SPOILER ALERT, SPOILER ALERT

* And Sayid gets beaten again! Has he ever won a fight? Was there a touch football game with Walt in the early days he managed to come out on top of or something?

* Dogen and Lennon, we hardly knew ye.

* I’m gonna go ahead and attribute Sayid’s dirty deeds in this episode to the aforementioned “darkness growing inside him.” Sayid is someone who’s done a lot of terrible things, though mostly during his offscreen years with the Republican Guard, but he was obviously extraordinarily repentant about that. Moreover, until tonight I really hadn’t seen him do anything unforgivable on the show itself. (I’d have shot Young Ben too. Baby Hitler, if they ever invent time travel, I’m coming for you, asshole.) The point is that the show has never framed Sayid as a bad person deep down–they’ve framed it that he thinks this is the case, but they’re always showing us evidence to the contrary. So it’s a big leap for him to suddenly be walking around smirking about murder, something he’d never ever done before no matter who he was in the process of killing–hitmen, golfers, Others, future archvillains, you name it.

* But Sayid’s corruption makes me wonder what the heck Richard was talking about last season when he warned Sawyer and whoever else that if he took Ben to be healed in the Temple, he’d never be the same. Obviously there’s some other kind of process at work with Sayid than whatever saved Ben, since Ben is clearly not in thrall to the MIB the way Sayid is (or the way crazy Claire is). What we’re seeing from Sayid is more similar to the cold evil of Rousseau’s teammates when she was in that kill-or-be-killed situation with them long ago.

* I’m also wondering how separate the Others community seemingly overseen by Dogen at the Temple was from the Others community ostensibly run by Ben and Richard at the old Dharma Village. Based on tonight’s evidence, the Temple Others really were servants of Jacob, doing his will and often being quite shady in the process. But they still seem miles away from the neck-snapping, boat-detonating, Walt-kidnapping, Sawyer-shooting, Charlie-hanging, Juliet-branding, Michael-blackmailing, Charlie-drowning antics of Ben, Tom, Ethan, Goodwin, Miss Klugh, Mikhail, Pickett, and the rest of that crew. Was Jacob down with all that? We’ve gotten the impression that the MIB was, I dunno, impersonating Jacob in that cabin for quite some time–was Ben getting orders from the wrong guy without knowing it, or was he getting orders from Jacob but twisting and perverting them, or is Jacob just as much of a creep as the MIB?

* I suppose it’s also worth pointing out that Ben didn’t seem to make the connection between the smoke monster and Jacob’s arch-enemy back when the monster became Alex and talked to him. It seems like he’d thought of the Monster as “The Island” in some way, up until the moment Fake Locke transformed into the Monster, killed those dudes in the base of the statue, then transformed back and admitted they were one and the same. So obviously Ben was in the dark about what was really going on for a long time.

* Come to think of it, Ben’s dead mother appearing to him was the first step of his life of crime, right? So MIB’d been monkeying with him for a very long time.

* Anyway, back to the episode itself:

* I can’t be the only person who kind of enjoyed watching the smoke monster wreck shop in the Temple, right? First of all, killing Others is always fun, and the more the merrier. Secondly, I was kind of disappointed in the Temple as a set. The use of an outright namedrop from the mouth of Hurley is not enough to offset how syndicated-ripoff-of-Indiana-Jones it felt. Compare and contrast with the wondrous ’70s EPCOT specificity of the Hatch–the Temple comes off generic and unimaginative. I don’t mind leaving it behind. But mostly, yeah, kill those Others!

* Crazy Claire isn’t just crazy and/or evil, she’s also obnoxious. That’s not a bad choice for that role.

* There aren’t a ton of characters who could sustain a whole episode of Lost without any Sawyer or Jack material in it. Sayid’s one of a very few.

* Nadia’s pretty.

* I was pulling hard for Eko or Jin being related to Sayid’s brother’s money mess, and thus was about 50% disappointed. But Keamy was a nice surprise! What a creepy, unpleasant man. Kevin Durand, yet another example of the show’s nigh-flawless villain casting. Great to see him back. And I’d forgotten until I hit Lostpedia just now to look up Durand’s name that his underling, Omar, was his underling in Widmore’s mercenary crew, too.

* No Other in Sayid’s flashsideways, though. I suppose Keamy fulfills that role in a sense. Or perhaps there’s some narrative significance to Others appearing with Jack, Locke, Kate, and Claire, but not Sayid…

* So how did Jin go from being held up in customs to Keamy’s freezer? Does the presence of Keamy mean that my long hoped-for connection between Jin and Eko in L.A. won’t happen? Does it mean that Widmore is involved as well?

* I’m wondering what the hell Sawyer and Jin were sitting around talking about while Fake Locke and Claire destroyed the Temple. Perhaps Jin was able to convince Sawyer that if crazy Claire thinks following Fake Locke is a good idea, it’s probably a bad idea.

In one scene in Shutter Island, Leonardo DiCaprio’s Federal Marshal Edward Daniels interrogates a jovial but visibly on-edge patient at the mental institution to which he’s been sent to investigate the disappearance of a patient. In order to buy time to pass Daniels a clandestine note, the patient asks his partner Chuck to get her a glass of water. When he returns with it, she picks it up and starts drinking it. In the next shot, she’s just miming drinking it and putting it down–there’s no glass there at all. In the next shot, she puts it down, empty. In the next shot, it’s half full. None of this is ever noticed by any of the characters. I doubt it was noticed by very many people in the audience.

That, in one sequence, is why I love seeing Martin Scorsese movies. You know, maybe it’s my immersion in comics that’s leading me to call this out–my increasing conviction that greatness stems from using as tools the facets of your medium others see as mere props. But when I sit myself down and place myself in the hands of someone like Scorsese, there’s a good chance that he’ll, say, be deliberately sloppy with shot-to-shot continuity–the positions of the actors’ bodies don’t line up properly, their mouths aren’t synced with the dialogue, snippets of time will disappear like miniature jump cuts–simply to show that something’s…not…quite…right. It’s not some jittery effect, what back in the Natural Born Killers days people used to call MTV editing; the effect is every bit as classic-Hollywood as the cliffs and towers straight out of Hitchcock, deep focus shots straight out of Welles, or the mightily effective, star-of-the-show contemporary-classical score. It’s just a sign that the filmmaker is in control of his medium, and is going to spend the next couple hours using it. It’s not a guarantee of success, necessarily–I understand that people’s mileage with late-period Scorsese varies, and I understand why. But it’s a guarantee of effort. It’s a sign that if the movie fails, it’s not failing because it’s trying to do something else but falling short. It’s doing what it wants to do.

What does it want to do? Two things most importantly, I think. The first, which is another reason I enjoy Scorsese movies, is showcase performances. This starts with his lead. Leo has his detractors, obviously, but in much the same way that his Departed castmate Matt Damon has parlayed his vacant all-Americanness into a career of playing cold-blooded killers, DiCaprio has taken the pinched features of his aging babyface and, in his collaborations with Scorsese at least, transformed himself into a little ball of seething guilt and rage. He’s like Hollywood’s Red Lantern. I empathize with manner in which his characters constantly battle back the knowledge that they’re not up to the task at hand, whatever it may be. Daniels, with his nightmares and his nightmarish memories constantly bleeding into one another, constantly looking like a drowned rat, may be the apotheosis of that type.

Beyond that, I wish I could remember who I read saying that the movie veered dangerously close to Martin Scorsese’s Circus of the Stars, but you say that like it’s a bad thing, whoever you are! Jackie Earle Haley out-Rorschaching Rorschach, Elias Koteas being creepy and grotesque, Max Von Sydow (who has been old for close to 40 years, somehow) being a good German, Ted Levine sending out sonar echoes of Buffalo Bill (The Silence of the Lambs being another super-obvious reference point for Marty) as the spectacularly bloody-minded warden, Ben Kingsley as bald and sinister as ever…I do not mind attending this circus, no siree. Emily Mortimer and Michelle Williams both impress and discomfit in their roles as the women Daniels sets out to rescue as well.

Which leads us to the other thing Shutter Island wants to do, a high-wire act linking Scorsese’s straightest thriller since Cape Fear with genuine, real-world horrors. I say by all means let the corpses of Dachau be used to frighten and terrify. Let the execution of the guards by the American liberators go on and on like a sick joke, unfolding horizontally as if each soldier patiently waited his turn to slaughter the slaughterers. Linger on the frozen bodies as they pour out of the cars of a freight train like a glacial waterfall. And later, dig into the horror of the murder of children. Cover the actors with their blood, carry around their bodies, wade into the water in which they drown and float. Make your whole movie about the mind’s inability to cope with horror, to the point where the end comes like blessed relief and the rollicking delivery of the twist feels like a blade cutting away the bad parts. Don’t we have enough monsters?

* Recently on Robot 6: Jim Woodring’s moleskine, Lisa Hanawalt’s t-shirt, Jim Lee’s cover, and Scott Pilgrim’s soundtrack.

* More Destructor art over at We Are The LAW, from David Paggi, Rob “Topless Robot” Bricken, Ryan “Agent M” Penagos, and Matt Powell.

* Renee French is so good.

* A Frank Santoro golden oldie, straight outta PULSE! magazine.

* I really dug “The Symbiote’s Effect on the Mind” by Aaron Zvi Felder. Be sure to click through and read the whole thing.

* Arthur Magazine has launched a new dedicated webcomics portal with the latest installment of Jesse Moynihan’s very good GWC.

* Brian Ralph does Jack Kirby!

* Not Coming to a Theater Near You is doing a Stanely Kubrick retrospective. ‘Nuff said.

* Is pacifism objectively pro-fascist? Is any one thing ever objectively pro-any other thing? George Orwell once thought and said so, but changed his mind.

* Consume NeilAlien’s ultra-rare first-person look back at his ten years of comics blogging with relish, my friends. His fellow comicsblogging O.G. Steven Wintle has more.

* There’s a MAJOR catch in this week’s Lost comment round-up at Whitney Matheson’s Pop Candy, in terms of something that eagle-eyed viewers caught in this season’s second episode but which turned out to be a production error rather than a clue.

* Turns out those hilarious statements from Icarnate creator/Bleach plagiarizer Nick Simmons I linked to the other day were bogus. Here’s his real statement, which is only barely an improvement.

* The star bloggers of The Atlantic‘s web presence–Andrew Sullivan, Ta-Nehisi Coates, James Fallows–are revolting against a website redesign that essentially turned their blogs into a collection of disembodied headlines, and in some cases folded them into another stream of content entirely. It’s funny how similar the features they’re complaining about are to what bugs everyone so much about the new Comics Journal website, and how easy a fix would be in both cases. When people go to a blog, they want to see the posts, not the headlines and first few sentences of the posts.

* One of the great MCs, Guru from Gang Starr, is in a coma after a heart attack. Here’s wishing him a full and speedy recovery.

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

Everyone’s wondering who Jacob wanted Hurley and Jack to summon with the lighthouse. Who’s #108? The name, according to Lostpedia, is Wallace–a name we’ve never seen before. Lots of people are guessing Desmond, but my guess is Walt. Mostly I just think that would be awesome. It’s also one of very few ways left for them to justify how important Walt was in the first two seasons. And on a purely logistical level, Walt’s been raised by four different people, so it should be easy enough for him to have a surname we haven’t heard yet.

But most importantly, it would also be the ultimate callback to that momentous, the-key-to-everything backgammon conversation Locke had with Walt in Season One: “Two players. Two sides. One is light. One is dark.” A final confrontation between Fake Locke and heretofore inexplicably psychically enhanced Walt would bring everything full circle.

* Happy 10th Blogiversary to NeilAlien, Skyfather of the Comics Blogosphere. (Via Tom Spurgeon.) Spurge’s list of 21 cool things about Doctor Strange is a pretty great birthday present.

* Today at Robot 6 I talked a bit about Geoff Johns’ post-promotion charm offensive.

* Plenty of fun Lost links today (and don’t worry, I’m gonna be keeping the Carnival spoiler-free unless otherwise noted). First up, Todd VanDerWerff’s weekly follow-up post, which includes more interesting discussion of Jack–who’s one of my favorite characters on the show, let me just come right out and say it–and in which VanDerWerff shares my enthusiasm regarding a potential identity for a potential someone.

* Next, Noel Murray’s review/recap for the Onion AV Club struck me as particularly sharp and observant this week, regarding everything from a weakness of some of the dialogue in this episode to the throwback elements it included to a way in which the final seasons will increase our investment in the first to parallels between this episode and the corresponding installment of Season One to making fun of Doc Jensen.

* Keep comin’ back to the comment thread on my Lost post for the week if you please–insights and compelling debates abound.

* Finally, good golly, look at this “visual timeline” Olivier Lacan is building for Lost! Right now it’s very much a work in progress–there are more gaps than there is timeline at this point. And it’s not very well written. But it’s a great idea, executed with gorgeous screencaps, and it’s as good a reminder of the show’s sweep, scope, and mystery as anything I’ve seen. Soak it in. (Via Whitney Matheson.

* Super Mario Galaxy 2!!!!!

As I watched that trailer I literally became frightened of how much time I will be spending playing this game. As Rob Bricken at Topless Robot points out, it’s very very similar to the first game, but man, if it ain’t broke.

* Gene Simmons is one of the worst people in the entire history of recorded music, without exaggeration. Just a loathsome creep in almost every conceivable way. Turns out the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, as his son Nick Simmons flagrantly plagiarized Tite Kubo’s Bleach for his comic Incarnate–a plan that would seem to require no one reading his comic for it to succeed–and then issued denials that manage to be simultaneously insulting to manga, threatening to his detractors, and transparently bullshit to all. My favorite report on all this today is Rob Bricken’s at Topless Robot, which does not hold back.

* Want. Tom Neely, ladies and germs.

* More Destructor art from the LAW! King Suckerman, Rickey Purdin, and this killer piece by Zach Oat.

* Oh hey, Fuck Yeah, T-Shirts is back.

* Alright, another very good episode, intriguing in both timelines, lots of juicy mythology, fun performances, action, hieroglyphics, dead people, the whole nine. So far the only false note for me this season has been the Great Kate Escape episode. Three out of four ain’t bad.

* During one of the initial segments of Jack’s flashsideways, he seemed as taken aback by his appendectomy scar as he seemed to be on the plane by the cut on his neck and just the general way he looked in the mirror. They made a nice big deal of this this time, complete with a call to Mom asking when he had the operation, so methinks there’s something fishy going on with this whole alternate timeline, that it’s not as simple as “what would have happened if the Island had been nuked in the ’70s.”

* And I’m glad of that, because it’s only now occurring to me why some part of me never quite believed that was where they were headed in the first place: I never consciously made this connection, but the idea that we’re seeing what life would be like if something bad had never happened to them and they lived happy lives instead is straight-up The Last Temptation of Christ and/or “For the Man Who Has Everything.” Obviously the Lost writers aren’t above riffing on or referencing other big genre works–The Dark Tower, The Stand, Watchmen, we can all rattle off another half-dozen major touchstones easy. But never do they simply lift storylines wholesale. This ain’t Heroes, and Jeph Loeb hasn’t worked on the show since Season One. So while I had speculated that maybe this would all lead to Jack or Sawyer or whoever seeing how much better their life would be without the Island but somehow sacrificing it all for the greater good, I don’t think that’s where we’re headed anymore, at least not in the “Christ still chooses to die on the cross/Superman decides to rip off the psychic plant and kick Mongul’s ass” way I was kicking around.

* So, in each flashsideways, our protagonist character will bump into an Other? Kate and Claire met Ethan, Locke met Ben, and Jack met Dogen. Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is a pattern. Or to use Ian Fleming’s formulation, three times is enemy action. Dun dun DUNNNNNN! Anyway, I like this because it means we’ll probably see big Tom again. Speaking of which, did you notice the last name “Friendly” on Jacob’s lighthouse wheel? He really was “Mr. Friendly”! Oh, Lindelof & Cuse, you kidders.

* We’ve learned, if it wasn’t clear already, that the Man in Black is an out-and-out liar. Obviously he was pretending to be Jack’s dad. Obviously as such he only pretended to be speaking on behalf of Jacob. Claire tells us “her dad” told her that the Others stole her baby, which isn’t true. Thus one can assume he was seriously fudging the truth for Sawyer too. My brother Ryan pointed out that a cave hollowed out of a sheer cliff wall over the ocean seemed like an odd place for Jacob to hang out, making him skeptical that that was ever Jacob’s place to begin with. The moment I saw those 360 names written out in an orderly fashion next to each degree on the wheel, I thought, “Well, I guess there was probably no need for Jacob to have scrawled them all over the roof of a cave someplace else on the Island.” Particularly if the wheel is a magic portal into all their lives, right?

* Who’s the momma? Juliet?

* I loved all the callbacks to Season One. Shannon’s asthma inhaler, the caves, going on a jungle quest, Jack recalling his vision of his dad…Thinking back, it really did seem like that was just a vision, for a long long time after that episode aired. Maybe an Island-inspired vision, but a vision nonetheless. I wonder how long it took for the writers to decide “You know what? That really was his dad!” Then again, the body was missing from the coffin all along, so who knows.

* I would say that Hurley’s speculation that the skeletons in the cave are two of their own, as a result of time travel, shoots down the possibility that that’s actually the case. But remember back in the day when they got “Moonlight Serenade” by Glenn Miller to play on the radio and Hurley said it could be coming from anywhere “or any time?” He added a quick “just kidding,” and at the time I thought that was the creators’ signal to us that we didn’t need to bother with spacetime continuum theorizing. Whoops!

* Jacob’s a manipulator too. Important to remember. What I really want to know is whether the Others’ rather barbaric conduct over the seasons are a result of a more-or-less faithful interpretation of his orders, or if things are way off base due to either a communication breakdown or deliberate malfeasance by Ben or Richard or Widmore or Dogen or whoever the relevant person is.

* With Jacob looking on approvingly, newly minted leadership-position Hurley opts to be cryptic and not answer Dogen’s question. So THAT’S how they learn it!

* The animal-corpse baby in Claire’s basinet was the most disturbing thing the show has served up in a long time. Like, it made me really uncomfortable for the brief few seconds we saw it. That is Texas Chain Saw Massacre shit right there. I’ve said this before, but as we’ve learned more about the Others, the Dharma Initiative, the Monster, and so on, a lot of the sense of fear and horror that these things presented in the earlier seasons, when the show was often one of the scariest on television, gradually dissipated. It’s nice to see them try to inject it back in.

* And hey, an axe murder! Alright.

* I don’t know if this was something they thought of, but of all the characters they could have left to the tender mercies of crazy Claire and evil Locke, Jin was an excellent choice because he spent years trying to stay one step ahead of the wishes of a vicious gangster. I believe that he’s someone capable of thinking on his feet and staying alive around the homicidally violent, longer probably than any other character except maybe inveterate conmen like Sawyer or Ben.

* Here’s the thing, though: Fake Locke knows that Jin knows that they’re both lying about who has Claire’s baby. Sawyer, who’s with Fake Locke, will know it too. How’s all that gonna work?

* Back to the Lighthouse for a second: I thought this was a fine scene, because it delivered something we haven’t seen…mmmmmmaybe since Locke refused to press the button at the end of Season Two? Which was someone getting so fed up with the way the Island’s phenomena have used and abused him that he snaps. There was an interesting new dynamic in play here as well: In the Hatch, Locke really had no evidence about whether what he was doing was extraordinary or bull, he just didn’t buy it anymore. Jack, on the other hand, just got a glimpse of his childhood house, and someplace in Japan, and maybe Oxford or something, in the mirrors of a magic lighthouse to which he’d been led by someone who got his directions from a dead man only he could see or talk to. Jack knows damn well that something really astonishing is happening on the Island, in reference to him specifically–and it’s precisely that knowledge that’s driving him crazy, not the lack of knowledge that so tormented Locke. Jack smashing the mirror (did he hear or fear or…?) was six seasons of not knowing what the hell is going on exploding into action. Good stuff. (I sort of wish the smashing hadn’t been spoiled by the stupid network’s next episode teaser last week, but oh well. It was at least nice of them to try to avoid making that mistake again this week.)

* I loved seeing all the hieroglyphics on the temple hallway wall, just ‘cuz you know they threw that in there so that the Lostpedia folks would translate it. And translate the Japanese dialogue, and freezeframe every glimpse of the wheel, and so on and so forth.

* Who’s coming to the Island? I’m pulling for Walt. I can barely fathom how satisfying that would be.

I wrote a comic called “The Side Effects of the Cocaine” about David Bowie’s very strange sojourn in Los Angeles between the release of Young Americans and Station to Station. Isaac Moylan was kind enough to draw it. You can read it at Isaac’s site. I hope you enjoy it!

* Is Siege a bomb? I have no idea but maybe you’ve got an opinion.

* Also on Robot 6 today: The LA Times’ Graphic Novel Book Prize finalists are a strong group, and this is the first and probably last time I’ll ever think of Gareb Shamus and Robert Altman at the same time. This weekend I also revealed what I’ve been reading. Click that last link for an interesting take on Blackest Night and Siege from Tim O’Neil, too.

* Tom Spurgeon is to the new DC executive team what the Daily Kos is to the Obama Administration: Rhetoric is nice, but he demands action on a progressive agenda.

* Speaking of Spurge, just try to resist buying Dan Nadel’s Art in Time after reading this review.

* To Ceri B. and all RPG-interested readers: Zak Smith is a very very good artist and one of my fellow “Fifth Beatles” vis a vis the Partyka group. He’s also a fellow Son of Eli. He’s also writing a fascinating blog about being a D&D Dungeon Master, featuring posts like this killer piece on four different kinds of vampires and how to play with their varying rule sets. He’s also a porn star who’s playing D&D with Mandy Morbid, Satine Phoenix, Kimberly Kane, Sasha Grey, Justine Joli and so forth. Definitely check out his blog Playing D&D with Porn Stars. I’m looking forward to their upcoming video series I Hit It With My Axe, which will basically be them playing a campaign you can follow like a TV show. That’s a rad idea, porn stars or no.

* I thought Tom Spurgeon’s ten thoughts on the DC management announcement were pretty solid.

* Recently on Robot 6: Cameron Stewart makes a Batman & Robin-related funny and John Porcellino makes a Batman & Robin-related drawing.

* Ben Morse has a round-up of recent Winter Games What The–?! silliness at Marvel.com. I really do love his profile of Team Transylvania.

* Renee fucking French, man.

* Frank Santoro is my favorite webcartoonist.

* If you’ve ever looked up at a big building and are a superhero fan you’ve probably thought about what a battle atop it would really look like to onlookers, which is why this Robt Seda-Schreiber cover version of John Romita Sr.’s cover for Amazing Spider-Man knocked my socks off. Making the action smaller makes the action bigger, you know? Click the link for the full-size piece.

* Real-Life Horror: John Yoo, who still has his law license and teaches at Berkeley, gave the legal thumbs-up to literally massacring civilians.

* Good question.

* Dan DiDio and Jim Lee are the new Co-Publishers of DC Comics, and Geoff Johns is their new Chief Creative Officer. I wrote about this a bunch for Robot 6 today. Nose-tweaking over prognostications here. Highlights from the new management team’s various statements here. Pondering whether the company will head to Los Angeles here. Rick Marshall gets Diane Nelson to say no decision has been made on that score here. My colleague Kevin Melrose has a good round-up and analysis post here. Heidi MacDonald tries to pin down the status of other high-ranking DC figures like Karen Berger, Bob Wayne, Gregory Noveck, and Richard Bruning here. Tom Spurgeon casts a skeptical eye on the all-in-the-family promotion strategy here. My colleagues Kiel Phegley and Jonah Weiland interview the team here. Note the in-no-uncertain-terms statement that their goal is to make DC the number-one comics publisher.

* Most of us who talk about the vintage, Igor Kordey-illustrated Nu-Marvel makeover of the character Cable focus on the Darko Macan-scripted Soldier X, for good reason, but Marc-Oliver Frisch reminds us that the David Tischman issues were pretty good too.

* This collection of Kate Beaton comic strips based on old Edward Gorey book covers is as gorgeous and funny as you’d expect, but when I first looked at it my browser cut off the final panels of each strip, and you know what? I actually liked them better that way. The first strip in particular.

* Lots more juicy Lost comment action in the thread for my latest post.

SPOILER WARNING

Down in the bustling comment thread for this week’s episode, my brother Ryan carpet-bombed me with Lost knowledge bombs. Rather than respond to his lengthy comments downblog, I thought I’d pull them out and make a post of it. Ryan’s thoughts are in italics, mine are in roman.

This episode was amazing. Ben’s eulogy for Locke pretty much brought a tear to my eye. Also really enjoyed Sawyer calling out fake Locke even in a drunken stupor.

Two great, revealing character moments.

MIB’s tossing of the white rock into the ocean and describing it as an “inside joke,” was quite interesting as well. I guess you can draw a lot from that one action. The white rock could just symbolize Jacob in a literal sense. It could mean that with Jacob gone, the balance of power on the Island has swung back to fake Locke (and as we have been led to believe thus far, evil). Probably signifies both.

Right. The former idea is the “inside joke” aspect and the latter is the metaphorical aspect.

In reference to the creepy little boy, my best guess is that it is a young Jacob. I say this for a few reasons. First, I believe the first time MIB sees the little boy, the young boy has blood stained clothes. Jacob was stabbed to death brutally. The little kid had his hands out and, from my view, seemed to be bloodied. This is a lot like how Jacob looked when he was murdered.

Interesting. I need to check that out.

Secondly, in their next encounter, the little boy warns MIB (or fake Locke or Smokey or Esau) that he cannot kill Sawyer according to these darn “rules” that we always hear about. If this kid was Aaron or Claire (which I don’t think at all) , how do those two characters no the rules that only seem to be privy to MIB and Jacob??? Whidmore and Ben also speak of rules obviously but who knows if they are referring to the same things as Jacob and MIB.

I hadn’t thought of that line referring to Sawyer. Hmm! I thought of it as referring to Jacob, the implication of “you can’t kill him” being “he’s not really dead.” But it seems to work for Sawyer as well, if as you say the MIB is not able to kill candidates.

Also, Claire is currently on the Island in the same time frame. She just shot the Others that were going to kill Jin. Why would she then show up as a little child in clothing that we have never seen her in? In addition, the leader of the “temple” Others has mentioned to Jack that Claire has been claimed much like Sayid. If that is the case, it seems logical that MIB is the person or entity doing the claiming, no? If Claire has been claimed since the time she disappeared and left Aaron, don’t you feel that she is already under the influence of MIB? The real Locke was basically led to his ultimate demise while following the advice of Christian Sheppard. If dead people or dead bodies are claimed and used by MIB, I think it is reasonable to conclude that MIB somehow knew enough to orchestrate Locke’s leaving the Island only to ultimately be killed by Ben and brought back to the Island so that “a candidate” (Locke and his image) could infiltrate Jacob’s lair with Ben and persuade Ben to end Jacob’s reign on the Island.

1) I wonder if MIB has his own equivalent of recruiting “candidates” like Jacob does. Obviously Ilyana speaks of the MIB Locke “recruiting” Sawyer, but what about before that? Is Widmore working for MIB the way Ben is working for Jacob? Or are the dead entities the way that the MIB protects his legacy?

2) That theory about needing a candidate to ice Jacob is pretty tight.

If Claire was claimed, did she physically die somehow on the Island after leaving Aaron? Maybe she actually died when the house was blown up and somehow came back to life only to carry Aaron so far and leave him to the other Oceanic crew we know so well and then went off with Smokey and Christian Sheppard.

I remember people saying something along these lines at the time.

I think that Sawyer could see the young boy (maybe Jacob) because he is a candidate.

If that’s the case, then are we to infer that Jin couldn’t see the Ghost Jacob who visited Hurley because it’s Sun, not he, who is the “Kwon” candidate? Or is that a separate issue because that’s a straight-up ghost and we’ve established that the dead only talk to Hurley? (Or have their thoughts read by Miles.)

Also, it seems like we can believe MIB when he says that Jacob wrote those names on the cave ceiling because of the flashbacks linking Jacob to the names on the cave walls.

Right.

However, I only remember ever seeing Jacob on the beach or in the foot statue monument. Why would Jacob be living in a very shady cave on the side of a cliff that can only be reached by braving the rope ladders of death? Could it be possible that the names were not written by Jacob at all but by MIB?

I thought the same thing when we first entered the cave–that this is where the MIB lived, and that’s why, in the flashback where we first meet the real him and Jacob as they watch the Black Rock approach the Island, it’s said that it’s been a long time since they last saw each other. But I do feel like the show didn’t give us any cues that MIB Locke was lying about the basics of his story, even if I’m sure some of the details or spin are lies.

Perhaps through his activities as the Smoke monster, he knows about all the candidates and is systematically “claiming” or destroying them? Just a thought, it could easily be that he was telling the truth but you never know.

I would guess his unspoken goal is to kill the rest of the candidates to ensure that Jacob’s legacy would die with him. Why else recruit Sawyer? He needs someone to take down the other candidates since he himself is forbidden to or unable to.

Richard’s frantic behavior is pretty funny. He does have the guts to stand up to fake Locke and tell him that he will not go anywhere with him though.

Ah, good point. I think we can take that as another sign of how scared Richard is by MIB Locke, though–this guy is so terrifying that Richard won’t even pretend to play ball with him.

It’s ironic that Ben Linus, the calculating leader of the others, could not tell that fake Locke was MIB and didn’t even really believe Locke was dead until Richard shoved his face near Locke’s lifeless corpse but Sawyer sniffed out fake Locke in about 1 minute of conversation.

Ha! Very true. I’d been saying that you can’t con a con, but Ben’s as much of a con artist as Sawyer. I suppose Ben’s constant need to look out for Number One made him vulnerable to Fake Locke’s blandishments, whereas Sawyer just don’t give a fuck anymore and thus he sees through others’ ruses. Well, at least until he agrees to team up with Fake Locke.

The alternate reality is quite intriguing. I almost think that the writers want us to believe that certain things were destined to happen to the characters no matter what but other things can be changed. Rose and Locke (both healed by the powers of the Island) cross paths again in the alternate reality and again share the bond of their significant physical problems. In Claire’s alternate reality, she still seems destined to give birth and possibly raise Aaron as the adoption falls through the day she arrives in LA.

Helen mentioning that it could be destiny that Locke runs into Jack (a spinal surgeon) at the airport is eerily similar to Ben’s appeal to Jack on the Island when he is trying to have the tumor removed from his spine. It is also interesting that Locke is about to get married in the alternate reality. Jack originally performed surgery on his future wife under the promise that she might be able to dance at her wedding. If Jack eventually does perform surgery on John in the alternate reality, maybe Locke will get to dance at his own wedding.

I’d noticed a lot of those resonances, but missed a lot of the others–the dancing at your wedding thing, Locke and Rose bonding through their illnesses, Jack being Locke’s destiny the same way he was supposedly Ben’s destiny.

Did you guys ever discuss how Ben was able to summon the smoke monster to fight off Whidmore’s army of thugs? I still don’t get that.

No we didn’t, but I was thinking about that today too. If Ben and the Others are servants of Jacob (although they seem to have made a real hash out of his true wishes, if he is in fact the Good Guy many of us think he might be), how can they summon or command Jacob’s enemy? Unless the Monster was simply playing along.

Another thought:

Perhaps Christian Sheppard, as he appeared on the Island, was never really the spirit or ghost of Christian Sheppard. Perhaps it was MIB the whole time. I’m kind of figuring that MIB can use the form of dead bodies on the Island. The prime example is when Yemi appears to Eko. I don’t remember the tenor of the whole conversation but the main point of it was that Yemi (or MIB or Smokey perhaps) wanted Eko to atone for the live he had led up until that point. Eko wouldn’t and was consequently brutalized by the Smoke monster.

Right. There was also a deleted scene that they used as a webisode that was a flashback to the moments after the crash but before Jack wakes up and sees Vincent–in this scene, Christian approaches Vincent and tells him to wake up his son because “He has work to do.” Sounds like the Walt apparition that rallied Locke after Ben shot him and tossed him into the Dharma mass grave. And sounds like the MIB.

What makes it so hard to figure is that we’ve seen all different kinds of dead people. Ghosts appear to Hurley and talk to him conversationally. Entities like Christian, or Ben’s mom back in the day, or Yemi, or Alex, seem far more enigmatic and more likely to be the Monster in human form. On top of that, Christian and Yemi’s bodies both disappeared, suggesting the MIB needs the actual body to do his thing–but Ben’s mom died in America, not on the Island, while Fake Locke strolled right past real Locke’s corpse which was clearly not being puppeted around by him. And then you’ve got Walt appearing to Shannon and later to Locke. And then you’ve got this mystery boy this week. Tough to piece it all together!

At one point when fake Locke is talking to Richard and Richard refuses to go with fake Locke….MIB states, “Are you sure about that Richard because people seldom get a second chance?” That almost brings me back to Eko’s encounter with Smokey.

It sure does. I always thought that was a great bit, even though Eko was only being written out of the show because the actor didn’t like living in Hawaii. It takes guts for a show to take a beloved character and allow him to forgive himself for his sins, but then kill him for it.

Ilana later states in the Episode, I believe to Ben, that Smokey cannot change form anymore. My guess, is that now that Smokey has taken the image of a CANDIDATE, he can no longer change his image and use other bodies.

It’s gotta be either that, or that he’s stuck in whatever form he was in when Jacob was killed.

Smokey himself even says that he looks like John Locke so that he could gain access to Jacob. Hence, he had to take the form of a candidate.

Again, tight.

Still think the lair where the names were written doesn’t seem like a place that Jacob would inhabit or hang out.

I’m not so convinced, but it’s certainly possible.

Smokey says also that he was once a man and had become trapped. So I think Smokey and Jacob have a long history together going back to when they were possibly even children. Therefore, seeing a young, bloodied ghost or image of Jacob would draw the reaction that Smokey had during the episode.

Sounds about right to me. Do you wonder at all if there were people in the Jacob and Smokey roles before Jacob and Smokey? How far back does it all go?

Incidentally, Ryan, if you like the business with Jacob and Smokey, you ought to read The Stand by Stephen King. There’s stuff in there you’d get a kick out of.

* I wrote a list of The Top 15 Greatest Science Fiction-Based Pop/Rock Songs for Topless Robot. (Hip-hop too.) I’m very happy with how it came out, and the mix of artists and songs that are in there, though of course after I handed it in I thought of at least two more I’d have elbowed some out of the way to include. Oh well, there’s always a second list. I have a blast doing this kind of writing for TR, I’ma tell you what. And as always, the comment thread is as much fun for me as the actual writing. You’d be surprised just how many variations on “Oh yeah? What about _____?!?!?” people can come up with. My favorite is the guy who called the list “EPIC FAIL” because of its lack of Uriah Heep.

* PS: Look at the tracklisting on the new Bowie live album! That’s quite a career retrospective, and it’s two discs for the price of one.

* Look, it’s Ben Jones’s Adult Swim show, and it’s called Neon Knome! Scroll down to the Mon Feb 22 line to view a snippet, but on your way there, be sure to vote for Michael Kupperman’s Snake ‘n’ Bacon in some sort of “winner gets on the air” contest Adult Swim’s having for a bunch of pilots right now.

* Todd VanDerWerff on last night’s Lost, a must-read as always. One thing he’s very right about is that the show’s best performers elevate their frequently generic–I mean that in the sense of genre, not in its usual pejorative way–characters. It’s similar to how a great artist can transform a pretty good superhero comic into a “holy shit read this” sensation.

* Speaking of Lost, be sure to pop into the (much to my delight!) ever more active comment threads for my two posts on last night’s episode.

* Tucker Stone interviews and waxes philosophical about Benjamin Marra of Night Business fan. God only knows what would constitute being successful as a self-publishing comics creator in 2010, but to the extent that success stories are possible, I sure like to hope that Ben is one. His books bring me great joy. (Via Ben’s blog.)

* Over at The Cool Kids Table, my pal Ben Morse does his monthly round-up of his favorite covers from the Previews solicits. Three things stand out: 1) There really are a lot of fine cover artists for the big companies these days; 2) Damn, who designed the Dazzler logo? That is killer; 3) Jeeeeesus–If you’ve followed Hellboy and B.P.R.D. at all, this cover for King of Fear #5 is absolutely terrifying.

* I supported these sick, sadistic monsters for years because I was too gullible, too proud, and too angry to see them for the sick, sadistic monsters they so obviously were. Shame, shame, shame.

* This video for Liars’ menacing new song “Scissor” from their upcoming album Sisterworld–which I’m told is an album-length experiment in dread along the lines of Portishead’s Third or the Knife’s Silent Shout–reminds me at varying times of Clive Barker’s “Scape Goats,” Stephen King’s “The Raft,” and the opening of Lucio Fulci’s Zombi 2. ‘Nuff said. (Via Pitchfork.)