Rewatching LOST: 5.16 “The Incident, Part 1″

Jacob is revealed as Locke tries to manipulate Ben, while Sawyer, Kate, and Juliet try to stop Jack from detonating the bomb.

• In 2007, Locke orders the Others to take a break on their way to see Jacob, and he and Richard share a brief talk. Richard is still amazed that Locke was resurrected, and Locke comments on Richard’s apparent immortality, which Richard says is thanks to Jacob. Locke says that after they’ve finished their business with Jacob, they’re going to need to eliminate the Ajira flight passengers. Richard balks at this but says nothing. Later, as their march continues, Locke tells his newly obedient servant Ben that Ben is going to be the one to kill Jacob, not Locke.
• Elsewhere on the island, Ilana, Bram, and their friends finally make land on their outrigger canoe, with Frank and their large steel crate in tow. Ilana argues for keeping Frank around, even though he didn’t know the answer to the question, “What lies in the shadow of the statue?” Bram asks if Ilana considers Frank a candidate, and Ilana orders him to show Frank what’s in their steel crate. Frank’s stunned when he sees the contents. Later, as they journey through the jungle, Frank asks what Ilana and Bram are going to do with what’s in the steel box. Bram says they need to show it to someone, so they’ll know who they’re up against — which is something a lot scarier than what’s in the box. Bram assures Frank that they’re “the good guys,” and that Frank is safe as long as he’s with them. The group soon arrives at Jacob’s cabin, and Ilana goes inside alone to find it abandoned. Bram also points out that the ring of ash outside the house has been broken. Ilana finds a piece of burlap inside with a depiction of the Tawaret statue on it, and takes it outside to show Bram. She tells them all that the cabin is empty, that “someone else has been using it.” She orders the cabin burned to the ground, before they depart for the statue.
• Locke’s group comes to the beach camp where the Oceanic survivors lived, abandoned and dilapidated. As everyone rests, Locke approaches Ben again in private and asks Ben about the day that they went to visit Jacob at his cabin. Ben finally admits that he made the whole thing up, that he never saw Jacob sitting in that empty rocking chair at all. And he was as surprised as Locke was when things started flying around the room. Ben says he made it up because he was embarrassed that he had never actually met or even seen Jacob. Ben asks why Locke wants him to be the one to kill Jacob, and Locke replies that after everything Ben had done in service to the island, only to be dealt cancer, loss, and banishment in return… why wouldn’t Ben want to kill him?
• In 1977, Sawyer initially refuses to help Kate escape the sub and go back to stop Jack, but Juliet agrees with Kate that they can’t let everyone on the island be killed by the hydrogen bomb, and she orchestrates their escape. They paddle back to the island on a raft, though none of them recognize what part of the island this is. They’re stunned to be met there by Rose and Bernard, who none of them have seen in three years. Rose and Bernard explain that they’ve been living in hiding out here all this time, and have even constructed a small cabin for themselves. They’ve “retired,” as Rose puts it, and want no more to do with the concerns of Jack, Kate, Sawyer, and the rest. They just want to live out their days in peace, together. As they talk about their love, Sawyer shoots a sideways glance at Kate, who isn’t looking, but Juliet catches it and is immediately disheartened, realizing that Sawyer will always love Kate, no matter how committed he is to Juliet. Rose tells them how to find the Dharma Barracks from here, and the three of them leave.
• At the Swan site, Chang orders the drilling into the ground to stop, out of fear that they’ll hit the electromagnetic pocket. But Radzinsky soon arrives and overrules Chang’s orders, personally restarting the drill.
• Down in the Tunnels beneath the Barracks, Sayid disassembles the hydrogen bomb to make its thermonuclear reactor portable enough to carry in a backpack. While Sayid works, Richard asks Jack about John Locke, stating that after meeting adult Locke in 1954, he’d left the island three times over the years to see him as he grew up, and never noticed anything all that special about him. He didn’t understand how Locke could ever become their leader, but Jack urged him not to give up on Locke. Once Sayid is ready, the four of them go back into the Tunnels, where Richard finds a nice spot to break through the rock wall into the basement of a Dharma house. Eloise intends to lead them in, but Richard knocks her out from behind, saying that he’s protecting her as the Others’ leader, and urges Jack and Sayid to go on without them. Jack and Sayid emerge into Horace and Amy’s house, which is empty, and wearing Dharma jumpsuits, they walk out of the house as if they’re Dharma members. But Roger Linus spots Sayid and recognizes him as the man who shot his son, and shots Sayid in the stomach in response. Other Dharma members open fire, and Jack shoots back, but the two of them are soon rescued by Hurley, Jin, and Miles in a Dharma van. Jack tells them to make for the Swan site, while he tries to stop Sayid’s bleeding. Sayid says that he’ll need to modify the bomb to detonate on impact before it can be used at the Swan site. But Hurley soon stops the van, pointing straight ahead at Sawyer, Kate, and Juliet, who are standing directly in their path, armed and ready to stop them from reaching the Swan.

• The all-important Jacob was finally revealed in a flashback to the mid-1800s, just before the Black Rock arrived on the island. Jacob made his home in an ancient room inside the base of the four-toed statue, which was really a depiction of the Egyptian goddess Tawaret. After working on a hand-made tapestry one morning, Jacob was met outside on the beach by a man wearing a black shirt, where they both watched the Black Rock coming toward the island in the distance. The two of them clearly had a long history, as the nameless “Man in Black” pointed out that he very badly wanted to kill Jacob. The Man in Black noted that like everyone else that’s ever come to the island, Jacob had brought the Black Rock there, all as part of some kind of experiment to see if the people who come there can overcome their darker tendencies to fight, destroy, and corrupt. The Man in Black promised to find a “loophole” one day that would allow him to kill Jacob at last.
• A series of flashbacks showed that Jacob briefly met with several of the Oceanic 815 survivors at pivotal moments in their lives, and that he physically touched each one of them: he helped Kate get out of trouble when she was just a young girl; he visited young Sawyer just after his parents died; he kept Sayid from being killed in the same drive-by incident in L.A. when Nadia was hit by a car; he was present the day Locke was pushed out of a highrise window by his father, and may have even resuscitated Locke with a touch; and he gave a blessing to Sun and Jin at their wedding.
• Jacob also visited one person he didn’t touch: Ilana, who was in a foreign hospital somewhere, recovering from a severe head wound. He apologized for not coming sooner, and then asked for her help with something important, though he didn’t go into detail about what.

• Tawaret, the Egyptian goddess of fertility.
  Question: What did the four-toed statue originally depict? 2.23
• Richard claimed that he didn’t age “because of Jacob.” How exactly Jacob caused him to be this way remains to be seen.
  Question: Why doesn’t Richard age? 3.20
• Rose and Bernard are alive, but they’ve hidden themselves away in the jungle for three years, at a remote location where they could live out their days in retirement, together, away from the cares of others.
  Question: Sawyer, Jin, Juliet, Miles, and Daniel have wound up in 1977 after all that jumping through time. Are they the only members of the original Oceanic 815 group of survivors left alive? Did anyone else end up in 1977 with them? What about Rose and Bernard? What’s become of them? 5.08
• Ilana works for Jacob.
  Question: Who does Ilana really work for? 5.10

• Who is the Man in Black, aka Jacob’s Nemesis?
• How did Jacob and the Man in Black come to be on the island?
• Jacob and the Man in Black have a real yin/yang thing going on. What’s the nature of their relationship? And why can’t they kill each other?
• Why does the Man in Black want to kill Jacob?
• Jacob appears to be responsible for bringing everyone to the island that gets there. How exactly does Jacob bring people to the island?
• Why was an enormous statue of an Egyptian fertility goddess (Tawaret) erected on the island? And what is the significance of Jacob living beneath it?
• Why did Jacob touch so many of the castaways in their pre-island past? For what purpose did he mark them this way?
• What is Ilana’s history with Jacob?
• What happened to Ilana in the past, that gave her such a severe head wound?
• What did Jacob need Ilana’s help with?
• If Jacob hasn’t been living in the cabin, who has? The Man in Black? Is this who Ben and Locke encountered the day they visited the cabin?

• I’m still intrigued by all of the people that Jacob touched, and I wonder if he ever touched anyone else that wasn’t shown in “The Incident.” His touch clearly marked them all somehow, designating them as special, but the effects and consequences of that action have yet to be revealed. This action seems to indicate some sort of foreknowledge of future events on Jacob’s part, and yet he still touched Locke — the man who seems to have had but one purpose: to be used by the Man in Black to find the loophole that would let him kill Jacob. Did Jacob foresee even this? Is Locke’s story truly over now that he’s dead, or is there still a chance that the old Locke could still return?
• I think we’re all thinking the same thing at this point about Ilana, that Jacob asked for her help with his eternal struggle against the Man in Black, which seems to have come to a head in this episode. She came to the island specifically because of his bedside visit where he asked for her help.

Need more depth and detail? Read my full recap of “The Incident”.

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Image credits: “Rewatching Lost” logo by Robin Parrish. Season 5 cast promotional image: American Broadcasting Company.