The Incident, Parts 1 and 2

Well, the writers of Lost cooked up another great season finale, as is their wont.

To start us off, how major a paradigm shift was the revelation that Jacob is who Jacob is? On Tuesday, he was a shadowy figure on the fringe (haha) of the show that we know little to nothing about, someone that we scour screencaps for a glimpse of, someone probably trapped in the cabin, someone Ben had never seen. 

And now? He's a world-traveling, never-aging, healing-with-a-touch Cool Guy. 

Who saw that coming? Not me.

Long list of What We Learned today:

1. Jacob is corporeal. He eats, he touches, he can be stabbed and killed.

2. Jacob is free to roam about the world. 

3. Jacob has a nemesis, and we meet him. This nemesis cannot kill Jacob as of the late 1800's, though he desperately wants to.

4. The statue looks more like Sobek, another Egyptian deity, thanks to the crocodile head. 

Sobek (also called Sebek, Sochet, Sobk, Sobki, Soknopais, and in Greek,Suchos) was the deification of crocodiles, as crocodiles were deeply feared in the nation so dependent on the Nile River. Egyptians who worked or travelled on the Nile hoped that if they prayed to Sobek, the crocodile god, he would protect them from being attacked by crocodiles.^[1] The god Sobek, which was depicted as a crocodile or a man with the head of a crocodile was a powerful and frightening deity; in some Egyptian creation myths, it was Sobek who first came out of the waters of chaos to create the world.^[1] As a creator god, he was occasionally linked with the sun god Ra.^[1]

5. Jacob visited Sawyer, Sayid, Locke, Hurley, Kate, Jack, Sun and Jin at different stages in their lives and touched them. In Locke's case, Jacob's touch seemed to restore John to life. 

6. Rose and Bernard are fine, and living alone. They've become pretty laissez-faire in the last three years, and Vincent is with them.

7. Roger shoots Sayid, justice for Sayid shooting Ben.

8. Juliet is convinced to help Jack after realizing Sawyer loves Kate. This lends actual plot relevance to the whole stupid love square, so good work, writers.

9. Jack actually goes through with Faraday's plan to blow up the ocean-ahem-the Island, and restore the timeline. Whether the plan actually works or not we won't know for a while.

10. We see how Chang injured and lost his arm.

11. Sun finds Charlie's family "DS" ring in Aaron's crib. 

12. Locke convinces Ben to kill Jacob by telling him how wronged Ben has been. It was then that I became sure that this Locke was not Locke.

13. Locke's body is in the crate Ilana and Bram have.

14. Ilana and Bram, while unknown to Richard, are apparently followers of Jacob.

15. Richard Alpert responded to the question of "What lies in the shadow of the statue?" with "Ille qui nos omnes servabit" - “He who will protect/save us all.”

16. Ben stabs Jacob after essentially being told he was meaningless. "What about you?" is probably the harshest thing you could say to Ben at this point. 

17. If you want to get technical, Locke/Nemesis is the one who actually pushed Jacob into the fire. 

So much to tackle here. Just one note to end this post: 

The show has increased in scope every season. 

In Season 1, it's all about a small section of the Island. Then we move out to the fact that there are Others on the Island, and explore more. Then we discover the Hydra. And from there, the conflict between DHARMA and the Others on-Island, and then the conflict between Ben and Widmore off-Island.

And now all of that seems like the arguing of children compared to this conflict between Jacob and his Nemesis (some have taken to calling him Esau). The struggle between gods about the fate of man? For us, doesn't get much more epic than that. 

Theories tomorrow.