Lost Rewatch on VHS: The Beginning of the End

 

Like most episode titles this one has a double meaning. It refers both to the warning Ben gave before Jack called the freighter (the opening montage reminds us of that) and also the fact this; now that the series has an end date in mind, the season premiere is the beginning of the end.

But there’s also a deeper meaning and it has to do with the character at the center of the episode: Hurley.  In Season Four of Finding Lost, Nikki Stafford wrote that the episode was centered on Hurley for several reasons. Because we’d seen Jack at the end of Season Three and we knew he got rescued, starting Season 4 with an episode centered on him (as it had with every season to date) would make little sense. By focusing on Hurley, we learned not only that he was rescued as well but we get a term that is critical to the series for Season Four: the Oceanic 6.  For the first half of the season the viewer will be speculating who the other three people who got rescued were.

The other reason the episode focused on Hurley was because he was Charlie’s closest friend on the island and as the castaways spend most of the episode reacting to Charlie’s death and what his final message was, it makes sense to focus on Hurley. And because we learn in one of the flashforwards that Hurley has seen Charlie, we assume that he is still dealing with his death.

But in hindsight there’s clearly more at play. How much of a plan the writers had for the endgame of Lost  at this point is unclear but few would deny that Hurley becomes far more vital to the series than he has before.  And there’s a decent argument that the groundwork for what would play out in the final season starts getting laid out for much of action involving Hurley both on the island and off it.  So let’s follow Hurley in this episode, first on the island and how it ends up playing off the war between Jack and Locke, which is critical to the action of Season Four.

First of all, let’s remember where Hurley is when we left him. He has become a bona fide hero, saving everybody’s lives on the beach. When he gets in touch with Jack at the beginning of the episode and learns that the signal has been sent, he becomes overjoyed because he naturally thinks that Charlie is alive. Then he goes to the beach, shares with Bernard his secret about the lottery and says: “I’m going to be free.” He looks at the beach and says that he wants to do a cannonball. And then, to the music that we’ve come to associate with Hurley’s happiness, in slow motion he leaps off the beach and dives underwater. There’s a look of pure joy on his face: one that we just don’t associate anyone having on this series.

And the moment he resurfaces he sees Desmond rowing back to the beach…alone. While everybody is trying to figure out Desmond’s scattered warning, Hurley finally gets everyone to focus on what they should be: “Where’s Charlie?!” And Desmond breaks down and tells him what happened to his friend.

Hurley has always been the central character who has the biggest heart and cares the most about everyone’s wellbeing. Throughout the first three seasons while people like Jack and Locke were making the hard decisions, he spent all his energy trying to cheer everybody – including them – up. Sometimes that meant going into the jungle and facing imminent death but despite his squeamish and his terror, he would always man up because he cares about his friends. In that sense, he’s always had a better motivation for leadership than either Jack or Locke: Jack has never been able to delegate and only helps people because he wants to fix things and while Locke claims to be acting in everyone’s self-interest, his priority has always been the island.  As Rose pointed out back in Season Two, no one has a problem with Hurley.

Now Hurley’s heart has been sliced in two and he understandably lets his emotions get the better of him. While everybody is bickering on the next move to make, Hurley throws the walkie-talkie into the ocean and says: “We should get going.” There’s a coldness to him that we just haven’t seen before.  When Sawyer tries to persuade them to stay on the beach, Hurley convinces everybody to keep moving saying that you don’t wait with warnings you warn. Sawyer tries to help Hurley in an awkward fashion but Hurley remembers how much time Sawyer spent abusing Charlie when he was alive and he doesn’t want comfort from him yet.

So Hurley falls behind…and somehow runs right into the cabin. We’ll later learn that we’re being fed a narrative about what the cabin means that isn’t true. What is clear is that this is the first sign we’ve seen that Hurley has a communion with the island.  We have no idea how Ben found the cabin in the first place, but the fact it just appears (and keeps appearing to him, no matter how hard he tries to get away from it) shows that he might be special too. Unfortunately, it terrifies him to the point that he’s vulnerable…and runs into the worst possible person.

Anyone else had they run into Locke at this moment would regard him with rage. That’s what actually happens when Locke comes back to the survivors; you can see all of them looking on him with something between contempt and fear. But Hurley has never been that kind of person and he also happens to be vulnerable right now.

And its worth noting that Locke is more than willing to play on that vulnerability. The viewer will spend much of Season Four genuinely wondering if Locke has completely gone crazy and in fact might have become evil, and there’s a decent argument it starts at this moment.  Locke killed Naomi because he was sent on a very specific mission from a source that anyone else would have doubted. (There’s actually an argument that if he’d let Naomi live much of what happened in Season Four wouldn’t have happened the same way, as I’ll explain later.) Locke knows that he has to now convince a group of people who want to be rescued and leave the island that it is not in their interest to do so. Those on the beach don’t trust him because he blew up the sub to get them the rescued and those on the radio tower saw him kill Naomi and try to kill Jack.  The only person who might take his side is Ben and no one believes him either.

So when Hurley tells him that Charlie warned them that this was not Penny’s boat, it’s all Locke needs to hear.  He doesn’t  care who the boat has been sent by (he never thinks to ask the question until several episodes later) or even why they are here. He knows Hurley well enough to know the influence he has over the survivors and that if he can convince him, people will listen. And he drives the point home when he makes it clear if they fail: “Charlie died for nothing.” Charlie was Locke’s friend too but as far as John cares, he’s just another sacrifice the island demanded.

Much will be written about how Jack loses his authority the moment he pulls the trigger on the gun with the intent to kill Locke. But look at it from his perspective. He’s spent the last several months feuding with Locke and he was about to get rescued when Locke blew up the submarine that was his ticket off the island. He just led his people across the island, ran into Ben who threatened to kill his friends if he didn’t stay on the island, and then thought he did kill them. They got to the tower and they thought they were about to get rescued and then Locke shows up, throws a knife in Naomi’s back, fires a bullet at Jack’s feet and says if he doesn’t hand over the phone, he’ll shoot him. Jack might have overreacted but not by much.

But Jack’s capacity for leadership will always run counter to his inability to accept information that is contrary to what he believes. When Kate tells Jack that there might be a dummy trail after Naomi runs off, he just laughs it off even though there’s no other reason there’d be two bloody trails.  The fact that Charlie swam down to rescue everybody but spent his dying breath to tell everybody that the people on the boat were not who they said they were would seem to be the kind of evidence to make a rational person think. But because Locke suggested it first, Jack automatically refused to give any reason to it.  Ironically, from the moment the freighter folk arrive on the island Jack spends every moment believing that they are not who they say are and that they’re not there to rescue them.

I think that is why, in the final flashforward Hurley, who clearly doesn’t trust Jack’s motives any more (we’ll get to that in a minute) apologizes for going with Locke. He knows that Locke would never have been able to get the group to split without his influence and that if he had gone with Jack, there’s a good chance fewer people would have died and more people would have been rescued than six.  Jack’s curt acceptance of his apology says a lot about him. We know that his own guilt is at least one of the factors that led him to where he was in Through the Looking Glass, and by now we also know that Jack essentially takes the weight of the world on his shoulders and will not let anyone lift it from him. In his mind his attitude is how dare this crazy person try to alleviate my well-deserved burden.

And whatever else is driving Jack when we see him in Hurley’s flashforward, it isn’t compassion for his survivors. When he sees the high-speed chase going through LA and recognizes the car (it’s the one that Hurley had spent fixing up with his dad in Tricia Tanaka is Dead) his first reaction is not of concern for his friends but anger. When he comes to see Hurley in the last flashforward under the nature of visiting a friend, Hurley immediately sees through his compassion as self-interest.  We’re still not sure why he’s mad at Jack, but the guys who everybody loves clearly seems to be holding a grudge against him.

Then again maybe Hurley’s got enough to worry about. We learn that he saw the ghost of Charlie in a convenience store and then hallucinated him again in the interrogation room in the LAPD. (Some wondered just what Hurley did to merit such a massive overreaction; my argument is simply, it’s the LAPD. Overreaction is their go-to mode.) Hurley justifiably thinks he is going crazy and demands to be sent back to Santa Rosa. Once he’s there he meets a mysterious man named Matthew Abaddon, who clearly knows that he is lying about what happened to him. (We’re still not sure what: “Are they still alive means?” but I have a guess which I’ll put forth in the next article.) Finally he sees Charlie and they have a heart-to-heart in which his dead friend tells him things like: “I’m dead but I’m also here", “he’s avoiding it,” and “They need you.” Hurley has every reason to believe that the curse that he thought he had broken has returned tenfold and that the only way to protect everyone he loves is to stay locked up in an institution.

It’s truly sad watching him on both the island and the flashforwards. At this point in Season Four we still don’t know if Hurley has gone crazy or he is being visited by the dead.  Jack might very well be thinking the same thing by the time we see him in his flashforward but right now, they could both be variations on PTSD which both men have every reason to be suffering from. We’ll later get an explanation as to how some of the dead are appearing but not the ones here. Has the island reached out to them? Hurley seems to think so in his last scene with Jack, and even though Jack insists “We’re not going back!” we know in a while (and a beard) he’ll be singing a different tune.

Right now the major crisis on the island is the biggest division we’ve had on the show so far. There have been many times in the first three seasons that the survivors have been divided, but to this point their division has always been towards a greater purpose, almost always trying to help the group. This schism is different.  They are being asked to decide between hope and fear. Jack is arguing the freighter means rescue; Locke is arguing it means death.

And its very telling how the division breaks down. We’re not surprised that Claire decides to go with Hurley; she believes Charlie’s last words. Rousseau made it clear she wasn’t going anywhere and naturally Alex and Karl go with her. Sawyer’s defection is something of a surprise but he wants to survive. And it shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone that Jack has no problem letting Ben go with Locke.

Ben’s attitude in this episode and the next several episodes actually make us question his thinking. He’s now a prisoner but he goes out of his way to goad Jack at every opportunity and deliberately withhold information from him. To be clear Jack kind of deserves it. But for much of the next several episodes a man who seemed determined to want to survive spends his time doing everything in his power to infuriate his captors and withhold vital information. Perhaps he goes with Locke because he thinks John is thinking clearly, perhaps its because he wants to keep Alex safe.  But for someone who warned Jack that if he called the boat everyone would die, he doesn’t do much to make sure anyone survives – including himself.

Equally interesting is who goes with Jack. We should be shocked Kate goes; we know she’s off the island. Jin and Sun have no reason to think they’re in trouble yet and Juliet wants to get off the island more than any of the survivors. But when Bernard asks Rose if she wants to go with Locke, she blatantly refuses. She said she would never leave the island and she knows as well as Locke how special it is. But Locke’s actions have crossed a line she never forgives him for.

The most surprising decision is made by Desmond. Even though he saw Charlie’s last message, even though he warned them not to call the boat, even though he has a greater connection to Locke (he was the only person who asked why he hadn’t come back from the rescue mission) he still decides to go with Jack. Perhaps he is grieving for Charlie in his own way and he feels that he has to make sure that the rescue happens. Or maybe it’s the fact that he heard Penny and now she knows he’s alive.  At the end of the day, his desire to leave the island is driving him more than his own survival.

The episode ends with another helicopter arriving and another man parachuting out of it.  We don’t know who he is, but when he asks the question: “Are you Jack?” we know the game is about to change. Naomi has died, but the freighter is here and now the survivors have to prepare for what’s coming.