LOST Episode 5×16 “The Incident” - Screencaps, Easter Eggs, Audio, & Analysis

May 13, 2009

Talk about an unbelievable episode to cap off another mind-blowing season of LOST. Absolutely loved this episode…sure most will agree. We may add some additional commentary to this post, so feel free to check back often. Call us and leave your thoughts on the episode at 920-626-6086. Here are a few initial thoughts:

So, Jacob is real…and he has an adversary. My hunch is that their discussion at the beginning of the episode impacts the end game of the show. It was probably no accident that Jacob and his enemy were dressed in white and black, respectively. This contrast has been a theme on the show from the beginning. So let’s play theory of the day. What if…Jacob’s enemy is the smoke monster? Here are some things that could support it:
- The black attire would be a symbolic reference.
- We’ve seen that Smokey can take human form (Yemi), so it stands to reason that he could take over Locke’s body.
- If Smokey’s job is to judge, then it would make sense that he couldn’t kill Jacob if the judgement didn’t “authorize” it. From there, a “loophole” would be needed…such as tricking someone else into doing it (see “Locke” and Ben).
- Smokey could have even taken over Christian Shephard’s form when he told Frank and Sun to wait for John Locke. Why would he know Locke was coming unless it was going to be him having taken over Locke’s body.
- When Ben went to be judged, “Locke” and Smokey were never seen at the same time (at least I don’t believe so). Locke disappeared into the jungle and came back and magically knew that they had to go to the Temple because the island told him. Only after Locke left Ben alone in the temple did Smokey appear. How convenient, too, that Smokey (via Alex) told Ben to follow Locke’s every order and not even think about trying to kill him again. That would seem to begin to create the “loophole” needed for Jacob to be killed.
- Jumping back to Jacob and his enemy’s conversation, if you consider some of the dialog between Jacob and his enemy with the mindset that his enemy is a human incarnate of Smokey, it would seem to support what we know of Smokey. Here’s some dialog:
  - Jacob: You’ll have to ask them when they get here.
  - Enemy: I don’t have to ask. [pause] You brought them here.
- You could look at “I don’t have to ask” a couple different ways. You could just assume he doesn’t have to ask because he knows Jacob brought them. However, you could also look at it like he doesn’t have to ask because he can read their minds once they get there like we’ve seen Smokey do.
- More dialog:
  - Enemy: Still trying to prove me wrong, aren’ you?
  - Jacob: You are wrong.
  - Enemy: Am I? They come, fight, they destroy, they corrupt. It always ends the same.
- The enemy is trying to pove a point that the any new island inhabitants will follow a predictable pattern that will end up resulting in their demise. If looked at from Smokey’s perspective, if your role is to be a “security system” of sorts for the island and judge people on it, you’re basically just used to this pattern that unfortunately keeps playing out the same way.
- Shifting gears away from Smokey a bit and onto Jacob, let’s focus on his response to his enemy:
  - Jacob: If it only ends once, anything that happens before that is just progress.
- I believe Jacob is looking to end the cycle of people becoming evil, destructive, and corrupt. When Ben talks later in the episode about “all those lists” that he had been given by Jacob, perhaps these lists are the people that Jacob feels can break the cycle.
- I think Jacob now thinks that he has the right list of people to break that cycle with our Losties. I think the end game might be whether or not they can break this cycle and possibly save the world by virtue of it. When Jacob says, “They’re coming…” before he dies, he’s referring to our Losties, the ones he visited and made contact with (see my later comments on him literally touching them). Maybe this is what changes one of the factors in the Valenzetti equation. Maybe this is the forthcoming war: Good vs. Evil. Maybe this is their destiny.
Switching gears, it was disappointing to not have Desmond, or Walt for that matter, in the finale.
I loved Miles’ voice of reason that perhaps by behaving in a certain way you think is going to change the future, you end up creating that exact future. We’ll have to wait to find out if he was correct.
What a heartbreaking seen with Sawyer and Juliet. I’m holding onto hope that perhaps if the Losties were sent back to 2007 when the bomb detonated, then Juliet may somehow survive <crosses fingers…and toes>. I heart Juliet.
I took a great amount of sick pleasure in watching Phil get impaled, especially after grinning at Sawyer when he thought he was going to be able to shoot him (and obviously after hitting Juliet last week).
What’s in the guitar case?
It was great to see Rose and Bernard (and maybe even Vincent a little bit). I could see them being Adam and Eve, but based on Jack’s comments in Season 1 that he estimated the bodies were deteriorating for 40-50 years, then that estimate was high and Rose and Bernard probably would’ve had to have died shortly after 1977.
Was the ship in the water the Black Rock? Sure looked like it. Based on the coversation between Jacob and his enemy, I’m not sure we’re going to get much more of a Black Rock story. I could be wrong, but it may just have been used to demonstrate that at some point in the past, another group of people showed up and they fought, destroyed, and became corrupt. We’ll see.
Now let’s check out the statue. We’re pretty sure it’s Taweret, as was suggested as a possibility after LaFleur:

Sobek may be another possibility…
Or at least someone is pretty convinced that’s who it is (this LOST episode is referenced in the Wikipedia entry).

(thanks to Wikipedia for the image)

Click the thumbnail below for a better look at the statue:

Something we noticed about Jacob’s visits was that he always seemed to touch those that he visited. In some cases, the camera made it very obvious that this was happening. It made us think that somehow by touching these people, Jacob was making some sort of connection that would draw them to the island. Jacob’s rival also made a statement early in the episode regarding how he thought Jacob brought the Black Rock folks there (”You brought them here.”). Take a look at pics from each of the visits that Jacob makes and see for yourself: