LOST: Ab Aeterno

The devil is in the details. So much detail, so many symbols and resonances with literature and past episodes. So much mythology crammed into one episode.

I’ve toyed with several plays on words when thinking about “Ab Aeterno” in the past twelve hours: The eyes have it (because so many lines of dialogue, as well as close-ups of characters’ eyes, e.g., Richard’s, Ilana’s, were featured in the episode); the lesser of two evils (Jacob or MIB? fLocke or Widmore?), as well as the cliché I went with. Perhaps I liked this episode so much because it isn’t clichéd or easily summarized with a sound byte. And in depicting the struggle between Good and Evil, it’s refreshing to see a television episode that confounds black or white interpretations, while giving us obvious oppositional symbols (keys and chains, white rock or Black Rock, white or black shirts).

What I find most hopeful about this episode is that Everyman Hurley, already portrayed as a Biblical prophet in Charlie’s vision (“Fire + Water”), fulfills that role in person. He comes to Richard, Jacob’s representative on the island (metaphoric Jesus on Earth?), at his greatest moment of spiritual crisis (Why hast Thou forsaken me?)—the point where the Man of Faith renounces Jacob and agrees to join Man in Black (MIB). Hurley once again speaks with the dead in order to save the living. By the end of the scene, Richard takes up the cross, wearing it as a talisman against his own weakened faith and his desire to work closely with MIB. The island doesn’t need a replacement for Jacob; it has gentle, ordinary Hurley to show the world the best of what humanity can be and to offer the opportunity for salvation.

In the battle between Good and Evil on the island, I find the rhetoric of each combatant equally compelling, but then, Evil will tend to sound like Good, won’t it? The symbolism of the wine corked in the bottle, the future foreshadowed when MIB smashes the glass against a rock, isn’t all that surprising, but it definitely makes a point about today’s world as well as the fate of the island.

If I were on the island, I confess that I don’t know which camp I’d join, based on the actions of the “Devil” and “God.” MIB takes several forms, all associated with Locke, while Richard is chained to the Black Rock: moth, boar, Smoky—the many faces of MIB mirrored through Locke’s island stories. Is a Man of Faith evil? If I go by the actions of the priest who won’t absolve Richard’s sin (but chooses to accept payment for his enslavement) or the healer who casts away Isabelle’s cross because it is worthless, I can see why Richard, or any of us, would rightly question God’s lack of action on behalf of the weak or powerless. If I think of Jacob as God or even Good, I question what is good about violently bringing people to an island so that they can be tortured into choosing how to act. The good seem to die anyway, sometimes horribly (Charlie fan speaking here). The bad seem to prosper. Jacob can’t bring back the dead or offer absolution to the living. He just lets people make their own decisions and gloats over victory when they choose to be Good. Hmmm. Seriously rethinking the whole Man of Faith thing if Jacob is the object of the faithful’s adoration.

In this episode, Evil supposedly is MIB and, indeed, Smoky/fLocke/MIB often misleads followers with his words and wipes out those who stand—or run—in his path. He only provides water and food to Richard after visiting him in several forms to check on his progress in getting out of those chains. He offers “freedom,” but at what price? He equates life/the island with hell and points out that Jacob isn’t helping anyone into heaven—or even back to LA. In fact, MIB doesn’t seem all that different from Jacob—manipulating people’s lives to prove a point or get what he wants.

“Ab Aeternum” takes powerful symbols and displays them obviously. It borrows shamelessly from literary masterpieces that question humankind’s existence and purpose; it forces us to look critically at cultural interpretations of Good and Evil but doesn’t tell us which is which.

If I have to choose a side and go with my inner sense of what is right and wrong, I’m turning my back on Jacob and MIB and following Hurley back into the jungle.