Plot
Washed ashore on the island, a pregnant woman named Claudia ( Lela Loren) encounters an unnamed woman ( Allison Janney); both speak Latin. The woman helps Claudia give birth to her son, whom Claudia names Jacob. Another boy is born, unexpectedly. The woman kills Claudia and raises the twins as her own, keeping them ignorant of the outside world. She teaches them to be distrustful of humanity, which she regards as corrupt and dangerous. At age 13, Jacob's brother (the future Man in Black) finds a Senet game. Jacob ( Kenton Duty) asks about the box and his brother (Ryan Bradford) asks him to keep it secret, but the woman sees through Jacob. She confronts Jacob's brother and claims she left the box for him, telling the young boy that he is "special". When the boy persists in asking about their origins, the woman explains that she came from her own mother, who is now dead, adding that the boys will never need to worry about death. After following a boar, Jacob and his brother discover other people on the island. The woman warns the brothers to avoid the other people; she reluctantly decides to show the brothers a mysterious tunnel filled with light and an underground stream. She claims that one of them will eventually be its caretaker, and that she has made them incapable of harming each other. The woman explains that the light is highly coveted and warns, "If the light goes out here, it goes out everywhere." Soon after, the brothers are playing the game and Jacob is frustrated at his brother's rules. Suddenly, a vision of Claudia appears to the young Man in Black. She reveals herself as their birth mother, and claims the other people came to the island with her. The young Man in Black confronts the woman about Claudia's claims, and attempts to convince Jacob to join the other people with him. However, Jacob refuses and stays with the woman. Over the course of the next 30 years, Jacob ( Mark Pellegrino) visits his brother ( Titus Welliver) at the camp he shares with the other people. The Man in Black reveals they have discovered a way to leave the island by digging wells in spots where " metal behaves strangely". Jacob declines his invitation to leave. When the woman hears of what the Man in Black is doing, she visits him and learns he and the others have constructed a giant wheel down a well. He tells her that his people have dug into the light from other locations on the island, and plan to create a system that will allow them to leave. Upon hearing this, she knocks the Man in Black unconscious. When he awakens, he discovers the people in the camp massacred, and the well completely filled in. Meanwhile, the woman shows Jacob the tunnel of light again, explaining that Jacob is to succeed her in guarding it. She tells Jacob never to enter the tunnel, warning of a fate worse than death. Jacob reluctantly drinks a wine that the woman pours, and she proclaims, "Now you and I are the same." Enraged by her actions, the Man in Black stabs the woman in the back and asks why she would not let him leave the island. She replies that she loves him, and dies. Jacob retaliates by beating his brother, and throws him into the tunnel of light. The smoke monster emerges in his place. Jacob then finds the Man in Black's physical body and places it with the woman's in the cave where she lived, along with a pouch containing the black and white stones they used in the game. In a repeat of a scene from the first season, now in a new context, the corpses and stones are found centuries later by Jack Shephard ( Matthew Fox) and Kate Austen ( Evangeline Lilly), and dubbed Adam and Eve byReception
"Across the Sea" is one of the most polarizing episodes of ''Lost''. Writers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse said on their podcast that even they were shocked by fans' reaction to the episode, stating they had received comments ranging from saying "This is one of the best episodes ever" to "You ruined Lost". The episode received mixed reviews from critics, and a divided reaction from fans. Review aggregator website Metacritic gave the episode a score of 58 out of 100, indicating "Mixed or Average Reviews". The score was down on the previous episode's score of 92 and is the lowest-rated episode of the season. Teresa Kiessling of NPD, said "Now we just need to learn the origin of their Mother", and indicated that the episode did little to satisfy viewer's curiosity surrounding the origins of Jacob and Man In Black. Noel Murray of '' The A.V. Club'' stated "I have only one real criticism of "Across The Sea," and it's that when Lost deals directly with the transcendental—rather than just glancing at it—the show can get awfully gooey, and painfully blunt."Noel Murray (May 12, 2010),References
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