Lost : Across the Sea

This week, Lost takes us on a journey back in time, to the day Jacob and the MIB came into this world. A pregnant woman is shipwrecked and finds herself stranded on the beach. she goes in search of water, and meets a mysterious woman who helps her give birth to her children. First came Jacob, and then they were shocked when she discovered she had twins. The mystery woman lays the two babies on a rock, and proceeds to apologize before smashing the pregnant woman's  head with a stone. (Even as babies, they had different coloured shawls. Jacob's was white, while MIB's was a darker brown.)

As they grew up, the woman pretended to be their mother, but she always loved the MIB (or in this case, BIB) more than Jacob and hoped that he would take over her duty as the protector of the island. One day, while hunting, the two boys come across a group of men who live on the other side of the island. Their mother tells them that those people were bad (here she quotes the MIB) and brings the two boys to a shiny cave deep in the jungle. She tells them that it is the duty of one of them to protect it because it was the heart of the island and if anyone tried to take the light away, it would be extinguished and so would every living being in the world.

One day, their real mother came back to see them, but only the BIB could see her. She leads him to the other side of the island, where the people who came with her on the ship lived and tells him that he belongs 'across the sea'. She also describes how their false mother had killed her all those years ago. Angered by this, the BIB tries to leave, bringing Jacob with him but Jacob refuses to follow. Their mother comes upon them, and the BIB accuses her of lying to them. He leaves, and they let him.

Twenty years later, Jacob still lives with his mother but visits his twin occasionally. It's odd how they don't look at all alike (the MIB looks older). He tells Jacob that he's finally found a way off the island. Apparently they found a way to get to the light he had seen all those years ago (by digging wells). Jacob tells his mother about this and she sets of to prevent him from leaving. They meet in the well, where she says her customary "I'm so sorry," before bashing the MIb's head against the rock wall of the well. She then proceeds to kill all the people, burn down the settlement and cover up the wells.

Their mother then tells Jacob that it is time and brings him back to the shiny cave. She tells him that he is the one who must replace her and hands him a cup into which she had poured the wine from the bottle Jacob gave to the MIB in the future. He drinks it, and she tells him, "Now we are the same." 

Meanwhile, the MIB wakes up to total destruction and heads back across the island to kill the woman who had done it all. After he stabs her, she surprisingly thanks him before dying and tells him that she won't let him leave the island because she loves him. Jacob comes across the scene, beats his brother up and brings him to the shiny cave before knocking him unconscious and throwing him in.

Moments later, the ground starts shaking and the Black Smoke emerges, flying off into the jungle. Jacob later finds his brother's dead body by the stream and carries it home to the cave. He lays it beside that of their mother, and puts the black and white stones into a pouch between them. Many years later, Jack, Kate and Locke would stumble upon what Locke describes as their very own 'Adam and Eve'.

So, the shiny cave has transformed the MIB into the Black Smoke. Why's such a sacred place capable of producing monsters? If Jacob had gone in, would he have become a pillar of white smoke? This episode shed some light on the origins of Jacob and the MIb but I was disappointed when they never mentioned the MIB's name at all. Or maybe he doesn't have one because his mother only had one name prepared before she got smashed to death with a stone.

The mysterious woman was supposed to be the protector of the island, and she would do so at any cost, including murdering all of the MIB's people. No wonder he's pissed off right now. And she also made it so that Jacob and the MIB couldn't hurt each other, so it explains why Smokey got Ben to kill Jacob.

After this episode, I started feeling sorry for the MIB. All he wanted was to get off the island, but his false mother does everything she could to stop him. And she finally tries to kill him and murders all his people. Can't blame him for being angry. Even his brother hates him, and throws him into the shiny cave, which his mother described as 'something worse than death'.

Another thing, if the black smoke wasn't created yet back then, how did their dead mother come back to talk to the MIB? And it still doesn't explain why Jacob could leave the island at will and the MIB couldn't, and why everyone is so intent on preventing him from leaving. I don't believe it when his mother said that it was because she loved him. Why can't he leave? He wasn't evil before the woman killed all his people, so why is she being so hard on him? If it's all because of love, then I say she's a pretty selfish person.

Well, one more episode left before the two hour finale. Hopefully it'll shed some light on everything that has happened so far. I enjoyed this episode a lot though!