If you haven’t seen the episode yet, YOU HAVE TO GO BACK! Well, you don’t have to, but I’m going to spoil the crap out of this episode, so be ye warned. Edits are denoted [like this].

This episode was a Locke episode. This (almost cer­tainly) mir­rors the 4rdth episode of Sea­son 1, enti­tled “Walk­a­bout”, which was also Locke’s story, and, in my opin­ion, one of the great­est episodes in the series. That said, we fol­low Flocke in Reality1, and we fol­low Locke in Reality2. I’m not going to recap the episode, but I do want to talk about a smat­ter­ing of top­ics and details that I think are worth bring­ing up.

Locke’s Dad

In R2, Locke is engaged to his beloved Helen. Things between them are at a much dif­fer­ent place than they were when he went to Aus­tralia in R1. As Locke soaks in a tub, con­sid­er­ing fab­ric swatches, Helen laments the frus­tra­tions and stress of prepar­ing for a wed­ding. She asks why they don’t just do a quiet cer­e­mony, stat­ing that the guest list can be com­prised solely of her par­ents and his dad.

Waaaaah?

In R1, Locke’s rela­tion­ship with his dad has been a com­pli­cated, nasty mess that has shaped his out­look (and his spine). Helen’s men­tion of invit­ing Locke’s dad to the wed­ding, in R2, sug­gests that they are on favor­able terms with his dad. Not only that, but they seem close to him (close enough to be one of three guests at a shot­gun wed­ding). This sug­gests a large num­ber of possibilities:

• Locke’s Dad is Anthony Cooper, but this time he is not a bas­tard, thereby being on good terms with his son
• Locke’s Dad is a step-dad, mar­ried to Locke’s mom
• Locke’s Dad is a dif­fer­ent man alto­gether (a bio­log­i­cal impossibility)
• Locke’s Dad is an adopted dad who adopted Locke
• Helen was being “edgy and ironic” and the joke didn’t really land

Of those pos­si­bil­i­ties, the only one that would really her­ald major change is the first. If Anthony Cooper isn’t a bas­tard, he prob­a­bly isn’t hus­tling peo­ple for money, which means he hasn’t caused Sawyer’s dad to kill his wife and then him­self. This would dras­ti­cally change Sawyer’s future, and he would no longer be seek­ing life-long revenge on “Mr. Sawyer”. We could also spec­u­late that Sawyer wouldn’t be con­ning peo­ple, but that might just be his pre­dis­po­si­tion. In any case, they would reveal the new Sawyer at his new R2 job, using the same con artist tricks of the trade. “Used car sales­man” comes to mind.

That’s beside the point; what these pos­si­bil­i­ties really sug­gest is that Locke lost his legs by another method. In R1, Locke con­fronts his father about a new rela­tion­ship, won­der­ing if Anthony is con­ning the woman for her money. Dan­ger­ously close to being found out, Anthony Cooper pushes Locke out the win­dow of a build­ing, par­a­lyz­ing him. In R2, none of the new dad pos­si­bil­i­ties get us to that point. Locke was inter­ested in Anthony Cooper in the first place because Locke had never had an ade­quate father fig­ure. Anthony cap­i­tal­ized on that to take advan­tage of John, thereby start­ing the chain of events of bas­tard­ness. Even if Locke lost his legs by the same means, it prob­a­bly wasn’t the same intent.

A minor ques­tion is that of how Locke and Helen meet in Reality2. Orig­i­nally, Locke attempts anger man­age­ment classes after his father steals his kid­ney. There, he meets Helen. If my father pos­si­bil­i­ties are right, then Locke and Helen would have met through some other cir­cum­stance, as there’d be no rea­son for John to attend anger man­age­ment classes.

Flocke’s Vision

One pos­si­bil­ity that has arisen since we dis­cov­ered that the Smoke Mon­ster can take a human form is that the strange visions and sight­ings on the Island were in fact his work. Well, that the­ory was dealt a dev­as­tat­ing blow when Flocke saw an unnerv­ing vision him­self, of a boy with blond hair and cloth­ing straight out of an Aber­crom­bie & Other cat­a­log. Inter­est­ing to note, Richard could not see the boy, but Ford could. The first time we see the boy, his arms appear to be cov­ered in blood. The sec­ond time, he runs, Flocke gives chase, falls, and is issued a warn­ing. The boy says, “Remem­ber the rules. You (we?) can’t kill him,” to which Flocke answers, “Don’t tell me what I can’t do!” This guy’s a bro­ken record even after death.

The most inter­est­ing thing, to me, about the visions is the truly shaken reac­tion of Flocke after see­ing it, par­tic­u­larly the first time. We, as an audi­ence, are used to strange visions, but the char­ac­ters who aren’t react the same way: dis­be­lief. Per­haps this vision is the work of Jacob, but it cer­tainly appears as if visions (or, at least, this par­tic­u­lar vision) take Flocke by sur­prise. Per­haps, as a pup­pet mas­ter, he feels he is beyond these par­lor tricks, but it might also be that he can’t explain the vision any bet­ter than we can. I’m sure next episode some­one will say, “You don’t look so good,” and they’ll advise the smoke mon­ster to “get some rest.” That’s how it usu­ally goes.

The Num­bers and Kate

In R1, Flocke takes Sawyer to a cave dug a cliff fac­ing the ocean. Inside the cave is an office desk with some instru­ments on it (one of which is a scale with one white rock and one black rock on it). Deeper into the cave, we see ceil­ings and walls cov­ered in names with num­bers next to them. Most of the names are crossed out. These names, and their num­bers, cor­re­spond to char­ac­ters in the show. It’s a set of num­bers we’ve seen time and time again. Flocke off-handedly men­tions that Jacob “had a thing for num­bers”, but that’s all we get in the way of an exact expla­na­tion. The list:

• 4 — LOCKE
• 8 — REYES
• 15 — FORD
• 16 — JARAH
• 23 — SHEPHARD
• 42 — KWON

As Flocke reads this list, we see cut scenes from the Sea­son 5 finale, when Jacob goes to meet a num­ber of sur­vivors. He touches them as he meets them. This reveal and expla­na­tion is pretty tidy. The only ques­tion that the scene raises (on its own accord) is whether KWON means Sun or Jin, as Jacob touched them both. The ques­tion that the scene doesn’t raise on its own accord is “Where’s Kate?” Kate has a num­ber of dis­tinc­tions: she was an Oceanic 6, she was on The List that got her cap­tured and brought to Hydra Island, and she was vis­ited and touched by Jacob.

Why doesn’t Kate have a num­ber? Or, if she does, what is that num­ber? Is she crossed out? Flocke men­tions that the wall is a list of can­di­dates for those thought wor­thy of pro­tect­ing the Island. In that sense, it’s not so bad that she’s not up there; it just means that she’s not a can­di­date. On the other hand, it could have far­ther reach­ing impli­ca­tions, includ­ing a spe­cial role with regards to her boyfriend-candidates and/or untimely death.

Check out a fas­ci­nat­ing list of can­di­dates on Lost­pe­dia.

Ben­jamin Linus (Here and There)

I wanted to touch on this topic because it’s one that has wor­ried me since the end­ing of Sea­son 5. What is the role of Ben­jamin Linus in Sea­son 6? Since his intro­duc­tion in Sea­son 2, Ben Linus (then Henry Gale) has been manip­u­la­tive, schem­ing, lying, and mur­der­ing to stay in charge, on top, and alive. Ben is a sur­vival­ist of the utmost feroc­ity. It’s those deli­ciously con­niv­ing fea­tures that make Ben one of my favorite char­ac­ters. Scratch that, he is my favorite char­ac­ter. That is why Sea­son 6 has me wor­ried for him.

As it stands right now, in both real­i­ties, Ben is no longer the force he once was. In R1, he’s no longer a part of the drama. Flocke left with Richard, the other Oth­ers went to the Tem­ple, and Ben is still at the beach, pre­sum­ably because he no longer fits in with his peo­ple. Hav­ing just killed a man who he has fol­lowed for much of his life, Ben is rudder-less. Richard, a nor­mal source of direc­tion, is gone. Locke, his recent adver­sary, is dead (still). As they bury Locke’s body, Ben is the only one who felt he knew Locke well enough to say some­thing at the grave. He expresses remorse for killing John Locke, and I’m afraid that might be a sign of things to come. Ben has no rea­son to sur­vive any­more. Alex, his daugh­ter, is dead; John Locke, his Island adver­sary, is dead; Wid­more is off-Island and out of reach, Juliet, for whom he once had roman­tic feel­ings, is dead. Ben is left with one per­son he’s never met before and two he doesn’t care about.

In R2, we meet Ben as a Euro­pean His­tory teacher at the high school where Locke is sub­bing. Ben has glasses which make him look pretty thor­oughly nerdy, and we meet him as he’s chastis­ing the fac­ulty on dis­pos­ing of cof­fee fil­ters when the pot is empty. Ben is cor­dial, if a lit­tle gruff in his gen­eral demeanor. John’s request for Earl Grey tea impresses Ben, who eagerly intro­duces him­self to John. In all, it’s an inter­est­ing look at Ben’s life with­out [spend­ing his for­ma­tive years on the] Island. [He wouldn’t have had the promises of Jacob seduc­ing him as his father grew more and more alco­holic and abu­sive. He wouldn’t have had the rivalry with Wid­more to fur­ther twist him into a sadis­tic, cal­cu­lated manip­u­la­tor.] All that would make Ben into a pleas­ant per­son. What need is there for his sur­vival skills in a high school (pub­lic school jokes aside, that is)?

I believe some event is going to kick Ben back into his old tricks. In R1, it’ll prob­a­bly arise from his own dis­trust of Ilana. He may poi­son Sun and Lapidus against Ilana and seize that oppor­tu­nity. He may work to divide the four of them into two groups, con­vinc­ing one of the other two to join him. Or, some­thing else entirely may hap­pen. The ques­tion is where would he go, and what would he do? Ben is going to try to get on the “win­ning side”, though we’re not entirely sure of what. Will Ben remem­ber his devo­tion to Jacob and fight against Flocke, or will he honor a new mas­ter? In R2, Ben’s future is much cloudier. We really have no idea if he’ll even be a fea­ture. Right now, Sea­son 6 is heav­ily influ­enced by Sea­son 1, and Ben doesn’t make his appear­ance until Sea­son 2. Cer­tainly, he’s impor­tant enough to war­rant inclu­sion, but will it be any­thing more than the cameo we just saw?

We’ll have to wait and see.