Lost Rewatch: Further Instructions

 

Note: This is the only episode of Season 3 I did not watch on videotape.

 

Another justifiable complaint about Season 3 is that in the first two episodes we have yet to see anything from the beach and more importantly, the consequences from the hatch detonating. Well, the writers finally give us the answer to what the viewer was most concerned about: what happened to everybody inside?

Further Instructions opens in an exact parallel to the Pilot. We open on the eye of the character who will be central to the episode (this time it’s Locke). That character is lying flat on his back. He gets up slowly and is attracted to movement in the bushes. Here it’s a human figure and it initially appears to be Desmond. Locke reaches out and is greeting by an unfamiliar object: in his case, it’s Eko’s ‘Jesus stick’. Then Locke, like Jack before him walks on to the beach.\

That Locke spend the first act of the episode unable to speak is fitting: he spent much of the first season giving advice and not waiting to hear what people thought. As Season 2 progressed and his faith waned, he stopped listening to people and was shouting over everybody by the finale.  Now he knows he has to start listening – and in John’s mind, that means regaining his communion with the island.

It also, at least for this episode and the first half of Season 3, means letting people back in. That is probably why he goes to Charlie for help because he knows he has to make amends with him. As we shall see Charlie is now more amicable than he was back in Season 2, and while he engages in some sarcasm, the bitterness is gone and he’s willing to help John, not just when it comes to standing guard but for the mission going forward.  By rejecting the drugs for good in Season 2, Charlie has regained his faith – which he will need for what lies ahead.

The session in the sweat lodge is a highlight of Season 3 and the series overall. Locke is feeding the fire, eating the paste we saw him give Boone in Season 1, and then ‘Boone’ appears.  It’s always questionable what the dead on the island represent but Locke’s visions have a way of trying to move him forward. I am not certain that when Boone tells John “he was the sacrifice the island demanded” that actually real or simply what John needs to hear. However, considering what happens in the ‘airport’, I’m inclined to think the island is letting Boone talk to him.

What we see in the airport is a combination of how Locke sees everybody on the island as well as flashes of things to come, as well as things he has no way of knowing. As always, he is in a wheelchair unable to walk, and an observer. Boone tells him someone in this airport needs his help.

First he sees Charlie, Claire and Aaron together acting as a family.  When Locke points at them, Boone says: “They’ll be fine. For a while.” The implications of that will become clear in part in the next few episodes.

Then we see Sun, Jin and Sayid together. Jin seems to be speaking English and yelling at Sun, who is speaking Korean. Sayid is trying to settle it.  The island is clearly showing John a version of what is happening in the boat around this time. Boone tells John when he points: “I think Sayid’s got it.” Considering what happened in the last episode, that’s clearly a misinterpretation.

We then see Hurley, helping everybody on to the plane, typing the numbers into the computer and pushing the button. Boone just says: “Not Hurley.” Locke has clearly realized Hurley is basically everybody’s helper – and maybe subtly his connection to the numbers. (He also seems to know that Hurley is no longer in danger from the Others.)

Desmond appears as a pilot. Locke understandably is concerned about him, but Boone says: “Forget it. He’s helping himself.” In hindsight, Locke is clearly seeing that Desmond has a critical role to the salvation of everybody here, which will begin to play out late in the season.

Locke sees the three people who are still missing. He thinks Kate and Sawyer are a couple and Jack seems alone. (Perhaps this is more based on his vision of Jack than reality.) He then sees ‘Henry Gale’ (that’s the nametag Ben is wearing) working security in the airport and monitoring the three of them. (Is the island telling him how Ben sees himself?) He clearly can make the connection and really thinks these are the people he has to save but Boone tells him. “There’s nothing you can do for them. Not yet. First you have to clean up your own mess.”

And then John is at the foot of an escalator, sees Boone at the top, manages to climb across and finds Eko’s Jesus stick, covered with blood. He’s told he doesn’t have much time, regains consciousness – and sees a bear attack him. He emerges and knows his mission: “I’m going to save Mr. Eko’s life” are his first words when he regains his speech.

Considering not only Locke’s behavior in much of Season 3 but for the rest of the series, its fascinating that he spends this episode clearly trying to atone. It’s more than understandable but he also clearly feeling a lot of anguish over how he felt through much of Season 2.  When he tells Charlie to go back and that “Bad things happen to me when I’m around,” there’s every bad decision he’s made on the island as well as everything we saw that’s happened to him so far in his life. (We’ll get to his flashback in a bit.) He clearly is surprised when Charlie decides to stick with him and given everything that happened last season we’re a little shocked ourselves. It doesn’t help that as he tracks the polar bear that has dragged Eko office, they come across the ruin of the hatch which has either exploded or imploded (the writers are never clear) which is the latest reminder of his biggest mistake.

We also finally see Hurley who has made it back to the other side of the island (it’s been a day since the season premiere, which tracks with how it took to get there) and he’s both simultaneously upset and very puzzled by what’s going on. (I find it hard to believe he doesn’t know anything about the polar bears on the island.) Hurley then encounters Desmond, stark naked (“So…the hatch…blew off your underwear?”) and we officially get confirmation that while the sky turned purple and the island vibrated, no one inside the hatch died. Lost at our joy to seeing everyone intact was a very obvious question: how?  It’s one thing to know that several of the characters in the hatch were important enough that they might get out alive (this is series television) but it’s kind of hard to see how they basically came out unharmed.  Setting aside the electromagnetism there was metal flying everywhere and a giant explosion. Yet somehow, Locke only woke up with the (temporary) inability to speak, Charlie has slight tinnitus, Desmond is naked (well, that’s not the only thing that might have happened, as we see) and we can’t tell how much of Eko’s injuries are due to the explosion or being mauled by a bear.  Again we are reminded of Locke’s speech as how most of the survivors of the crash came away with only minor injuries. And apparently, though this same explosion turned the sky purple, everyone else is just fine. We spent so much of Season 2 dealing with the scientific aspects of the island that we seem to have forgotten the mystical aspects. Is the island protecting the survivors somehow?

If so, the fact that the island chooses to give Locke the ‘further instructions’ that move the action forward would seem to show that he is critical. But right now, it’s not clear if he realizes how that matters. He tells Charlie what he saw in the sweat lodge and Charlie, with no sarcasm, tells him he agreed with Boone. There’s also no judgment when he tells him: “Spoken like someone who’s had a few messes to clean up.” Charlie can’t throw stones because he’s both cleaned up messes and made them in his life.

The flashback we see in this episode is, like all of Locke’s. wonderful to watch. It might not seem as critical because it’s the first without his father, but it actually has resonance. When we meet Locke he picks up a hitchhiker, seems genuinely cheerful when he encounters a cop with ‘guns and groceries’ in his backseat and smiles when Eddie asks him what’s with guns. (Eddie, for the record, is Justin Chatwin, who in a few years would achieve stardom in his role as Fiona Gallagher’s first boyfriend on Shameless, and has worked consistently since then, most recently in the Netflix series Another Life.)

Locke seems unusually happy throughout the episode. He introduces Eddie to Jan and Mike, who appear to be leaders of what we really do think is some kind of religious cult. We saw the guns, we see the fertilizer, we hear the prayers and when you realize we’re in the mid ‘90s we’re inclined to agree with Eddie.  Nor would we be surprised if that was the case. We learn in the last part of the flashback that Locke’s psych profile shows he is ‘amenable to coercion’, which is one of those things that cult members look for – and let’s be honest, we’ve seen the Others, they’re a cult in all but name. (We won’t learn the deity they worship until later in this season.) And we’re kind of shocked when Locke hears Eddie’s suspicion and actually laughs. Because he seems to know better.

And of course, the irony is that even though Jan and Mike aren’t leading a revolution, he’s destroyed them anyway. They are running a grow-op and in the 1990s, weed is very illegal.  The fox didn’t come here looking for this, but he found a henhouse anyway.

In a sense what we see throughout the flashback shows that John is still working off the collective trauma of his family. We hear in the prayer gives, we see just how badly he reacts when Eddie’s mentions that everyone’s looking for a daddy, and how quickly he turns the conversation away from his father.  Locke’s family has filled a void in his heart, and now that’s it’s gone to hell when he confronts Eddie in the final flashback, the rage returns. Earlier in the episode Locke didn’t answer whether he was a farmer or a hunter. It’s worth noting when he says: “I’m a hunter” in the flashback, he hates himself for saying it. We know all too well the memory hunting has for him and that he wanted to be a farmer. That’s why when he has a chance to shoot Eddie in the final moments he can’t do it because he knows the connotations of being a hunter and he doesn’t have it in him.

Now in the last minutes of the episode, he tearfully atones to Eko about his failings.  It’s pretty clear that the island is talking through Eko in the conversation when he tells John he is a hunter, something he couldn’t have known. (It also confirms that Eko is just as much attuned to the island as John is …which makes what will happen in two episodes all the more maddening.)

For now it seems that Locke has decided to use ‘hunter’ to mean ‘protector’. He knows that everyone is looking for leadership and that he has to step up. He gives a speech that is not something we have come to hear from Locke so far in the series. Right now, he is following the island’s message that he has to ‘bring the family back together’. He doesn’t know how yet, but right now he thinks that’s what the island wants.  The thing is Locke has thought the island is communicating to him. What will he do when it sends him another message?

And is Locke the only one communicating with the island? Because for everything Desmond seems to say about waking up fine to Hurley, he gets annoyed and mentions something about “Locke’s speech.” Then at the end of the episode, Hurley hears Locke and looks at Desmond, who doesn’t seem to be paying any attention at all. Desmond, as we shall see, is not telling the truth about ‘just waking up in the jungle like this’  Did Desmond get a vision of his own?