Published at 11:56 AM on May 14, 2009

By Rachel Dovey

Lost Review:
"The Incident" (Episodes 5.16-17)

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The faceless Jacob appeared in Lost's season finale, "The Incident," last night. In fact, he appeared again and again; he opened, and nearly closed the episode, and his dark annunciations to all of the Lostites before they returned on the plane wove a tight tapestry throughout the episode. As the various groups of characters scurried around like frenzied mad hatters and white rabbits (Jack to detonate the bomb, Sawyer to stop him, Locke to kill Jacob, the beach dwellers to find the statue), Jacob's presence became as certain and quiet and sure as the future every character was bolting away from.

"The Incident" opened, abruptly, with Jacob on the island's beach talking to a nameless stranger. Their conversation directed the episode toward a degree of existentialism we weren't expecting. "What are human beings?" they asked. Is progress possible for them? Can they truly evolve? Or are they destined to rush around the jungle mindlessly, trying only to survive? Although our characters are playing with space and time, though they plot and conspire and kill, the same question applies. With Jack and Juliet's desperation to put off the bomb, Ben's bitter resignation to Locke, and Juliet's death, our characters certainly don't seem to control the events around them one bit, no matter how hard they try.


Except maybe they do. The bomb does go off. And a certain conspiring genius (is it Widmore?) has crawled into John Locke's "man-suit," glamoured Ben and apparently killed Jacob.

So the question, perhaps, isn't "Have they evolved?" as it is more along the lines of, "Do they have free will?" Of course, this isn't a new idea. How often have we heard Locke say, "It's my destiny/the island wants me to?" But in this episode, the concept of destiny vs. free will culminates, and is complicated in new ways; namely, through the characters themselves.

First, we have Sawyer. He has grown out of his conning, incorrigible past into a true leader this season. For our money, Sawyer represents the self-made man. He's always reading, trying to "better his mind" and sharpen his wits. And he tells Jack, "I don't speak destiny." Whatever Sawyer wants, he's going to do it himself. Of course, this mindset has its Darwinian side. Sawyer desires nothing more than to get himself and Juliet away from the island. It's classic "flight," and he's not too concerned with what happens to the others. However, Juliet convinces him to go back.

Then there's Jack. He has spoken destiny for the past few seasons, albeit brokenly. He rounded everyone up to come back to the island (sort of), and has followed in Locke's footsteps. But his sense of destiny is weak and self serving; all he really wants is an escape. Essentially, and he nearly tells this to Sawyer straight up, he wanted to come back to the island, and now he wants to blow up the island, because of Kate. "I had her. I had her and I lost her," he spits. He wants to go back and numb the pain. Destiny is just another word for "crutch" to Jack.

And there's Locke. Or is there? Locke was the ultimate man of destiny. If anyone trusted the island, trusted the God-like Jacob to take care of things, Locke did. But since his return, he's done nothing but scheme, use Ben's bitterness to his own advantage, and now, we find out, that wasn't even the same Locke. Locke is dead, his body is tossed aside in an old, steel box, and the man masquerading as him is...we don't know. So trusting things to work out didn't really seem to work out in the end for him.

Juliet was a great antidote to all the destiny/machiavellian power trips around her. If anyone was a truly decent, balanced character, it was Juliet. And now, she seems to be dead too. 

And through it all, like a tolling bell, we have Jacob. Is he God? Is he the angel of death? What is he? Who is he? And did he really die?

As always, more questions are asked than answered in this finale. But Jacob's presence and his conversation at the beginning framed the episode, putting it into a much larger, cosmic, context. These characters aren't just battling to change the future; they're battling to understand just how much control they have.

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