It’s been just a few minutes since the season premiere of Lost’s sixth and final season ended, and I think I’m going to be scratching my head on this one for a while.
(WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD)
I don’t think we’ve solved the mystery of Locke/The Man in Black/The Smoke Monster yet, but hopefully those answers will continue to unfold in the weeks ahead. This much is certain, though: Nothing is certain. Not on this island, and not in this unpredictable universe. Reality isn’t, unreality is, dead people are alive, and living people are dead, and I don’t even think 1.21 jiggawatts could send me far enough into the future to figure it all out. At least not yet.
Three images/scenes near the end of this episode really caught my attention . . .
I’m intrigued by what these three scenes might mean. (Again, there be spoilers ahead.)
1) When Jacob (alive or dead?) tells Hurley to bring the dying Sayid to the temple to save Sayid’s life, he stresses that Hurley should bring the guitar case. When the guy at the temple opens the guitar case, he finds a large Egyptian symbol called an ankh, which represents new life and/or immortality. The sign is carried by many Egyptian deities in their mythology. Hmm. Jacob seems to have been alive for a long time, Richard never ages, and they’re bringing Sayid to this place to give him new life.
2) When they bring the apparently dead Sayid out of the pool, he is in the position often depicted of Jesus when taken off the cross – prostrate, arms outstretched. I don’t want to read anything too messianic into this imagery, but golly – first a cross-like symbol of eternal life, then sort of a “baptism” in the holy water (baptism represents Christ’s death and resurrection), and then, well, the stunning ending. As Hurley would say, “Dude.”
3) When Jack meets Locke in the “alternate reality” (I’m not sure what’s real, and what isn’t) near the end of the episode in LAX, they’re both in the Oceanic baggage claim area, looking for “cargo” that the airline lost on the flight (Jack’s dad, John’s knives). When Jack tells John he’s a spinal surgeon, Locke says that his condition is irreversible. Jack, who has always believed he can fix anything, retorts, “Nothing’s irreversible.” And hoo boy, just a moment later, we find out how true that really is. (Right, Sayid? Dude!)
All three add up to a favorite story about how even death itself isn’t “irreversible,” in certain contexts. When Aslan comes back to life near the end of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, Susan and Lucy ask him, “What does it all mean?” In his reply, Aslan tells them of a “deeper magic” that the White Witch (who had killed him) didn’t know about: “Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backward.”
No, Sayid’s no Aslan; he wasn’t a willing victim, and his past life is full of treachery. But I am interested to see what the show’s creators are getting at with all of this imagery, all coming within minutes at the end of the episode. So I echo Susan and Lucy by asking, “What does it all mean?” We probably won’t know for months, and even then, all of our questions probably won’t be answered. But it’s fun to speculate.
What do you think it all means?
