There Is a Light That Never Goes Out: Across the Sea on Lost

"Everything dies."

It's a fact of life that all things must come to an end, even Lost itself. We've entered the final act of one of television's most ambitious and serpentine series and anticipation is running high for just how showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse will wrap up six seasons of storylines and a plethora of mythology-based mysteries while also remaining true to the characters we started this journey with back in 2004.

We certainly got some answers this week. However, I don't know that they were quite the answers that we wanted or needed... or that they were offered in the timeframe they needed to be in.

After a staggering episode that ramped up the tension last week and set the stage for a climactic final few episodes, this week's episode of Lost ("Across the Sea"), written by Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse and directed by Tucker Gates, felt like it squandered the taut momentum of the last few episodes, pushing aside the central characters for the backstory of the island's dueling deities, Jacob (Mark Pellegrino) and his Nemesis, the Nameless One (Titus Welliver), and their mother (Allison Janney).

So what did I think of this week's episode of Lost? Grab your Senet board, finish your tapestry, gaze into the light, and let's discuss "Across the Sea."

While Jacob and his Nemesis have provided much theorizing among Lost's devoted audience, I don't think that they are the driving force behind the overarching narrative, at least not in an emotional context. We've come back week after week to follow the adventures of our beloved band of castaways, caught in a timeless battle between good and evil, but it's been those characters--Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Sayid, Hurley, Sun, and Jin (and the rest)--who have provided the emotional spine of the series.

Casting them aside this late in the game to focus on the mysterious past of two characters we know precious little about seemed doomed to failure, with so few episodes remaining in the series. For an episode that was intended to provide answers--and perhaps closure to some mysteries--it ultimately felt increasingly frustrating and obtuse. Were these stories that needed to be told? Or at least told in this fashion? With so few hours remaining in this grand tapestry, wasn't it a bit of a waste of yarn at this point?

Part of that frustration could stem from the fact that none of our main characters featured at all in this week's installment (other than a frustrating "flashback" to Season One, where Jack and Kate found the skeletons in the cave and Locke dubbed them "Adam and Eve," which we all remember already) and the three characters that this episode revolved around--Jacob, his brother, and their murderous mother, the island's previous guardian--aren't fully formed characters in any sense of the word: they're archetypes meant to represent various images that have repeated themselves endlessly through stories: the child, the hero, the mother, the trickster, the devil.

Here, we're meant to see the beginnings of the grand rivalry, the endless push and pull between good and evil that exemplifies the balance of the island, but instead we got a domestic drama about a woman who steals children, lies to them about the nature of the world, and then sets them against one another after showing them the truth behind their island home: a glowy, watery cave that is the source of the light within every man.

Wait, say what? After six seasons and countless theories about the nature of the island and its energy source--which had been explored already through the Dharma Stations, the Orientation films, and the groovy 1970s sojourn--the war comes down to who controls this badly rendered special effect?

Back in Season One, John Locke claimed to have seen the heart of the island (or specifically the "eye of the island") and that it was a beautiful and transcendent experience, made all the more so because we didn't see it. Instead, we saw a bright shining light that was reflected in his face and an expression that was akin to divine communion. Here, that energy source--that ephemeral spirit that exists within all of us--is transformed into something tangible and therefore loses something in the translation. What's unseen is typically more psychologically powerful to the viewer than what is seen and, by giving the Source a form, the writers have essentially removed its aura of mystery and therefore its narrative strength.

Yes, as Allison Janney's unnamed mother (henceforth called just "Mother") tells us, "everything dies." But so too does a little bit of my faith in Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse here. From start to finish, this episode was a huge misstep at the end of a marathon, sending the narrative tumbling to the ground amid a hazy fog. I've been anxiously awaiting the series finale but the way with which Team Darlton provided answers here might not bode well for an emotionally satisfying conclusion.

Personally, I don't need every answer served up on a silver tray (or even an ancient Senet board); I'll be content to continue theorizing and turning these mysteries over in my head for some time to come after the final credits have rolled if the writers opt to offer an ambiguous ending. But what happened with "Across the Sea" is that the episode functioned more or less as an information dump, a way for Team Darlton to say, "Here you go: You wanted answers, here are answers."

We learned just what the relationship was between Jacob and his Nemesis (they're twin brothers!); we learned where they came from (their pregnant, Latin-speaking mother was shipwrecked on the island); we learned who raised them (a solemn woman prone to keeping secrets and weaving things into her hair); we learned who originally constructed the frozen donkey wheel (the Man in Black!); we learned who the skeletons in the cave belonged to (Mother and Man in Black!); and we learned how the Nameless One became the smoke monster (his unconscious body went into the Source and his soul was stripped from his body).

So, yes, we got answers. A whole heap of them. So why did I find "Across the Sea" to be so disappointing? Because it was a narrative mess that failed to extract any emotional core to what was going on, rendering this familial struggle to nothing more than millennial-old sibling rivalry, glowy caves, and questions within questions.

Mother says that questions just lead to more questions and that's true. The fact that this woman appeared to be living on her own made me wonder: where did she come from? Had she been brought to the island? Did she grow up there and replace the former guardian? How did she learn about the island's nature? Why did she have such a cut-and-dry view of human morality? How did she have the power to implement rules, such as the fact that Jacob and his brother couldn't ever die and couldn't hurt one another? Why were she and Claudia speaking Latin? How did she kill an entire village and fill in a huge well by herself? If the statue of Taweret wasn't there then, when was it built? When was all of this taking place?

For all of the answers that Cuse and Lindelof provided, it kicked up a whole slew of others, over-shrouding the episode's story, adding to the frustration that we're being fed these singular answers this late in the narrative because the writers felt that these were the answers that needed to be given.

I would have been happy not to have seen Young Jacob and Young Nemesis (though both actors--Kenton Duty and Ryan Bradford--have to be commended for their powerful and nuanced performances) because I had already formed a more compelling vision in my mind. And we've already known for some time that the teenage boy that the Man in Black was seeing was a Young Jacob. Additionally, I didn't feel as though Allison Janey really provided the sort of presence required to pull off that role and it was distracting, in fact, to have her there as her Allison Janney-ness kept pulling me away from the character she was meant to be portraying.

Also distracting: the blatantly awful and cheap set when Claudia gave birth to the twins, which is still making me laugh a day later. It seemed to set the tone for an episode that was unnecessarily cheesy on a series that had previously excelled at dealing with the profound and powerful. Makes me sad, really.

Twins. We learned this week that, while Jacob and his unnamed brother, were born on the island, they came from across the sea and were brought to the island, unborn, by their Latin-speaking mother, Claudia. She is found wandering the island by Mother, who helps her give birth. Both Claudia and Mother are overjoyed to see that she has given birth to a beautiful baby boy, who is quickly named Jacob and swaddled in light colored cloths. But Mother seems visibly shaken when she realizes that Claudia is going to give birth to another baby, a dark-haired son, who is not given a name as Claudia had only picked one and who is swaddled in dark cloths. (One side is light and one side is dark, of course.)

The appearance of the twin is significant. I believe that Mother had already chosen Claudia's offspring as her successor as guardian of the Source and was chagrined to learn that there would be a second child. The existence of two children (and later two men) will inevitably lead to conflict. Only one can follow in her footsteps, only one can be the candidate to replace her, and everything else that follows points towards an inexorable conflict between the two.

Light and Dark. Being twins, they seem to embody the literal duality of light and dark. Besides for their obvious looks, the twins seem to be polar opposites: Jacob is quiet, loyal to a fault, and cannot tell a lie; the Other is shifty, crafty, and manipulative. Jacob would never dream of leaving his mother or the island; his brother wants nothing to do with her after learning the truth and wants to use the Source to leave.

Their cross-purposes put them on a collision course thirty years later as the Nameless One, now a grown man, prepares to use the untapped energy of the Source to leave the island. It is exactly what Mother feared: that the greediness of mankind would corrupt the source, a magical energy whose sparks lie within all of us, a Well of Souls.

The Nameless One. Did Mother always know that the Nameless One would eventually betray her and the island? Is that why she showed the children the Source, knowing full well that the Nameless One's need to explore the boundaries of his universe would lead him to that moment? Did she hope that he would be the one eventually to kill her and release her from her duty to the island? Everything must die, after all. Even Mother. Her words of thanks as the Nameless One pulls out the knife which he used to stab her seem to indicate that she is pleased that he fulfilled his purpose and the cycle can start anew. (She also says that she wouldn't let him leave because she loved him.)

Mother, after all, did tell the Nameless One that he was "special," beginning a pattern of kidnapping and island brainwashing that continued with Rousseau/Alex and Claire/Aaron. Not so special that he warranted a name even as an adult, but that was another effort of Mother to distinguish between the two men. Jacob was the selfless one, caring for his mother and the island, while the other brother wanted escape, to see life across the sea. Is he corrupted by his three decades among men? Or was his fate decided the moment he sprang from his mother's womb, a shadow following the brightness of his brother?

After all, he knows that the Senet board came from "across the sea," just as he inherently knows the rules of the game. He seems to have knowledge that Mother's stories are nothing more than falsehoods intended to ensnare them, to continue her purpose of protecting the island, to eventually force Jacob into his role as the island's guardian. She loved them in different ways and each served their purpose. From the moment that the ghost of Claudia appeared to the Nameless One, his fate seemed all but sealed as he became attuned to the island's dark side, to the death that surrounds it, the souls contained within its grasp.

The Source. Then there's the matter of the Source itself. The villagers whom the Nameless One makes his people have begun to conduct crude experiments into the island's natural energy, discovering the existence of the electromagnetic properties that intrigued the Dharma Initiative so much thousands of years later.

It's significant that Mother tells the boys that they cannot ever enter the cave or they will face a threat worse than death. A fragment of the light that exists within the cave is inside all of us but that man inherently wants more... and that if they try to take the light, it might go out... and if it goes out at the Source, then it will go out everywhere. (Which made me wonder about the island being at the bottom of the ocean in the Lost-X timeline. Has the light gone out? Or is it still flickering away from beneath the water?)

So what is the source? Is it the Well of Souls? A place where all souls are born or return to after death? Is it the mystical energy that animates the world? A nexus of power and possibility? Is it the source of all stories, all lives? The ever-turning wheel of life, death, and rebirth?

The Wheel. I'm not sure how the behavior of metal at certain electromagnetically-charged sites across the island lead to the Nameless One's theories about a means of departure, nor how tapping into the Source can result in an exit route or how he knows this. (Though the Nameless One does know many other inexplicable things as well.)

It's he who designs the frozen donkey wheel in a cave that it later the site of the Orchid Station (though why it's frozen down there years later is a mystery) and, given that we know that it is an escape route, the Nameless One was correct with his theory: it does act as a gateway to the world across the sea. Mother can't let him access the source, can't let him leave, so she wounds him and uses her considerable powers to cover up the well and kill the Nameless One's people.

Jacob and the Smoke Monster. Mother tells Jacob that the next guardian will be him. "It has to be you," she says, echoing Sayid's words to Jack in last week's installment. The virginal and pious Jacob is the only one pure enough to keep watch over the Source without being tempted by it. The Nameless One is tempted by the Source and wants to use it rather than protect it. He questions whereas Jacob accepts, providing a skeptic to Jacob's believer, a man of science to Jacob's man of faith.

Mother inducts him to the order of guardians by whispering a benediction and having him drink from a cask of wine from a silver cup. I couldn't help but wonder which part of this ceremony was the most important: the chalice, the wine, or the words? Or all three? Or was it a more a case of Mother willing it to be so as she elects Jacob to replace her? And is this the same bottle of wine that Jacob has Richard Alpert drink from as he makes him immortal?

I can't help but wonder what would have happened to Jacob if he had been he who had touched the Source rather than his nameless brother, whether he too would have had his soul stripped away from his body and been trapped in the form of a black smoke, a formless thing befitting his own lack of form, lack of name.

Striking his brother until he is unconscious, Jacob throws him into the cave containing the Source, knowing that he cannot kill his brother. When the Nameless One--already corrupted by his interaction with the men and his own greed and need to harness the Source to his own ends--comes in contact with the Source, his soul is transformed into the creature we know as the Smoke Monster. (Clearly, he later takes as his first corporeal form his human body.)

What happened, happened. Actions cannot be undone. As much as the Nameless One is chained to the island, so too is Jacob, doomed to protect the island until a successor can be found, forced to act as jailer to his brother, suffering from the knowledge that the monster unleashed that day was created by his own hand in an act of vengeance.

Adam and Eve. It's Jacob who takes his brother and mother's bodies to the cave and lays them down, their hands clasped together, in final rest. And places the white and black stones of the Senet board game in a pouch with them, where they remain undisturbed until 2004, when Jack and Kate find them in the cave.

As I mentioned earlier, seeing this scene unfold again really rubbed me the wrong way. Given that we're at the very end of Lost, I think it's safe to say that we all recall that scene--perhaps not with pitch-perfect accuracy--but with general message and import remains abundantly clear. It seemed to indicate that the audience wasn't clever enough to piece this together on their own and needed their hands held.

Additionally, I still think the season would have been better off had this episode aired earlier in the rotation as it could have provided some answers earlier on without falsely building up to this point and then pulling the rug out from beneath us. "The Incident" managed to juxtapose both the plight of the survivors with the revelations about Jacob and the Man in Black and I almost wish that they had done the same here, splitting up this episode into segments that were intertwined with the main storyline. Would that have made me feel differently about this episode? Perhaps, but left as it was, I felt like it was a disjointed and frustrating note at a time when the entire series should be singing.

Ultimately, while there were several interesting ideas cast up by this episode, I felt really frustrated by the way with which they were handled here, resulting in an episode that did not connect with me on any emotional level. Lindelof and Cuse have been vocal about the fact that mysteries are often more exciting than their solutions and they're absolutely right. I just wish that with "Under the Sea," they had followed their own advice and left some things in the darkness, rather than bringing them into the harsh light of day.

Next week on Lost ("What They Died For"), Locke devises a new strategy while Jack's group searches for Desmond.