Lost Character Study - John Locke: A TV Character Unlike Any Other

 

In February of 2010 just before the final season of Lost debuted, Entertainment Weekly published an issue in which they ranked the 100 Greatest Characters in The Last 20 Years. This list ranked literary, comic book, movie, television and even some internet creations that the editors considered the standouts of the 20 years this magazine had been covering pop culture. And because we were right in the middle of the New Golden Age of Television there were a lot of familiar faces from that era. (As always I'm going to focus on the era Lost was on the air.)

Tony Soprano, Vic Mackey, Don Draper and Dexter Morgan had critical places along the list, along with Buffy Summers, Sydney Bristow, Jack Bauer, Gregory House,  and Omar Little. Al Swearengen and Walter White weren't there, but I was willing to forgive this because Patty Hewes of Damages and Kara Thrace of Battlestar Galactica were – and also because on that list was John Locke.

Even before Lost's run was over it was the consensus of both fans and critics alike that Terry O'Quinn's work as John Locke was one of the great performances in TV history. Nikki Stafford never hesitated to gush over it in every volume of Finding Lost and Back to the Island regularly sings O'Quinn's praises, eventually coming to the conclusion "He is perhaps the single most fleshed out well-developed character in the show and Terry O'Quinn is remarkable at playing every little micro-expression that might plausibly flutter across Locke's face."

Indeed every time I've rewatched Lost over the year what I always take away from O'Quinn's work time and again are how he can convey so much whenever the camera focuses on him without even saying a word. We see in the Pilot when he smiles beatifically as it starts to rain and everyone else seeks shelter. The way he always seems to have a smile that is utterly content and out of context with what is happening during so much of the first season. The look of astonishment when Eko hands him a bible in which a segment from the orientation film from the Swan is visible. The look of panic when the timer runs out for the first time and he watches the numbers start to spin into hieroglyphics. How unable to speak during a vision quest when he sees Boone, he tries to express his regret at letting him die.  How after he has been paralyzed he faces the fact that his future is in a wheelchair. And most of all that look on his face when he's standing on a chair in a motel room preparing to commit suicide and the weight of every single failed decision can be seen in that expression.

It is a level of performance that is deserving of the Emmy he won in 2007 for Best Supporting Actor in a Drama as well as the two other nominations he got in 2005 and 2010, one that ranks with the characters listed above who also received multiple Emmy nominations and often multiple Emmys for their great performances. Yet O'Quinn's work is vastly different from all of these great performances in a way that's vitally different. Because all of them – and this includes Al Swearengen and Walter White – walk through their series with a cockiness and certainty of what they are doing, even as they do often horrible things, sometimes physically, often psychologically to all those around them. There's an air of confidence and swagger when you see Vic Mackey beating up thugs on the street or Dexter Morgan stalking his prey at night. There's even that level of confidence to Sydney Bristow when she's doing a mission undercover or when Patty Hewes is in her office.

By contrast all of the writing about John Locke makes it very clear that he is none of those things. As early as Season Three Nikki Stafford writes: "The history of Locke is that he will always be a pawn and never a player." The author's of Back to the Island refer to him as a 'mark', a 'born sucker' and 'deep down, something of a dupe'. And the writers never let us forget that fact. For all the confidence Locke has when he's striding across the island, brimming with certainty, we know from his flashbacks and so many of his interactions on the island that it's all a front. And one that is visible to most of the other castaways the more time they spend around him.

I think that's why what seems to be an outlier in the flashbacks of Lost – the one in Further Instruction which shows him at a grow-op" – is actually just as vital to understanding John as all of the interactions with his father.  In the final part of the flashback John has taken Eddie hunting, ostensibly to find out what he knows and possibly kill him, but in reality to learn why the cops decided to pick him when they wanted to infiltrate it. Eddie tells him that his psychological profile has revealed that "he was amenable to coercion'. He was told as much by Anthony Cooper in a far more snide way when he was conned out of a kidney and now a cop is basically telling him the exact same thing.  Locke refuses to accept this as a reality – and when we see him four years later he falls for Cooper's cons one last time and ends up getting pushed out a window.

I would contest the idea that Emily St. James posits in Back to the Island as 'a kind of analogue for the angriest, most vengeance driven voices in the United States in the post 9/11 period." I won't deny that his devotion to the island will resemble a kind of religious fanaticism where that parallel could be driven but I've never seen the connection there the way I do with 24 and Homeland. I think that Nikki Stafford's analysis of his character in Season Three is more on point:

"He suffers anger issues because of what his father did to him, he doesn't trust other people and while both would suggest he's a violent man, he's the opposite. He's unable to lash out at people, even when they deserve it, because of his underlying fear that he's the spineless coward his father has made him out to be."

This is true throughout his history on the show. If he doesn't stop to think about he can throw his knives with perfect aim and kill people he thinks are a threat, such as he does to Naomi in the climax of the Season 3 finale. But if he stops to think about it – as he does when he points a gun at Jack moments afterward – he'll fire a shot into the ground and then walk away in defeat. Similarly in The Brig when Cooper is tied to a post helpless before him, he's given a knife and told he has to kill him to prove his value to the island. He's clearly being manipulated by Ben at this point but the viewer's seen all the horrible things Cooper has done over the past three seasons and we'd be fine with his murder. And yet despite all the horrible things he's been put through by him, John can't follow through.

So in order to do so Richard, who wants to use him to remove Ben from power, gives him a file on Sawyer's history and reveals the two men's connection. He then goes to Sawyer that night and says he has Ben locked up in the Black Rock and that he wants him to kill him. Eventually Sawyer is pushed to his limit and pushes John to the ground with a gun to his head. "Why don't you do it?!" he screams. And in a moment of brutal honesty John shouts: "Because I can't!"  Coming from a man whose mantra has been 'Don't tell me what I can't do!" this is arguably the biggest admission he's made to anybody about what a failure he's always been and what he considers himself to be.

And this is something Sawyer never forgets. In the final season when 'Locke' shows up in the Barracks to a drunk and broken Sawyer, it takes less then five minutes in his presence for Sawyer to figure out something that neither Ben nor Richard couldn't figure out when they met him when he returned to the island: he's not John Locke. 'Locke' is taken by surprised and asks how Sawyer's knows. And Sawyer's answer is honest is brutal:

"Because Locke was scared. Even when he was pretending that he wasn't."

That too separates John from so many characters above. I don't remember ever seeing a moment watching a show Dexter or Mad Men or any other character show fear. They were afraid of people learning who they really were, no question, but they were always able to put up a front in public. By contrast so many times over five seasons you could tell how scared Locke really was and a lot of time he wasn't even bothering to pretend.

As I mentioned in my entry on Jack Shephard Jack was wrong on almost every major decision he made on Lost. And because most of the time his decisions were made because Locke was making the opposite argument John was right about almost all of them. In the aftermath of their first critical discussion right before they were about to blow the hatch John told Jack that all of this was happening for a reason, and that they'd all survived the crash because they'd been chosen to be here. He was right about the importance of the button being pushed – and of course when he decided not to do so with disastrous results, he then made the understatement of the century in a hatch that was imploding around him: "I was wrong."

Locke was right about that the people on the freighter weren't there to save the survivors, something Jack ignored at the end of Season 3 and kept denying even after the freighter folk showed up. He was right when he told Jack leaving the island would destroy him and that one day he'd want to come back. He was also right on many other decisions throughout the series. He believed that the message he got from Eko would lead them to Jack and it ended up doing just that. He was right about Ben lying about being the only one to see Jacob and that he was trying to fool his people. And he was right when the island starting blooping through time that by going back to the Orchid was the only way to stop the island from skipping.

Nikki Stafford writes in her summation of Lost that: "Fundamentally John was right about everything." Yet through his entire tenure on the island no one ever gave him credit for that because he had a different principle then every other character. Because the island granted him his legs back, he became its disciple from that moment. And as a result his first priority throughout every season was the island rather than any of his fellow survivors. He also basically followed his own council rather than being part of the group. Even when he was part of the decision making process during the first two seasons he had other priorities: the hatch in Season 1, the button in Season 2.

It's a shame Locke seemed more determined to follow the island then try to be part of the group because he was better at it then he gave himself credit for. Charlie wouldn't have gotten off heroin without his help, Claire and Walt  seemed to find he had good fatherly instincts and he tended to treat Kate better than Jack did the first couple of seasons. He was always less judgmental and self-righteous then Jack during the first half of the series to the other survivors always trying to be respectful and polite. And whenever he chose to step up, such as when Jack, Kate and Sawyer were abducted by the Others in the first half of Season 3 and when he took over when the island started skipping through time, he was superb at it.

The problem was how John saw the island and everyone else did. Famously in White Rabbit Locke tells Jack "I've looked into the eye of the island and what I saw was beautiful." (John has no idea that the Smoke Monster was manipulating him even then.) At no point did any of the other survivors or indeed almost everyone else who ended up there feel that same way. They were all focused on two things: survival and rescue.  And it became clear as early as Season 2 John really wasn't interested in either.

By Season 3 he was openly doing everything possible to impede rescue at every level, blowing up the Flame, the submarine and fatally wounding Naomi. When he tried to tell the survivors in the Season 4 "All I've ever tried to do is act in everyone's best interest," Jack wasn't the only one looking at John as if he were crazy. As he'd tell Miles – while putting a live grenade in his mouth, mind you – he believed he was the sole person who could protect the island and the well-being or wishes of even those who followed him was always secondary.

At that point no one was following John willingly and he was barely hiding the fact that he was taking a dictator like approach in his leadership. He still hadn't changed that much and he was capable of manipulations of Ben and Sawyer, who'd already fooled him more than once in previous seasons. As a result most of the people who followed him to the Barracks ended up getting killed by the mercenaries (though to be fair Ben had his own role in that) and he had to force Hurley at gunpoint to come with him to find the cabin. While he's being incredibly snide at the time when Ben says: "John's still looking for someone to tell him what to do," he's completely right. Locke has no plan beyond the idea when he takes everyone to the barracks and he's still one step behind Ben's manipulations the whole way. The fact that's he right doesn't change the collateral damage that happens in his wake.

In 'This Place is Death', Nikki Stafford makes the bold argument that while "Locke may be crazy, he's still the bravest character on this show."  I always found that debatable; many characters time and again had shown themselves capable of making brave and selfless decisions putting the survival of the group ahead of their own. But it's hard not to deny the decision John makes at that point isn't up there.

John loves the island more than anything and he knows because Ben told them once you move the island you can never come back. He's also been told that he has to get all of the people who left together to return to the island though he has no idea how he can do that. And he is told by Richard that the only way he can do that is to die. So that John believes all of this and still decides to move the island (on a broken leg, no less) does rank as  one of the biggest sacrifices any character will ever make. That he's essentially being lied to by larger forces doesn't negate his bravery.

For that reason 'The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham'  - what viewers all know is the final episode in which we see the 'real' John Locke is incredibly sad even though we know beforehand basically what's going to happen. And the worst part is John absolutely should have seen it coming.

With the exception of Walt none of the other survivors are happy to see him. With good reason. Despite just how miserable all of their lives have been in the three years since they left the island, not one of them wants to go back. What's more all of them have not forgotten all of the truly horrendous things John did in the name of the island that led to them that made a traumatic experience emotionally, even more draining for all of them. They're clearly all carrying survivor's guilt for all the people who died and who they left behind that has already caused them to fragment all over the world and Locke is a living reminder of it.

All of them treat him with varying degrees of scorn, fear and hatred, which despite our sympathy for John is still justified at every level.  Indeed with each rewatch it's just a reminder that John is still being manipulated  by larger forces: an agent of Widmore is ferrying him around, Ben is following him from a distance, the Man in Black is manipulating him and he's trying to do this for the approval of Jacob. The fact that he truly feels that he can disrupt their lives after three years and just ask them to back to a place they escaped – one that he's already been told will very likely kill them if they return – makes you wonder if the only reason he's doing this is because it will get him back to the island and that's the only place he's whole.

In a sense Locke's death in a dirty hotel room at the hands of his worst enemy is fitting for the larger theme. The mission statement for Lost was always "Live Together, Die Alone" and it takes until the series is over for us to realize that the characters all needed to learn how true that was. Locke never once followed that mission brief and as a result dying alone was the only fate he could possibly earn. That the last thought that went through his head as Ben strangled him was "I don't understand' is also sadly appropriate for John who did everything because of a higher purpose that he never truly understood is entire time on the island.

Writing about Locke in 'The Substitute'

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… 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.

John Locke was one of the greatest characters in TV history and like so many great ones we've never truly seen one like him since. I've only seen variations of him in some of the shows that Damon Lindelof did after Lost ended: Matt Jamison, the minister who keeps trying to find some proof of miracles in a world after the rapture in The Leftovers, Adrian Veidt in Watchmen convinced that he is the savior of mankind even after bringing about an apocalypse, Hal Jordan in Lanterns, needing to hold onto the ring because it's the only thing that makes him whole.

Nikki Stafford was right when she said that John Locke really was remarkable. Emily St. James is right when she said deep down, he was something of a dupe. It is that contradiction that made him, as the show would say, truly special.