Here’s a three-minute promo that was shown at the Roma Fiction Fest this week. The promo focuses on how LOST is a global phenomenon. At the end, there’s a little teaser for Season 6, aka the “Destiny Found” season.
Also, while I was browsing on YouTube, I found a cute (though shaky) video clip of Terry O’Quinn (Locke) and Jorge Garcia (Hurley) at the first Roma Fiction Fest, two years ago:
Videos by dudeoneeighttwo and malamoffo
After I posted my “Who is Jacob?” post (directly below), I started thinking that Jacob might be John Locke.
In Follow the Leader, we saw present-day Locke, using Richard Alpert as his messenger, give instructions to time-traveling Locke to bring everyone back to the Island. In other words, Locke was giving (and getting) his marching orders to (and from) himself.
Many times over the seasons, we have seen Locke attribute his actions to orders from Jacob. But now we know that Locke can (also?) get orders from himself. Could it be that Locke’s encounters with Jacob were really encounters with himself, that Jacob was really Locke from a different time? Were the meetings similar to what we just saw in Follow the Leader, with Locke meeting a time-traveling Locke from the past and giving (and receiving) his orders to (and from) himself?
Since I didn’t think of this until after I posted my earlier poll, I didn’t include Locke as one of the choices. So let me ask you that now:
Here’s the scene from Follow the Leader of present-day Locke telling Richard Alpert what to say to time-traveling Locke:
Notice that when Ben says to Locke, “Your timing was impeccable, John. How did you know when to be here?” John answers, “The Island told me.”
Could “the Island” also be Jacob? Would that make the Island = Jacob = John Locke? Has everything that has happened so far been the result of John Locke talking to himself across time?
And when we last saw John, marching down the beach, saying he wanted to kill Jacob, was he really setting off on a quest to kill a time-traveling version of himself?
Boing boing boing, goes my head.
Miles and Jin watching the people get on the submarine
Although the episode title refers to a “leader” in the singular, there are actually two leaders in this episode who set out on parallel treks in different times — Jack in 1977 and Locke in 2007. Each is convinced that he is finally acting out his destiny. And each has Richard Alpert tagging along, as fresh and dewy-looking as ever.
Jack wants to carry out Faraday’s plan to explode the bomb, in order to put things back the way they were. Kate’s not interested. If everything is undone, she will just become a fugitive again, and will never have met Jack. Besides, she thinks, not unreasonably, that it’s irresponsible to go around detonating hydrogen bombs.
Ellie, though, is glad to show Jack where the bomb is. She knows she has just shot her future son and of course would want to see that undone. Not to mention that the bomb is right under the village of her enemies, the Dharma Initiative.
Sayid pops up (I had forgotten about him!) and rescues Kate from being shot by a Hostile. Kate takes the opportunity to head back to Dharmaville, where she is captured and put on the submarine in the impromptu prisoner’s quarters already occupied by Sawyer and Juliet. They were gazing into each other’s eyes and reveling in their sweet Suliet-ness until being rudely interrupted by Kate’s arrival.
Jack, Sayid, and Ellie, accompanied, for some reason, by Alpert, enter some very cool-looking underground tunnels and find the bomb, which apparently was not encased in concrete after all.
Meanwhile, Hurley, Miles, and Jin are in the hills above Dharmaville. Poor guys! Sawyer, who was supposed to lead them to the beach, is on the sub, apparently not caring that he was leaving them behind.
Miles, though, learns something important about his past. He watches his father, Dr. Chang, yelling at his mother, who has baby Miles in her arms, telling her she has to leave. Grown-up Miles understands that his father is yelling not because he is cruel, nor because he wants to get rid of his wife and infant son, but because he knows that yelling is the only way he will get his wife to leave — and save herself and baby Miles. And so the Island, once again, seems to have healed one of its character’s painful lifelong Daddy issues!
Thirty years later, in the Hostile’s camp, John Locke is glowing with alpha male energy. Alpert (who John aptly describes as a kind of adviser who has had that job “for a very, very long time”) and Ben appear submissive, but seem to harbor mutiny in their hearts, as they follow John on a trek to find Jacob, who no one has ever seen before.
Alpert had told Sun that he had seen all the 1977 Losties die. Locke told her that Jacob can bring them back. But Locke told Ben that he really wanted to find Jacob in order to kill him.
There’s a mind-bending scene where Locke tells Alpert that his time-tripping self is going to appear in the jungle with a bullet in his leg (just as we saw him earlier this season). Locke tells Alpert to tell the other Locke that he has to bring everyone back to the Island, and that in order to do that he will have to die.
So Locke’s instructions came from …. future Locke. So it’s all a big circle? Excuse me while my head explodes.
Screencap from Lost-Media, (c) ABC
Posted in 5x15 Follow the Leader, Ben (Michael Emerson), Daddy issues, Destiny versus Free Will, Dr. Chang (Francois Chau), Ellie in 1977 (Alice Evans), Hurley (Jorge Garcia), Jack (Matthew Fox), Jack versus Locke, Jacob (Mark Pellegrino), Jin (Daniel Dae Kim), Juliet (Elizabeth Mitchell), Kate (Evangeline Lilly), Locke (Terry O'Quinn), Miles (Ken Leung), Recaps and reviews, Richard Alpert (Nestor Carbonell), Sawyer (Josh Holloway), Sayid (Naveen Andrews), Suliet (Sawyer and Juliet), Time travel, Widmore in 1977 (David S. Lee)
Here’s another entry in the “LOST actors who sing” series. It’s a strange one. Pay attention to the words:
You think his kids had Daddy issues? 
The video clip is from 1989, when O’Quinn was on MTV’s The Big Picture. He was promoting Stepfather II
Here are the trailers for Stepfather I (1987) and Stepfather II (1989), which are unintentionally funny, and filled with scary … hairstyles.
Smokie shows Ben faces from the past
Ben, still wracked with guilt over Alex’s death, has come back to the Island to be judged by Smokie, who he calls “The Monster.”
That name could just as easily be applied to Ben himself. Ben is a cold-blooded killer, as we see in both the present storytime and the past via flashback. In the present, Ben shoots Caesar point blank, after manipulating him into attacking John. In the past, Ben tries to kill Penny, who he has never even met, just to get back at her father. He shoots Desmond because he is in the way. Surely Ben is the real monster of this story.
And yet, it’s a testament to Michael Emerson’s skill as an actor that we don’t simply hate Ben. When he tells Charles that baby Alex is not an “it,” Ben seems human, even endearing. When he sees the vision of Alex in Smokie’s lair, and he says her name, the love, and longing, and sorrow, and regret in his voice is heartbreaking.
The episode is almost as much about Locke as it is about Ben. Being dead for a while seems to have done Locke a world of good. It must have been like a little vacation, if we can judge by how refreshed he looks! He’s got his Season One macho swagger back, his confidence, his smile, his twinkling eyes, and his ability to do a magic mind-meld with the will of the Island.
There’s a lot of talk about the Island’s will. Not only John, but also Ben, Widmore, and Alpert all have lines referring to “what the Island wants.” At times, they seem to equate “what Jacob wants” with “what the Island wants.” Does that mean that Jacob is the Island, in some sense?
We see Ben in several stages of his life, and along the way, a few mysteries are cleared up. Charles, with a lot of hair, visits Little Ben and tells him the Island saved his life. Young-man Ben, with a teenaged Ethan, takes baby Alex. Several years later, Alex is in a swing, and Charles is banished from the Island.
In the present, Ben appears freaked out that John is alive, and says that knowing it would happen is different from actually seeing it. Ben and Locke then take the Island version of a buddy road trip. They run into Sun and Lapidus. The latter has had it with dead men walking, and wants to leave Crazy Island. But Sun wants to stay and find Jin. Locke tells her he has some ideas for how she can do that.
Ben lies to Sun, and tells her that “dead is dead” and that he had no idea that Locke would come back to life. Or is it Locke he had lied to, earlier, when Ben told him he knew he would come back — and Sun to whom he is now telling the truth?
In any case, it’s off to the temple, an encounter with Smokie, and the appearance of undead Alex. Strangely, when undead Alex suddenly grabs Ben by the throat, out of all the many topics she could have chosen to discuss with her father during this rare opportunity for communication, she chooses to speak about John Locke.
She says she knew Ben was planning to kill him again, and that if Ben so much as touched John, she would hunt him down and destroy him. She orders Ben to listen to every word that John Locke says and to follow his every order.
That’s quite a good deal for Locke!
Earlier, when Ben was on the porch of his old home with Sun, he heard a rustling in the jungle. He said to Sun, “You may want to go inside. What’s about to come out of that jungle is something I can’t control.” He meant Smokie, of course, but then when it was Locke who walked out of the jungle, Ben’s statement still applied – John Locke is someone Ben can no longer control.
Mysteries solved:
Ben killed John to bring everyone together so they would come back to the Island (or, at least, that’s what Ben said).
Ben took baby Alex to save her.
Ben’s injuries when he boarded Flight 315 were from Desmond beating him up after Ben tried to kill both Desmond and Penny.
Unsolved mysteries:
What’s in the crate on the beach?
How did Ethan come to be with the Others?
Who is Ilana, really? And why did she ask Lapidus “What lies in the shadow of the statue?” and why did she knock him out when he couldn’t answer?
And who was Caesar? Was he just the innocent victim of Ben’s manipulations that he appeared to be? Or did he have a secret role on the Island as well?
Ben and the Smoke Monster (lightened) from screencap by Lost-Media.com (c) ABC
LOST is filled with Christian symbolism. Locke, for example, appears to be the show’s Jesus figure. Told that he would have to sacrifice himself in order to save his people, Locke died, only to rise again.
In the Sayid-centric episode, 5×10 He’s Our You, Sayid also appears to be a Jesus figure, though the signs may be more subtle than they were with Locke.
"Better put him in restraints"
Arms outstretched
Twelve people vote to execute Sayid:
Amy and the other Dharma-ites vote to execute Sayid
Sawyer is a Judas figure (albeit only temporarily), when he appears to join in on the vote to execute Sayid. Then, when Sawyer offers to help Sayid escape, Sayid turns him down, saying that he has finally found his purpose. Sayid, who had spent much of the episode regretting the killing he had done, seems at that moment to want to die for his sins.
Then, of course, the plot takes a twist, and Sayid reverts back to his old killer self. Or does he? At the time I wrote this post, we don’t yet know if Ben is really dead.
Either way, Sayid’s tenure as a Jesus figure appears to have been temporary. But we shall see.
Credit for many of the ideas in this post, especially the observation that there were 12 people who voted to condemn Sayid, goes to epiclogin’s comment on a reddit discussion thread.
Images (c) ABC, via YouTube and Lostpedia.
