This episode began poignantly with a close-up of John Locke’s eye, mirroring the start of the pilot, and hinting at the comparisons and contrasts between the two Johns that would characterize much of the series.
A religious focus comes to the fore as boars get into the fuselage to get at the corpses. When Jack suggests burning them, Sayid objects, saying that it shows no respect for their wishes, their religion. Jack says we don’t have time to figure out each person’s god. Later, Claire proposes a memorial service, and Jack says it is “not his thing.” People continue to look to Jack for leadership. And he goes and sits with Rose, until she begins to talk. Eventually she mentions her confidence that the people in the tail section of the plane, including her husband Bernard, are still alive. We also see Jack getting his first glimpse of the figure that we eventually learn is an apparition of his dead father.
We were also introduced to the show’s humor and misdirection, as we see Locke addressed on the phone as “colonel” only to discover that he is in a cubicle in an office, but plays war games during his lunch break.
Locke is planning to take a walkabout, which he describes as a spiritual journey in which one communes with the Earth. There is talk of “destiny.” And we meet the catchphrase “Don’t tell me what I can’t do.” If anything, Locke might seem to typify the “clean slate” approach better than anyone, as he seeks to live out on the island who he imagines he can be, rather than who he was. But he has in fact always imagined that he could be a hunter, a soldier, a leader. Nevertheless, going after the boar alone, he finally accomplishes what he previously only imagined. And we see Locke as the first to come eye-to-eye with the “monster” even though we do not get to see what the thing looks like. And incredibly, we learn at the end of the episode that he was in a wheelchair, and that when we have seen him looking at his feet, it was because something incredible did indeed happen to him when he arrived on the island. And once again, we hear him talk of destiny.
In light of the later series, we might want to ask whether and to what extent Locke was misguided, a pawn in a global game of backgammon, and to what extent he was on target in his faith. While clearly Jacob’s brother was working from early on to try to kill Jacob and escape the island, I have come to believe that Jacob too was seeking to find a way to end the ongoing conflict with his brother, to have them both die indirectly through each other’s actions, and to let others take over the care of the island. If playing a part in a battle of the gods (in fact, deified humans, ultimately connected with the Island which might be the real main character of the show) because they have chosen you is not “destiny,” then what is?
I think I half expected some of these scenes to seem to fit poorly with the ending and subsequent seasons, suspecting on some level that perhaps the writers had not yet thought about what the “monster” would be. But in fact, we have seen in these early episodes how it moved with intelligence, purpose, and choice, and that it – or rather he – encountered and interacted with John in a manner that would shape what followed, and fits with where the story ended up. So far, so good.
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