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Episodes 516/517 – The Incident (Season 5 Finale)

At some point during the 1800’s, whilst the Black Rock is still sailing, a man, Jacob, sits on the beach and cooks himself some fish. He is approached by someone else who accuses Jacob of bringing the ship to the island. He says it always ends the same, with destruction and corruption and people are brought to the island. Jacob says that it only ends once and anything before is just progress. The other man tells Jacob he wants to kill him and one day he will find a “loophole” which will allow him to do so. As he walks away we see Jacob is basking next to the statue.

We get a variety of flashbacks, each one of them feature Jacob in some form except for Juliets. We see Kate stealing a lunch box that Jacob pays for when she is caught, he gives a young Sawyer a pen to write his note to the man who killed his parents, he touches Locke after he is pushed out of the hotel window and seems to revive him, he congratulates Jin and Sun on their wedding day. He distracts Sayid as Nadia is run over, he gives Jack an Apollo candy bar after completing his first operation, he awaits Hurley as he is discharged from prison and tells him that he isn’t cursed or crazy, he is gifted, and he visits a badly injured Illana in hospital where he apologises for not coming sooner. He then asks her in Russian if she’ll help him and she says she will. In Juliet’s flashback we see her as a young girl being told her parents are divorcing, her mother says when she is older she’ll understand how two people can love each other but not stay together.

On the island and present Locke leads the Others with Ben, Richard and Sun to Jacob stopping off along the way at the old beach camp. Meanwhile Illana and her crew, with Lapidus, take the crate to Jacobs cabin. They show Lapidus what is in the crate and he is shocked, they also say he is a candidate to which Lapidus questions what for. When they get to Jacobs cabin the ash circle around it has been broken, the cabin is desolate. Illana takes something from the wall and they burn the cabin to the ground. They head to the statue.

In 1977 Richard and Elly help Jack and Sayid take the core out of Jughead and lead them to a basement of one of the houses at the barracks. Richard knocks Elly out and says he is protecting her as the leader. Jack and Sayid go ahead but there is a full scale operation at the barracks. Sayid dresses them both as Dharma employees and they try to escape in plain sight, but are spotted and Sayid is shot. Miles, Hurley and Jin arrive in the van and rescue them, taking them to the Swan site.

When they get there they are met by Sawyer, Juliet and Kate who escaped from the sub to stop Jack blowing up the bomb. When they returned to the island they bumped into Vincent, Rose and Bernard who had been living in the jungle for the past three years. They say they don’t need anything apart from each other and who cares if Jack is going to blow up the island, they’re just happy they’ve got one another. Sawyer looks at Kate.

Jack and Sawyer talk as Miles offers a suggestion, what if Jack blowing the nuke is the “incident”, what if they do nothing, perhaps that will prevent the future? Jack refuses to listen to Sawyer and they fight, Juliet stops it and changes her mind, they have to blow the bomb. When Sawyer asks her why she changed her mind she says that Sawyer looked at Kate and she knows that despite the fact they love each other, her and Sawyer can’t stay together.

The group launch an assault on the Swan site where Radzinsky is continuing to drill despite Chang’s orders to stop. He says he has worked too hard on studying electromagnetivity to stop. A gun fight ensues and eventually Sawyer turns up and they take control of the scene. Jack throws the bomb down the shaft but it doesn’t detonate. Then everything metal is pulled into the site, the Dharma crew try to escape but Dr. Chang’s arm gets trapped under some falling metal. Miles rescues his Dad when Juliet is caught up in chains and dragged into the pit. Sawyer makes a dash for her and holds onto her as she is being dragged down below. Juliet seems to acknowledge she is going to die and tells Sawyer she loves him so much, he returns the love as Juliet lets go of his arm and falls.

Thirty years later and on a trek to the statue Locke tells Ben that he wants him to kill Jacob, why not? After all he had never met him, had to watch his daughter die, get cancer, what did Jacob ever do for Ben? When they reach the statue Richard shows them the way in and Locke takes Ben inside. He gives Ben a knife and says things will change once Jacob is dead, there they find Jacob sitting in a dark corner.

Outside, Illana’s crew arrives and ask to speak to Ricardo. Richard steps forward and they ask him what stands in the shadow of the statue, he replies, in Latin, “he who will protect/save us all”. They open the crate and inside is John Locke’s dead body.

Inside Jacob immediately recognises Locke as an imposter and tells Ben he has a choice. Ben asks Jacob why he was never granted a chance to see him, he asks “what about me?” Jacob asks “what about you?” Ben then stabs Jacob who whispers to Locke “they’re coming” as Locke kicks him into the fire.

In 1977 Juliet wakes up at the bottom of the shaft, she is hurt and the nuke lies next to her. She picks up a rock and smashes the bomb with it, nothing happens, she hits it eight times when suddenly there is a loud noise and a flash of white light as the show ends.

Why do we now have to wait until February? Why!?

Ok, so Locke wasn’t really Locke, does that mean that Black Smoke Alex was also duped or was she working with this man all along, it does seem suspicious that Alex forced Ben to follow his orders, which included killing Jacob. Is this because the man himself can’t kill Jacob so needed a “loophole”, needed someone else to stab him? What does this mean for the island? Who are Illana and crew and what is Frank a candidate for? Stopping impersonator Locke because he’s been to the island twice and could go back to his first encounter and change history?

Did the bomb really go off or did the island just jump through time once more? Please don’t kill Juliet, I love her, Sawyer loves her. If it was the bomb, did it work? Will Jack wake up on the island or will the plane land at LAX? If it wasn’t the bomb then it’d make sense that the hatch gets encased in concrete, because there is an unexploded nuke down there. Probably the reason no one in Dhara can have babies.

Freakin’ fantastic!

Archived: The Big Lost Recap – Episodes 516 / 517 – The Incident (Season 5 Finale) - archived