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For all the mothers in Lost, see Mothers.


An unnamed woman was the foster mother of Jacob and his brother. She murdered their birth mother, Claudia, just after she gave birth to the twins, and raised them herself. She was the protector of the Heart of the Island, until shortly before she was murdered by Jacob's brother, who would later go on to be known as the Man in Black.

On the Island[]

Her presence on the island predated any other individual known. Approximately 2000 years prior to the crash of Oceanic Flight 815, she found Claudia, heavily pregnant and shipwrecked on the Island. When Claudia asked her how she had arrived on the island, Mother replied: "the same way you did; by accident." When asked how long she had been there, Mother cut her off and flatly stated: "every question you ask will only lead to more questions." Moments later, Claudia went through labor with Mother assisting her in the delivery. After Claudia had given birth to Jacob and his twin brother, Mother killed Claudia. Eventually, she would tell Jacob that she had done this because Claudia and the other people who were shipwrecked with her were bad people, and she did not want the infants to be raised by them and therefore become "bad".

Jacob and the Man in Black grew up believing this woman was their mother. She told them nowhere other than the Island existed, and that her mother had died. She also said that she had "made it" so that Jacob and the Man in Black would not be able to hurt (or, kill) each other. When Jacob and the Man in Black were thirteen, she took them to a cave filled with water and light. She told them it was the "heart of the island", and that she was its protector. She also said that someday one of them would have to take her place as the protector of the light.

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Mother shares some truths with Jacob. ("Across the Sea")

After the Man in Black learned from Claudia's ghost the woman had lied to him, he decided to leave her and live among Claudia's people. Jacob decided to stay with the woman but continued to visit his brother. After several decades, the Man in Black and Claudia's people learned about the magnetic energy pockets on the island and dug wells to learn more about them. In a chamber beneath one of these wells, the Man in Black had started to build a wheel which he hoped to use to leave the island. When the woman learned about his plans, she confronted him and knocked him out. When he regained consciousness, he found the well had been filled in and all Claudia's people were killed.

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Mother passes protection of the source to Jacob. ("Across the Sea")

Meanwhile, the woman took Jacob to the cave of light and gave him a cup to drink. She said by doing so, he would take on the responsibility of protecting this place for as long as he can, after which he will have to find his replacement. However, she told him never to enter the cave, and if he did, it would be "worse than dying". With reservations (which arose because he believed the woman favored his brother), Jacob accepted the cup and the responsibility.

The woman returned to the cave where she lived and her belongings and loom were destroyed. As she examined the black playing piece from the Senet game, the Man in Black stabbed her from behind with his dagger. As she died, she said, "Thank you." ("Across the Sea")

Post-death[]

Enraged at the death of his mother, Jacob fought with the Man in Black and threw him into the cave of light, killing him and transforming him into the form of a smoke monster, which would become his most notorious ability among future islanders. Jacob took the woman's body and the Man in Black's body and laid them to rest in the cave, with a pouch containing one black and one white stone from his brother's Senet game. ("Across the Sea")

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"Adam and Eve". ("House of the Rising Sun")

Their skeletons were discovered a millennia later by Jack Shephard and Kate Austen; John Locke subsequently nicknamed them to be "our very own Adam and Eve". ("House of the Rising Sun")  ("Across the Sea")

When telling Kate about Aaron now having a crazy mother, the Man in Black described his own mother as "very disturbed" and responsible for him having issues that he was still trying to work through. ("Recon")

Trivia[]

  • The character was referred to as "Mother" in the episode recap for "Across the Sea" at ABC.com.[1] This name was repeated by Carlton Cuse in the Official Lost Podcast (14th May 2010).
  • Her nickname on ABC.com's LOST Untangled was "Knotty Mommy Hair", similar to Claire's nickname on the show "Crazy Jungle Hair Claire".
  • While Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse have not confirmed nor denied the theory that Mother was capable of transforming into the smoke monster prior to the Man in Black, they did note that while [she is] "a scrapper", for her to wipe out the Man in Black's village as a human by herself against "twenty armed men" would have been "impressive, especially in daylight". (However, since The Man in Black is shown to be impervious to almost all wounds in both his human form and his smoke monster form, it would not have been that difficult for Mother to have massacred them if she also had those powers.)
  • Witnesses of death: The Man in Black, Jacob.
  • Last words: "Thank you."

Unanswered questions[]

Unanswered questions
  1. Do not answer the questions here.
  2. Keep the questions open-ended and neutral: do not suggest an answer.
For fan theories about these unanswered questions, see: Mother/Theories
  • What is her name?
  • What are her origins, and how long had she been on the island?
  • Was she capable of becoming the smoke monster?
  • How did she fill the well and kill all the residents of a village in a short period of time?
  • What happened to her mother?
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