I do not think it is a coincidence that all of the best episodes of LOST do not follow the normal structure of usual LOST episodes. A standard episode focuses on one character on the island while providing flashbacks of that character off the island. The season three episode titled “Flashes Before Your Eyes” featured Desmond mentally reliving a mistake he made in the past. The season three finale titled “Through the Looking Glass” featured a new format to the show; the flash-forward. The season four episode titled “The Constant” featured Desmond mentally streaming in and out of consciousness in the year either 2004 or 1996. The season five finale titled “The Incident” followed Jacob showing up at vulnerable times in the main characters lives before the island. Finally, the season six episode title “Ab Aeterno” followed the 150 years of Richard Alpert’s life and how he came to be the important person he is on the island.
Ab Aeterno opens up on the Island with team Jacob around a campfire trying to figure out what to do next. A flashback features Jacob visiting Ilana in a hospital and asks her to come to the Island to protect the recruits. She asks him what to do, and he says to ask Ricardus (meaning Richard). Back at the campfire, Richard has no idea what Ilana is talking about and storms off to go join team Flocke. Jack tries to stop him, but Richard reveals the truth about where they are (or at least his theory as to where they are). He exclaims that they are all dead and they are in Hell and have been since they died in the plane crash. After Richard storms off, Jack sees Hurley talking to the air in Spanish. Jack asks him what Jacob is saying, and Hurley said he is not talking to Jacob.
Next, Jacob is wandering through the jungle and we hear a familiar sound that we have not heard in a long time, the flashback sound. We flash back to the late 1800s with Richard Alpert trying to help his sick wife, Isabella. They decide she needs medicine and in order to get that, they must use every last possession they have in order to get the medicine to save her life. She gives him her gold cross, which we interpret to be the last valuable item they own, so he can go off and get this medicine. He rides horseback through the rain and through the night to find this doctor with the medicine. Richard enters this man’s home and offers all of his possessions for the medicine, which the doctor claims will save Isabella’s life. Richard hands the doctor the cross, and the doctor throws it on the ground, implying it is worthless. Richard pleads with him and they end up in a struggle resulting in Richard pushing the doctor into a table, which he hits his head on and dies. Richard takes the medicine and rides back to his village where his wife is nearly dead and he is too late with the medicine. After she dies, Richard is arrested for murder.
Richard is now featured in a jail cell crying in a corner reading the Bible.
A priest walks in to get Richard’s confession, and Richard admits to killing someone in order to save his wife’s life. The priest accepts, but cannot offer him forgiveness since murder is unforgiveable. In order to gain forgiveness, he must go through penance; however, unfortunately for Richard, he is convicted of death by hanging and does not have time to gain penance. Richard knows what will happen to him next, he will be hanged and sentenced to Hell. Suddenly, a man comes in, examines Richard’s hands and asks if he speaks English. After being reluctant to respond in English, Richard eventually does and the man takes him prisoner to bring him on to his boat and to be used as a field worker in America. Richard is saved just in the nick of time, coincidence? Of course not, Jacob has intervened and summoned him to the Island.Getting to the Island is not an easy excursion. The boat Richard is on ends up in the middle of a storm approaching an Island, and the workers at the bottom of the ship are looking out at a gigantic statue that they are heading right into on a huge wave. They end up crashing into the statue (answering our question of how it ended up as a Four Toed Statue) and ending up with the boat landing in the middle of the jungle. After a scene of terrible CGI, something LOST still hasn’t mastered, it is revealed that the boat Richard was on is the Black Rock, the boat that seems to have an endless supply of dynamite. Unfortunately for Richard (how many times have I said that today?), he is chained to the wall along with several other slaves. The captain comes down and starts killing off these men. When he gets to Richard, Richard begs for salvation, but the man says, “It will only be a short while before you try to kill me.” Once again, Richard is saved in the nick of time as we hear the familiar sound of the smoke monster attack the men off of the ship. The captain proceeds to see what is going on and is killed by the smoke monster. The smoke monster comes down into the cargo of the ship, approaches Richard, and scans him in a similar way as he did Mr. Eko in “The 23rd Psalm.” The smoke monster lets Richard live, leaving him chained to the ship.
Next, we see Richard trying to pull a nail out of the floor in order to set himself free of the chains. After a long time and what we can only assume to be a lot of pain, Richard finally gets the nail and starts to pick his lock. A boar comes along, (It was probably the smoke monster yet again) and after Richard attempts to kill the boar, the nail is knocked out of Richard’s reach (how unfortunate). Next, to Richard’s surprise,
Isabella comes down into the ship and convinces Richard that they are in Hell. She tells him that she must set him free before the black smoke, which she claims is the Devil, comes back. Suddenly, they hear the black smoke and Isabella runs back upstairs, only to be taken away by the black smoke. So, what just happened? This was all the smoke monster’s intricate plan to read Richard’s memory. It was to keep him down in the cargo until he is beyond desperate, send his “wife” down there to convince him he is in Hell, and then take away his “wife.” The Man in Black laid out all the tracks for him to seem like the savior, comes to Richard’s rescue and gets Richard to do anything he wants of him. And finally, the Man in Black, is the same form as he was in the opening scene of “The Incident” that first introduced us to Jacob and the MIB. Richard explains everything that has gone on, and the MIB convinces him it was the Devil. The MIB says he will set Richard free if he kills the Devil, and in return the MIB will bring his wife back to life. This is all a ploy for the MIB to put together another attempt to kill the man he so badly wants to be dead, Jacob. He easily convinces a desperate Richard to kill the “Devil” with the same knife that Dogen gave Sayid several episodes back to kill Flocke. Richard accepts his mission with one more instruction, that Richard must stab Jacob before he speaks or else it will be too late.
Richard finds Jacob outside the Four Toed Statue. Before he can stab him, Jacob starts talking to Richard and asks what he is doing. Richard explains what the MIB said to him, and Jacob starts explaining his side of the story. To start, Jacob attempts to drown
Richard to prove to him that they are not in Hell and that he is not the Devil. Then, Jacob reveals a lot of information that finally clarifies the mission and reasoning behind everything that has gone on with this Island. Jacob explains that the man Richard was talking to is an evil man that does not believe that anyone is truly a good person. Jacob brings people to the Island to prove him wrong, but the Man in Black corrupts these people to prove Jacob wrong. This game has been going on for a long, long time we presume, and it is happening with the characters that crashed on the Island from Oceanic 815. Jacob describes that his role on this Island is to keep the Man in Black from leaving the Island, for he would unleash evil to the world. Jacob uses a metaphor about wine and a cork. The Man in Black is a bottle of wine that can easily spill out of the bottle unless something is stopping it, a cork. The Island is a cork; it is keeping the evil smoke monster/MIB on the Island so he cannot spread to the outside world. Jacob is in charge of keeping him in. This is what the candidates are for. They are here to replace Jacob when he dies in order to keep the Man in Black from leaving the Island. The Man in Black, Flocke, has finally killed the other Man in Black and is now attempting to infect the candidates so he can finally leave the island. Now, we already can assume the outcome of the show. One of the candidates will replace Jacob, my guess being Jack, and the Man in Black, being Locke, will once again not be able to leave the Island and will be stuck playing this game again. Ironically, this will be between Jack and Locke, whose roles will have reversed. I presume that this will be the ending because if the Man in Black leaves the Island, then the world ends and that is not going to happen since that would be a way too open ended ending. This ending is poetic in terms of LOST, and it makes a lot of sense. I still do not know how they are going to get to this point, but I know it will be amazing and finally we will understand the purpose of everything that has happened over the years.
After Jacob explains all of this, he promises Richard that he will give him eternal life, after saying he cannot bring his wife back and denying him forgiveness. Now, Richard cannot go to Hell, and he will act as Jacob’s advisor following all of his orders and intervening when Jacob cannot. Richard returns to the Man in Black, and the MIB already knows what has happened. Richard gives the MIB a white stone from Jacob, probably signifying that Jacob has yet again won, for now. The MIB ends this by telling Richard that his offer still stands and will always stand. Anytime Richard wants to join the MIB, he can, and the MIB’s promise of bringing Isabella will still stand.
The Man in Black disappears and Richard buries his wife’s gold cross. We go back to present time, and Richard is calling out for the Man in Black (in the same spot that they were in the flashback where Richard buried the necklace) only to be interrupted by Hurley, who had been following Richard. Hurley claims that he knows what Richard has to do, because Hurley can conveniently speak Spanish, talk to the dead, and therefore get Richards instructions from Isabella. Hurley convinces Richard that he is truly speaking to Isabella, and passes the message along that Richard has to protect the world from the Man in Black. He must keep doing what he has been doing for the past 150 years, and he cannot lose faith in his mission. They have a last embrace, although it is unclear as to whether they physically touch even though the show portrays it as if they do, when she suddenly disappears and Richard is hugging the air. He digs up the cross, puts it on, and goes off to join Hurley back at the campsite. Flocke is shown looking over at what has just happened, and now seems to have another problem. He has lost Richard once again.
The final scene of the episode is Jacob talking to the Man in Black. This conversation is very similar to the scene on the beach back in the opening scene of “The Incident.” Jacob gives the Man in Black a bottle of wine with a cork in it, and the MIB proceeds by breaking the bottle on a rock.
What a perfect episode! In what has been a shaky final season of LOST, we finally get an episode that restores our faith in the show, and lays out the path that the show is heading. Personally, I love it and cannot wait for more (even though I do not want it to end). We still must have a back-story of Jacob and the Man in Black since we still do not know the origin of them. We also do not know how they came to be and why they can live forever. This strict set of rules that they have to follow is uncertain, but I have faith that they will be explained. With the teams set up, the path laid out, and with Widmore showing up, it seems like pretty soon all Hell will break loose until the grand finale of the greatest show ever. Until next time, I guess all we can do is ponder like we have for the past 5 seasons, even though we are slowly having less and less to ponder.
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