LOST: Episodes 5.16 and 5.17

The Incident

Dude, that statue has, like, a dinosaur face! WTF?!

I know that should be the least of my concerns after last night's fantastic finale, but I did some reading around and found out that the statue is probably the Egyptian god Sobek. From Wikipedia: 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.

Sound familiar? Fixing dead people?

Anyway, despite a little impatience that I felt with the whole love quadrangle - and the unforgivable absence of Desmond and Penny - I was very satisfied with the episode. They piled on the mythology, ramped up the violence (like they really needed to!) and really delivered on the quieter character moments. And then they ended on a patented LOST WTF moment. Actually, more than one.

There is a lot to process, but here are some quick thoughts.

• I am reminded of BSG's "All of this has happened before, and all of it will happen again."  I think Jacob and the man in the dark shirt (let's call him Titus, which is the actor's name) have been locked in some kind of struggle for a very long time - good v. evil, dark v. light - but I'm still not clear about who the good guy is.  Jacob "brings" people to the Island as part of a test, or something, to see how they will interact when faced with the properties of the Island.  Perhaps?  First he brought the Black Rock there, and then Flight 815.  Titus wants him to stop (why? Is he the Island?) but can't kill Jacob himself for some reason.  So titus does everything he can to position the Losties where he can use them to kill Jacob.
• Locke is really dead.  Dead is dead, as Ben said.  Oo, a rhyme!  How tragic and touching it will be if this is the last that we will see of our Locke.  Maybe he's in there somehow - he does have Locke's memories...
• Ben Linus as the "manipulatee" is fascinating to watch.  Michael Emerson is the king of acting!
• So raise your hand if you think "Ricardus" came to the Island on the Black Rock?  I found a translation to how he answered the question, "What lies in the shadow of the statue":  It's a latin phrase - "Ille qui nos omnes servabit" - which means "He who will protect (or save) us all."
• I'm feeling now like maybe the excessive violence - does anyone on this Island NOT have a gun or knife? - was intentional, there to prove Titus' point that people always bring"destruction and corruption" when they come to the Island, and that it always ends the same.  I wonder what he means about the way it ends?
• Vincent!  Rose and Bernard!  I would be very happy if that's the last we see of them.  Their decision to "retire" makes perfect sense and I think they've been able to lead a peaceful existence on the Island because they're not caught up in the "destruction and corruption" that surrounds the rest of the Losties and the Island chooses to leave them be.
• I started to get a lump in my throat as soon as Juliet got pulled into the well.  The tears came when she and Sawyer were ripped apart.  I can only hope that Juliet somehow survives.  If the detonation of the bomb killed her, then it would have also killed everyone else. If, on the other hand, the detonation caused an "incident" that "white-flashed" them all to 2007 ( which is what I think happened), then she could still be alive. Hurtin' real bad, but still alive. Same goes for Sayid.

I honestly don't think the bomb undid anything as far as the 2004 plane crash goes. I think it just caused the incident because it was meant to cause it - whatever happened, happened. And I think that the "they" that Jacob said were coming are Jack, Sawyer, et al, coming back to 2007 from the past.  I am really uneasy about the idea of this being a giant reset and when we pick the story up in January they will all be landing at LAX.  This story needs to be finished on the Island, in my opinion, and 16 or 17 episodes just isn't enough to get them all back there.