LOST Rewatch: Further Instructions

This episode begins with John Locke’s eye, as he wakes up in the jungle after the hatch explosion. We see Desmond run by, naked. Eko’s scripture stick falls from a tree. Locke has lost his voice. But through signs, he indicates to Charlie that he needs to speak to the island. He finds a pen and a lad of paper, and asks Charlie for help, to stand guard at a sweat lodge. Charlie asks John if the paste he has made is a drug, since he knows about his zero-tolerance policy and doesn’t want him to have to start punching himself in the face. He sees Boone. He has a vision if Boone wheeling him around the airport in Sydney in his wheelchair. He is told to clean up his own mess. He understands that he needs to save Mr. Eko from a polar bear, and so takes his knife and sets out with Charlie, finding Eko’s cross in the way. They find the crater where the hatch imploded. Locke finds Eko in a cave and rescues him from the polar bear. Locke also finds an old toy dump truck in there too. Locke says he is sorry for having lost his faith in the island. Locke hears Eko say that he (Locke) can still protect and save his friends who have been captured.

Later, when Hurley gets back he gives Desmond a tie-dye shirt. He also asks whether he is going to turn into the Hulk. Desmond “remembers” Locke’s speech about going to rescue Jack, Kate, and Sawyer before he gives it.

In flashbacks, we see John Locke bring a guest Eddie, wearing a Geronimo Jackson shirt, to a commune that he is a part of. John says grace, and gives thanks for having stopped being so angry and having found a real family. Later, Eddie sees fertilizer being brought into a greenhouse and thinks they are planning to blow something up. It turns out that they were growing marijuana. And Eddie turns out to be a police officer, and when Locke picked him up on the side of the road as a hitchhiker, he had actually been waiting for him. John gets him at gunpoint. Eddie says that they had chosen him because he had not been there long, he had no criminal record, and his psych profile had suggested that he would be amenable for coercion. Locke can’t bring himself to shoot him.

This is the first episode in which Paolo and Nikki are introduced.

This episode shows how Locke was manipulated once again at another point in his life. And so, when the series finally revealed that this continued in what he thought was “fate” on the island, it was in keeping with a major theme on the show from the very beginning.

There is also a significant spiritual element, as Locke seeks to commune with the island using a hallucinogen and a sweat lodge.