Welcome back to the Lost Secret Clue, where we dig deeper to find the clues and secrets you might've missed to fuel your theories for the final season! This week's episode, "Across The Sea", saw us flash an undetermined amount of centuries back to show us the origin of Jacob and his twin the Man in Black. Take a deep breath; we're in the home stretch now. Love, life, lies and the light at the end of the tunnel...

If you've not seen it yet, we've posted a brilliant behind the scenes tour of the Temple set hosted by one of Lost's key directors and executive producers Jack Bender.

The format of this episode meant that we spent no new time with our usual survivors, a first for the show. Instead we discovered a multitude of answers including how Jacob came to power, how the Smoke Monster came into being and how one woman’s actions may have created the horrible whirlpool of despair that has swallowed the lives of everyone we’ve seen spend time on the island.

While we spent little time with the twins’ mother Claudia before she was killed, and her red dress should have been enough of a clue that her demise was coming, those few minutes were packed full of things for us to glean. She and The Mother spoke to one another in Latin, which explains why Jacob would insist on the Others knowing his native tongue. Just like Claire and Rousseau, Claudia’s baby was snatched away to be raised by another. Are we to infer that this was the moment where the island’s maternal woes began? By killing Claudia, purportedly to protect the children, did The Mother create some kind of island curse that echoes through loudly to this day? Interestingly, the Man in Black was never prepared for, thus him not having a name ready for the bawling baby, forever destined to live in Jacob’s shadow.

Right from the outset, we were given constant clues that something was indeed different about the Boy in Black yet, strangely, each of the things that made him so different appears to be a key aspect of a current survivors’ predicament or past. The Mother told him of how he was special, filled him with empowering statements and fostered his love of games, all things Locke went through in his younger years. Just like Hurley, the Boy in Black can see and converse with the dead. Just like Sawyer, the Boy can lie with the best of them. Like Jack, he “just knows”. In fact, considering how angry we were at the conclusion of “The Candidate”, the Man in Black was painted in a rather sympathetic light and we see he’s been trying to combat the same screwed up parenting technique that has caused so many problems for every character across the show.

The Mother’s house of lies was so poorly constructed that it was sure to come crashing down at any moment, but after a second viewing of the episode, we’re starting to think that might have been her intentions all along. Someone in her past had obviously told her that the arrival of twin babies on the island would herald the arrival of her replacement. Was she told that the other child would represent her demise, or possibly even her eventual escape from solitary island confinement? By concealing the truth from the Boy in Black she created an inquisitive, cynical man of science, while doing the same from Jacob created a young man almost willing to hand his life over for a poorly explained stint of servitude. Young Jacob may not have been able to lie, but it seems he wasn’t particularly interested in the truth either.

A few questions remained after the episode, of which we’re likely to never receive an answer, so we thought we’d take a punt at some guesses:

Who completed the frozen donkey wheel?

While the well was filled in by episode’s end, we were led to believe the Smoke Monster utilized another, later set of humans on the island to complete the work. Considering we’ve seen Egyptian hieroglyphs down there, and the Tarawet statue had yet to be completed, we think its fair to see these Roman characters existed before any Egyptians. However, due to the very nature of the wheel itself, its just as likely that the island popped before this point to grab the Egyptians, once the wheel was operational.

When did Jacob change his views on humanity?

Jacob came across as a creepy voyeur during the Man in Black’s time with the humans, so what was it that made him change his opinion so? Was it losing his mother and brother at the same time, leaving him alone? Did he choose to subscribe to Jack’s Live together, Die alone lifestyle? Or was it simply that he wanted to create his own game, with his own rules, in order to get himself replaced?

What exactly is the Smoke Monster?
Hmmm. This is far tougher. While we were all happy with the answer, “a human”, it seems something far less now. Or at least half as much… As it spewed forth from the light cave, we came to two conclusions: either the body blocked, trapped, warped and stole the light, creating a monster with evil intentions, or Jacob accidently stripped his brother’s soul from his body and left his to linger limbo-style for what could be thousands of years. Which leads us to the final question: considering The Mother described going into the light as “a fate worse than death”, have all the Man in Black’s references to leaving the island been about escape – or his eventual death and freedom?