The Unfiltered Ramblings of a DVR Addict

Game Changer.  That is the phrase of choice used to described the events in previous Lost season finales that change the way the rest of the series will play out.  The finale of Season 5 had two such events, the results of which we’ll have to wait nine long months to find out.  So, let the speculating begin.

Like much of this season, the finale consisted of two parallel story lines taking place in the same location, but thirty years apart.  The seemingly more important of these two stories consisted of the efforts of Jack to detonate the plutonium core of Jughead at the site of the Swan station.  His motivation is to prevent the incident, thus preventing the crash of Oceanic 815, and all of the subsequent fallout.  Initially several people are opposed to his plan, mainly because they don’t want to erase the relationships that they have formed over the last three years.  But, this is Jack.  He eventually persuades Kate, Sawyer, Juliet and the rest to help him with his plan.  After a couple of overly long and dramatic shootouts, and the overly long and dramatic death of Juliet (sorry to all of the Sawyer-Juliet fans out there), the season ended with one huge explosion.  The classic black screen with white Lost logo is replaced this time with a white screen and a black Lost logo.  This to me would seem to indicate that the game has indeed changed.

The symbolic black and white coloring also played into the other main story line of the finale, that of Locke’s pilgrimage to Jacob.  The episode opened with a conversation between two men, one in black and the other in white.  Several revelations were made during this brief opening scene.  The man in white is revealed to be Jacob, and he is living happily in the distant past (as indicated by the complete statue, the woven shoes and the approaching ship which is likely the Black Rock).  The other man, whose name is never given, is desperately searching for a way to kill Jacob, a loophole.  He is angry at Jacob for continually bringing people to the island where “they come, they fight, they destroy, they corrupt.”  As he says, “It always ends the same.”  From there, we see Jacob intersect with the lives of most of the main characters of the show, typically at what seem to be the most important moments of their lives.  For Jack, Kate, Sawyer and Locke, these incidents eventually lead to them being on Oceanic 815.  For Hurley and Sayid, they seem to get them back to the island via Ajira 316.  He’s also seen asking a severely injured Ilana for her help. 

The major revelation of this story line is not that Jacob has visited all of these people off the island or even that he is a “real” person, but rather that Locke is actually dead, and the person that returned to the island in the form of Locke was actually the man in black from the opening scene.  By convincing Ben to kill Jacob he has indeed found the loophole he was looking for.  Ben spent this entire episode looking exceptionally pathetic, unable to garner respect from anyone, and ultimately being used as a pawn by the fake Locke.  He was portrayed in this episode as a pretender to the throne.  It seems as though Widmore and Ben were just placeholders while Richard awaited Locke’s return.  Ben is not the only person who was deceived by Jacob’s nemesis.  Although many people stated that he seemed different, and we were told multiple times that “dead is dead,” no one ever seemed to doubt his resurrection.  That was, of course, until Ilana and Bram dumped his corpse onto the beach. 

So, that was it.  The ending of Season 5.  Locke is dead.  Jacob is dead.  Juliet is dead.  Sayid is dying.  Or are they?  Did the detonation of Jughead prevent all of this from happening?  How does the death of Jacob affect the ultimate outcome of the island?  The answers to these questions will definitely not be black and white.  Now we’ve got nine long months to debate where this show is heading, but truthfully, none of us have a clue.  That’s the beauty of it.