The episode “Across the Sea” reveals the backstory about MIB, Jacob, and their “Mother”. It was a fairly interesting episode in that it provided a lot more history to the mythology, but I was generally disappointed in it as a self-contained episode. However, it did give me tons of inspiration about the characterization of Jacob and MIB.
One thing I thought was interesting was the relationship between MIB and Mother. Mother first favors MIB, hoping he will be her replacement, but then MIB becomes the estranged of the two sons. MIB rebels from Mother, eventually murders her, and proves Jacob to be her rightful replacement. Yet it’s curious that it’s Mother who originally says what is echoed by MIB long after his matrical falling out with Mother – “they come, the fight, they destroy, the corrupt, and it always ends the same”. It’s also ironic that the two characters that detest the evil of humanity are the two that deceive and commit murder.
On the other hand, Jacob seems like a dull, sheepish, buffoon in this episode. However, though viewers might be tempted to lose respect for him, it’s obvious that he grows up a lot between the time he “killed” his brother and the time his brother kills him. For example, in the first meeting between Jacob and Richard, Jacob seems to me how I conceive God must be if He actually existed: bad things happen, not because it’s in God’s Plan, but because He tries His best to be a passive observer. This superior-being moral viewpoint is also like the Star Trek Prime Directive which states that Starfleet stay out of matters of alien races whose technological advancement isn’t yet at warp-level. Basically, it’s a viewpoint of advanced beings leaving lesser beings alone and giving them the opportunity to let their evolution run its own course.
Jacob is also like God because he has faith in humanity. Some people look at humanity and lose heart because, though we should have learned from all our wars and injustices of the past, we generally seem to repeat the same mistakes again and again. Even after 4000 years of civilization we are still essentially as MIB describes us to Jacob: “greedy, manipulative, untrustworthy, and selfish”. It’s also noteworthy that MIB claims that Jacob doesn’t see this because he’s “looking down on [them] from above.”
MIB and Mother’s pessimism of humanity is fair. Similarly, in Stephen King’s novel “The Stand” -- a tale about an end-of-the-world type battle between Good & Evil -- the hero asks at the end of the story, “do you think people ever learn anything?” and the question just hangs there in hesitation and doubt. It is a valid concern -- will humanity ever learn? Neither Mother nor MIB thinks so. Jacob does – “it only ends once; anything before that is just progress”. In this respect, he keeps pulling people to the island because he believes, I suppose, that they will eventually redeem themselves there.
And perhaps Jacob is right. Though the Oceanic survivors deal with lots of internal conflicts and commit great sins on the island (Jin attacks Michael, Sawyer attack Sayid, Charlie abducts Sun, Michael shoots Anna Lucia and Libby, etc.), they have all acted as heroes at one time or another, and have found themselves to be good people. Even Sawyer, who was the most immoral survivor in season one, becomes a leader in the Dharma Initiative, a cop in his flash-sideways, and a hero in general. It’s not a stretch to consider the Oceanic survivors as the exception to Mother and MIB’s pessimistic rule about humanity. In fact, if it wasn’t for Ben Linus and Charles Widmore, maybe the Oceanic survivors would have all gotten along in a semi-utopia long ago! In creating heroes out of these flawed people, Jacob has certainly seemed to have matured since his brother’s transformation/death.
The most telling sign of Jacob’s maturity since his youth in “Across the Sea” is his way of doing things his way, against his mother’s rules. For instance, he has begun selecting new candidates in a style completely different from that of his mother.
I don’t know if Mother needs to select the “chosen one” out of the twin candidates that washed up on the island, but her selection isn’t very formal at all. Basically, one candidate leaves so she chooses the other one. This is supposed to be explained when Mother tells Jacob that he was always the rightful heir, even if she never realized it before, and that he would one day understand. I don’t know if Jacob ever understands, but I sure don’t. To me it clearly seemed like the sad rationalizing of a flawed human being, and that MIB would have inevitably been the replacement if some dead person hadn’t intervened. And unless dead Mother or grand-Mother appears to Jacob (which seems problematic, considering his real mommy never did), then what could Jacob possibly even know about the candidate selection procedure?
Well, he doesn’t need to know; he no longer needs to know anything from Mother. Jacob creates his own rules now, as a young MIB once teased: “one day you can make up your own game and everyone else will have to follow your rules”.
Other Thoughts
If Jacob is just making up the game, do we really know anything about the consequences of the current character’s actions? MIB certainly doesn’t seem to think that he’ll destroy everything by leaving. How could Jacob be so sure of it and why should we believe him?
If Jacob is pulling people to the island to find his replacement, what’s all that talk about “it only ends once; everything else is just progress”? Does he have both things in mind by pulling the Oceanic survivors?
What does Mother really know, and who gave her the job of protector? Is she simply a naïve pawn in a situation like Desmond or Locke, who were told that they had to push a button to save the world? They weren’t exactly filled in on many details, and the one detail they were given was a little misleading, wasn’t it? Does mommy know the truth about the light, or is it just another skimpy myth told by someone who, like the creators of Lost themselves, hate giving any real answers?
And is it just me, or was the scene where mommy reveals the Cave of Light to the twins just plain bad? I mean, either the character of mommy was lying about the Cave or the actress playing her did a terrible job. I’m thinking it was just bad acting, which I can forgive because I’m sure the actress has no f’n idea what the Cave really is and thus can’t really give her lines the gravitas they deserve. But to me, that whole little speech rang hollow.
Seeing Jacob as a parallel of God (with the love of humanity + the non-involvement) means that Richard is Jesus (though much less mortal). But as a more human-like being, Richard can serve as an intermediary between God and Man. But then who is the MIB? Maybe he’s Satan, but before he becomes Smokey he seems like a Jesus who just happened to be unimpressed with man volunteering to live among them for *wink wink* 30 years. MIB seems like a Jesus figure who, in the end, agreed with Satan that Man just wasn’t worth the trouble.
Young MIB asks “what’s dead”, but in the very next scene he’s hunting a boar. WTF? Plus, don’t very young children get all these curiosity questions out of the way such as “where did I come from” and things? Did these children never ask where they came from, or where their mother came from?
Also, why would he know what an island is? I mean, the mother (who might be from off-island) could just call it that. But it’s really a relational term, meaning a small piece of land separate from a continent. If an island was simply land surrounded by water, then all continents would be known as islands. Calling something an island, in my book, means that you are aware of other land that isn’t an island – something we call a “mainland”.
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