Post by Jack on Jun 14, 2009 13:10:14 GMT -5
Follow up message
This is a note i posted on Facebook today before listening to your podcast. After listening to you guys; especially the theory of the week, I am leaning towards the "Esau is not the evil one" theory, and the containing him in the ash thing is very very interesting. Anyhow, this is a jumbled note and I started writing it last night/finished this morning, so excuse any major gaps that are there.
If it takes a bit to get back to me, no worries. I know how busy you must be.
Alrighty.
So in season 5's finale, we FINALLY got to see the infamous Jacob. I know a lot of you follow the many LOST fansites out there and so do I. A lot of the theories i'll be discussing are in fact paraphrases from one in particular:
lost.cubit.net.
Full credit and props to the webmasters of this site and the various commenters within who helped lead me to write this note.
Let's get started. Apologies for the constant jumping around; that's just my writing style.
Jacob. He doesn't age, and neither does Richard Alpert. This third mystery character (who I will name Esau for now) has now taken the form of Locke.
BUT WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?
In that final scene, we see the stand off between Jacob and Esau. He has "Figured out the loophole" and found a way to kill jacob. What we know, or assume to know, is that for some reason Esau can NOT KILL JACOB HIMSELF. This is implied when they spy the Black Rock arriving on the Island when Esau has the line that goes something like "You know how much I want to kill you, right?"
So. He asks Ben to do it instead. What does this imply? Let's look deeper into the trends of LOST's writers. We know they are fans of Egyptian mythology thanks to the obscene ammount of hyroglyphs in season 2's hatch, the temple, Ben's basement, and a plethora of other examples. We finally see the reveal of the statue, proving that it is in fact NOT Anubis. The statue is either Taweret or Sobek.
Taweret (name meaning One who is great) is interesting for a couple of reasons:
(this is taken from Wikipedia's page) She is the goddess of Fertility. This is important because while the statue still stands complete on the island, people can have children. Once it is broken, all births cease on the island. This is just a theory, there isn't really any backing for this. That being said, it does have some sort of plausability time-wise. Taweret is also seen as the polar opposite of one of the gods of evil, Apep, who I believe Esau is.
Sobek: "In some Egyptian creation myths, it was Sobek who first came out of the waters of chaos to create the world. As a creator god, he was occasionally linked with the sun god Ra." That is a direct quote from the Wikipedia page for Sobek. Now people have speculated that Richard Alpert is in fact the Sun God, Ra. Richard Alpert's initials being R and A, this seems relatively plausable. Another bit that might help the Sobek argument is this quote:
"Sobek's ambiguous nature led some Egyptians to believe that he was a repairer of evil that had been done, rather than a force for good in itself, for example, going to Duat to restore damage done to the dead as a result of their form of death. He was also said to call on suitable gods and goddesses required for protecting people in situation, effectively having a more distant role, nudging things along, rather than taking an active part. In this way, he was seen as a more primal god, eventually becoming regarded as an avatar of the primal god Amun, who at that time was considered the chief god."
So...distant role, fixing evil stuff...sounds a tad like Jacob. Avatar or a PRIMAL GOD? Sounds a LOT like Jacob.
So these are the theories on which god the statue is. That being said, the Sobek theory leans more towards who Jacob himself is. It is also interesting to note the answer to the riddle that this "new faction" have been asking: The riddle is "What lies in the shadow of the statue" and Richard (or Ricardus, har har) answers in latin, "He who will save us all".
He who will save us all kind of implies he has power beyond any average joe, no?
I mean nuts, the guy brought back the REAL Locke by touching him on the shoulder after he fell 8 stories.
Getting back to Esau now:
I'm calling him that because of the biblical story of Jacob and Esau (Jacob's brother, as far as that story goes). In the story, Jacob stole Esau's inheritance in a plot developed by Rebekkah, their mother.
Esau is infuriated and desires revenge on Jacob. Eventually, all is forgiven, blah, blah, blah. What it comes down to is he needed a name and I found that one fitting since people on forums everywhere seem to think this is now tying into that story.
I'm not convinced myself as Jacob and Esau eventually forgave each other if i remember correctly.
What I am becoming more sure of is that Esau is the Smoke Monster.
Why? Think about it. When Esau says the line, "and you have no idea what i've gone through to be here", he reveals a lot more than meets the eye!!
My theory (finally) is that John Locke was NEVER SPECIAL. Hurts to say it because I always thought he was, but it's looking more and more like he wasn't. To me, it seems as though Esau has used John Locke as his puppet this entire time. When "The Island" was talking to Locke, it was Esau in some way or form. John never feared the smoke monster for whatever reason from the very start. He felt he was special from day one since he was instantly healed on the island.
Day one - Crippled but can suddenly walk. In this last episode we saw Jacob bring John back to life after he fell out of that window. Based on this, I'm making the assumption that Esau has the same powers. For this to be plausable, we have to believe they are gods of some kind. Schmah. We also have to believe (and it's somewhat shown) that Esau can take the form of other people.
We never see anyone touch John and bring the feeling back to his legs, but who knows, he was lying on a beach amidst chaos. If someone had touched him to check if he was alive, would anyone have noticed? Would anyone give a %$@% if that person didn't seem familiar? No, because you've all JUST survived a plane crash, so they're all freaking out anyhow. That means that someone could have come out of the jungle and checked up on Locke, healing his broken legs.
Being able to take other forms - Locke magically shows up alive after the Ajira crash. No one says he has come off the plane. In fact, he probably DID come out of the jungle dressed in a suit. He has the memories of Locke, which is interesting to note. The eater of souls in Egyptian myth would devour the souls of the dead who were judged unworthy to pass into the underworld by Anubis. So far, who has all died on the island that is of note? Libbey, Ana-Lucia, Eko, Yemi, Boon, Shannon, Charlie, Claire, Danielle Rousseau, Alex, Naomi. Christian did not die on the island, but he is also important since he has come back from the dead. Claire is still debatable in fact, since we have not actually seen her die. Yeah, she's hanging out with dead people, but not necessarily dead. Don't count her out.
Here's the dead ones we've seen come back in some way or form, and all of them have some bearing on one of two people: John Locke or Hurley.
Ana-Lucia - Appeared to Hurley off the island
Eko - Appeared to Hurley off the island (played chess)
Yemi - Eko's brother that appeared to him on the island
Charlie - Appeared to Hurley off the island
Claire - Hangs out with Christian
Christian - Appeared to Locke a few times over and to Sun.
Alex - Appeared to Ben in the temple and tells him to obey every order of Locke.
Boon - Appeared to Locke in the tent back in season 3
Funny story. I JUST rewatched the clip of Charlie visiting Hurley. There's another guy at the psych center who saw Charlie. Hurley didn't even notice till that guy pointed him out. I didn't get a clear look at his face, but he has dark hair. Odd. Very odd.
Anyway: It seems that Hugo's dead visitors are there to advise him. Charlie insists that the losties need him, Ana-Lucia tells Hugo how not to f**k up when running from cops.
On the other hand, Locke's dead visitors seem to push him in another direction of importance. Boon told locke he needed to clean up a mess and help Eko. This is a test of faith to see if Locke would bend to the will of Esau. It works since John is compelled to save Eko (even though he shows up too late).
Eko's death however is interesting. After re-watching that one on youtube, I saw a comment that caught my eye. metabog, the commenter, believed that the whole Yemi offering forgiveness thing was a test to see if Eko could be manipulated into the same blind faith in the island that John has. Eko has failed the test. Eko knows however that John is a man who believes in the island, and his last words to John are "You are next" or something like that. Esau moves from Eko to John as his main target here.
When John meets Christian in the cabin, Christian asks John if he knows why he is there. John replies, "because I was chosen to be".
Christian replies, "That's absolutely right".
Not to mention, what the hell is Claire doing there, and why the eff is she so calm? That one I can't really explain. Haven't thought about it. Anyhow, Christian starts the wheels turning here, and gets the island moving/gets John on the path necessary for him to move the wheel.
Christian/Esau lays it on thickly here. Seems everyone on the island tends to do that. Ben back in season 2 insisted that Locke was special thanks to (probably) the insistance of Jacob and Richard. Jacob knows that Locke is special for some reason, otherwise he wouldn't have brought him back to life. Richard has been time and time again been shown that Locke is important, so he'll buy it. So when Jacob brings the list to Ben with John's name on it, that's when John's ego starts getting built up.
Now the funny thing is, (going back to the cabin meeting), Christian/Esau tells John to move the wheel, but BEN ends up doing it. Is this a mistake? NOT AT ALL. In fact, it's almost as if Smokey is counting on Ben to do this so things will get effed up and John will have to fix it. Thanks to all the flashes, John ends up looking like a god in the 50's or 60's or whatever to Richard. Bald man tells him a few truths about the future, then dissapears in front of his eyes. Weird? Definately. Then Locke's name is mentioned to Richard again in the 70's by Sawyer. Seems like a few other strange random people know about Locke and how important he is. Weird? Oh yeah.
Then 3 years later, Richard helps two other non-dharma's (jack and sayid) to get the bomb and he asks Jack about Locke. Jack at this point is also convinced fully of Locke's importance, and that convincing in turn helps Richard be even MORE confident in Locke despite earlier reprehensions.
Christian appears to Locke again to tell him how to move the wheel, and also tells Locke to say hello to Jack; knowing that this will convince Jack and in turn all the others to come back to the island thus re-creating the conditions necessary to be able to return on that plane.
So now upon their return to the island, Ben wakes up and sees a very living John Locke. He is INSTANTLY convinced of Locke's importance here. New believer! Huzzah! Wouldn't you be convinced at this point?
Well here's what's funny. Remember when Ben tried to summon the monster at his old house? No one showed up. Why? Because at the moment, he's disguised as Locke. Well nuts, hey? Looks like we need to go to the temple. Another fun moment: Locke mysteriously knows why Ben feels so guilty: Death of Alex. YET MORE FUN: Locke knows where smokey lives. How effing convenient! Not to mention once in the temple, Ben goes ahead and Locke lets him do it. The floor is a little weak and Ben falls through, and Locke dissapears for a bit to "find something to get ben out of there". So Locke dissapears just before smokey arrives.
So smokey/locke/esau "judges" Ben or basically SHOWS HIM WHAT HE NEEDS TO SEE IN ORDER TO DO ESAU'S BIDDING. Seeing your dead daughter and having her promise to gut you if you don't do what Locke says is a pretty strong argument I'd think.
So this ensures Ben's loyalty to Esau-smoke-locke. He tests it one more time when on the way to Jacob's place saying, "So you have to do everything i tell you?" or something like that. Then Ben replies yes. So Esau-locke-smoke replies that Ben will be the one to kill Jacob. Dun Dun DUN!
WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?!
Esau really DID go through a lot of stuff to get to this point. Hot d**n. That's like 3 years of work, straight up. I guess in an eternity though, 3 years ain't a whole lot.
So. Esau = Smoke monster and maybe Apep, one of the Underworld Gods who rivaled with Ra.
Locke = Gullible and not very important (also, the REAL Locke = DEAD).
Jacob = God? Sobek?
Other things that creep me out/seem important.
When Jacob offers Esau some fish, there's a nice camera cut to the face of Esau and he has that one nice line "I just ate". Creeeepy.
Then Jacob's line, "It only ends once. Everything before that is just progress".
The whole scene with Bernard and Rose. FINALLY. We've been wondering where they went! Now my theory was that they end up becoming Adam and Eve in the Cave. Remember season 1? When they were found? Well that was my theory and it isn't completely debunked yet. There weren't any bodies in their cabin when the new faction showed up.
Walt. Friggin' Walt. The one guy who appeared to John Locke but WAS NOT DEAD. What's his story?!
LIBBY. I forgot she gave Desmond a boat! She met the guy in a Coffee Shop, and gave him an effing yacht that belonged to her dead husband "David". So how did she end up in a mental institution with Hurly and Emily? (John Locke's mom)
That's all i've got for now. Props and creds to everyone at lost.cubit.net and the various youtubers who put up stuff for me to dig through
-Ed Mendez
