The Beauty of Good and Evil on Lost by Alejandro

When John Locke held up the two game pieces, and recited the now infamous line- "Two sides- one light- one dark", many have taken this as a comment on the current 6th season events and characters. You have the light- Jacob, the man in white, the good guy. And then you have the dark- the Man in Black, the Smoke monster, the evil one. So if you're making this assumption, and you watch the most recent episode, then of course you are going to be outraged that the suppossed good guys are really anything but. Jacob, protector of the island, blindly followed the woman who murdered his real mother. And even after she torched an entire village just because she couldn't bare to watch one of her "sons" go, he still protected her. And let's make no mistake. This was before the MIB became the smoke monster, so it wasn't as if at that time she was protecting anyone but herself by keeping him there. Such reprehensible acts. These are the people we're suppossed to be rooting for? These are the good guys? I can understand why some people are angry.

But the truth is if you're making this false assumption, you're missing the point. John Locke's backgammon line was never meant to describe the good and evil of the external world, but the good and evil in the internal, the good and evil inside of every human being, even immortal ones.

The whole point of Lost from Day 1 was that we are all good and we are all evil. This episode is simply being consistent with this complex and beautiful premise which the writers have worked so hard on from the beginning. Indeed, from the onset of the show, the line between good and evil has been blurred. Good guys are bad and bad guys are good. If you listen carefully to "Mother’s" description of the light in the tunnel, it’s the good AND evil in everyone. If you recall Doggen’s little speech to Sayid- every one has a scale in them- good and evil.

Don't believe me? Let’s take a step back and look at some of our quote/unquote heroes shall we? A drug addict, a torturer, a con man, a Mafia bosses' personal thug, a murder/fugitive on the run. Not exactly anyone's guest list for their next Sunday picnic, unless perhaps you're in the mafia. And yet, these are some the people we’ve been sympathizing with, rooting for, and even cheering for since the beginning of the show. Then you have a character like Ben, who is introduced as the evilest of all evil bastards, and within a couple seasons, they have us not only sympathizing for him but even crying for him. And do you remember the ruthless tycoon, Charles Widmore? The one who told Desmond he's not worth a swallow of his whiskey? Did you see the true remorse and the real love in his eyes when he talked about the sacrifice he made of his relationship with his daughter and the grandson he never met? All of Lost's characters have always been more complex than your cookie cutter "all good" or "all bad" heroes and villains from your old comic books. Hey! Just like real humans!

Flashforward back to season 6, and you look at what Mother is doing, she is in essesence keeping the entire world from complete destruction. Every living being owes her a debt of gratitude without even realizing it. And yet, look at some of her methods- they are absoultely reprehenisble and inexcusable. And I wouldn’t dream of making any excuses for her actions. And her successor, Jacob, doesn’t exactly have a clean track record either.

It is true that MIB is pure evil- now, because he is the smoke. But this most recent episode shows that originally he was just a guy who wanted to find his roots, and go back to where he belonged. He didn’t become pure evil until Jacob made him that way. So in that way, one could make the case that all of what is going on now, the threat that MIB poses to the world, is all Jacob’s fault. MIB was, in the beginning, a victim of a psychotic mother and a misguided brother. And yet, that doesn’t actually change the fact that he is pure evil now, and that his leaving of the island, which he is obsessed with doing, will mean the destruction of the world. Does he care that his leaving of the island will mean the non-existence of us all? No. Because all that remains of him is his obsession. He once truthfully told us that Jacob stole his humanity. No question. As we now see, Jacob did in fact steal his humanity. Yet, that doesn't change the fact that his humanity IS gone now. Regardless of who's fault it was. He is still an evil force that needs to be stopped.

Now as to who to sympathize with- well, given the choice between the psychotic murderer who is trying to destroy the world (even if he doesn’t believe it), and the psychotic murderer who is trying to protect it, I gotta go with the psychotic murderer who is protecting it. But maybe that's just me.

No one on Lost is all good or all evil. The characters are all far deeper and far more complex than that. Always have been. This is a tale of the struggle between the internal good and evil; the good and evil within all of us. And I think that kind of complexity in writing is one of the things that makes it one of the best TV shows of all time.