Spoilers below the image!
This week, not as good as last week. But no big deal — because this was still really good.
We open up the show with Caesar — the same guy who gave Jack his condolences over Locke’s death before getting on the plane with him, and apparently a new character. He’s going through paperwork in what looks like a Dharma station. Ilana — the same woman who was escorting a handcuffed Sayid on the plane — interrupts him to say that a new man in a suit has shown up, and he wasn’t on the plane.
Obviously, it’s Locke. Back from the dead, as we knew he would be.
So the Ajira plane passengers are alive. We also learn from Locke’s exchanges with Caesar and Ilana that the pilot (Frank) and another woman (must be Sun) took one of the boats that were left on the beach. Why would they take the boats? Well, because the Ajira people crashed/landed (using the runway Kate and Sawyer were helping to build?) on the wrong island. They’re on the creepy little Dharma work island where Jack, Kate and Sawyer were held captive. The real island can be seen in the near distance.
We go back in time to see Locke getting spit out in the desert after turning the wheel. This is apparently the same place that the island always spits you out — and apparently, when you get spit out, you also always puke. After laying in the desert for some time, unable to walk because of his horribly broken leg, some guys pick him up, throw him in the back of the truck and take him to some makeshift hospital where a doctor resets his leg, and John passes out from the pain. Before he falls into unconsciousness, we see the same thin, tall, creepy dude who went to visit Hurley in the hospital, and who told John Locke many years earlier to go on his walkabout, standing over in the corner.
Locke wakes up to see Charles Widmore at his bedside. Widmore? Run! But strangely enough, Widmore seems really nice and genuinely concerned about Locke’s well being. He also seems genuinely concerned about getting all of the Oceanic 6 back to the island — and with getting revenge on Ben. We learn that Widmore has remembered his encounter with Locke on the island, from back when he was 17, all these years. Widmore claims that he used to be the leader of the Others, until Ben exiled him and tricked him into moving the island. Three years have passed since the Oceanic 6 got back, Widmore explains, so Locke’s task of getting them to go back will be difficult. Oh, and Widmore wants Locke back on the island because there’s a war coming. Oh snap!
The next morning, Widmore gives Locke a fake passport with the name Jeremy Bentham, a cell phone on which to call him, and a driver — the tall, thin, creepy dude who we’ve been wondering about for so long — Matthew Abaddon. Locke wants to know how he can trust Widmore over Ben, and Widmore says that it’s because he’s never tried to kill him. Which, well, is only sort of true. But Locke accepts it nevertheless.
Locke then goes on to visit Sayid, Walt, Hurley, Kate and Jack. We learn what Sayid did after he quit working for Ben (though not yet what happened to make him stop working for Ben), and it’s working for a Habitat for Humanity type thing in the Dominican Republic. Trying to make up some good karma for torturing and killing so many people, I suppose. Obviously, he turns Locke down. Locke doesn’t ask Walt to go, and Hurley and Kate also say no. Then, when visiting his ex-girlfriend Helen’s gravestone (aw!), Locke is sitting in the car and watches Matthew Abaddon get shot dead. He takes the car and drives away, only to end up in a major car accident, and then in Jack’s hospital.
Jack is just mean to Locke. All that stuff about how Locke isn’t important and instead just a lonely old man who just crashed on an island? That’s cold, Jack. I mean, I know that you’re a drug addict/alcoholic who keeps getting visits from his dead dad and is therefore losing his mind, and that you hate Locke and once put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger . . . but damn!
Anyway, of course Jack doesn’t listen either because Jack never listens. So Locke decides to kill himself, writes his suicide note to Jack, rigs up a noose with an extension cord and is about to step off the table when Ben breaks down the hotel room door and tells Locke that no, he can’t do this: he’s important. Locke can’t trust Widmore, he has to trust Ben! And anyway, Jack booked a plane ticket to Sydney, so obviously he believes Locke. So step down from the table, John? Locke complies, tells Ben what’s going on — namely that he can’t go see Sun, and that he’s supposed to find Eloise Hawking — and then Ben freaks out, strangles Locke with the extension cord he was going to hang himself with, and then frames it to look like a suicide. Nice.
Terry O’Quinn does some really fine acting in this episode. You really felt for him the whole time, watching the failures one after one and seeing him get more downtrodden. It was good work.
So, questions: Where is Sayid? Everyone but him, including Ben, is accounted for. I’m betting that Ilana has him held captive somewhere, but I don’t know! Are the Ajira people in the present (2007), or in the past (1970s)? The fact that the Dharma station is abandoned indicates that Jack, Kate and Hurley all time-traveled out of the plane, but that the other folks (Locke, Ben, Sun, Frank, and maybe Sayid) are in the modern day. It gets my vote, anyway. And if I’m right, how will the two groups eventually hook up?
And why did Ben kill Locke? You saw something turn in him as soon as Locke said that Jin was still alive. Why? And at the beginning of the episode, I was still on the side of Widmore playing Locke, and Ben being the less evil of the two totally evil guys. But now? Who to trust? Who is telling the truth? Both men are ruthless killers. Who has the best interests of the people on the island, and the island itself, at heart? And what was with Walt’s dreams that Locke was on the island, in a suit, surrounded by people who are going to hurt him? What are the Ajira passengers going to do?
And most importantly of all, now that there’s finally another female character on the show, are they going to kill her?
I don’t know, but leave your theories in the comments!