LOST season 5 wrapup

As always, SPOILER ALERT!

WOW!  What a thrill ride this season has been and especially this ending!  So great.  And the ultimate cliffhanger leaving the future of LOST completely open.  So much has been revealed this season and even still more mysteries to resolve.  One more season remains, but before that happens we have a long 8 month wait for season 6 to start in January 2010.  One more final ride.  Should be a good one!

In the meantime some final observations, thoughts, and questions…

• Jacob.  Jacob is not the person I thought he would be.  If anything Jacob is a good guy.  He interacts with the characters in their past and brings people to the island for a purpose, always with free will.  I think the opener of the finale between Jacob and an unamed person is really the entire big story to the whole show.  In alot of ways I see the similarities between God and Satan battling it out for the future of the island.  I know we imagined Locke as being a Christ like character, but I now wonder if Jacob is truly that person.
• Locke .  So dead really is dead in LOST.  And the person who looks like Locke is somebody else.  I’m certain it is the person that Jacob was talking to at the beginning.  And it would seem Jacob bringing people to the island (Black Rock ship, Danielle and her crew, the drug plane from Africa, Oceanic 815, & Ajira 316) is something he has done time and time again.  I don’t know the reason but the island really is a kind of heaven in a way.  And Jacob’s enemy doesn’t want Jacob to do this, hopefully we’ll find out more about these characters and backstories next season.
• Some dialogue from the beginning.  I’m going to call the person talking to Jacob “Esau” since we don’t know his real name.  But Jacob was wearing white (good) and Esau was wearing black (evil)
  (as the black rock ship approaches)
  Esau:  They come, fight, they destroy, corrupt.  It always ends the same
  Jacob: Only ends once.  Anything that happens before that is progress.
  E: You have any idea how badly I want to kill you?
  J:  Yes
  E: One of these days, sooner or later I’ll find the final loophole my friend.
  J:  When you do, I’ll be right here.(and later on, when Jacob and “Locke” encounter each other)
  J: Found your loophole.
  (the loophole being someone to kill Jacob because “esau” couldn’t do it himself.  whereas Ben has been a pawn this entire time leading up to this event.  I wonder if Locke’s first encounter will Jacob when Jacob said “help me” was him speaking to him because he was dead or at least enslaved somehow)
• Something I found online:
  Jacob is an omnipresent being who can perform miracles, grant superpowers, and seems to look upon and speak with everyone with a deep sense of love. And he is killed by one of his trusted servants, a man he declared leader.It seems that since John’s resurrection, we’ve all had it wrong. Locke was not the Christ-like figure; his body was possessed by something far more sinister.

  Jacob was the god figure. “Locke” is the anti-christ in this story, and Ben is Judas.

• I think season 6 is going to be about this big picture of the island as a whole and the battle between good and evil.  I think if they follow the biblical storyline that Jacob is not dead – at least not permanently.  I do wonder if Ben will indeed become the hero of the entire story if his will be a story of redemption once he realizes what he has done.
• I have a theory also that “Esau” is the smoke monster.  As the smoke monster can take the form of other people, he’s been acting like Locke this entire time.  Who else would *know* Locke well enough to impersonate him.  Note that they never showed us the Locke’s resurrection – he just appeared.  Also note that when the Smoke Monster ‘judged’ Ben he told him to do whatever John Locke said (and “Locke” wasn’t present at the time).  It does make me sad that the real John Locke is dead, but even that may not be permanent…
• The future.  The season ends with the H-bomb detonating.  Talk about a cliffhanger!  Ultimately though, even if this prevents the hatch ever being built and destroys the electromagnetism problem, we have seen the future.  I don’t believe that Oceanic 815 will land in LAX because we’ve seen 30 years after this detonation.  So even if it takes care of the electromagnetism issue, I believe Oceanic 815 will still crash on the island.  I think Miles nailed it when he said “maybe that IS the incident”.  Ultimately, whatever happened happened.
• Also H-bomb related…Smoky didn’t exist in the past (1950’s and 1970’s).  Perhaps the H-bomb released it in some way.  I think chronologically the first time we see Smoky is when Danielle and crew arrive.  And perhaps the H-bomb being under Dharmaville leaking radiation was the reason why women couldn’t have children?
• Final H-bomb thought.  I wonder if the explosion will send the 815ers stuck in 1977 into the future to 2007 and that was why Jacob told “Locke” and Ben:  “they’re coming”.
• Jacob’s cabin.  Another theory:  I’m wondering if all the ash outside has been a sign of the smoke monster, and what the significance was the the ash was ‘broken’.  It makes me wonder if Smoky/Esau was impersonating Jacob and that’s what John Locke saw when he first encountered what he thought was Jacob.
• Finally a Jack/Sawyer fistfight!  How long have they wanted to do that?!  I wish Heroes would take a lesson from this and actually show us the battles like LOST did.
• R.I.P. Juliet.  Even though I think everyone who was on the island is now dead, she won’t be part of the crew any longer I would imagine.
• Remember Adam and Eve (the skeletons in the cave in season 1)?  Could that be Rose and Bernard after the H-bomb detonates?  I think Rose & Bernard and Vincent represent the reality that Jacob was trying to attain:  Humanity living in peace.  Whereas Rose’s statement “trying to find ways to shoot each other” is the stuff Jacob’s rival represents.

Great, great stuff.  Lots to think about over the next 8 months.  I LOVE THIS SHOW!!!