I can’t stop thinking about last night’s episode, “Ab Aeterno.” It was easily one of the best hours of Lost I’ve ever seen: rich, heady, emotional, with more information packed into it than an Introduction to Philosophy lecture. And it played out like a mini-feature film, with an amazing performance by Nestor Carbonell (don’t be surprised if he gets his own ABC series after this). Admittedly, I was invested in finding out about Richard’s past, but even if you’re not, how can you resist an episode full of island history? That’s what Lost is about, baby!

Mystery #1: Who is Richard? Call him Ricardos, a poor farmer working the land on the Canary Islands in 1867 (he’s not even that old!). His wife is dying, so he goes to the doctor to barter his way to some medicine. He gets in a scuffle with the doc over the meds, kills him accidentally, returns to find his wife dead anyway, is arrested and charged to hang, is told by a priest that he’s going to hell for his sins, and at the final hour, is sold into slavery instead. All in the first 15 minutes of the show.

Assumption alert: Jacob blows up a storm that shipwrecks the slave ship, the Black Rock, on the island…though he misjudges those winds and sends the ship crashing into his statue instead, leaving just a giant foot as a sanctuary (mystery solved!). Richard, one of the few left alive, is caught in between Jacob and the Man in Black. MIB welcomes him with (now-snarky) “It’s good to see you out of those chains,” hands Richard the same old sword, and gives the spiel he gives Ben and Sayid: You must kill Jacob. Jacob is bad (in this case, the devil). Don’t let him talk! Just stab him in the chest, and you’ll get your wife (life) back.

Sounds good, right? But Richard loses a fistfight with Jacob, and lets the man chatter for a while, which is when we hear…

Mystery #2: The wine bottle theory. Shaking a half-empty decanter of wine, Jacob says: The wine is Hell, a pool of evil. The island is the cork—the only thing keeping evil from leaking out. So…the island is the gateway to hell? Jacob doesn’t quite say, and I doubt we’ll find out any earlier than the final episode. Jacob also discusses his theory of humanity (like I said: heady ): that we’re all inherently good and have the power to choose right from wrong. But he does like to nudge people in the right direction, and appoints Richard his representative of nudgement, granting him eternal life (mystery solved!).

With all the smirking Jacob does in this scene, it’s hard to tell if he’s telling the truth…

Mystery #3: Is Jacob good? In my opinion, yes—because he doesn’t kill indiscriminately like the Man in Black/Smokey does. Yes, he brings people to the island (Black Rock, Dharma), and they often end up dead. Yes, he sends Others out to look for candidates—but it’s not his fault that they kill and “kidnap.” He takes a hands-off approach, trusting in their inherent good, while Smokey would rather be rid of the whole lot—nasty, corruptible bunch they are. (Though Smokey’s probably just jealous, since humans have bodies and he doesn’t.)

It’s a fuzzy area, a gray good—but it makes sense when you consider how often moral ambiguity comes up in Lost. The candidates/castaways themselves are a motley crew, but this godlike Jacob chooses them because of their faults, not in spite of them. You didn’t seen Rose on the candidate list, right? Because she isn’t a challenge, a work-in-progress. She already has faith. The rest don’t, and it’s up to Jacob to prove his point that people who walk the line between right and wrong will ultimately choose what’s right. It’s a pretty messed-up social experiment, when you think about it.

So what of hell, and Richard’s Bible open to the Gospel of St Luke (to the verse dealing with the devil’s temptation of Jesus)? Is it time to lay down the Christian theory that’s been batted around? That Jacob is God, the MIB is the devil, and the island is the Garden of Eden?

It makes a lot of sense…until I think about all the pre-Christian icons on the island. That statue. The hieroglyphics in the temples. Are they incongruities? Or signs of a different religion, one with its own agents of good and evil that also apply to this storyline? I don’t think the Lost writers will ever be so specific to call a character God, but he could very well be a representative of God, from any background.

Final thoughts:
Now that we’re at the halfway point in the final season, we’ve seen inside the temples, found out why there’s a giant foot on the island, learned who Richard is and why he doesn’t age. All that’s left is the final reveal: what is the island (exactly), who are Jacob and the MIB (exactly), and what are the fates of the Oceanic 815? Is Hurley going to be Jacob’s successor? Will Sun and Jin ever get back together? Or all they all dead already?

Plus, the sunken island at the bottom of the ocean in the Sideways world is now a scary, scary prospect.