Well, that certainly didn't paint Jacob, and especially his adoptive mother, in a very positive light, did it?
I thought the whole 11th hour reveal of the island's "heart" was getting dangerously close to shark-jumping territory, but the fact that Jacob inadvertently created or unleashed Smokey made up for that.
Moderator? Jack's estimation of the decomposition of the corpses he found in the cave in House of the Rising Sun (which this episode reveals are the corpses of the Man in Black and his adoptive mother) put their deaths at about 40-50 years before that episode. Since Jacob and his brother appear to have been in their 40s, that would put the crash of Claudia's ship at about 80 or 90 years ago, not hundreds.
Also, MiB was not dead when Jacob put him in the stream, because their mother told them she made it so that they could not kill each other. He was merely unconscious, though he did "die" in a sense when he was transformed into the Smoke Monster, since he left his corporeal body behind, which Jacob put in the aforementioned cave.
Actually, it now occurs to me that Jacob and his brother were 43, to be a bit more specific. They were 13 when BiB (the Boy in Black) left to go live with the other people, and when we next saw them as adults, he said that he'd been there for 30 years (though this could've been a rounded-off estimate).
Oh, and a nit I forgot to post earlier:
The woman raises the boys to be ignorant of death. But they later report how the other people on the island "killed" the boar.
quote:Luigi Novi: Moderator? Jack's estimation of the decomposition of the corpses he found in the cave in House of the Rising Sun (which this episode reveals are the corpses of the Man in Black and his adoptive mother) put their deaths at about 40-50 years before that episode. Since Jacob and his brother appear to have been in their 40s, that would put the crash of Claudia's ship at about 80 or 90 years ago, not hundreds.
Did forget that they couldn't kill each other, though.
This episode summed up in one sentence? "Well... that was all far less awesome than I'd imagined."
Nice to have 'Adam and Eve' finally explained, though.
So... do Jacob/mother have some sort of crazy smoke monster powers, too? 'Cause filling in that well (so who DID put the wheel in place, then? Did Smokey re-dig it and then find out it wouldn't work in his new form?) and slaughtering the entire village by oneself in less than a day would presumably take some doing... now that Jacob and Mommy are 'the same'... what ARE they?
Why do I get the feeling "the heart of the island/life/death/rebirth" is the closest to an explanation we're gonna get? Essentially a no-answer answer. :-( The setup for Jacob and Smokey's motivations and characters- while a little simplistic seeming- was good, and I liked the touch of Smokey's contempt for people coming from living among his own people... who he hated, but was using as a means to an end. That was a nice touch.
"Moderator? Jack's estimation of the decomposition of the corpses he found in the cave in House of the Rising Sun (which this episode reveals are the corpses of the Man in Black and his adoptive mother) put their deaths at about 40-50 years before that episode. Since Jacob and his brother appear to have been in their 40s, that would put the crash of Claudia's ship at about 80 or 90 years ago, not hundreds." - Luigi Novi
I feel like that timeline HAS to be off, though- that the estimate was wrong. Jacob was already established by the time that Richard arrived, and we have a date for him that greatly predates that, don't we? So I think it must be hundreds of years... perhaps the island simply slows decay, or no one in the Lost crew is very good at estimating time-of-death. :-)
"The woman raises the boys to be ignorant of death. But they later report how the other people on the island "killed" the boar." - Luigi Novi
Also a little inconsiderate of her not to explain it and claim "It's something you'll never have to worry about" when she clearly expected to eventually die. Now, she may have meant "Never have to worry about it coming to you personally" (ALSO not true), but laying that aside... she wasn't going to explain death to them in case of her own?
Well the mothers were speaking Latin (or the island mother was, and the natural mother Spanish), which would suggest Roman empire times. I think the easier explanation was that Jack's estimation was off, way off, and/or clothes just decay longer. If their bodies didn't age while they were alive, it's not too much (more) of a stretch that their clothes don't either.
I totally forgot about the 1800s episode. Duh.