Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION The Anywhere Machine Lost: The Final Season

They made a point of mentioning Miles's father in the flash-sideways, which suggests that he left the island and was there to raise Miles in that timeline, which presumably made a huge difference in his life (one can speculate his memory of Miles as a Security Officer might have led him to push him in the direction of being a cop...).

Interestingly, we still don't know exactly what happened to Miles's dad in the original timeline. Was he killed with the rest of the Dharma initiative? It's not clear.

Also
They havent touched upon Miles ability to speak to the dead, maybe in the flash sideways, that ability does not exist for him.

In the Miles-centric episode of season 5, his mom told Miles that his dad was dead. He asked where she was buried, and she implied it was the island, saying it was nowhere he could go. That's not absolute confirmation, but she was on her deathbed. I would think she'd be inclined to tell him the truth in that situation. However, she may not have more than someone's word about it.

Hmm... I seem to remember having the impression that what she said wasn't reliable at all.

We haven't seen Miles near the Dharma graves, though, have we?

No, and that would be pretty awesome. You're right though...as far as we know, Mile's Dad made it to the Purge but we have no confirmation of that.

I'd love to see the conversation Razinsky and he had after the end of Season 5.

Yeah, that was pretty awesome.

And while it didn't quite seem that way at first, I think we had *the* major revelation of the entire show with Jacob's explanation of the island to Richard. Considering this show has never spelled anything out to the fans, don't be surprised if that's all the explanation we get...

The best episode of the season thus far!

What's fascinating are the parallels between the Jacob/MIB story and "lower-level" stuff we've seen previously. For example, the claims that the MIB wants to kill "every living thing on the island" are similar to what was said about Widmore a couple of seasons ago. And the whole "cork that's keeping evil bottled" metaphor is very similar to Desmond's pressing the button to keep the electromagnetic energy from escaping.

I also liked how the Man In Black immediately began calling Jacob the Devil and implying he is the good guy. It goes along with Ben, Widmore and the Other's, and basically any antagonist throughout the entire series, and how they always claim they are the "good guys" and trying to do the right thing. Cons / Lying / Deceptions are such an intricate part and major theme of Lost.

I also think the revelation that Hurley was talking to Richard's wife, who did not die on the island, is major. It re-opens the question of whether the MiB is all of the ghosts/dead people we've seen. We have to now safely assume we just don't know and need further clarification.

What was that line from Lapidus about how one should always suspect anyone who begins by claiming to be the good guys? One of the best lines of the series.

I definitely think there's going to be a lot of work going back and figuring exactly which appearances of the dead/dreams/visions, etc. were caused by the MiB versus other island phenomena.

I take it that the appearance of the little boy in the Locke-centric episode implies that that even Jacob/MiB are subject to higher-level powers in operation on the island.

I really am hoping that in at least one episode there is a scene (or a few) featuring Jacob and the Man in Black in ancient times, or at least pre-Black Rock times.

It's clear the Statue, Temple and various ancient structures are Egyptian or related. And I checked this morning on the sword that the MiB handed Richard--which is also the same sword Dogen handed Sayid--and it is indeed an Ancient Roman military dagger (standard issue for Roman soldiers). Through the awesomeness that is the internet, its been confirmed that on the sheath, it depicts the Roman she-wolf suckling Remus and Romulus. So Jacob's line about bringing many other people to the island over the centuries applies to these groups (potentially among others).

Another thing that I thought about all night:

Jacob uses the bottle of wine as an explanation of how the evil & malovence are trying to break free and the island is holding it back (represented by the cork). The MiB, which even kind of looks like the wine, of course represents the evil. Later in the episode, Jacob hands the MiB the wine bottle "a gift to pass the time"; this is kind of symbolic of how the MiB can roam around the island--Jacob won't let him leave the island but he can roam around there to pass the time. Naturally, the MiB who wants nothing more than to leave the island, breaks it, completing the symbolic nature of the scene. Great scene to throw in there.

More cool symbolism: Richard no longer can communicate directly with Jacob and therefore no longer believes in Jacob's plan. At the end of the episode, he puts the cross necklace back on, which symbolizes the restoration of his faith in Jacob's plan. Without Jacob speaking to him directly, he now must go on faith.

My guess is that we'll see the origin of Jacob and the MiB in the series finale.

It's interesting that that was the same dagger that Sayid had, especially considering Dogen gave Sayid the same instructions the MiB gave Richard. I wonder if, at some point, the "rules for killing Jacob" became confused with the "rules for killing the MiB", which might imply that a lot of the what the Others believed was actually manipulated by the MiB all along.

It's interesting that the smoke monster killed the entire crew but then didn't kill Richard. Why? Because he can't kill those more good than evil? Did he see something in Richard that made him potentially able to kill Jacob?

So much of the show has followed this pattern: certain things are taken as truths or rules but are revealed to have been misunderstood or deceptions from decades/years earlier. For example, the MiB tells Richard to tell Locke that "he has to die"; thus, Locke believes this has to happen--that's not true, but it served the MiB's purposes.

I suspect the same thing could apply to your above scenario. *Or* the rules to killing the MiB and killing Jacob are the same.

I think we've seen now that Jacob wants people to make the right decision without him telling to, while the MiB's goal is to corrupt people and perpetrate lies and falsehoods. So he's basically been corrupting the Other's belief system from the very beginning in every way he can. He's the implied culprit for how Ben grew up to be the way he was and how the Other's, who claim to be serving Jacob, have a leader as awful as Widmore.

The continued usage of the dagger in Season 6 makes me wonder if it will be instrumental in the eventual killing of the MiB in the series finale.

One other possibility is Richard was the perfect example of a person that could go either way. He'd just committed a terrible crime, but it was an accident and he had no ill intentions. Either he could become more malovent or he could repent and do good. Perhaps the people who aren't killed right away need to have those two roads open to them.

Otherwise, why kill the pilot and not the others in the first episode. And when Eko at last makes a firm decision in his outlook on life--no longer hamstrung by guilt but not looking to do real good in the world, the MiB kills him?

A theory, I admit, that needs some work (but figured it was worth mentioning).

It's fairly clear that the whole Eko story is pretty much key to mystery of the rules that govern when/who the smoke monster can kill. It's funny that what seemed like such an annoying death at the time is really central to the whole mythology of the show.

I have always known that ever since MIB said that he just wanted to go home..leave the island, that he was being kept on the island, not allowed to leave.
But i agee it was the best show of the season.

So the Black Rock destroyed the Statue? It always looked pretty steady to me! Seemed the Black Rock would've been MUCH the worse for wear if the force of the collision could do that. Very odd!

I always kinda figured that many of the Others were survivors/descendants of the Black Rock crew. However, Richard was the only apparent survivor. Obviously, they recruit from different groups that encounter the Island. Maybe a lot of them who were Widmore's age came with him on an expedition or in another accident? Lots of mysteries, still.

I liked the return of the actor who played the MiB in The Incident episode. In a way he works better for me in the role than Locke. I kinda miss the real Locke actually.

Definitely a good episode.

You know, I never thought about it, but it *is* pretty absurd to think the Black Rock could've destroyed the statue.

I took it that Dogen's telling his story a few episodes ago suggested that most of the Others were recruited from the outside world.

Concerning the Black Rock/Statue, I think only two options really happened:

(1) It's actually a big story point that the Black Rock destroyed the statue (i.e. Jacob himself destroyed the statue as a symbol of the old visitors to the island who built the statue being long gone and the beginning of a new cycle of visitors to the island that is continuing to this day with the Losties). In prior years I would have thought this was the case but with only 7 episodes, that might be in question.

(2) The tsunami destroyed the statue, not the Black Rock, even though we heard the loud crash. It's more of a common sense theory even though it was obviously implied the Black Rock destroyed the statue.

You'll all recall Artz saying in Season 1 that the Black Rock likely wound up all the way into the island via a tsunami. Turns out he was right.

One thing that puzzled me about the episode is that I kept thinking there was supposed to be some sort of connection between Jonas Whitfield and Charles Widmore. The names seemed oddly similar.

My take is that the tsunami had almost enough the force to take the statue out, and the Black Rock was the thing that put it over the edge in being abole to topple it.

Something else else I just remembered... Faraday once said something to the effect that "the rules don't apply to Desmond". I wonder if that could include whatever rules constrain the behavior of Jacob/MiB?

amazing that a Tsunami could find the island

No, but they mention the captain, Magnus Hanso, who owned the ship and he's the grandfather of Alvar Hanso who created the Hanso foundation and the Dharma Initiative.

Charles Widmore was seen purchasing a painting of the Black Rock (and journal?) in an earlier Desmond-centric episode at an auction.