Season One: Episodes 13 – 16
Welcome back to Re-Watch Week Number Four! This week we will be reviewing Hearts and Minds, Special, Homecoming, and Outlaws. In the past I spent the first part of the articles reviewing the entire four episodes from Locke’s perspective with a follow-up section on my critique of his behavior and actions. As John Locke’s character has grown to be in many of the scenes within the episodes, the recap section has been a bit daunting to say the least! Therefore, starting this week, in order to provide a better way of analyzing ‘the great white hunter’, I will be giving you my speculations and observations of his character as we walk through the episodes. And as always I’ll add any personal observations of the overall episodes at the end. So… let’s get to it!
Looking at Locke:
These four episodes take place over days 24 through 31 on the island. By the start of Hearts and Minds, it has been eight days since John Locke and Boone discovered the metallic hatch underneath the vegetation of the jungle. Despite stealing the axe a few days ago from the Losties’ camp, very little has been done to unearth or uncover the hatch itself. Boone continues to follow Locke’s advice and lies to everyone that he and John are out hunting daily. After a confrontation between Boone and Sayid over Shannon, Locke reprimands Boone en route back to the hatch, telling him to put aside his differences with Sayid because he’s very competent and they don’t want to make an enemy out of him but rather want him on ‘their side’. When Boone reports that the people at the camp are starting to wonder what it is that they are doing since they do not return with any meat, Locke shrugs it off, telling Boone that the others have plenty of fruit and fish and that what they are doing is far more important. The hatch, he points out, is their priority. I find this conversation between Boone and Locke to be extremely important as far as mythology. To me, any talk or conversation that uses terms like the word ’sides’ points to Season Five’s The Incident with the major scene between Jacob and the Man in Black. We now know that there are two distinct and different sides existing on this island. We know that John Locke encountered the Smoke Monster in Walkabout and since that time has behaved in a very creepy all-knowing type of way that can only be explained by supernatural intervention. And we also know that the Smoke Monster is clearly defined to be part of one of these two sides on the island. Can we not conclude that John Locke has been chosen to be a part of that same team? One thing is for certain, he is the only survivor on this island that has knowingly chosen ‘a side’ and has attempted up to this point to either lure people to it or create conflict outside of it. And to have ‘a side’ infers that there is a counter or opposite side. Based on how Jack Shepherd did not follow Locke’s advice and submit to fate and continue to chase after his father, I believe Jack is someone we can say with certainty is currently on the ‘opposite side’. I’ll be able to show evidence of this later in the article. Finally, I need to say something about John Locke prioritizing the hatch above providing sustenance to his fellow survivors. He was the one who took ownership as ‘the hunter’ and it was a roll he gladly took on with gusto. Just ask Charlie Pace, boar bait boy. But since finding the hatch, John has dropped that title like a bad habit. And instead of taking the time to teach someone else how to do it or squeezing in a kill now or then just to keep everyone at bay, John simply walks away from his responsibility. He is not emotionally connected to the community of survivors on the island. They are simply pawns to be used or sacrificed for his purposes.
Later that day, we see Boone and Locke sitting near the hatch and we learn that the reason why there has been little progress unearthing the metallic structure is because Locke is pulling a Michelangelo, or so he says. As he stirs a concoction that he tells Boone is ‘for later’, John waxes eloquent on a story about Michelangelo, the Statue of David, and four months of staring at marble. When Boone fears that he will have to stare at the hatch just as long while Lockelangelo works it all out in his mind, we see Locke smile one of his knowing smiles. This scene makes me think back to the first three episodes of Locke sitting on the beach staring out into the ocean. He sat there and waited for something to happen instead of getting up and joining the others in gathering food, water, and shelter. He’s doing the exact same thing here. Except this time, we can see that he’s getting a bit frustrated at all of this waiting. He wants to get that hatch open NOW and he’s going to try to use a shortcut: Boone. And how he’s going to do it I believe is a key to how he himself has managed to be so knowledgeable about the island and about those around him. He’s going to drug Boone to illicit dreams and visions that may tell him what he needs to do. I believe that is how John Locke has been getting his information up to this point. All those weird times when John showed up at the right place at the right time, forecasting rain, saving people off cliffs, etc were given to him via dreams and visions. So why would he need to drug Boone if he gets his own honey-do-list? Well, what if ‘his side’ doesn’t want the hatch to be opened (either now or never) and is no longer communicating to him via visions and dreams? Would you not, if you were as desperate as John Locke is of finding his destiny, consider using your sidekick? So he puts together the necessary ingredients, stirs slowly, and waits for the opportunity to clobber Boone the Boy Wonder over the head.
Once Locke knocks Boone unconscious, trusses him up like a rodeo calf, puts the psychotropic paste on his wound, throws a knife into the ground just out of reach, and says ‘Buh-bye’, Locke walks away from Boone and the hatch and heads toward the beach. It is here that he runs into Sayid trying to orienteer with a needle floating on a cork. When Sayid asks John what he is doing out this far in the jungle, Locke lies easily telling Sayid that he was hunting until Boone gave him the day off. He then offers his compass which Sayid accepts gratefully. Until Sayid realizes that the compass is defective due to a significant magnetic anomaly. There are two things here, I’d like to mention. The first is about the actual compass itself. It is NOT the same one that Locke had on his vest for all of the time leading up to this scene. [I've inserted screen captures of this episode to show the two different compasses.] Up till now, Locke has been wearing a silver steel compass on his vest. In every episode, in every scene, it is the exact same silver steel compass. But in this scene, it is gold. Where did this different compass come from? The second thing I’d like to comment on is about its defective quality. How could it have gotten this way? We know up to this point in LOST that there are two major electromagnetic sources on the island. One is under the Swan Station and one is under the Orchid. Sayid noticed that the compass was not pointing to true magnetic north when he compared it to the needle-on-a-cork compass he made earlier that day. So this gold compass had to have come in contact with one of these underground stations or some other magnetic anomaly. Something else to note: After Locke gives Sayid his compass he decides to get rid of his hunting vest, because from that point on, you will not see Locke wearing it again.
Anyway… after leaving Sayid to his own work, we next see Locke sitting by the shoreline staring out to sea like he used to in the earlier episodes. He is completely at peace and one would never know that he had knowingly assaulted, tied up, and drugged the Boy Wonder earlier that day. Jack comes up to him and makes conversation about seeing ships in the ocean, being patient, Boone and about hunting boar. Ladies and gentlemen, if this scene doesn’t give you the heebie-jeebies because of its similarity to the scene with Jacob and the Man in Black in The Incident, I don’t know what will. It’s in the imagery. It’s in the conversation of ships just out there on the ocean like the Black Rock. It’s in the talk of being patient. It’s in the bottle of water Jack offers to Locke like Jacob offers the fish. It’s in the denial of the offer of the bottle by Locke like the MIB does with the fish. And it’s in the talk of humanity by Locke that we are nothing but predators that sounds like the MIB. It is simply THE biggest mirror image in Lost. And to me, my friends, it solidifies my stance that John Locke is of the dark side and Jack Shepherd is of the light. The two of them are the modern day representatives of both sides of the island. One believes in hope and change and the other believes in fate. If you want a goose-bump reaction, I seriously recommend watching these two scenes back to back!
That night, Boone returns to camp and tries to kill Locke thinking he was responsible for his sister’s death. When he realizes that Shannon is not dead and that the events he experienced were in a dream, Boone is relieved. He is relieved because he no longer is under Shannon’s spell. Unfortunately for him, however, he now is completely under Locke’s. It is the only way to explain how Boone could forgive Locke for his behavior and follow him back into the jungle that evening with nothing more from John than, “follow me”. Oh, and isn’t it ironic that Locke tells Boone that he ‘gave him this experience because it was vital to his survival on the island’ and in little more than two weeks Boone is tragically killed? Seems to me that the experience had the opposite effect, wouldn’t you say?
We next see John Locke teaching Walt how to throw knives in the episode Special. John gets ensnarled in the tense situation growing between Michael and Walt. I’m not going to get into the dynamics of Locke, Walt and Michael’s relationship until next week when we discuss … In Translation. Let’s just say that I’m glad Michael didn’t take Locke’s suggestions that he should stop treating Walt like a child and start allowing him to reach his full potential. Never good to take advice from a creepy never-been-married bald dude with a god complex whose closest friend was a 1-900 dial-a-chick!
A few nights later, while out pretty deep in the jungle doing whatever it is Locke and Boone do outside of staring at the hatch, they come upon Claire. They rush her back to the caves but are not truthful about where they found her. After dropping her off with Jack the doctor, Boone attempts to find out from Locke just what he thinks happened to Claire. When Boone nervously asks Locke whether he thinks Ethan is still lurking around the camp, Locke responds with a creepy, “I sure hope not.” Personally, I think that this ties to my argument last week about Locke interfering with Jack’s attempt to catch up with Ethan. For some reason unknown to us, Locke does not want Ethan to be captured or returned back to the camp. Since we know that Locke is extremely self-motivated, I’m sure that whatever it is, it doesn’t shed him in a positive light. This comment is also a very good litmus test proving that John Locke is definitely NOT the hunter and superhero he projects himself to be. A superhero would want the bad guy to come back to the camp, simply so the superhero could save the day and capture him.
The next day, after Ethan warns Charlie that he will kill someone every day until they return Claire to him, Jack is back on the “let’s go track Ethan” bandwagon. And again, Locke balks. He tells Jack that he needs to start playing defense and that he’s got a better plan than just moving everyone to the caves. Jack agrees, although he says that if Ethan does what he says he’s going to do there will be blood on their hands. So the group sets up 4 traps of garbage on trip wires in the tree line, light fires at 20 yard intervals, and have rotating shifts of volunteers for sentry duty. And when Boone himself volunteers for a shift, although Sayid is a bit leery knowing Boone’s track record, Locke agrees wholeheartedly. “Absolutely, we’re counting on you Boone!” Later that night, we see Boone fall asleep. He wakes up the next morning with the crashing of one of the garbage traps nearby and lunges off the beach and into the tree line. He finds himself at the center of moving and crashing noises in the jungle. Unable to locate the origin of the sounds, he makes a run toward the jungle only to trip and fall flat on his face. Vincent appears and begins to lick his face just as Locke and Sayid arrive as backup. They immediately assume that Boone and Vincent were the cause of the tripwire until a scream pierces the morning air, coming from the beach. Scott is found brutally murdered lying in the sand. His neck, both his arms, and all of the bones in his fingers are broken. Locke tells everyone that Ethan must have come in via the water. Sounds good, right? Hardly. First off, since Scott was found lying on the beach near the shoreline, one has to assume that both he and Boone were on sentry duty at the same time. Where were the rotating shifts that Sayid spoke so highly of? Here we have one sentry that falls asleep and another that is brutally murdered and none of the other sentries notice anything wrong or periodically check on each other? Secondly, why would Locke place an incompetent fool like Boone on the line when he knows that Boone is already exhausted from the night before when he found Claire wandering deep in the heart of the jungle? Thirdly, if the only way Ethan can inflict all those injuries without Scott screaming is to break his neck first, why go through the hassle of then breaking his arms and then all his fingers? And how does one go about breaking someone’s arms when they are already dead? Fourthly, how is it possible that Vincent tripped the alarm and made all that noise that Boone heard crashing through the jungle? I think that it was either a diversion or Ethan as he escaped up the beach and into the tree line that set it off. Now, Locke may be right that Ethan came in from the water. But everything else screams to me of Locke making sure that Ethan had a method of escape should he decide to attack the camp. And I totally believe that Locke is to blame for this fiasco since it was his plan. He’s the one ‘with blood on his hands’.
After burying Scott, Jack again attempts to convince Locke that he needs to track down Ethan and stop this once and for all. And, of course, Locke refuses. Even when Jack shows Locke the stash of four 9 mm’s, John does not go after Ethan. So they plan a trap using Claire as bait. This time they are successful in capturing Ethan, but the plan turns sour when Charlie shows up and uses one of their guns to shoot Ethan four times in the chest. The reason why I say “one of their guns” is because it is possible that Charlie did not use the 9 mm that we saw get knocked out of Jack’s hand as he tackled Ethan. For you see, there is someone at the gunfight without a gun. And his name is John Locke. He is holding his weapon of choice, a hunting knife. Yes, I know it’s crazy. But perhaps John Locke placed his gun somewhere where it could be found so that Charlie would find it AND use it. We have seen over and over again how Locke refused either directly or indirectly to capture or track Ethan Rom. And with Jack insisting on some action and with the guns as a stronger weapon for offense, perhaps he realized he needed to make sure Ethan COULDN’T talk if he was captured. One thing of note I found rather funny. The camera pans to the five Losties as they crouch or hide in the trees around Claire. And all are wet and clean from the pouring rain. Except for John Locke, who thought it necessary to attempt camouflage. His face is covered in mud like an Army ranger on reconnaissance mission. What a dork.
Finally, a few days later in Outlaws, John comes upon Sawyer and Kate’s disarrayed camp. He explains that he was way out there in the jungle looking for salvage from the crash when he picked up their trail and thought he’d come by and say ‘howdy’. When Kate tells him that the camp is messed up because of a boar and that Sawyer believes that the animal has a vendetta against him, Locke tells an interesting story of his childhood. Kate and Sawyer are looking at each other and thinking the same thought: CREEPY. That is until he gets to the punch line. His mother believed that this beautiful, playful, obedient golden retriever was her dead daughter Jeannie, coming back to tell her that the accident that caused her death wasn’t her mother’s fault. Sawyer looks like he gets hit by a two by four after Locke finishes the story and smiles at him. For the immediate inference of his story is that the boar is hardly an obedient, warm, fuzzy dog. It’s an ugly, thieving animal that has torn and ripped up most of his belongings and peed on his shirt. Therefore, to Sawyer, the boar must be dead Frank Duckett coming back to tell him that IT IS HIS FAULT! So later that day, when Sawyer comes upon the boar, we expect him to shoot it dead. But after staring at it for several seconds, Sawyer chooses not to do it. Killing the boar would be for revenge. And that is the same reason why he killed Frank Duckett in Sydney. He decides to break the cycle in his life. To accept what he did and to try not to live like that angry, vengeful, manipulative person he once was. And John Locke’s attempt to lure James Ford to his ’side’ is denied, just like it was with Jack Shepherd.
My quick list of observations:
1. At the start of Hearts and Minds, there is a very interesting conversation between Sayid and Boone over Shannon. With his jealousy piqued, Boone orders Sayid to stay away from his sister. Sayid, however, remains impassive to the threatening tone. As the confrontation is interrupted by John Locke, Boone turns away with a scowl and a “See you later” comment. Sayid smiles and says simply, “You know where to find me.” It is VERY similar to the tone and dialogue between Jacob and the Man in Black on the beach in The Incident.
2. I found it interesting that at the very moment in Boone’s dream when he confesses to Shannon about the hatch and what he and Locke have been up to is exactly when the Smoke Monster attacks and kills Shannon. And from that moment forward, he never again talks about telling Shannon the truth.
3. In Special, Michael goes through his letters he wrote to Walt all those years ago. They were kept in one of those boxes we all seem to find throughout the show. So far that makes two boxes I’ve seen, one here and one last week that belonged to Claire.
4. We know that Walt has the ability to make things that he pictures in his mind’s eye come true. We saw this with the hunting knife toss with Locke and Boone. If that’s what he did with Hurley during their game with backgammon and what he did with the bird at his home in Sydney, could it be possible that he did it with the polar bear, too? When he was angry at Brian for ignoring him while reading the bird book, suddenly the same bird appears and makes a run at the family inside their living room. It was stopped by the heavy leaded window. Now we see Walt angry at his dad who threw his comic book, turned to the page with the polar bear, into the fire. Moments later, Walt is chased by a polar bear. Coincidence? I think not.
5. Ethan the Ultimate Fighting Champion. For his size and weight the man is a brute to be sure. He can drag two people into the jungle with no more than footprints and a dropped finger bandage or two. He can whirl a sling so fast that people can’t figure out where it’s coming from. He can lift a guy like Charlie four inches off the ground with his bare hand. He enjoys the rain and can break a man’s neck, arms and fingers without anyone noticing. Who IS this guy? And is it possible that like Locke, who seems to have been ‘altered’ by Smoky, Ethan Rom has been ‘altered’, too. And that Ethan was on some sort of Smoky Steroids? He WAS among Richard’s group as well as DHARMA, so it’s possible that he knows more about Smoky than we give him credit for.
6. Watches, watches, who’s got watches? We’re down to FIVE : Charlie, Sayid, Sun, Jin, and Rose. John Locke’s watch mysteriously disappeared in the Homecoming episode during the Jack and Ethan ‘punchfest’. Gone forever… kind of like his hunting vest.
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