Recap / Lost S05E16 & 17 "The Incident"

Season 5, Episodes 16 and 17:

The Incident

"Hurry up, Doc! What are you waiting for?! Drop it!"

Written by Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse.

Directed by Jack Bender.

Man in Black: They come. They fight. They destroy. They corrupt. It always ends the same.

Jacob: It only ends once. Anything that happens before that is just progress.

Jacob and a man dressed in black watch the Black Rock sail towards the Island. The Man in Black tells Jacob that he will one day "find a loophole" and kill him.

In flashbacks, Jacob visits many of the Oceanic 815 survivors at different times in their lives, and touches them. He gets Kate out of trouble for stealing a lunchbox from a store as a child, and tells her to be good. He visits Sawyer at his parents' funeral, and gives him a pen to finish his letter to Anthony Cooper. He asks Sayid for directions in Los Angeles, stopping him from crossing the road with Nadia as she is run over and killed. He comes to see Ilana in a hospital in Russia and asks for her help. He congratulates Sun and Jin at their wedding, and although they have no idea who he is, they are impressed by his Korean. He talks to Jack at the hospital after he has an argument with his father during surgery. He convinces Hurley to return to the Island on Ajira Flight 316 after he is released from prison and gives him a guitar case. He is present when Anthony Cooper pushes Locke out of the window, and approaches the injured Locke to apologize for what has happened to him.

In 2007, Locke tells Ben that he wants him to kill Jacob. Ilana and her crew visit the Cabin, and are alarmed to notice that the ash circle around it is broken. Ilana finds a picture of the statue of Tawaret inside, and burns the Cabin, saying that "someone else" has been using it. The Others reach the foot of the statue, and Richard tells Locke that Jacob lives inside it. Locke and Ben go inside. Ilana arrives, and shows Richard what was inside the crate: Locke's dead body. Inside the statue, Jacob congratulates "Locke" on finding his loophole, and tells Ben that he can either do what Locke asked him to do, or leave them. Ben kills Jacob, and Locke kicks his corpse into a fire.

In 1977, Kate, Juliet and Sawyer escape from the submarine and go back to the Island to stop Jack. They find Rose and Bernard, who have built themselves a cabin and settled down with Vincent, and refuse to get involved in their conflict. Sayid follows Faraday's instructions to remove the core of the bomb so that it will be small enough to carry. Richard knocks out Eloise, and tells Jack and Sayid that they are on their own from now on. Pierre tries to convince Radzinsky to stop drilling, but he stubbornly plows ahead. As Jack and Sayid bring the bomb through the Barracks, Roger spots Sayid and shoots him. They are saved by Hurley, Jin and Miles in a DHARMA van. Sawyer tries to convince Jack not to go through with his plan, and then beats him up when he refuses, until Juliet changes her mind and agrees to Jack's plan. The group gets into a shootout with the DHARMA workers at the Swan. Jack drops the bomb into the electromagnetic pocket, but nothing happens. The drill then hits the pocket, causing metal objects to fly around, killing Phil, crushing Pierre's arm, and dragging Juliet down into the pocket. She survives, barely, and hits the bomb with a rock. There is a flash of white light, and the black title card comes up on the white screen.

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Tropes in this episode include:

• Ambiguous Situation: Jacob's last words to the Man in Black before he dies are "they're coming", but what he means by this is not elaborated on.
• Armor-Piercing Question:
  • Locke/The Man in Black establishes his Manipulative Bastard credentials when he hits Ben with one of these while trying to convince him to kill Jacob.
    Ben: Why do you want me to kill Jacob, John?
    "Locke": Because despite your loyal service to this island, you got cancer. You had to watch your own daughter gunned down right in front of you. And your reward for those sacrifices? You were banished. And you did all this in the name of a man you've never even met. So the question is, Ben, why the hell wouldn't you want to kill Jacob?
  • Rose hits Sawyer, Juliet and Kate with one when they explain their intent to stop Jack detonating the Jughead.
    "We travelled back thirty years in time and you're still trying to find reasons to shoot at each other?"
• Blatant Lies: Upon his release from prison, Hurley tries to persuade the security guard giving him his personal items that he is a dangerous murderer who needs to be locked up. The unimpressed guard doesn't buy it for a second.
• Borrowed Catchphrase: Three years of living with Sawyer certainly rubbed off on Juliet as the last thing she says before triggering the bomb is "Come on, you son of a bitch!"
• Call-Back:
  • Hurley once again shows up to save the day in a DHARMA van.
  • When Ilana shows Lapidus Locke's body, he says "terrific", the same thing Charlie said when he first heard the Monster roaming around the jungle.
• Call-Forward: Pierre's arm is crushed during the Incident, revealing why he has a prosthetic arm in the Swan orientation video in "Orientation".
• Cliffhanger: The season ends on a huge one, with Juliet apparently detonating the bomb, and no indication of whether or not Jack's plan to change the future worked.
• Combat Pragmatist: Sawyer isn't above using a Groin Attack to regain the advantage when Jack has him on the ropes in their fight.
• Continuity Nod:
  • Several of the scenes where Jacob visits the survivors throughout their lives contain references to previous episodes.
    • He visits Jack immediately after the surgery in which he recovered from a fatal mistake by counting to five, which Jack told Kate about in "Pilot, Part 1", although it's revealed that Jack's account of the event was not entirely accurate.
    • He lends Sawyer a pen to finish his letter to "Mr. Sawyer".
    • He is present when Nadia is run over and killed by one of Widmore's assassins, as mentioned in "The Shape of Things to Come", and possibly saves Sayid from the same fate.
    • He shares a taxi with Hurley after he is released from prison and convinces him to return to the Island, explaining how Hurley knew to get on Ajira Flight 316. He also gives him the mysterious guitar case he's been carrying around since that episode.
    • He approaches Locke after he is pushed out the window and paralysed by his father and appears to revive him when he is on the verge of death.
  • While looking through the old campsite Sun finds Charlie's "DS" ring in Aaron's abandoned crib. Charlie left the ring for him before going to the Looking Glass station back in "Greatest Hits"
• A Death in the Limelight: We finally meet Jacob and see flashbacks of him interacting with the survivors at key moments in their lives, and then he is killed by Ben.
• Didn't Think This Through: Miles, of all people, points out a fairly glaring potential flaw in Jack's plan that nobody else seems to have thought of.
  Miles: Has it occurred to any of you that your buddy's actually gonna cause the thing he says he's trying to prevent? Perhaps that little nuke is the incident? So maybe the best thing to do... is nothing?
  (Cue Mass "Oh, Crap!" face)
  Miles: I'm glad you all thought this through.
• For Science!: Radzinsky's reasoning for boneheadedly pressing ahead with drilling at the Swan site, despite clear indications of how dangerous it is.
  Radzinsky: If Edison was only worried about the consequences, we'd all still be sitting in the dark. I came to this Island to change the world, Pierre; that's exactly what I intend to do.
• Friendly Enemy: Jacob and the Man in Black have this dynamic in the opening scene, with the Man in Black politely asking Jacob if he can join him for breakfast to watch the Black Rock arrive, before telling him he plans to kill him.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Juliet allows herself to fall down the shaft into the energy pocket when she sees a crane above Sawyer's head is about to fall on top of him and kill him as he tries to save her.
• Hope Spot: After Juliet gets wrapped up in chains and dragged down the shaft, Sawyer catches her and it briefly looks like he might be able to pull her to safety. However, the chains prove to be too tight and Juliet lets herself fall so he won't be killed trying to save her.
  Sawyer: Where do you think you're going, blondie?
• Humans Are Bastards: The Man in Black firmly believes this, in contrast to Jacob, who believes that Rousseau Was Right.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: After Locke and Ben go into the statue to meet Jacob, Richard offers Sun some water, to which she responds by asking if he has any alcohol. Richard admits he'd like some too.
• Insane Troll Logic: As Sawyer points out, Jack's plan to prevent the crash in the future to fix his relationship with Kate runs on this, since Kate is right there on the Island with him, meaning that if he wants her back he can ask at any time, and if what he's trying to do even works, they'll never have met and Kate will be in prison. Jack's only response to this is "If it's meant to be, it's meant to be."
• Laser-Guided Karma: Sayid is shot by the father of the young boy that he shot a few episodes earlier.
• Nepotism: In the flashback, Jack mentions that many of the hospital staff think he got his residency only because his dad is in charge.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Sawyer beats the crap out of Jack when he refuses to stop his plan to detonate the bomb, and may well have killed him if Juliet hadn't stopped him.
• No Sympathy: Jacob's response to Ben's big speech about all he's suffered for the Island and asking "What about me?" is a very indifferent "What about you?"
• Pet the Dog: Although Jacob comes across as a somewhat creepy and manipulative stalker tricking or forcing the survivors to come to the Island for most of the episode, he does have a moment of genuine kindness when he reassures Hurley that returning to the Island on Ajira Flight 316 is entirely his choice and nobody will make him do it if he doesn't want to.
• The Reveal: This episode explains why Hurley has been dragging around a guitar case since returning to the Island. He met Jacob after being released from jail, and after being given a heart-to-heart about his ability to speak with dead people, he was told that the guitar case was in fact his.
• Screw the Rules, I Make Them!: When Locke tries to bring Ben to see Jacob, Richard objects by saying that only the leader can request an audience with Jacob and there can only be one leader on the island. Locke replies that he thinks Richard makes up these rules as he goes along, and as leader, he can do what he wants.
• Self-Serving Memory: Jack's story of how he recovered from a terrible mistake in his first solo surgery by counting to five is revealed to be this. In reality Jack only did that because his father ordered him to in front of his entire team, and at the time he found the experience humiliating.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Discussed. Sawyer tells Jack that his parents died when he was eight, which happened one year earlier from his perspective. He could have got on the sub and stopped them from getting swindled, leading to their murder-suicide. But he didn't, because what's done is done.
• Team Switzerland: Rose and Bernard firmly establish themselves as this, having built a nice retirement cabin and lived in peace there for the last three years. They make very clear that they have no interest in getting involved in any of the other survivors' conflicts, even when they find out that Jack is trying to detonate a hydrogen bomb.
• Time-Passage Beard: Bernard has grown a beard during the three years he and Rose have been living in the jungle.
• Too Dumb to Live:
  • Phil decides to hang around at the Swan and pick up a gun to try to shoot Sawyer while there is dangerous metal flying all over the place, which gets him impaled with a piece of rebar.
  • Granted, Jacob seems like he doesn't really care if he lives or dies, but he's just begging to be killed with his response to Ben, who he knows the Man in Black has already instructed to kill him.
    Ben: Thirty-five years I lived on this island, and all I ever heard was your name over and over. Richard would bring me your instructions, all those slips of paper, all those lists — and I never questioned anything. I did as I was told. But when I dared to ask to see you myself, I was told, "You have to wait. You have to be patient." But when he asked to see you? He gets marched straight up here as if was Moses. So... why him? Hmm? What was it that was so wrong with me? What about me?!
    Jacob: What about you?
• Wham Line:
  • The opening scene ends with the bombshell of who the mysterious man in white really is:
    Man in Black: Always nice talking to you, Jacob.
  • Jacob telling Locke that he found his loophole, revealing that he is, in fact, the Man in Black.
• Wham Shot: Ilana tips open the steel crate to reveal John Locke's body, indicating that he has not been resurrected and the Locke that has appeared since the Ajira plane arrived on the Island is an impostor.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: The season ends without showing how young Ben was returned to the DHARMA Initiative, as he was still with them up until the Purge.

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