“We’re in hell.” Richard doesn’t break the news gently to Jack, Sun, Hurley and the others on the beach, but it’s a simple truth reinforced by Richard Alpert’s long-awaited back story. In “Ab Aeterno,” we see Richard’s history unfold, unraveling the knot of the one of Lost’s biggest mysteries. We followed Richard’s tale from the beginning (nearly 150 years ago on the Canary Islands) to his current semi-hysterical state (nervous laughter and shifty eyes are the man’s new trademarks) on the island. And though Jack may not take him too seriously when Richard says, “You’re dead. We’re all dead,” there’s plenty of proof to back up that theory—a theory that many viewers have held about the island being some kind of doomed afterlife.
After killing a rich doctor while trying to buy medicine for his dying wife, Richard is sentenced to death. But something troubles Richard more than death itself; he’s denied forgiveness for his sins. “I’m afraid the devil awaits you in hell,” the priest says to a distraught Richard. And so begins his struggle to escape hell. Richard’s life is spared two times: first by a man who buys him as a slave to go to the New World, and then by the Man in Black after the Black Rock is shipwrecked on the island.
But could Richard be in hell? According to his dead wife Isabela (who finds Richard still chained to the bowels of the Black Rock) they are both dead and in hell. But when Isabela is taken by either Jacob or the Man in Black (depending on who you trust), Richard is left alone with the Man in Black, and convinced that Jacob is the devil. “There’s only one way to escape from hell,” the MIB tells Richard. “You’re going to have to kill the devil.”
Though this episode answered many questions about Richard (namely the story behind his immortality) it made the Jacob vs. MIB/Smoke Monster situation all the more murky. It’s still difficult to say who is telling the truth or who is better at manipulating people, because at different moments both men seem to be convincing someone to do their bidding. It would be easy to assume that Jacob represents the “good” side and the Man in Black his “evil” counterpart, but the story seems too complicated to be summed up that easily. If, as the MIB says, Jacob is the devil, then the island is in fact hell. But perhaps it’s only the MIB’s personal hell. If Jacob’s cork-in-the-wine-bottle analogy is true, then the island’s function is to save the outside world from hell by keeping the Smoke Monster confined.
When Richard goes to kill el diablo—whom he believes to be Jacob—he’s turned to the other side and agrees to work as Jacob’s intermediary. Without any hope of getting his wife back or being forgiven for the murder he committed, Richard asks to live forever. He wants to avoid going to hell, but after decades and decades on the island, he feels that he may have been living in hell all along.
So Lost viewers may have breathed a collective sigh of relief (in between gasps of surprise) during this episode, but the future of the island, Flocke and all of the island inhabitant’s lives is still very much up in the air. Richard’s wife Isabela is still on the island (in the guise of other dead-but-not-really characters such as Christian Shepherd) and talks to her husband via Hurley. (Thank goodness the one guy who can talk to dead people is also fluent in said dead person’s native language!) Isabela tells Richard that he must stop the MIB from leaving the island, just after Richard’s screamed out into the jungle that he wants to join back up with the guy. So he’s in the same confused boat as the rest of us right about now.