Spoilers Ahead: If you are not currently up to speed on all this LOST stuff — that is, if you have not completed Season 6 Episode 3 — you will not want to read the following passage, as I will pontificate and spoil many things for you.
Anyone who did not like last night’s episode is crazy. It might have moved slowly at parts, but last night LOST season six announced it’s arrival. This is not to be a catastrophe like the start of season three, nor is it going to be balls-to-the-wall action like season four. It’s going to move slowly at times — deliberately, I might add — and it’s going to be engrossing on much more than just an emotional level. As far as the plot of “The Substitute,” I thought the two biggest revelations of the episode dealt with the numbers and the conversation in the cave by the sea between Man-In-Black/Locke (herein referred to as either MIB or Locke) and Sawyer.
The Numbers: For me, this is a huge reveal and a great answer provided to longtime fans of the series. Think of all the different incarnations of the numbers we have seen for a little over five full seasons now. How many times did we see variations and combinations and feel tweaked. Just when you’d stop thinking about them, something would pop up. Someone would be staying in a hotel room with a 4 or a 23 in it and you’d recall, “Oh yeah, what the fuck is that!?” Well, when coupled with Lock’s quote about how Jacob was controlling Sawyer and all his friends, the fact that these numbers have always represented the castaways becomes absolutely mindblowing. Instead of thinking of them in terms of their literal entities: 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42 think of them as the names they represent. Locke, Hurley, Sawyer, Sayid, Jack, Kwon. Think about them as fast and frantically as Desmond, Locke, Ecko, or anyone pressed those buttons in the the hatch computer did when they would hurry to beat that 108-minute timer. In an instant I started to feel like maybe the island has been calling out to those six people. Each time someone tapped that “execute” key, those six people were moving closer to the island. I don’t mean literally, psychically or whatever, I just mean…they have been fated to that island for a long, long time. Think about it — how many times did we hear that annoying debate about the need to push the button. In hindsight, it appears to have been absolutely 100% necessary for us to have reached this point in the lives of the castaways. If those numbers weren’t entered into the computer, if even one link in the chain from Radzinsky on down had said, “Screw it. This is stupid,” and stopped pushing the button, if those six people were stopped from reaching the island — “God help us all.” Whatever it is that is now inside Locke could have found his way off the island and spread his darkness across the world. I wonder if all that Dharma Initiative-speak was presented to us with a kind of tongue-in-cheek irony. Those pour dolts thought with their “silly little experiments” thought they were “saving the world” for an unknown reason, and yet, what if it turned out they really were saving the world, only for a reason they could not comprehend.
The other great little idea about the numbers I had deals with Hurley. He has believed them to be a curse ever since he won the lottery. But others have passed through his life and told him they are a blessing. The fact that some fans think the MIB/Locke is good and Jacob is bad makes all the speak about cursed/blessed numbers even more fascinating. We still don’t know how it’s going to play out. Hurley believes 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42 to be cursed because he does not yet understand their true importance (as revealed to us by Locke last night). His lack of knowledge scares him. Maybe in the “free will reality” (I’ll explain that in a moment) Hurley sees the numbers as lucky — and sees himself as lucky — because all those invisible forces pushing him towards the island do not exist. He is not bound by any gossamer to the island in his sideways flashes. They are just numbers. It wouldn’t surprise me if in a Hurley episode not-yet-aired we learn his winning lottery numbers weren’t even “the numbers.”
Now, I haven’t read any other LOST websites or blogs yet about “The Substitute,” but as far as I know Kate and the other half of the Jin/Sun duo were not given numbers. This does not bode well for them. It bodes well for us because, well, Kate sucks and Sun has been useless for more than a full season now. Most people I spoke to last night after watching the episode thought Sun was the “Kwon” written in the cave. I took the stance that really, only one of them was born a Kwon, so I think it’s Jin.
Now, the conversation between Locke and Sawyer was so great. I had an immediate reaction to the comment about how Jacob had met all the castaways at some point in their past and was playing them like puppets. It was a great light-bulb idea moment. How about this: the sideways flashes have nothing to do with the plane crash or the hydrogen bomb. To me, it’s all about what happens to the puppets when their strings are cut. These are the lives the castaways lead when they are blessed (or cursed!) with free will. Locke mentions to Sawyer that all those decisions they had made throughout their lives were not really theirs. They were Jacob’s. What we could be seeing is a group of people who have regained control of their lives. I think this is a much more exciting way to view the sideways flashes than a simple “what if!” scenario. The differences between those characters lives when they really do make their own decisions clearly has affected them all differently, as we can see by the little continuity errors we’ve been noticing ever since Cindy handed Jack only one bottle of alcohol on Oceanic 815. Hell, in his “free will reality,” John Locke doesn’t seem to believe in destiny. That’s fucking amazing!
The problem with this theory is that Jacob touched the majority of the castaways when they were older, so they wouldn’t have too much time to exert their will. But if we’re to believe that those assignments of numbers-to-names happened long ago, maybe the castaways never had any free will at all. Or maybe there are more moments between the castaways and Jacob still to be seen.
What else…Oh, we know that MIB/Locke is now “recruiting” people to get off the island with him. Theory: The last recruit is going to be Jack. Duh, because Jack is the natural born leader, Locke’s long-time rival, and because Jack was the last person Locke needed to convince to go back to the island after the Oceanic Six left. In this instance though, in perfect irony, Jack will choose to stay. Why? Because he is the candidate that will be elected to take Jacob’s position. You know what? He’ll convince the castaways (who aren’t dead) to stay with him and abandon the Man In Black. He might even reward them with eternal life. You know, like Richard Alpert? And in the end we’ll see Jack and Locke sitting on the beach. Maybe Jack will be eating some freshly caught fish. And Locke will turn to Jack and say, “Do you know how badly I want to kill you?” We might even see another plane approaching overhead, or a freighter coming towards the island off in the distance. you know, progress and all…
I’ll leave you with this crazy thought, which totally flies in the face of my theory about the “free will” reality, but needs to be shared anyway. I want to re-watch the 6th season premiere again, because I’m wondering if Jack touched Locke when giving him his business card. Why, you ask? Well, what if sideways Jack is already the new Jacob, and in this timeline he has to go back and touch everyone a la Jacob in order to set them on some kind of path. This obviously stands in contrast to the theory I just made about it’s not an alternate reality but a fateless reality, but it would definitely bolster my Jack-is-Jacob theory if true. One final note that could be a hint as to my correctness in seeing Jack as Jacob in these flashes. In “LA X” we see Jack touch Charlie in the plane, and he brings him back to life. Sounds familiar, right? Like when Jacob touched Locke after his fall and seemingly brought him back to life. I’m not sure if sideways Jack is cognizant of his Jacobness, but if he is…if his eye opened at the start of “LA X” and knew something no one else knew, then decided to play it cool…that would be stunning.
What say you, people!?
Scott Walker – Black Sheep Boy
Henry Flynt – Sky Turned Red
Sunburned Hand Of The Man – Books Of Ability
