Like so many of the best shows during this period Lost
took incredible swings for the fences, in terms of character as well as
plot. One of the most incredible then and now has to be with Sayid Jarrah,
played brilliantly and soulfully by Naveen Andrews.
Fatigue over the War in Iraq had already set in by
the time the Pilot of Lost was being written and in a post 9/11 America
bigotry against Islam was becoming increasingly excused. So it was astounding
to have a character such as Sayid Jarrah who was not just Iraqi but who when
asked in the Pilot said he served in the Republican Guard. That Sayid was a
devout Muslim was something that the show frequently illustrated (we saw him
praying on multiple occasions both on the island and in flashbacks) though his
faith was never the focus the way it was for so many other characters.
In a way when it was revealed that Sayid had been
a torturer less then a third through Season 1 it was actually less of a
creative risk: 24 had already become part of the Zeitgeist and Battlestar
Galactica had already been willing to use similar methods on Cylons during
its first two seasons. The difference was we never saw Jack Bauer feel any
regret when he beat up suspected terrorists. By contrast the first time Sayid
tortured anyone – Sawyer when he was suspected of having Shannon's inhalers –
he felt such remorse that he actually decided to exile himself from the camp to
map the island, with the full intention of never returning.
If Lost had been a more political show it
could have easily used Sayid as a victim of the American military and our own
worst impulses. In 'One of Them' we saw that Sayid had learned his skills from
the American military in order to extract information from a superior without
them getting their hands dirty. But Sayid always had an awareness of himself as
he said in what is arguably the most famous monologue he ever gave on the show.
He tells 'Henry Gale' about his military career about the things he wishes he
could erase from his memory, but that he came to realize he was always capable
of them:
My name is Sayid Jarrah and I am a torturer.
And that is what makes Sayid different from Jack
Bauer as well as so many other of the antiheroes will meet during the era (with
one exception I'll get to below). Like Tony Soprano, Jack Bauer and Walter
White he is capable of doing horribly violent things to men and even
defenseless women but the actions drain him emotionally. He doesn't want to be
a violent person, he doesn't like himself when he does it but as we see there
are so many points in his life, on and off the island, in the past and in the
future, where he has a choice to inflict violence or not do so. And as Nikki
Stafford points out in her own analysis: "As much as we love Sayid he is
weak…He never chooses that option."
Noel Murray points out that Sayid 'spends an awful
amount of time in Lost in shackles'.
Stafford is aware of this fact in Finding Lost but in her books
she makes the argument its symbolic of a condition Sayid has been throughout
his entire life – even when he's physically free he's always emotionally
imprisoned. This decision plays out by far the most effectively on the Ajira
flight: Sayid is the only one who has been physically restrained by another in
order to return to the island. And it's the idea that Sayid has always felt
like he has always been doomed his entire life in which I argued the greatest
parallel upon characters of this era is not a torturer like Jack Bauer but
rather Dexter Morgan:
Like Dexter, Sayid Jarrah knew even at a young age
he was capable of great violence. Both men were influenced by their father’s
behavior – Sayid’s encouraged violence in his son, Dexter’s tried to help him
channel it - but both knew at an early
age of the darkness in them.
Both Dexter and Sayid followed in their father’s
footsteps. We don’t know much about Sayid’s father’s background except he was
‘a great hero’ but Sayid may have gone into the military to win his approval
just as Dexter went to Miami Metro to
earn his. During the First Gulf War Sayid learned his potential under the
instruction of the U.S. Army. Unlike Dexter, Sayid initially refused to engage
his dark side and the first time he did so, he was so horrified he swore he
would never do it again. But that was an oath he broke and he ended up working
as a ‘communications officer’ for the Republican Guard. Here we see the first
critical difference: Dexter spent much of the first half of the series hiding
his capacity for violence because he knew how much it would horrify the world.
Sayid received advance in his career because his capacity was useful.
Like Dexter Sayid feels there are two sides of his
nature: the torturer and the caring one. The difference is Dexter spent the
entire series hiding that nature and pretending he was, to paraphrase Nadia
about Sayid, someone he knew he wasn’t. He only showed his darkness under the
cover of night and protecting himself. Sayid, however, has always been able to
turn off his emotions and inflict violence when he needed to – he was even
capable of doing it to the woman he loved before he helped free her.
Dexter started the series believing that human
connection was part of his cover: he initially started his relationship with
Rita Bennett and her kids because he thought they were safe. He was surprised
when they became real over the first few seasons and more surprised to learn he
was capable of love. But he always feared what would happen if his dark side
ever came to interact with the cover. He spent much of the first four seasons
making human contact and trying to find friendship only to find out his human
side could lead him astray.
By contrast Sayid wants to belong to that world of
humanity but it has always gotten him into trouble. He spent eight years
searching for Nadia and when the CIA dangled her in front of him he sold part
of his soul to do so. There is a parallel between Sayid and Essam’s story in
‘The Greater Good’ and Miguel and Dexter’s storyline in Season 3. In the
latter, Miguel spent much of the season manipulating Dexter into a position of
trust just as Sayid did with Essam. But when Essam learned of his friend’s betrayal,
he committed suicide and his last words summed up so much of Sayid’s story: “I
hope she makes you whole.” Sayid has never been whole and he knows that.
When the plane crashed, his skills as a
communications officer made him useful – as did his capacity for violence. On
the island his growing relationship with Shannon made him torture Sawyer and
seriously wound him. He chose to exile himself from the group but when he got
caught in Rousseau’s traps, he found a kindred spirit – perhaps one more
kindred than anyone he ever knew. When Sayid learned of the Others he returned
to the camp to warn them and swore he would never torture another person. He
began a relationship with Shannon, only for her to be accidentally killed by
Ana Lucia. He resisted an urge to kill her, and we thought he had grown – but
it would turn out he only would direct his violence towards ‘people who deserved it’, much in the same
way Dexter sought his targets.
The first target was Henry Gale and despite the
fact he never broke Sayid was certain he was ‘One of Them’. It was the start of
the long relationship between him and Ben Linus, a man who was his nemesis even
more than Locke’s because he always brought out the worst in him with his
manipulations. He spent much of the next season and a half focusing his rage on
the Others and while that didn’t play out as much in Season 3, in the season
finale he stayed behind on the beach. It was in part to secure rescue to be
sure, but you can’t help but wonder how much of it was to help kill off so many
of the people who had tormented him.
Sayid’s story had always been filled with violence
throughout the first three seasons but it turned truly tragic once he left the
island. He found Nadia and the two of them quickly married. He thought he was
getting his happily ever after, but less than nine months later she was killed
in a hit and run. It’s never clear if this was the action of Charles Widmore, a
manipulation of Jacob, or just an accident but the result was the same: the day
Nadia died, the best part of Sayid did to and it made him vulnerable to the
manipulations of Ben Linus.
Sayid spent the next two years as Ben’s personal
hitman, killing Widmore’s men. Sayid was manipulated by Ben into doing his
dirty work because it was supposedly to protect his friends, much as Dexter
killed people he thought were dangerous to society at large. When it came to an
end in the cold of Russia, Sayid blamed Ben but Ben told him: “You didn’t do it
for me.” And there’s a certain truth to this: like Dexter, Sayid needed
something to channel his darkness into and the list was as good a reason as any.
Sayid tried to walk away from his violence and did
humanitarian work. But yet again Ben found him and convinced him that his
friends were in danger. This was a pure manipulation on Ben’s part – he claimed
his murder of Locke was an action of Widmore to get Sayid back to Los Angeles –
but he also knew it was bait he couldn’t resist. In one of the last lines he
said to Sayid told Ben that “whenever you’ve made the choice, whether to
torture or to kill, it hasn’t really been a choice at all. It’s in your nature.
You’re a killer.” This could just as easily apply to Dexter except he wouldn’t
have bothered to deny it.
And just as with Dexter, the more effort Sayid
tried to become human, usually through his romantic connection, it always ended
up hurting him. Every time he made himself vulnerable to a woman – whether it
was genuine as with Shannon or under false pretense as with Elsa or Ilana – it
always comes back to hurt him. In the last case, Ilana did a con to get him
into her hotel room, gave a different con (she was there to get him back to the
island) and Sayid was brought on to the plane in handcuffs.
I could add that at the end of Season Five Sayid
is shot and is on the verge of dying until he's brought to the Temple. There he's brought to a pool that may have
the power to heal him but now that Jacob is dead (something that the viewer
knows but critically no one at the Temple does) it's no longer running clear.
Sayid drowns in the pool but two hours later returns with his wound closed.
Dogen later tells Jack that there is a 'darkness growing inside him'. In effect
Sayid now has his own 'Dark Passenger' as Dexter famously described what was
inside him for most of the series.
The critical difference between Sayid and Dexter,
at least on the island, is that Sayid was always accepted as a critical member
of the group. We should never forget that in Tabula Rasa Sayid stepped up and
made a speech about not surrendering hope and leadership two full episodes
before Jack made his famous speech. I can't really argue that racism didn't
play a role in everyone following Jack but its worth noting that Sayid himself,
much like the soldier he was, always seemed more comfortable following orders
then giving them.
For that reason he was always considered a
valuable member of the leadership. Jack always took Sayid's counsel seriously
and while the two disagreed it was never at the same level of his arguments
with Locke. Locke also got along with Sayid well (at least until they went to
rescue Jack); Kate always seemed willing to listen to him far more easily then
she did Jack and while Sawyer inflicted him with horribly racist nicknames
there was a measure of grudging respect that built over the years. Sayid was
considered almost universally trustworthy by everyone of the castaways as well
as many of those we met over the years and I've often had time to wonder if
Sayid ever had been a leader, maybe fewer people would have died.
Sayid at his core was a pragmatist and practical
when it came to dealing with so many crises. Rousseau kidnaps Aaron: he doesn't
try to understand logic he just goes across the island with Charlie to find
him. The computer in the Hatch needs to be fixed, he doesn't ask if Desmond is
telling a believable story, there's a timer counting down and he knows nothing
good happens at the end of it. Michael
tells him he's not welcome in the rescue mission for Walt. He takes the no
calmly and only in private tells Jack that he's sure Michael has been
compromised.
Sayid was always to put his own life ahead of a
greater good. At the start of Through the Looking Glass, just before Jack leads
his mission to the radio tower he tells Jack not to come back no matter what.
"I'm willing to give my life in order for rescue to be achieved," he
makes clear to Jack. And I suspect for that reason Jin and Bernard are fully
willing to do the same, despite their respective wives entreaties. When it came
to the greater good he demonstrated a clarity that so many of the other
Oceanics rarely had.
The same was not true of the Others – or
specifically Ben Linus. The two men were basically mirrors of the same kind of
monster. Sayid physically tortured people; Ben did so emotionally. We'll deal
with that in Ben's own article but for now we'll just say that much as they
hated each other, there seemed to be a part of them that sensed each other. On
more than one occasion Sayid seems to have sensed Ben's presence in a way that
bordered on the supernatural though it's clearly a power he absolutely didn't
want.
One of the great ironies of Lost came in
The Economist when Sayid tells Locke: "The day I trust that man is the day
I sell my soul'. And the flashforward reveals that Sayid has done just that.
His soul, as Nikki Stafford pointed out, was Nadia and once she was dead Sayid
had lost all of the hope he had left. Ben was always capable of manipulating
Sayid by arguing that people he cared about were in danger while withholding
the fact that they were likely in danger because of him more than anything.
Sayid was at some level aware of that fact, even
when he was working for Ben, but he had no purpose other than that. This is
made clear when we see him with Ilana in 'He's Our You'. Ilana doesn't know
anything about Sayid other then that he's a candidate and she clearly doesn't
know anything about Ben. So even though she's there to con Sayid she knows what
she has to do.
So its got to be sad when Sayid tells her that he
just quit his job. She never asks what it is, though she does know he was
responsible for the murder of Peter Avellino. So when Sayid tells her:
"The only thing I was ever really good at," he genuinely means it. He
doesn't know who he is without his violence or Nadia.
I am reminded of a similar scene nearly thirteen
years later. In what turns out to be his final scene in Better Call Saul, we
see Gus Fring going to an expensive restaurant he hasn't been to in a while.
He's just gotten away with the murder of Lalo Salamanca and he clearly wants to
celebrate with someone who clearly knows him. It's clear he wants to connect
but when the sommelier leaves his expression darkens and he leaves before he
comes back. The viewer knows where Gus's path leads – he will manage to get the
revenge he's wanted for twenty years only to have it end in his death as a
result.
It's not difficult to see a connection between Gus
and Sayid: both men engage in great amounts of violence in order to revenge a
loved one that they lost and that has defined who they are. The scene in Saul
is remarkable because for the first time we see that Gus, for all his
efficiency, violence and rage, really does just want to connect. Unlike Sayid
Gus knows well enough to walk away. Sayid doesn't – and the path brings him
back to the island in handcuffs. The critical difference is that Sayid spends
the entire series wrestling with the better angels of his nature whereas Gus
gave up on them decades ago.
I would make the argument that by the time Sayid
finds himself being held prisoner in 'He's Our You' that he considers himself
doomed. He never wanted to come back to the island and even if he leaves he's
got nothing to go back to. In that I see his decision to kill a teenage Ben
Linus not so much an effort to fix the past but out of his own need for
vengeance. When we see a tear run down Sayid's cheek and he runs into the
darkness, I think the metaphor is fitting as to where Sayid is as well as his
inevitable fate:
By the time he shoots a young Ben Linus in 1977,
the only hope he has left in that by blowing up a hydrogen bomb, there is the
false hope that all of this will save them and, at worst, it will end his
suffering. When Ben’s father shot him, the last words he said in Season Five
were: “Nothing can save me.” And it was clear before he was brought to the
Temple, he had no hope for the afterlife either.
It's real sad watching Sayid during the final
season of Lost. After he makes his deal with The Man in Black he has
fully embraced the killer within. When Ben finds him and says: "There's
still time." Sayid's response of "Not for me" is so blank that
Ben is genuinely terrified and leaves without a word. Sayid spends the second
half of the season saying he can't feel any emotions and has become just a pawn
to kill for the Man in Black.
It's impossible not to think of the comparison to
Dexter, particularly in the aftermath of Rita's death at the hands of Trinity.
Immediately after this Dexter sends Rita's children to live with their
grandparents, essentially thinking he's tainted them for live. He spends the
rest of the series watching Harrison hoping he's not irreversibly tainted by
this but he spends the second half of the show more or less the killing machine
he was when we first met him.
And while it doesn't strictly fit the metric of
these articles, it's worth remembering the original controversial ending of Dexter.
(Which was just as polarizing as Lost's.) After the actions of
Dexter lead to the death of his foster sister Dexter leaves Miami forever and
fakes his death, only to be found living a completely solitary lifestyle of a
lumberjack where he can't hurt anyone any more – and he's lost his sense of humor
as well as his narration.
But there's an obverse of this too. Dexter truly
believes that he must be a lone wolf because of the collateral damage that
comes when he tries to be normal. Like everyone else in Lost Sayid
thinks he's a monster but his friends believe in him – and at the end of the
series, he proves that he is more than what he thought of himself.
