Lost Rewatch: The Cost of Living

 

Lost fanbase dropped. Nearly two decades, we’re still not sure what to make of the ending and that’s in part we will never know for sure why Adewale Akinnouye-Agbaje left Lost.

According to the writers at the time,  they had originally planned for him to leave at the end of season 3 under these circumstances. Later on, it was revealed that this was not the case: the writers had planned for Eko to stay until Season Five but Akinnouye-Agbaje asked to be written out after Season 2. It was revealed that he did not like living in Hawaii. Recent stories have now thrown that part of the story into question: given revelations about the often toxic atmosphere on the set, perhaps it wasn’t the only reason he wanted to leave the show.

What is undoubtedly clear is that  unlike with so many other characters on the series, Eko’s final act is set in such a way that the viewer is left thinking there is a closing of the circle in a way that is unlike the deaths of most of the major characters in the first half of the series. One of the popular fan theories for much of the show  - one that the writers did everything in their power to disabused the fanbase of but never truly went away - was that the island was purgatory and that once the characters made peace with who they were, they would die. Boone had accepted that Shannon was holding him back and died soon after. Shannon had finally found someone to believe in her, and she died immediately afterwards. Ana Lucia had realized that she could not solve all her problems with a gun and was killed moments later. That this theory did not fit Libby’s character at all did not disabuse fans of it and it continued throughout Season 3 and well beyond that.

Much of The Cost of Living actually seems like it is being set up to prove that this exact theory is true. Eko, who is still recovering from his wounds, starts having visions of Yemi, who tells him that it is time to confess and that “you will know where to find me,” Eko then lumbers into the jungle, wounded and clearly delirious (that’s why we think he is seeing visions of the past), headed towards the plane where his brother’s body was. This has disturbed Eko in a way we have not seen on the show. Throughout Season 2, he was taciturn and peaceful, and while he could be violent on the island, he rarely showed anger.

Now when he encounters Locke, who is on his way to the Pearl Station, we find that the two have once again reversed both their roles and attitudes. Locke is now at peace in a way he was throughout Season 1, sure of himself in a way he rarely was after the hatch was opened in Season 2. When he quotes Eko’s line: “Don’t mistake coincidence for fate” to Desmond, it is now clear that he means it in the opposite context Eko used when they were splicing the orientation strip together. He is now firmly on the side of destiny again. The viewer thinks that Locke is back to his old self, but we have yet to realize the repercussions of this new faith.

Indeed, it’s hard to tell that now because Locke seems more willing to embrace leadership in a way he hasn’t in a while. He takes responsibility when Eko’s tent is set on fire, takes Desmond into his confidence and vouches for him with Sayid, and leads a party to the Pearl to find the next step. The only time he seems to lose his cool is when Hurley compares his leadership style to Jack unfavorably and he says: “Well, I’m not Jack.”  Considering that up to this point on the series, Locke has been far more right about everything than Jack has been, it says a lot about the castaways respective opinions of both men that everyone still prefers how Jack did things. What does it says that Locke’s flexible style, inviting everybody to come along is compared unfavorably by Hurley to Jack’s rigid style of doing everything by himself and not trusting anyone?

Interestingly even though Locke’s actions could have killed everybody and have clearly hurt at least three people, no one ever chooses to take John to task for what he has done. This may very well be a flaw in the writing. Now that we’re done with the hatch, the writers seem determined to put in the rear view mirror; we don’t even see the hatch again until Season 5.

Eko is angry when he sees Locke, but it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with being wrong about the button and more about the fact that he is dealing with what he is seeing. What we see in the jungle is perhaps the clearest connection so far that the island – and most tellingly, the smoke monster – clearly have a connection with the dead. The men Eko sees in the jungle are linked to one of the darkest moments in his life not because it was any worse than things he did before, but because he did in his brother’s name.

The flashbacks in ‘The Cost of Living’ take place immediately after Eko has been mistaken for a priest and given a second chance. He returns to Yemi’s village and when he mistaken for a priest again, he decides to live for his brother and take on his charge. The problem is not long after, he is faced with a dark reminder of who he is when a group of militia men come to take the vaccine. Eko, of course, has every reason to bear any army with more hostility than fear, and there is an argument that his actions are done for that very reason. In this sense, he is not only defending his brother’s name but bringing down a sort of revenge on the men who caused him to damn himself to save his brother.

But there is no more gratitude for his actions from the village then there was from Yemi after Eko saved him. The God in Eko’s world only sees things in black and white. Stealing is wrong, even if you are starving. Giving vaccines to help the sick is wrong if you have to kill to do it, and even if the men you kill are killers themselves. When Amina’s son asks Eko if he is a bad man, he tells him: “Only God knows.” The God that Yemi knew had made that decision already; Eko never believed in that.

God and ritual come up in a different context in the other major storyline. Ben comes to Jack so that he can see Colleen’s funeral rites. The funeral has a distinctly Eastern flavor: everyone dons white robes and walks out to the beach. Colleen is placed on a raft, which is set fire to as it is carried out to sea. (The fact that the Others are disposing of Colleen’s body in this fashion are, in hindsight, the first real sign we’ve had that there is a link between the monster and the bodies of the dead – and that the Others are aware of it.)

Jack looks at this with detachment because before this he has put Ben on his heels for the first time. When he casually asks Ben: “Does it hurt?” in the first act, for the first time this season – maybe in all our encounters with him so far – Ben is momentarily unsettled. When Jack begins to probe Ben about his X-rays and makes it crystal clear that he has a fatal tumor on his spine, Ben goes back to his act. Jack is fine going along with it because he’s figured out why he’s here and the card he has to play.

This is just as clear when Ben interrupts Juliet and Jack’s most recent encounter – by now, it’s clear the two have a rapport – and Ben throws his weight around for a change. Ben has gone back to the fallback he had when his deception of Henry Gale was discovered – to tell the ‘truth’. Now I’m pretty sure this would have been Ben’s plan originally: that’s why he told Kate the next two weeks would be hard, and its clear that Juliet was part of that strategy. The problem is, Jack has actually told him the truth and he can’t afford to stall any more.

When Ben asks Jack if he believes in God, and Jack turns it around on him Ben gives him one of the most famous lines in the show’s history: “Two days after I found out I had a fatal tumor on my spine, a spinal surgeon falls out of the sky. And if that’s not proof of God, I don’t know what is.” At the time, many believed Ben had known the plane was going to fall out of the sky; we now know that not only is that not true, but Ben did believe in God already – and in a way the tumor on his spine was a sign that maybe God wasn’t on his side. It’s also clear, based on what we know of Jack, that posing this question in the first place was the exact wrong tone to take. I have little doubt Jack was thinking when he heard that: “The one good thing about being here is I don’t have to argue with that sort of person anymore.”

Harder to fathom is Juliet’s plan in the final scene we have on Hydra Island. Juliet arranges things so it sounds she is persuading Jack to save Ben, while putting on a dumb show saying that she the Others want Ben dead and this is the perfect excuse. Now we’re going to see very soon that while Ben’s standing with his people is low, they do not want him to die. So the question is: was this all Juliet? Based on what we will eventually learn about Juliet and Ben’s history, I think she really was hoping Jack would kill Ben, either to escape or out of pure revenge.

By this point Eko seems to be dealing with the fact that he has returned to the plane and his brother’s body is gone. In the final act of the episode, he follows Yemi out into the forest and is asked to offer his confession. And it is based on his response that I truly think that the purgatory argument is refuted here.

Because unlike all those that have gone before him, who accepted the flaw in their character, Eko looks at his life and says that he does nothing wrong. “I ask no forgiveness, for I have not sinned…I am not sorry for these things, I am proud of them. I did not ask for the life I was given, but it was given. And with it, I did my best.” Eko has been honest about who he was in a way that most of the passengers haven’t been (in ? he told Locke about so much of what made him who he was) and he does not hide from it here. ‘Yemi’ walks away and when Eko follows him demanding to know who he is, the monster appears.

We will hear at one point the monster is the island’s form of judgment and though the source is unreliable, this is the best example of it. Eko is unrepentant of his sins and the monster has judged him unworthy of living. That was the theory at the time, and while it may not bare up on scrutiny long term, how Eko ends up being killed would seem to argue in that favor. The monsters grabs him, takes the form of a hand and kills him in the pattern of a cross, essentially crucifying him. It is one of the most shocking moments in the series.

And it leads to a moving one. In Eko’s final moments, we see what he does: Eko and Yemi as boys, happily playing soccer. It is as if everything that has happened to Eko since them was a scenario that never played out and now he and Yemi are as innocent as they were before their lives were destroyed. Along among all the characters who would be killed off in the life of the series (and trust me, the blood hasn’t even begun to flow) Eko alone would never return in any form after this episode. Perhaps that was out of some act of selfishness by Akinnouye-Agbaje’s part; perhaps he just didn’t want to come back to a set that had brought him such hostility. But as much as I would have loved to see the character back again, maybe it’s for the best. So much of what we have seen among the characters on this series is that they are unable to move on. In this final moment, we see that Eko has truly found peace and has no need to work anything else. What return could surpass that last scene?