny turned out to have been an illusion created by the smoke monster. It somewhat dulls the dramatic impact if Isabella is just another part of the manipulation which is going on this season. Also, we don’t know yet that Jacob can appear as other people, and the writers even said Jacob has not appeared in the form of others (though Damon and Carlton aren’t always exactly trustworthy . . . in fact, I wonder if they themselves are the Man in Black and Jacob). And if Jacob appearing as Isabella is related to the fact that he’s dead now and is like Snooki and can do whatever he wants sucka, it still doesn’t explain how Hurley saw Dave, Charlie, Mr. Eko, Ana Lucia, etc.

The last explanation is that it really was Isabella’s spirit, which is a less sci-fi direction and a more mystical and supernatural explanation. But the spiritual seems to be at play this season, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the show is actually a mix of science-fiction, the paranormal and the supernatural. By that token, it would mean the island’s electromagnetism can actually facilitate the communication of the dead with the living, which—considering that the island also has to do with psychic phenomena, time travel, teleportation, alternate realities and demonic clouds of black smoke—I don’t think is particularly that far out of left field for the show.

If it was the spirit or ghost of Isabella, it makes the most sense with the theme of the episode, which is that Richard is hiding from death. He has eternal physical life because he is afraid of what will happen when he dies, but in doing so he is both a.) delaying being reunited with Isabella through death, and b.) forgetting that her memory is always with him until then. Sounds corny, but this is exactly what we heard in the clip from Little House on the Prairie during last week’s episode, and I think it’s the perfect summation of what “Ab Aeterno” seemed to be saying. This also fits with the idea of Isabella on the boat being merely an illusion meant to trick Richard, whereas the Isabella which spoke to Hurley was the real thing. It recalls Eko’s brother Yemi, where Eko rejected the false Yemi that was a projection of the black smoke, and was reunited with the real Yemi through death.

Again, I’m reminded of “The Stand,” where a real world scenario slowly transforms into a science-fiction story, which in turn slowly becomes a story about the supernatural, magical and mystical. The writers of LOST have said that was their model in telling this story, so although I doubt that Jacob is literally an angel and the black smoke literally a demon, I think there are some major metaphysical and magical levels to this story. So while I’m not convinced that Richard seeing Isabella wasn’t manipulation on the part of Jacob, honestly I am at the point where I’m willing to accept that Hurley sees dead people because, well, he sees dead people. Hurley is even partly inspired by the character of Tom Cullen from “The Stand,” and who could Tom communicate with? Yep. Haley Joel Osment.

Speaking of Mr. King: anyone notice a few weeks ago how the Lighthouse looked a lot like a certain Dark Tower? Nice.