Alpert's Hell

To me Ab Aeterno is one of the most important (if not the most important) episodes in the entire series of Lost. I don’t say that flippantly, it gives me so many answers I’m appreciative of. Alpert’s back story was especially vital to me so that I could be witness to his experience, understanding the endurable length of his life on the island, a long history that I could only imagine has been grueling and a test to his patience and dedication to Jacob. Jacob’s mission is explained: to allow The Man in Black (Titus Welliver) off the island would be to set upon the world “hell”, the darkness that has beset Sayid and Claire magnified globally. MiB rolls around a white pebble in his hands, given to him by Alpert as a means to inform him that Jacob convinced him to stay on the island as a “mediator”. MiB doesn’t hide the fact that he will kill Jacob and anyone who might replace him in order to escape the island. Jacob is upfront that he would stop at nothing to make sure MiB never got off the island, prepared to do whatever possible to keep him “in the bottle, corked”. Like a bottle of wine served as an example of MiB in an analogy for Alpert, escape from the island is not an option to consider. But forward from 1867 to 2007, Jacob is dead and this prolonged mission seems futile as Alpert decides to call upon MiB in order to leave the island. MiB doesn’t show up (but his form of Locke is shown not too far away from the distinctive tree where Alpert buried his beloved Isabella’s cross), as Hurley comes to him with words from his wife. Comforting words that allows Alpert to realize that Isabella is near and that he must not go to MiB as he had so planned; Hurley’s gift of seeing and talking to the dead comes in handy here, especially.

Landing on the island (or as Jacob tells Alpert, it was brought to the island by him), Alpert was a slave being brought to the New World, but Jacob’s intervention diverted the Black Rock’s direction. MiB, in the form of the black smoke monster, kills the crew while a few slaves succumb to the captain of the ship’s sword (he feared they’d turn on him when his back was to them). But even the captain can’t escape the black smoke monster. But MiB unlocks Alpert’s chains and has a proposition for him…kill “the devil” (to MiB, Jacob is the very definition of this description) and he can see Isabella (Mirelly Taylor) again. Jacob isn’t to be fooled with, though. Alpert won’t just walk up on Jacob and stick that blade in him. This knife is familiar as Dogen gave it to Sayid to stab MiB. So it all circles back. Alpert’s willingness to receive eternal life from Jacob stems from the accidental murder of a doctor who was difficult and wouldn’t give him medicine that might heal a dying Isabella. A Spanish field worker with little money on the Canary Islands doesn’t afford much so the doctor turned him away, with the medicinal scuffle resulting in a head bash against a table. Soon comes the gallows, a priest unwilling to absolve “Ricardus” due to the murder, the revelation he speaks English, chains holding him captive in the Black Rock for slave use later, and a crash resulting in the statue on the island broken into pieces.

So where and why the Black Rock came to rest as it did on the island, its details now answered, and the reason the statue only has a foot that remains are provided to us finally. Such anticipated detail, along with key conversation pieces between Jacob and Alpert, and Jacob and The Man in Black, make Ab Aeterno such a crucial episode within the canon of the show. And it really allows us to finally embrace Alpert as a defining character within the show, no longer distanced from him due to the mysteries regarding his presence/importance on the island. That scene where Hurley serves as a go-to for Alpert to know Isabella was there and urge him not to give up, and the emotional potency of it, is quite special. I have really wanted this episode for some time, just needing information about Alpert so I could understand him. And this episode does just that…it emphasizes why this man has been such an integral part and yet often just another spoke on the turning wheel.

Jacob initiating Ilana as his emissary also gives her purpose. She is to make sure the candidates are together at the temple, but that obviously went awry. Still she proposes that Richard is the key to how it will all play out. But previous to this episode, Dr. Linus, shows us a broken Alpert returning to the slave ship that brought him to the island, as Jack and Hurley follow him. Jack tests the idea that he’s truly one of the candidates and won’t die as Alpert lights the fuse of a stick of dynamite. That fuse doesn’t dissolve into the dynamite and so perhaps this reinforces the idea that Alpert and Jack have work to do. But Alpert needs assurance that his following of Jacob hasn’t been in vain, a failure, wasted time.