Seems this episode was just an hours worth of setup to reveal who "adam and eve" were... And honestly, that is so far down on my list of questions i'd like to see answered. And as i mentioned above, they could have decided at ANY time (like right before filming this ep) who "adam and eve" were and concocted a story around that.



Also, I miss Ben and Richard.

Was that really necessary?

Yea, I've hated this entire season and it's nice to finally see the apologists back off a bit. I wish I had stuck to my original plan of buying the complete series set...if I was satisfied with the way the show ended. But no, Amazon had to have that amazing deal on the 1-5 BDs. Fuck you, Amazon!

I have been a hardcore fan since day one, but the whole thing is crashing and burning right before our eyes, like Oceanic flight 815. They at least proffered concrete answers in this episode, but the alarming lack of detail and continuity strongly suggests the writers lied for years about having a master plan of any kind. The donkey wheel explanation was as bad and lame as anything I have seen from a long-running show. For a show that was so finely-tuned for five seasons, the burden of coming up with a satisfactory conclusion was obviously beyond the scope of these writers, and drove them to mediocrity.

The episode itself was mildly okay, if it had not been one of the final three episodes. Maybe they were afraid of the reaction this reveal would cause if placed earlier in the season, and lead to poor ratings.

Let me give a general warning to people who are unspoiled, the spoilers for future episodes do not sound much better than the "awesome" answers we have already been given.

maybe not, but it's damn funny and a pretty fucking good analogy.

Honestly, the only thing I can think of that this episode showed was this: the island has been around a long, long time, and it needs a protector, and at some point, the current protector will find a new protector (perhaps when "evil" finds a loophole).

So "Mother" was a protector of some great and mighty power, whom she may have inherited that responsibility from, and she has now passed this protection role to Jacob. Jacob, in turn, will turn this role over to (what appears to clearly be) Jack. And perhaps one day Jack will turn this role over to another successor, so that the great and mighty glowing cave of... stuff... will be protected.

Now, all we need as an audience is to fill in the "why" part of this story, of which I assume we'll get in the last three episodes. Assuming that Cuse and Lindeof know the "why" themselves.

Not as necessary as your visit to the doctor to get that stick removed.

Seriously. That was so unbelievably dumb. My eyes almost rolled out of their sockets.

I am only into three pages of the replies so far. I recorded the episode and just watched it, so I didn't get into the "mob" mentality of the massive hate campaign the rest of you seemed to get into. I thought it was a good episode and I don't feel in the least bit slighted about it! I would have been far more pissed off if the stones turned out to be for Rose and Bernard, but apparently that is what the rest of you wanted. And for Aaron to be Smoky. I mean, come on...the lame ass theories I've read over the years on what you all thought this would lead to and you're disappointed? Give me a BREAK!

At least I was kind of close with the Jacob and MIB being father and son and there being daddy issues. They were related, and they had parent issues no less. It may not have been exactly the way I thought it would turn out, but it was better than some of the lame ass crap over the years I read guessing what it should be.

It's like everything that's bad about lost got sucked into an electromagnetic field and came back out resonating 100 fold.

Answering questions with more questions? Sure why not. McGuffin pond was a nice touch. Next episode let's watch Allison Janney wash up shore and have her fake dad make her drink some wine and speak in ambiguities.

Bad wigs? double check.

More characters we've never seen before? check. This is the worst offense. You don't introduce new characters when there's 5 minutes left in a movie.

No Desmond? Check.

And an homage to Deliverance for some reason.

Oh, no...no sir! Not even close! Jack will realize Jacob's job was for nothing and is going to find a loophole that not only relieves him of his duties but resets things for his friends and takes the island out and MIB out in the process. I think by sacrificing himself...the one thing Jacob refused to do to just finally end the cycle.

Could not agree more. They have three and a half hours left to finish this off. Even if I hated this episode (which I didn't), they still have plenty of time to redeem themselves.

Absolutely. Up until now, I thought the Kate episode was the worst. This now claims the throne. I think I'd be less pissed if there weren't 2-3 episodes left in the series. What a waste of time. I would have preferred they not have had an origin episode about Jacob/MIB at all.

I think if the acting would have been better, this episode would have been better regarded, but the acting was pretty awful this whole episode, and I watch a lot of tv, but this was truly bad. Titus Welliver was pretty good, but the rest of the cast were pretty bad imo.

I didn't like this episode a lot either but I didn't hate it as much as most of you. Well, not until the flashbacks about adam and eve. What a horrible way to supposedly prove you had this planned all along. What a joke.

Anyway, the impression I got from tonight's episode is that MIB was in fact the one chosen to protect the island because he was the most like his fake mom. She thought he was special and she treated him differently and that created just enough distance between them for the "ghost mom" to convince/trick him into joining the supposedly evil men. The evil men with their curiosity and other human traits. So MIB decides to use the power to leave the island. Fake mom can't let that happen so she goes nuts kills a bunch of people and makes sure MIB stays. The only reason for killing them all and trapping him is that she loves him.

So he kills her, by stabbing her before she can talk to him and probably with the same knife, but not until after she goes to plan B and elevates Jacob to the protector of the island. So Jacob, the guy most folks here think is the pure/good person, kills his brother and throws him into the light where he was told never to go because it would be worse than death.....

Jacob's act was evil, and because of his evil act against what we now see is truly the good guy, Smokie is formed. What I get from it is that the light in the cave is a forbidden fruit to the characters. There is no way to actually get the forbidden fruit without breaking the rules and when the rules are broken all hell breaks loose. Anyway, the light is probably a soul and depending on how a person ends up in it, decides what will be released in the person. Since Jacob's act of evil caused a person to go into the light, a dead person in fact, if that person ever gets off the island, then all evil will be let loose? Or perhaps a donkey wheel with polar bears and dodo birds are waiting for the person at the bottom of the well. This show went too many directions and I honestly cant see them tying it all together with the small amount of time left. Especially with jackass writing like tonight. Seriously, how can V be more entertaining the one of the very last episodes of Lost. What a joke.

Other than Jacob and MIB, what characters did you expect to see? The other longest living person on the island was Richard, so who else did you expect?

So if Jacob has the power to grant immortality to Richard, I wonder if he granted the power to anybody else? Or if not, how did he know he could do it with Richard? And if just Richard, why? I suppose those are questions that will never be answered either. Probably not important, but it would be interesting.

My biggest theory on why all the ambiguity you seem to be hating on right now... because they are leaving it open for more stories about the island to be told. The creators of the show said that the lives of the Losties would be wrapped up by the series end but it would be left open for more stories to tell. So I predict we will see a series of LOST novels coming to stores in the future covering this back story stuff, but never really answering much directly either so they can keep on trying to sell us books and other works about LOST. I hope not, but I fear it could happen.

When did Justin Bieber start acting? Man I'm so pissed. The wheel made no fucking sense. I'm just gonna continue drinking this episodeba way.

An episode that didn't look like it was shot by the crew of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys.

Less heavy-haned writing.

The island's secret to not be a giant glowy vagina that queefs evil.

Water and light? Fuck.

Fuck. Nickleback's killed Darlton and taken over the writing.

I've figured out the MiB's name, it's Rhett Khan.

The only subtle thing I enjoyed about the episode was MiB was the man of science, while Jacob was the man of faith; a nice contrast to the roles of Jack and Locke.

Yeah, casting a carpet pisser as Jacob was a bad idea.

Who?

It's not a mob mentality. I didn't log onto the forum until a half hour into the episode, and I'd already decided it sucked on my own.

Jason, glad to see a voice of reason in all the chaos.

And I am going to catch up on Battlestar Galactica one of these days...and I will expect to like the season finale based on the fact that somebody as intelligent and clear thinking as you liked it as well!