Just to clarify right off the bat, this review is for both parts of The Incident, which were aired as one episode. This is the best season finale of the show since season 3.
I didn't think season 5 was as great as everyone else thought, but the episode before The Incident came to a shocking conclusion. John Locke was leading the Others and Sun on a pilgrimage to Jacob, supreme leader of the Others- so that Locke could kill Jacob. The burning question is why? Why would he want to kill this man that we know nothing about? I realized that with the final season 5 episode, they were finally going to reveal Jacob. His identity was supposed to be a huge deal; in season 3 Hurley talks about a TV show he watched where the big bad guy's identity was kept a secret and he turned out to be someone previously thought to be a good guy. That seemed to foreshadow a similar revelation about Jacob. However, we finally see Jacob at the beginning of the episode, and he's no one we know, unless he's baby Aaron from the future, which I guess is still a possibility. We see him, but we still don't really know him. And that's a big part of the appeal of this episode. Like the rest of the show, Jacob is intriguing and mysterious. The expression on his face and the music associated with him make him god-like; as we see him in various times meeting future survivors of the plane crash, he comes across as the good guy despite the fact that we really know nothing about him. That mystery is a big part of Lost. Other things are mysterious: Who's his nemesis? Who did Jacob say was coming? (It couldn't be Widmore's people; they already came.) What was that ship we saw at the beginning of the episode? Could it be how the Others first arrived at the island?
Compared to the story following Locke, Ben, Jacob and Richard, the Jack vs. Kate and a bomb storyline isn't as compelling, I guess because, as Rose and Bernard point out, it's more of the same conflict we've seen before- even though it leads to the ultimate fight between Jack and Sawyer.
This episode is also interesting for Ben being given the task of killing Jacob. In having to turn against the master he served so loyally, the villainous, untrustworthy Ben is actually becoming a tragic character.
I don't know what the sixth and final season will bring, but I don't think Lost will let us down.
I didn't think season 5 was as great as everyone else thought, but the episode before The Incident came to a shocking conclusion. John Locke was leading the Others and Sun on a pilgrimage to Jacob, supreme leader of the Others- so that Locke could kill Jacob. The burning question is why? Why would he want to kill this man that we know nothing about? I realized that with the final season 5 episode, they were finally going to reveal Jacob. His identity was supposed to be a huge deal; in season 3 Hurley talks about a TV show he watched where the big bad guy's identity was kept a secret and he turned out to be someone previously thought to be a good guy. That seemed to foreshadow a similar revelation about Jacob. However, we finally see Jacob at the beginning of the episode, and he's no one we know, unless he's baby Aaron from the future, which I guess is still a possibility. We see him, but we still don't really know him. And that's a big part of the appeal of this episode. Like the rest of the show, Jacob is intriguing and mysterious. The expression on his face and the music associated with him make him god-like; as we see him in various times meeting future survivors of the plane crash, he comes across as the good guy despite the fact that we really know nothing about him. That mystery is a big part of Lost. Other things are mysterious: Who's his nemesis? Who did Jacob say was coming? (It couldn't be Widmore's people; they already came.) What was that ship we saw at the beginning of the episode? Could it be how the Others first arrived at the island?
Compared to the story following Locke, Ben, Jacob and Richard, the Jack vs. Kate and a bomb storyline isn't as compelling, I guess because, as Rose and Bernard point out, it's more of the same conflict we've seen before- even though it leads to the ultimate fight between Jack and Sawyer.
This episode is also interesting for Ben being given the task of killing Jacob. In having to turn against the master he served so loyally, the villainous, untrustworthy Ben is actually becoming a tragic character.
I don't know what the sixth and final season will bring, but I don't think Lost will let us down.