Ab Aeterno

I thought this was going to be a short entry, since it was only about one character and contained no flash sideways. Guess I was wrong.

Highlights:

Richard freaks out and tells our friends that they are all dead and in Hell. He runs off into the jungle with a torch.

Hurley speaks Spanish to someone we can't see, and Jack asks if it is Jacob. Hurley tells him it is not Jacob, and that it has nothing to do with him. He follows Richard into the jungle

Ben tells everyone that Richard doesn't age, and we proceed into a flashback.

Richard is on a horse in the Canary Islands in 1867. He has a beard and long hair. He kind of looks like Sayid.

His wife is sick with what looks like tuberculosis, and he grabs together all of his money to get a doctor. Isabella (the wife) gives him her cross necklace to pay for the medicine. Ricardo (as he was called then) is hesitant, but takes it and rides.

He finds the doctor who is a huge dick, and accidentally kills him in a fight over payment of the medicine. He rushes back to Isabella with the medicine but is too late.

Ricardo is picked up by the authorities, learns English from the Bible in his cell, and gives a confession to an unforgiving priest. This priest sells him to some guy named Whitfield (sounds a lot like Widmore), and tells him that he is acting for a mister Hanso who needed a slave that spoke English. Thank God for that Bible.... no pun intended.

Richard's ship (The Black Rock) wrecks on the island. The waves were so high, it broke the statue of Tawahret, and landed them in the middle of the jungle.

The smoke monster kills everyone on his ship. Richard attempts to free himself until his dead wife appears to him. She tells him she has to free him before the bad man comes back. He tells her to leave so she will be safe and ends up getting swiftly killed.... again?

Richard passes out from malnutrition, dehydration, and I am guessing exhaustion. A man with a lantern comes up and rolls him over. He is gentle and you think it is going to be Jacob, but it is really the Man In Black!

He tells Richard that he is a friend, and will unlock him if he does whatever he says in return. Richard agrees. MIB tells Richard to kill the man living under the statue with the knife Dogen gave Sayid. He tells him the man there is the Devil, and if he wants to see his wife again, he has to kill him. He ends with the speech Dogen gave Sayid about not letting him speak.

Richard goes to the statue and gets the Jacob Beat-Down of the Century. Jacob beats him to a pulp and almost drowns him to prove that he is not dead, nor is he in Hell.


He brings him a bottle of wine and tells him that the island is a cork, holding the darkness, or hell, or evil, inside. His job is to keep him from leaving the island and corrupting the entire world. He confirms the conversation in The Incident by telling him that he brings people to the island to prove that they are inherently good, and will male the right choice. He says that MIB thinks that everyone is evil and corruptable.

He offers Richard a job, and asks him to be his intermediate. Richard wants his dead wife back in return. Jacob says he can't do that. He asks for absolution of his sins so he can go to Heaven. Jacob can't do that, either. He then asks to live forever, since he cannot be absolved of his worldly sins. Jacob grants him this wish and touches him.

Richard goes back to MIB and hands him a White Stone. MIB tells him that if he ever changes his mind, Richard could come back to him.

MIB and Jacob have a private conversation, and MIB tells him not to gloat. He says he just wants to leave, that he is mad Jacob "trapped him" here. He tells Jacob he wants to kill him to do so, and will be seeing him sooner than he thinks.

Richard buries his wife's necklace and it is time for the present day.

Richard digs up his wife's necklace, a broken man, and shouts to the heavens that he has changed his mind. He says that he was wrong and will follow MIB.


Hurley shows up and asks what he is talking about. He translates for his dead wife, and tells him that she is standing beside him. He speaks Spanish to Richard, and tells him not to follow the Man in Black, but to destroy him. "Or else we will all be in Hell."

Special/ Key Moments:

Richard episode. FINALLY.

Mostly Spanish was spoken this entire episode with subtitles. I love avoiding the bottom part of the screen and trying to translate what they are saying. That's what I like about the Spanish spoken in Dexter. It is never translated, you just assume they are going to tell you what is going on if it is important. It's kind of like hearing people speak Spanish in oh, say.... real life.

Richard on a horse, in the rain, speaking Spanish, being awesome.

I liked Hurley speaking Spanish and telling Jack to piss off.

I liked seeing Richard be romantic and vulnerable instead of so calm and distant. Isabella was beautiful, and their story is amazing. His love for her was so pure and passionate. It wasn't part of some lame love triangle with a red-neck con man and a spinal surgeon or.....

Seeing Jacob beat the shit out of Richard was both comical and sad. Richard has had the worst luck in the world, but still ended up being blessed on the island. His wife dies, he accidentally kills someone, he gets put in prison, gets sold as a slave, his shipmates are killed, his wife dies again, and he is ordered to kill some guy at a statue who lays the smack-down on him? Jesus.

I really liked the way Jacob described his interaction with the people he brings to the island. He describes it as Free Will is described in the Bible. He says that he shouldn't have to step in, that his people should know good from evil and make their own choices. It is beautiful the way he seems truly pained by this repetitious cycle. Just as the Lord is pained by our constant sin in our everyday life. Jacob is clearly not the devil.


The fact that all Richard wants besides his wife is to be absolved of his sins was a good touch. I always knew he was beautiful inside, just like Severus Snape. Although Snape killed Dumbledore, and that is a whole other ball game. Richard is no doubt a Catholic man, obsessing over forgiveness and the afterlife. It is nice to know that all of this has been because he has a guilty Latino Catholic conscience. Mine was bad when I was in highschool, and I didn't even do anything bad back then. I can only imagine what Richard thinks about!

The scene where Hurley translates for Isabella is beautiful. Although slightly reminiscent of the Swayze, Goldberg, Moore medium in Ghost, this moment was heartbreaking. Seeing Richard so broken, and sobbing at this point was enough. But having his wife tell him that they are always together and that she loves him made me well up. Hurley's often comical demeanor was soft, romantic, and understanding of Alpert's situation. Nestor Carbonell really brought out the big guns for this one. The fact that he couldn't see her? Ugh. Beautiful! I love it.

This episode also makes me wonder how Richard got here:
From here:
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Then I realized that there is a scene in Season 3 where Richard meets a 12 year old Ben. And he is in a weird transitional period with his fashion sense. This fills in the gap between Clean-Cut Mayor of Gotham City Look to Jim Caviezel's Random Hot Cousin Look.
I prefer the Mayor of Gotham City Look, but that's just me.

Seeing Jacob and MIB is always a delight, and seeing a softer side of MIB was interesting.

We finally got to see how the Black Rock got to be in the middle of the jungle, and how the statue was broken! The wreckage of Tawahret was epic and awesome in the background of Jacob drowning Richard.

My sister said that the Man In Black was kind of hot. That made me smile.

Theories/Questions/Speculations:

Tony brought up another thought-provoking question about the smoke monster that I haven't thought of. Richard clearly knows that the smoke monster is MIB and is bad. Richard is the one who is an intermediate for Jacob. Jacob is the one who gave Richard lists of potential leaders and candidates such as Benjamin Linus. Richard no doubt was the one who trained Benjamin to be the leader the island needed him to be.
In season 4, when Keamy and his men are approaching Ben's house, Ben summons the Smoke Monster from a hidden door in his house. If Richard is following Jacob, why would he teach Ben to summon the very being he is trying to encase? Wouldn't he be afraid of him? Or has Ben figured it out on his own, and used him for his own devices? Was this one of the many acts that triggered Richard to give John Locke Sawyer's file to kill his father, and therefore become his leader? I don't know.

Can Hurley learn any language the dead speak to him, or can he just speak Spanish because he is Latino?

Is Michael dead? Because I looked at Lost-Media.com, and everyone that was dead was listed. Their promotional pictures were as follows: Libby (died Season 2), Mr. Ecko (died Season 3),etc. Michael was not listed as dead, but only as leaving in Season 2 and coming back in Season 4 as Kevin Johnson. Was he touched by Jacob and we haven't seen it yet? Is there a difference between being kept alive because the Island needs you, and being touched by Jacob? Because I thought Michael died when Christian appeared to him and told him he could go. He could go because he started the bomb himself. He could kill himself, so that negates the Richard "I can't kill myself" theory, doesn't it? I know that Ben was beaten to a pulp every week, but never suffered major injuries because the island needed him, but I am really wondering about Michael. He seems to be a hot topic amongst a lot of my friends, and I can't be sure about his mortality.

I was listening to a podcast the other day (Darlton, not Jorge) and Carlton said that the volcano on the island that Olivia talks about in Ben's flashback will be very relevent. From what I know about volcanos, (which isn't much), is that when volcanos erupt, they often produce new islands as the magma reaches the cool ocean and hardens into igneous rock. I don't know how this will be relevant since the island is now underwater, but I guess I will see. Maybe Jacob will flood the island like God did after his first attempt of creation was a bust. Maybe the candidate and/or Richard will be Noah, and Jughead is a temporal ark. MaybeI'm just fishing....

Namaste