Lost Recap: The Substitute

 

In Finding Lost Nikki Stafford says one of the highpoints of this episode is Ben’s eulogy of Locke. I agree with her, but not in the context that is the craziest eulogy ever or Frank’s description of this as ‘the weirdest funeral I’ve ever been too.”

In a way there’s so much about John Locke being laid to rest that is fitting for Locke as we’ve known him for four and a half years on Lost. Just before they are about to put him in the ground, Ilana says: “We should say something. Didn’t any of you know him?: “Did anyone know him?” And there is this long, tragic pause before Ben finally says that he did.

What hurts the most is that, even if everyone who had survived the show to this point been standing over Locke’s grave, there would still be this long tragic pause. Because for all Locke’s brilliance as a character he spent the entirety of the series on his own journey, slowly but surely isolating himself from everyone else on the plane, then in the Others to the point that no one knew anything about him. It’s fitting that Ben gives the eulogy because the sad truth is, he’s the only character on the show who really knew John at all.

That’s why I find Michael Emerson’s performance in this moment perfect because it is awkward, genuine and remorseful – three things we’ve never associated with Ben for the entire series. "John Locke was... a believer. He was…a man of faith. He was…a much better man than I will ever be. And I’m very sorry I’m murdered him.”

Obviously that last sentence is very funny particularly as this shocking revelation is essentially a throwaway: it’s the nature of the show at this point that everyone at the funeral is just going to have to shrug and keep moving given the situation. But there’s a larger meaning to it particularly when it comes to Ben in the context of Season 6. He has taken responsibility for his action (though not yet for murdering Jacob) but as John’s murder basically served as an impetus to it, this is nearly as big a deal. And his eulogy does get to the core of who Locke was, and the real reason Ben spent so much of the series manipulating him, resenting him and finally killing him. Locke was everything Ben wasn’t and as a result of his actions, the island is facing the consequences.

Terry O’Quinn’s work as Locke was one of the great performances in television history as he created one of the most memorable characters from the moment we met him. From the moment we learned his secret in Walkabout,  John Locke seemed like he was the key to the entire series why he was special and why the island was. We have seen Locke’s life playout in a way that almost no other character on the show has: we saw his premature birth, we saw his death and almost every major moment in between. And what’s been clear from season after season is that Locke’s life was a story in tragedy, someone who was unwanted from the moment he was born and who died convinced he was a failure, not even getting to choose how he died.

We saw Locke’s story unfold essentially chronologically in the flashbacks: we learned he was raised in foster care, how his father reached out to him only to con him out of a kidney, how he found a woman how loved him but ended up losing her when he chose his father over her, how he went to a grow-up to find peace and let a cop in to destroy it, how he trusted his father one time too many and ended up a wheelchair. We’ve also seen before anyone else on the show that his destiny was the island and that he kept avoiding it because he didn’t trust himself. His entire life was built on never trusting his instincts or trusting the wrong people.

Then the moment he woke up on the island, he could walk and for the first time something had been given to him rather than taken away. He knew before anyone else why the island was a special place. But Locke had spent so much time trusting the wrong people in the real world that he chose not to share this reason and while everyone else who survived the crash formed alliances with other people, Locke’s only allegiance for five season was to the island. Everyone who survived the crash was stingy with information about their pasts but John’s was the most important. The only person he chose to share it with was Boone, and he died not long after. Sawyer found out in Season 3 but apparently he’s never told any of the other survivors (or anyone in Dharma) what he knew about Locke.

In a sense Jack’s belief in destiny is a little more unbalanced than John’s. We’ll get to why in the next episode but for now it’s worth remembering Locke’s belief in the island was based on a very specific reason. Jack’s faith, at least initially, is much more misguided and blind and its understandable that Kate has been resistant to it.

The other difference is as bad as a leader as Jack was, he always was willing to trust certain people overtime, even if he could be self-righteous. It’s worth remembering Locke’s last thought: “I don’t understand.” Locke believes the island will tell him what to do, even if he doesn’t understand why. In Season 1, he thought the hatch was his destiny and spent most of the season trying to open. When he finally got inside in Season 2 and found that it contained a button that needed to be pushed every 108 minutes, he thought that was his destiny but he was never as sure of that and by the end of the season he decided that the button needed to be destroyed –  and his final words before Desmond turned the failsafe key were: “I was wrong.”

In Season 3 he found his communion with the island again, and this time he decided his destiny was with the Others. Despite the fact that ‘Henry Gale’ had spent half a season lying to him about everything, when the Losties made it the barracks the first person John made a beeline to was Ben. Ben basically then picked up right where he’d left off in the hatch but the tide was turning from Ben to Locke and by the end of Season 3 Ben was no longer in charge and at the end of Season 4 Locke was leading the Others. For two minutes.

Finally in Season Five Locke had a mission: he had to bring the Oceanic 6 back to the island to save everyone on the island from dying. Again he didn’t understand and even though he only received very vague instructions he did what he always did and blindly followed. He then immediately allied with Widmore – the same person who’d spent all of Season Four trying to kill him – because Widmore said he was special.

He crossed the globe trying to convince those who left to come back, all of whom treated him with varying degrees of scorn, contempt and fear. In retrospect, that was inevitable considering everything Locke had done right up until the moment they left and how little an effort he had made to either to get to know them or even to treat them with respect. For all Jack’s flaws, he and the group had agreed to live together…which made it sadly fitting that John Locke died alone.

And yet even though after this episode John Locke is dead and buried, he is neither gone nor forgotten, not by the show and not by the characters. And while we may be wondering whether the writers are now keeping the Man in Black in Terry O’Quinn’s form simply because they don’t want to let go of him (though who could blame them) the fact remains there’s a critical reason that the Man In Black is now wearing Locke’s skin. For five seasons the one thing everybody thought they knew about Locke was that he wanted to stay on the island and that all of this was happening for a reason. This isolated him among all of the survivors who just wanted to leave the island.

Now UnLocke walks up to Sawyer and offers to tell him – with no mysticism or bullshit – what that reason is. Sawyer is the first of the surviving Candidates – a term we heard mention by Ilana at the end of Season 5 with no explanation was to what it meant – that UnLocke will approach and tell them that the island is not nor ever has been special and seems to hate it more than the rest of them ever did. And because of that change the characters will start to look at the perception of Locke differently even though none of them really knew him.

It's fitting that the first person UnLocke goes to among the survivors is Sawyer as he spent the last three years ‘waiting for him to come back.’ And it’s worth remembering several things. First that Sawyer, as gifted a con man as he is, was always the easiest man to con. Locke knew that as he conned Sawyer into killing Cooper for him. Second is that Ben and Richard both knew Locke far better than Sawyer did and both were completely snowed when UnLocke showed up at their doorstep.

Sawyer barely blinks when Locke shows up and tells him he’s dead. Part of it is due to his despair and drunkenness. But less than two minutes after being in his presence Sawyer says: “You sure as hell ain’t John Locke.” UnLocke is puzzled and asks how he knows. “Because Locke was scared. Even when he was pretending he wasn’t.” Richard and Ben both noted the difference between the Locke they’d known before but just shrugged it off. Sawyer knows  - without having to see his corpse – that this isn’t the Locke he knew.

It’s worth noting that when UnLocke tells Richard that Locke was ‘a Candidate’, Richard has no idea what it means. We don’t know yet the history between Richard and UnLocke (or Jacob for that matter) but there’s something stunning about this. For three seasons Richard seems to have had all the answers and the fact that he’s been on the island for decades without aging would seem to indicate he was entrusted by Jacob with more wisdom than any of the Others. Now it becomes clear in a few lines by Richard that he’s no different from anyone else on the island: he has just been blindly following and never asking a single question. Even with Jacob dead and a man promising him the answers Richard stays firm to his principles.

Sawyer’s decision may be in part because he has lost everything he held dear within the last few days but we can’t ignore the fact that he’s also trying to find a way to recoup and adapt. Sawyer’s been able to do that his whole life. He did it after Cooper died; he did it when the island started blooping through time, and he sure as hell did it when he was part of the Dharma Initiative. He was dismissive of Jack’s talk of destiny only a few hours ago so it might strike some as odd when Locke offers to tell him why he’s here. When Richard tells him he can’t trust him and what his alternatives are, it’s hard to blame his dismissiveness: he’s spent three years dealing with the Others and he can only see the Temple as a step backward.

For the first time we get a hint as to what UnLocke might have been when he was the man in black. He speaks with longing of being ‘trapped…for so long he doesn’t remember what it was like to be free. I know what it means to know betrayal, anguish…I know what it is to lose someone you love.” It’s the first time since we knew that this wasn’t Locke that he’s seemed something resembling a human being and for the first time we doubt ourselves.

Because of the sideways world we get two John Lockes (three?) for the price of one. This John Locke seems far less broken then we saw in the original world. He’s still in his wheelchair, still working at the box factory (until the giant douche Randy fires him) and still frustrated. But while there are hints at the rage we saw occasionally, he’s more inclined to laugh at himself then before when things go wrong. He’s also managed to hold on to Helen (yea!) and they are about to tie the knot. There’s also some discussion that his father in his life, though based on what we know that’s hard to fathom even in an alternate universe. And perhaps more importantly, Locke seems to have accepted there are some things he can’t do. When Rose tells him that she wants to find a job he can do, he listens. He did go on the walkabout like in the original timeline and just like there he was turned away. But when he relays the experience to Helen, there’s a sense of acceptance in it that we never saw in the old John Locke. This John Locke doesn’t believe in destiny. This John Locke doesn’t believe in miracles. And this John Locke…seems fine with it.

John Locke has taken on the job of a substitute teacher. This is fitting because that’s apparently the reason the Man In Black chose him. Locke was never supposed to be the leader of the island or a Candidate; rather he was just a placeholder until the Man in Black could maneuver him so that he could kill Jacob. And why did he kill Jacob? Well, we do get a partial answer in the final scene – and a lot more.

The final scene of the episode does what I imagine many fans were hoping the entire final season would do: it gives one of the biggest revelations of the series. Two in fact. We’ve been wondering for five seasons if everybody on the plane was brought to the island and by who. Now we get the answer: Jacob brought them there. We also have spent years wondering what those six numbers that we’ve been seeing for all five seasons – 4,8,15,16,23,42 – mean in the context of the series. They did seem to have significance in regard to the button but now there’s a larger context.

It might seem dismissive when Locke says: “Jacob had a thing for numbers” but as we’ll see in the very next episode, there’s a reason he gave those numbers to the candidates. Across the cave wall, we see dozens of names and numbers, many of which are crossed out and many of which we’ve seen before. (We’ll get a view at several more in the next episode as well.) The names and numbers we see correlate with passengers on Oceanic 815, members of the Others, the Dharma Initiative, the freighter folk and even some pertaining to Rousseau’s team. And it would seem they are a fraction of the hundreds he has called to the island in who knows how long. These numbers and names are Candidates. And these candidates according to UnLocke have been drawn to the island to succeed Jacob. All of these seem to have been crossed off, except for the last six:

4: John Locke

8. Hugo Reyes

15. James Ford

16. Sayid Jarrah

23. Jack Shephard

42. Kwon (we will never know for sure whether it is Sun or Jin)

 

We saw Jacob touch all six of these candidates (Kate too) in The Incident and we are reminded of this by flashes every time we go to a number. UnLocke’s description of how Jacob got involve: “He came to you probably when you were weak and broken. And somewhere along the way choices that you thought were making were never really choices at all” would seem to fit every time we saw Jacob make contact with the Candidates in The Incident and there’s no reason to believe that was the only time Jacob met with them over their lives. (Again, we’ll get more evidence of that in the next episode.)  UnLocke may not be the bad guy but its increasingly hard to argue Jacob is the good guy. That he is trustworthy is a completely different story given everything we saw him do in the season premiere alone but given that Jacob’s pattern would seem to be never telling anybody what his plans are and only speaking in terms of some kind of vague good doesn’t exactly make him reliable. (He’s dead and he’s still not telling people everything he knows, for crying out loud!)

That may be the reason that the Man In Black has chosen Locke’s form. Ilana tells Ben that he’s stuck in this form but never gives a reason why. Perhaps Jacob’s death locked (pun sort of intended) the Man in Black in the body he was stuck in but there will be many reasons in the final season where its clear that Darlton never truly though through the reasons of both him and the smoke monster. However, from a dramatic standpoint it resonates in a way being in, say, Christian’s form wouldn’t. Locke spent his entire time on the island convincing everybody to stay because the island was special and needed to be kept safe. So when the man telling Sawyer that the island doesn’t need to be protecting from anything is using Locke’s form, it resonates in a way that it wouldn’t with any of the other hosts.

That said, we still can’t be sure to trust him. Consider the option he presents Sawyer:

First, do nothing and see how this turns out. As a result, your name may be crossed off the list. To emphasize this, UnLocke crosses off Locke’s name.

The implication is that the only way to get off the list is to die. That would make sense – but if you look at the cave walls Austen and Littleton are crossed off and as we saw in the last episode both are very much alive.

Second, you can choose to take the job of the next Jacob. UnLocke says the island doesn’t need protection and that it will be fine on its own. This goes against everything Sawyer has heard and experienced for the past five seasons; he knows it better than some of the people who left the island, in fact. But Sawyer never bought into anything the Others told him, he certainly never thought much of the adult Ben’s reasoning. And as we heard when UnLocke said at the start, he’s wanted to leave this island multiple times already and would have done so had not intervened at the end of last season.

So when UnLocke tells him that the third option is, we just leave you can tell he’s already made up his mind even before he knows how. It will be difficult to parse the motivations of everyone else who UnLocke is ‘recruiting’ but with Sawyer the reason is crystal clear. He wants off this rock. But Sawyer never trusted Locke when he was alive and as we’ll see very quickly, he doesn’t trust him any more now that he’s dead.

John Locke was murdered in a dirty hotel room but he is laid to rest in the one place that was truly his home: the island. We’ll occasionally get a hint that the old Locke is still in there – his uttering of ‘Don’t tell me what I can’t do’ to a teenage boy that has to be the ghost of Jacob makes that clear – but Locke as we know him is gone. His body is still walking around, scorning both the body he’s wearing and the island Locke loved so much. And even though he’s had dozens of chances to kill Sawyer already – including when they were climbing down ‘Jacob’s Ladder’ and it broke –  and hasn’t, we know already that there’s a lethal force in him that can kill whenever he wants to and has for the last five seasons. He claims that all he wants is to leave. Which gives us two more questions. How many people will he kill to do that? And why haven’t those candidates been among them?

 

IF YOU BELIEVE THE ENDING: It makes sense that Randy would be there. Randy was a part of Locke’s life before the island and as we all know he has a connection to Hurley before this. But why would the psychic who conned Hurley be at the temp agency Hurley owned? In the original timeline she was a psychic before Hurley got on the plane, so it would make sense if he saw her. But as good-hearted as Hurley is, I can’t see him wanting to have the woman who was a symbol of his father’s betrayal part of anyone’s story, least of all Locke’s. (Then again, Hugo always has been helping people…)

Rose’s presence isn’t out of the question because we never learned either what Rose’s job before she got on the plane. The fact that she’s the same person she was in the real universe actually tracks with both versions of the story: the island always affected Rose the least and she was always a caring person. Anyway, I never regret seeing her character.