This much awaited episode – distinctive for its back story and lack of any regular characters – was a mixed bag. Did we get answers? Yes, including one big one, but as guest star Allison Janney notes, "Every question I answer will simply lead to another question."
Janney plays the "mother" of Jacob and the MIB. When a pregnant woman named Claudia washes on shore after a shipwreck, Mama Janney (who, like MIB, doesn't seem to have a name) aids her in giving birth to the twins. Then she kills her without hesitation. ("Welcome to the island! Please enjoy a helping of our post-birth delicacy, which I call HeavyRockInTheFace!")
Faux Mama raises the twins to be completely oblivious to the outside world. She tells them there is nothing across the sea, and that any people they encounter on the island will only want to hurt them. Jacob blindly accepts what she says and seems to be a follower. MIB (or, perhaps we should call him BIB) is curious and restless, feeling he doesn't belong on the island.
She also blindfolds them and leads them to what apparently needs protecting – the light, the source, which she says is full of life, death, rebirth. (It also looks like something out of "Tuck Everlasting," but I digress.) She warns them to never, ever go into the cave of light, or they will suffer a fate worse than death.
After a vision of Claudia tells BIB the real truth about his "mother," he packs up and makes camp with some mysterious otherpeople, leaving Jacob to grow up alone with Mama to weave ugly blankets and drink aged (heh, get it?) wine.
When the light/dark twins are approximately 43, Jacob discovers MIB and his people are concocting some sort of donkey wheel to escape the island with the help of a combo of water and electromagnetic energy. When Mama finds out, she knocks MIB out, plugs the well and burns and kills everyone in the village. In revenge, MIB plunges a dagger through her heart. She thanks him upon dying.
Speaking of revenge, Jacob tosses MIB into that cave of light (oh yeah, they weren't supposed to go in there, were they?) and Smokey is born. The physical form of MIB, it seems, has died, and Jacob buries him and Mama in a cave – our very own Adam and Eve.
Tidbits:
-Interesting that Mama Janney doesn't have a name. She seems a bit like some sort of cuckoo Mother Earth. I suspect she is the earlier form of Smokey – how else could she have single-handedly destroyed that village? Or know what going in the light cave caused?
-When MIB kills her, it is with the same dagger we've seen all season, and per instructions we have heard in earlier episodes, he does not let her speak first. It would seem she wanted to die, to be released from this hell of protection. And in a way, it seems he knows this, and it's possibly a mercy killing.
-If it is a mercy killing, could that be Flocke's intention all along? Are the candidates – and anyone on the island – really prisoners, and will killing them somehow set them free in the Sideways world? That's my theory.
-And yes, that means I think Flocke might be the good guy, even though he's still doing everything in order to get his own ass off the island. But I'm not entirely sure Jacob is evil, either.
-It would seem that Mama, Jacob and Richard all drank from the same cup of eternal wine, no? Richard is now the only one of them still alive. What does that mean for his future?
One more episode to go before the finale. I'm just not sure how many answers are forthcoming. B
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