Lost - "Ab Aeterno"

So it just dawned on me that I’m spending tomorrow night cheering on my Dayton Flyers in the NIT tournament… and the game isn’t until 9:00 pm. So unless I do this Blog post right now, it’ll never get done and the 73% of you who voted “If Brian stopped doing his episode preview posts, I would kill myself” would be really upset. I can’t live with all those deaths on my conscience, so here you go. For the first time ever, a Blog double-header day!

Remind me why my wife hasn’t left me yet?

Episode Title: “Ab Aeterno”

Brian’s Deeper Meaning Guess: Good thing I took Latin in high school! Just kidding, I wasn’t that big of a nerd. But good thing Wikipedia exists! What does “ab aeterno” mean?

Translation = “from the eternal”

Notes = Literally, "from the everlasting" or "from eternity". Thus, "from time immemorial", "since the beginning of time" or "from an infinitely remote time in the past". In theology, often indicates something, such as the universe, that was created outside of time.

Holy crap.

I suppose this episode title shouldn’t come as a surprise. After all, this week is a RICHARD ALPERT CENTRIC EPISODE. For years we’ve operated under the assumption that he doesn’t age – and now we seemingly know that the reason is because it was a “gift” from Jacob.

The surprising thing about the episode title is how “past-centric” it seems to be. It’s “since the beginning of time”, not “until the end of time”. Why is that important? Based on everything we know (including Alpert’s own comments a few weeks ago), he arrived on the Island on the Black Rock. Which means Alpert wasn’t always on the Island in the past – he arrived there just like our Survivors. However, based on the gift he received from Jacob, he might be stuck there for the rest of time.

So what’s the deeper meaning? Get ready for giddy excitement – because if the Lost writers translated “Ab Aeterno” correctly – the title isn’t referring to Richard Alpert. It’s referring to the Island / Jacob / something eternal. Even cooler? There’s a chance it might be referring to the very last note about the definition – “something that was created outside of time”… like the Island existing at the crossroads of multiple realities where the normal rules of time and space do not apply! Could this be the episode where we finally get an explanation of the “unique electromagnetic properties” of the Island? Or understand WHAT the Island actually is, how it exists, and why it’s so important? Or did the writers just mistranslate the Latin title?

Here’s hoping. This episode could be huge.

Guest Stars: Mark Pellegrino as Jacob, Titus Welliver as man in black, Mirelly Taylor as Isabella, Steven Elder as Jonas Whitfield, Juan Carlos Cantu as Father Suarez, Jose Yenque as doctor, Izzy Diaz as Ignacio, Davo Coria as servant, Santiago Montone as prisoner and Sonya Masinovsky as Russian nurse.

Guest Star Breakdown: Welcome back Anti-Jacob / “Man in Black”. It would be pretty awesome if the episode featured a scene with Jacob walking by “Man in Black” and said “Good morning Larry” just so that we’d all have an official name to call the guy (also, it would be hilarious if his name was something as common and non-Biblical as Larry).

Seeing as this is a RICHARD ALPERT CENTRIC EPISODE, most of the guest stars make sense. I’m expecting a scene between Jacob and Larry both attempting to recruit Alpert to their own side (to tie in with SmokeLocke’s earlier comment about wanting “what he’s always wanted - for you to come with me.”) – but we all know who’s going to win that battle (sorry Larry).

The rest of the guest stars make sense as characters that would be on the Black Rock. Speaking of which, this is probably a good time to review the history of the Black Rock. Here are ten fun facts:

1. It set sail from England in 1845 on a trading mission to Siam (Thailand).
2. It was a mining ship, but some of its cargo included slaves.
3. It is currently assumed that Jacob “brought” the Black Rock to the Island, per Anti-Jacob.
4. It is mysteriously located really far inland on the Island.
5. It is full of highly sensitive dynamite, even though dynamite wasn’t invented until after 1845.
6. It is assumed that Alpert came to the Island on the Black Rock, but hadn’t visited it since.
7. The Black Rock was captained by Magnus Hanso (the great grandfather of Alvar Hanso, the financier behind the Dharma Initiative).
8. Charles Widmore purchased the Ledger (Journal) from the Black Rock at an auction.
9. Sawyer killed Anthony Cooper inside the Black Rock.
10. The fake Oceanic 815 crash was discovered by a vessel searching for the Black Rock wreckage.

Although most of the names of characters on the ship have a “Spanish flair” to them (Isabella, Father Suarez, Ignacio), keep in mind that the Black Rock allegedly set sail from England – weird… but not out of the question that the ship would have a semi-international crew, perhaps making multiple stops on its way to the far east. Here’s “Isabella”. She’s pretty hot. Maybe she’ll be Alpert’s lady lover back in the day!

In fact, the only guest star name that sticks out is actually the last one – normally reserved for some throwaway background character. This week, it’s “Russian Nurse”. Russia is nowhere close to the path that the Black Rock would have taken to get from England to Siam – so where does she fit in?

I’m reminded that when Jacob visited Ilana during last season’s finale, she was currently beat to hell and recouping in a Russian Hospital. Could this week also feature some Ilana backstory? If we’re learning the “history” of the followers of Jacob, it would make sense that we see both how Richard Alpert came to become a follower as well as Ilana. Maybe we’ll find out WHY Ilana was in the hospital and what information Jacob provided her. She seems to know a lot, and I didn’t see a TV in her Russian hospital room, so maybe Jacob just hung out with her for a few weeks and told her everything he knew – again, as a safeguard in case he died. From a storytelling perspective, it would be pretty cool to see the contrast between Alpert (on the Island but knowing nothing) and Ilana (off the Island but knowing everything) as two sides of being a “follower” to Jacob.

Whoa. This really might be the best episode ever.

Episode Description: Richard Alpert faces a difficult choice.

Episode Breakdown: The super descriptive Episode Descriptions continue! When we last saw Alpert, he was standing awkwardly to the side while our Oceanic Survivors had a slow motion hug-fest on the Beach. It didn’t really seem like there were any major life-altering decisions to be made at the time… and part of me thinks that this episode is going to be a little different than the other episodes from this season.

I don’t think we’re going to be seeing any Flash Sideways. I think we’re going to be back to good old fashioned Flashbacks – and I think there’s probably enough story there to occupy the majority of the episode. This makes me wonder if the episode description might refer to something that occurs in those Flashbacks – like Alpert deciding if he’s going to follow Jacob or Larry when he first arrived and was “chosen”?

If not, it could literally be anything. Even though he doesn’t seem to know a lot about what’s going on with the Island, Alpert still knows a heck of a lot more than our Survivors do, and could face any number of difficult choices about what to tell them (in terms of revealing Island secrets or suggesting a next plan of action), although it sure did seem like he was satisfied with just following Jack around for a while to see where his plans got him.

Either way, this episode should be pretty damn awesome. In fact, it’s so good that it can’t be contained within a single hour – so this week’s episode will actually be SIX MINUTES longer than a typical episode of Lost. For those of you in Eastern Standard Time (also known as “God’s Time”), it’s going to be on from 9:00 pm – 10:06 pm. Those in other time zones, do the appropriate math.

Six extra minutes of Losty goodness!

Happy Losting, indeed!

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