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Magnificence
The Cultural Mythology of LOST 1.01 to 6.18
by Pearson Moore

His name is Kambei Shimada, a ronin who lived five hundred years ago. He is an aged, balding, unemployed swordsman, symbol of a dying breed of men useless in an age of muskets. His story required only two hundred seven minutes of celluloid. We think we know him: hero, defender of peasants, leader of men. But his story does not end with one year’s barley harvest, or even an entire nation’s movement into the modern age. Without Kambei Shimada, we understand neither sixteenth century Japan, nor even twenty-first century America. This single figure from the imagination of Akira Kurosawa holds the key to LOST.

The Adventure of LOST

This six-year adventure has become the most monumental endeavour in the history of television. Millions around the world spend hours each week, not watching a programme so much as engaging our senses, immersing ourselves in an experience unlike anything ever presented on the small screen. We attend online lectures by professors of linguistics, Egyptology, and quantum string theory. The tome in Sawyer’s hand or the thin volume on the Swan Station bookshelf becomes our weekly order from Amazon. We listen to Al Trautwig, Carmel, Mr. James, Iain Lee, and Doc Jensen. Lostpedia is our bible, Vozzek69 our prophet.

We scour every scene for clues. Hurley is buying HO-HOs. Hurley and Jack play horse, but they proceed only as far as HO before Jack decides to leave. Hurley is in the recreation room, and behind him, conspicuous to our fanatical eyes, a plastic sculpture of the letters HO. This is rich fare for a guy who spends sixty hours a week in pharmaceutical laboratories, and I immediately reach for the periodic table in my mind’s eye. Holmium, a heavy metal, a lanthanide, atomic symbol Ho. Can’t say I know much more about it than that–it is obscure, even to a professional chemist. So I turn to the chemist’s best friend–Google. Holmium has the highest magnetic susceptibility of any element, several times more magnetic than iron. The Swan Station has peculiar and extreme magnetic properties. Is Holmium the key to understanding the significance of the Swan Station?

No.

I know this because of my acquaintance with Mr. Friendly. To his complete amazement, I’m sure, I explain to him every nuance of mutually-orthogonal four-dimensional electromagnetic space, and how the unusual concentration of unstable energy at the Swan explains not only the local magnetism, but also the strange light scattering properties of the Island, which are due to shifts away from the normal range of Mie and Fraunhofer diffraction. Five hours later, when I’ve explained every detail of electromagnetism in the Land of Mittelos, Mr. Friendly just shakes his head in amusement. “That’s not what the Island’s about, Pearson.”

What is the Island, then?

I’m going to apply the Mr. Friendly Rule to the remainder of this article. If a concept useful to full understanding of the core reality of the Island requires graduate-level expertise in a physical science, then the concept is not essential to that understanding. Studying the non-intuitive etiologies deriving of Schrödinger’s Cat and other quantum phenomena is entertaining, but at least for the purposes of my discussion, I’m going to bring the question to Tom Friendly and Flight Attendant Cindy Chandler (now Temple dweller Cindy, I guess). If they can’t figure out what I’m talking about, it probably is not relevant to the deeper aspects of the story. The Island is not a Mr. Wizard science freak show.

What is the Island?

The question is daunting. We are aware of two hundred forty-seven questions outstanding, thousands of details that must be woven together over the course of so many years to figure out just what Jacob’s Eye of Horus might signify, why it contains important Egyptian and Greek elements, and why nine individuals are depicted as bowing in obedience to the Eye. Jacob’s tapestry, laboriously spun from wool and woven on a hand loom, is symbolic of the tremendous investment in time we have given to reconciling unusual phenomena, extreme and unpredicted events, and most of all, the strange circularity and interconnectedness of Island, people, and time.

Much more than science is required to understand the Island. We gain important clues to the deeper appreciation of Mittelos’ significance from the narrative structure of the story itself.

Normal storytelling does not work on the Island, because LOST cannot unfold in linear fashion. The chronologies of cause and effect were difficult to track long before the time travel of Season Five, before Daniel Faraday demonstrated the bizarre curvature of spacetime around the Island in Season Four, before even we heard Mama Cass exhorting Desmond Hume to make his own kind of music in Season Two.

Why is the story nonlinear?

(Connections Web, Lost, Season 2. About 8% of the web is depicted here.)

A woman’s body is found unmoving in a pool of blood in a basement apartment. Neighbour calls the police, detectives come, interview tenants, landlord, husband. They search telephone calls, internet usage, medical records. Police identify suspects, assign motives, make an arrest, and there’s a trial. Bad guy goes to jail, and the world is safe again. Best thing is, it took only forty-three minutes (not counting seventeen minutes of commercial messages) to tell the whole story from start to finish.

Law-And-Order storytelling could not possibly work on Jacob’s Island. I suppose one might imagine LOST as a simple story of good versus evil, much in the manner of CSI, Law and Order SUV (Or is it CSI-SVU?) or any of the other programmes that seem to fill prime time in North America. But LOST brings much more to our dialogue: Free will versus Destiny, Destiny versus Fate, the philosophical imposition of Rousseau, Locke, Dogen, Burke, Bentham, and the religious sensibilities and histories of Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, and Buddhism. Even Greek mythology and ancient Egyptian religion are heavily represented. Now that we’re finally inside the Temple, it looks like we might soon be absorbing a dose of Shintoism as well.

As Lex Luthor said thirty-two years ago, “Some people can read War and Peace and come away thinking it was a simple adventure story. Others can read the ingredients on a chewing gum wrapper and unlock the secrets of the universe.” LOST is not a simple adventure story. If we apply and focus the full range of analytical tools on the story we will unlock ideas of great value.

The Island operates on a hierarchy of values. Any valid thesis regarding LOST must account for the vital and mortal truths of Mittelos. Theses addressing only scientific phenomena, character relationships, or pure mythology will fall short of identifying the most potent and enduring of LOST’s ideas.

LOST must be presented in a nonlinear, non-chronological, non-causal manner because of the complexity of the hierarchy. Most of the time Cerberus can mind his own business, curl up under the Temple and contemplate getting off the rock he has been stranded on. Sometimes he gets ornery; knowing when the MIB is in a bad mood–and where he is at the time–constitutes useful information to anyone interested in prolonging her stay on the Island. Sometimes the rules of the Island dictate that he will kill. Being aware of the conditions that oblige Smokey to execute the full force of Island law is a matter of life and death.

LOST Mythology

The mythology of LOST is insufficient to a satisfying appreciation of the Island’s deepest meaning. The creations of the Island that appear to be unique–The Smoke Monster, Jacob, Ricardus, the Temple Master–are not self-referential. They are not unique creations at all. This statement subtracts nothing from the unparalleled creativity of the series. Fifty years from now LOST will be considered no less a masterpiece of storytelling ingenuity than the story of Kambei Shimada’s defence of a poor village during the barley harvest.

The Man in Black can transform into a cloud of black smoke. Nothing new. Over a hundred years ago H.G. Wells created The Invisible Man. Men turning into wolves and other animals have been standard fare on movie screens for eighty years. The MIB acts according to law, a judge of thought and action, a guardian of the world under the Temple. Nothing new. The Dharma Initiative knew the MIB as Cerberus, from the Greek myth of the guardian of the gate between Hades and Earth. I would guess at some point in the near future we will come to understand the MIB as something closer in character to an angel. Again, nothing new. I imagine if Damon and Carlton read this, they will not feel slighted in any way by these words. I think they’ll be smiling, actually.

The goal of LOST is not creativity for the sake of innovation. LOST is the most creative programme ever produced for television, but this is not its unique or most important objective. Neither is it intended as Lex Luthor’s adventure-story interpretation of War and Peace. The intention is to create an idea of permanent value. The next seven hundred minutes–the remaining sixteen episodes–are crucial, for the story will have to resolve many plot threads and concepts for the creators’ grand ideas to establish enduring purchase in the literary world.

The genius of LOST is its profound connection to our awareness as human beings, to the deepest sensibilities of our nature. A story becomes literature, I think, when it engages the reader, plunges her into the story, and forces her to examine and perhaps even reconsider her own values in light of choices made by the characters in the difficult situations created by the author. Literature best achieves these ends when it weaves into the story elements of thought immediately recognisable to the reader.

Kambei Shimada did not act alone to save the farmers from marauding thieves and bandits. And Akira Kurosawa did not restrict himself to self-referential creations. The master storyteller reached back to over a thousand years of Japanese history to invoke themes and ideas that have stood these many years, proof to wars, plagues, and all manner of human imperfection. He examined poverty, nobility and altruism, gratitude–and the lack of it, and the injustice of a class-based society, among the grand themes of the film.

Kurosawa gave us memorable characters, most notably in Shimada, the balding leader past his prime who, on first attempt, failed to convince other ronin to follow him to the village. But more than memorable characters and situations, the director wove his story from the strong yarn of enduring culture. His film stands not only as an irreplaceable pillar of modern Japanese culture, but is considered by many the greatest film ever produced.

Few in North America have experienced the genius of The Seven Samurai, but the most frequently offered movie on American television is familiar to almost everyone on the continent: The Magnificent Seven.

Set in 1880s Mexico, seven unemployed gunslingers agree to risk their lives for twenty dollars to protect a village of farmers.  The lead role of Chris Adams, an aging bald man past his prime, was played by Yul Brynner.  John Sturges’ characters were as memorable as Kurosawa’s, most notably in Chris Adams, who, on first attempt, failed to convince gunslingers to follow him to the village.

The story of the Seven Samurai works perfectly well in any culture because the enduring and necessary elements of any culture transcend time and place.  One of the notions that works equally well in sixteenth century Japan, nineteenth century Mexico, or the twenty-first century South Pacific, is the idea of perfection.  In both the Kurosawa classic and the American remake, perfection is expressed in a number:  Seven.  In Japanese, Hebrew, and Western cultures, the number seven is perfect.  The perfect number of selfless men to protect a village? Seven.  The perfect number of selfless individuals to protect an Island?

The very stressed characters on Jacob’s Island are striving toward some better condition.  They strive toward perfection.  As Jacob said, “It only ends once.  Anything that happens before that–it’s just progress.”

The six numbers, the Oceanic Six, all their striving to date has had little effect because it has lacked coherent and collaborative movement toward perfection.  The single biggest loop-changing event, the action that temporarily displaced two instances of spacetime, was initiated not by one of the Six, but by the son of the former leader of Jacob’s people.

Six are not enough.

All of Jacob’s plans, all the Temple Master’s plans, and the hope of the Six must converge on the absolute need to deliver one very important seventh member of the posse safely to the Island.  At least two will die on the journey.  But their work will not have been in vain.  Because the person they need to deliver is the one person in the world Cerberus cannot touch.  In fact, this person will stare down the Smoke Monster–and win.  He will stare down Jacob–and win.  And one person, supported by the Six, will rule the restored Island–the place once called Eden.

The perfect number of selfless people to protect a Japanese village?  Seven.
The perfect number of selfless people to protect a Mexican village?  Seven.

The perfect number of selfless crash survivors to protect an Island?

There will be Seven.

Culture

Those of us with degrees in language or literature share an interesting hubris:  We believe we enjoy not only innate curiosity regarding the nature of the human condition, but also an obligation, essentially a moral imperative, to find the means to engage others in a contemplation of the meaning of existence.

Usually the artist is thwarted in her attempts to engage the audience.  She must feed herself, after all, and employers are not interested in art for art’s sake, they’re interested in selling a product or service.  Radically new ideas, risky by definition, are not generally seen as worthy of investment.  So the artist becomes a waitress, or sells commodities at the Chicago Board of Trade, or works sixty hours a week in a pharmaceutical laboratory… and the sculpture goes unseen, the screenplay unread, the great symphony unheard.

Sometimes the artist gets lucky.  A small work gains attention, a former employer earns a profit on the artist’s work, a second employer, willing to take a risk, agrees to feed the starving artist while she whips up another small creation.  That was the intention with LOST, as far as I can tell.  But something unexpected occurred:  18.6 million viewers.

What does an artist do when she’s given a nice salary and carte blanche?  Room 23 in Los Angeles is full of cartes blanches, and for nearly six years the writers have been filling them with scenarios, plot developments, character arcs, storylines, and most of all, cultural references.

The writers know the best way to engage the audience is to weave LOST into the very fabric of our lives.  They can do this only if the basic material is already there.  The greatest demonstrable skill of the artist is not the creation of new ideas.  Ideas are a dime a dozen.  The greatest skill is the ability to engage an audience.  If, in order to achieve this end, the artist must use fabric already present in the viewer’s psyche, she must endeavour to choose the strongest, most enduring yarns from that fabric, then re-weave them into something new.  The bottom line for us:  Regardless of any story innovations, LOST must rely on cultural motifs we all recognise.  The necessary connections between culture and the completed plotline provide a basis for a reasonable understanding of the outcome of the story.

The Island

The Island is Shangri-La and LOST is James Hilton’s Lost Horizon, updated to the internet age and stuffed with a hundred-fold more cultural references than Hilton ever thought to include in his masterwork.  The Darlton Shangri-La surpasses Hilton’s creation in ways critical to the telling of the story.  Most importantly, Mittelos is a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic Shangri-La with origins in Tibet, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Hawaii, and Japan, deep religious roots in Judaism and Christianity, and mythic roots in Ancient Greece and Ancient Egypt.  Those in the Western world will recognise elements of Eden:  Adam and Eve, harmony with nature, timelessness (e.g., Ricardus’ immortality), inaccessibility (a trait shared also with Lost Horizon), guardian angels (MIB and Jacob).  Mittelos references myths from around the world because this is a story for the entire world–for all of humanity.

The Island is a stern kind of paradise.  Mittelos has unbreakable rules.  Anyone making a decision to break these rules faces judgment of the Dark Angel–the MIB.  The MIB’s decision is immediate and final.

What The Island Is Not

The Island most emphatically is not Cheech and Chong’s pot-smoking, hippie-infested free-love paradise.  Lennon may wear love beads around his neck, but he feels no emotion of any kind when he relays the command to exterminate prisoners.  Lennon is only the most recent representative of the hippie counter-culture.  Darlton have made clear to us their unreserved disdain for any organisation on the island expressing hedonistic ideals.  Hedonism in LOST is a ploy, a diversion used to mask the true agenda of those in command, and that agenda is the acquisition of power over others.  Culture, on Darlton’s Island, seeks the Common Good.  Counter-culture seeks to concentrate power into a single dictator and her minions.  Counter-culture is what it implies:  a radical opposition to culture.  It is the purest expression of evil because it rejects everything of humanity that endures and is worthy of being held as ideal and exemplar of thought and behaviour.

Stuart Radzinsky, the first Man in Black, is the archtype for the Dharma hippie, and Darlton’s sternest warning to those who would abandon our common humanity in favour of power, wealth, or any of the other counter-cultural idolatries of self and selfishness.

Radzinsky doesn’t give a hoot about anyone else’s projects, ideas, or needs.  He believes his motivation to be scientific exploration, but his supreme selfishness has made him not only oblivious to others, but willing to fulfill his smallest desire at gunpoint.  If Dr. Chang had stood in Radzinsky’s way at the Swan even one more minute, Radzinsky, not the unrestrained power of infinity electromagnetic energy, would have chopped off Chang’s hand.

In Russian culture, the supreme insult, worse than anything that one might say about another human being, is formed with these words:  Он некультурный человек.  He is uncultured.  Radzinsky is uncultured.  He is an insult to the Russian people.  He is humanity’s disgrace.

Widmore

The off-Island Radzinsky is, of course, Charles Widmore.  Charles has turned his insider knowledge of past, present, and future into a multi-billion-dollar international conglomerate in league with nefarious uncultured thugs like Mr. Paik and the bloodlust mercenary, Martin Keamy.  The writers may try to rehabilitate Widmore in the next few episodes, but I tend to doubt it.  Power and wealth are counter-culture objectives, and Widmore is the greatest off-Island example of their successful acquisition.  He fathered a child off-Island.  His banishment may have been the only possible outcome of  breaking an unbreakable rule, or the one-way submarine trip may have resulted from nothing more than Benjamin Linus’ own lust for power.  But his activities since that day in shackles place him in Radzinsky’s ideological camp.

If Widmore is to be rehabilitated we will see him devote his massive wealth to the support of the Seven.  More likely, I feel, he will bring not only his wealth but his very presence to the Island, and the final war will be his naked, all-out attempt to seize control of Mittelos.  Charles Widmore is the top dog, the main antagonist of LOST, not the equal of Benjamin Linus, but the final obstacle to the leader of the Seven.

Cerberus

The Man in Black is not evil.  He has an assigned task, and he is fulfilling his destiny.  The Smoke Monster is, in Dharma terminology, the Island’s “security system.”  He is among those unearthly creatures–angels–who have been assigned the grim but necessary tasks associated with the care and grooming of Planet Earth.  It was he or his cohorts who were entrusted with the visiting of ten plagues on Egypt.  He, over the millennia, who has caused armies to win over impossible odds or die in battle when victory seemed assured.  It was he who was tasked with keeping people away from Eden.  His contempt for Jacob’s breaking of rules was most manifest in their discussion on the beach at the end of Season Five.  Cherubim with flaming swords are supposed to prevent anyone from ever again entering Eden.  The MIB is a cherub, and he wishes to have none of Jacob’s lawlessness.  Although the original job description says nothing about killing a fellow angel, Jacob is thwarting the Dark Cherub’s divinely-appointed task.  Cerberus has reasonably interpreted this to mean he is free to eliminate the entity thwarting the Divine Plan.  Though he doesn’t like his job, he must obey:  The Man in Black had to kill Jacob.

Jacob

Jacob is He Who Wrestles With The Deity.  He is of his own mind about the value of humanity, and his worldview is broad but incomplete.  He sees humanity as an infinite, multi-dimensional divine experiment having as its goal the attainment of perfection.  The best way to attain perfection, in his mind, is to allow the broadest possible movement of actors and agents over the field of play.  He is a Light Angel, and his mandate is to lift humanity to perfection.  He neither understands nor has any patience for the Dark Angel’s insistence that people be kept off the Island.  No one told Jacob he had to clear his plans with another Cherub.  He has his divine mandate and the instructions are quite clear.

Jacob doesn’t understand any requirement for rules.  While the MIB’s rule book is literally etched in stone, Jacob’s rule book is, well… flexible.  Or so he believes.  If he feels he can interpret the divine mandate in such a way that offering someone a free choice among possible destinies will further the task of achieving perfection, he will emphasise personal volition.  If he feels he needs to coerce to achieve his objective, he’ll do that, too.  Jacob is a free-flowing agent of improvement and advancement.

Jacob is not dead.  He understood the MIB’s plans, but he also understood the potential for Faraday’s Boulder, and the fact that a splitting of spacetime would allow him to achieve his objective in a condensed time frame.  Jacob is either off-Island, or he is on the Island but in some other form:  inhabiting the rusty pool in the Temple, inhabiting a dead body.  Perhaps to be seen as a pillar of white smoke or Locke’s brilliant white light?

The Numbers

The numbers provide the clearest insight into coming events on the Island.

I don’t know what the seventh coefficient will be.  In fact, I don’t know that the writers will even decide that the six existing coefficients will need updating, or that 108 will have to be revamped to some higher number.  But a seventh person, and a seventh number, must appear.  I have to admit to the strange desire of hearing an invocation of the Valenzetti Equation in its correct form, with all seven coefficients:  six variable coefficients and one constant.  The equation that determines the inevitability of human self-destruction rendered inert by the unopposable will of one human being.  I’m going to guess that a single click in the integer position will accomplish the task, and the seventh person will be assigned the number One, for a new seven-coefficient sequence:

1, 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42

Regardless of the specifics, a seventh key player will somehow appear on the Island.  The seeking after perfection implicit in Jacob’s statement will find expression at several levels in the story, beginning with the establishment of a Perfect Number (seven) as the unstated goal of those on the Island.

Aaron

A corollary implication:  The full Oceanic Six must be present on the Island before the Seven can complete their work.  Aaron, or some duly anointed proxy, is going to return.  I’m seeing in my mind’s eye a desperate Carole Littleton, in league with Kate Austen, coercing Claire into an emergency flight on Oceanic or Ajira (no time to create a third airline for Season Six, I’m guessing) with unborn or infant or fully grown Aaron in tow.  By the time of the flight the Island vortex will be growing more and more unstable (see my discussion of Faraday’s Boulder in last week’s analysis, “The Wounds That Heal Us:  A Cultural Analysis of Lost 6.01/6.02″), and the Island will either be raised from the ocean floor or the airliner will fly through the vortex into main-channel spacetime to the unsunk Island.

The Disciple

Jack Shephard is first disciple to the leader of the Seven.  He was the Man of Science, and now the Doubting Thomas, who will sacrifice anything other than his own humanity to see the leader installed as ruler of the Island.  Jack’s road has been troubled because he has spent most of his life pushing toward reconciliation with his father rather than fulfilling his own destiny.  He will experience redemption, which is not harmony with Christian, but realisation of his place in life, which is acolyte to the Seven.  His is unquestionably the most important task in this sweep of six years, and because his task is greatest, he will have to sacrifice the most.  Jack Shephard, in safely conveying the leader back to the Island, or in ensuring the leader’s success, will sacrifice his own life.

The Advisor

Kate Austen loves Jack Shephard in a way that few have ever come to love another human being.  She will do anything for him.  She is willing to give up all of her plans to support Jack in his great work, and in fact, she will, in the end, being willing to sacrifice herself rather than see Jack thwarted.  The love triangle could find resolution in precisely this way, I believe, and the keepers of the symbols of Light and Dark–Adam and Even–could turn out in the end to be the two great sacrificial heroes of Mittelos:  Jack Shephard and his true love, Kate Austen.

The real triangle of LOST is not anything the Skaters and Jaters have contemplated to this point.  The competition for Kate’s heart is not between Jack and Sawyer.  The triangle is established by Kate, Jack, and the leader of the Seven.  Kate will have to decide whether she wishes to have Jack for herself, or whether she can sacrifice her love to the greater goal of realising the Island’s destiny.  In the end, she is going to be the Advisor who gives Jack that final push, encouraging him to surrender his own life for the good of the Seven and the Island.  This scene, this gloriously emotional and profound scene, will be remembered as possibly the defining image from LOST.

There is cinematic precedent for Kate’s Choice.

Rick and Ilsa loved each other in ways no less profound than Kate’s love for Jack.  But as deep as their love was, the needs of humanity were far more profound.  In the end, Rick made the only humane decision, the only cultured decision:  He gave up his love for the good of Victor Laszlo, the Resistance, and the freedom of all mankind.

Rick’s Choice now becomes Kate’s Choice.  The stakes are even higher this time around.  Rick and Ilsa faced the prospect of an eternally enslaved Europe.  Kate and Jack are at the crossroads of two equally evil future worlds:  A world without rules (Jacob’s vision) or a world without compassion (Cerberus’ unyielding stone tablets).  The future of humanity rests in the fragile heart of one woman.  The final scene at Casablanca Airport was magnificent.  Magnificence will shine even brighter when Kate makes her final choice.

I am not sure of Kate’s final destiny.  I think chances are good she will die in giving Jack the final push, and she will be revered as Eve.  I think this would be the most satisfying conclusion to her position as primary heroine.  But Sawyer’s arc may require a prize.  As much as he reads, he is no Churchill, and I don’t see his character requiring a sacrifice.  But reality is split, Juliet lives, and Sawyer and Juliet love each other.  The quadrangle is satisfied with the heroic deaths of Jack and Kate and the reunification of Sawyer and Juliet.  This is most obvious from an examination of the rubrics of storytelling.  Juliet is not the primary protagonist, so she does not have to experience complete sacrifice.  Kate, higher in the storytelling hierarchy, must sacrifice more.  Giving up Jack may suffice in the writers’ minds, but I think if they push this story to its natural perfection, Kate will have to die.  I see the Skaters’ wet dream ending of LOST as a minor but entirely supportable possibility.

The Heretic

Ben, chosen decades ago by Jacob, fell from grace when he decided to pursue his own agenda rather than working for the good of the Island.  He will come back into Jacob’s fold, leading Hurley and a handful of others, recharged, reinvigourated, with greater zeal than he has ever shown.  But for all his ardour, he will realise almost too late that he is still fighting on the wrong side.  A last-minute conversion to discipleship under the true leader will save him from destruction and raise him to hero status.

This seems the most logical outcome to Ben’s story.  He is the most conflicted, ambiguous character in the LOST universe, and I believe the writers will use him as the final example of the redemptive power of human culture.  A distant possibility, I think, is Ben’s defence of Jacob to the bitter end, and martyrdom to Jacob’s incomplete vision of humanity.  Even more distant, I feel, is the possibility of Ben’s continued rejection of Jacob and an inability to subsume himself to the needs of the Seven.  But because of this character’s complexity, I think it quite possible the writers could weave new aspects of Ben’s character that could yet cause him to fall in line with Widmore, or even take Widmore’s place as antagonist.  But I see these as unlikely scenarios.

The Seven

As of Episode 6.01, Sayid has experienced either rebirth or bodily possession by some other entity.  He yearns for a life free of torture, murder, and death, and probably feels no love for the gun-toting hippies and martial arts practitioners in the Temple.  Is he going to find the MIB’s team any more appealing?  I think the most likely outcome of Sayid’s rebirth or bodily possession is his quick ability to see the folly of both Jacob’s ways and the lack of compassion in Cerberus, and he will be the first of the Six to advocate and plan for the return of the leader.  Sayid is the catalyst of the leader’s return.  His would be the most logical death if the writers decide to give Kate as prize to Sawyer.  Otherwise, Sayid will go on to enjoy torture-free life on the new Island under its compassionate and rule-abiding leader.  Sayid and Hurley, I think, are the two of the original Six most likely to “live happily ever after.”

Sun will find her Jin.  Her aversion to Ben will blind her, and despite Ben’s efforts to convert her to what he believes to be the  just cause of returning Jacob to power, she will succumb to Widmore’s entreaties, at least temporarily.  She is the most likely of the Six to help Widmore or his agents find or gain access to the Island.  But both she and Jin were touched by Jacob, and in the end she and Jin will come back, not as followers of Jacob, but as disciples of the true leader.

Hurley will find himself in the unlikely and uncomfortable position of fighting side-by-side with Benjamin Linus in the interest of bringing Jacob back to the Island.   His will be another almost last-minute conversion, when he realises there can be no paradise under Jacob.  He will join the true leader’s camp, probably in an all-out sprint, huffing and puffing, clearing the barrier just before a door or portal or spacetime displacement closes forever.

The Leader

His name depends on the story.  In The Seven Samurai, his name was Kambei Shimada.  In The Magnificent Seven, his name was Chris Adams.  On the Island… he has had many names on the Island, too.

The actor portraying him needs to have solid credentials, because the masterful execution of the role is critical to the success of the multi-million-dollar storytelling enterprise.  Takashi Shimura had over twenty years of acting experience before Akira Kurosawa offered him the role of Kambei Shimada.  Yul Brynner had been acting for over twenty-five years when John Sturges chose him for the role of Chris Adams.

The themes are similar from one story to another.  One man, wise beyond even his advanced years, enlists a group of six to fight an enemy much more powerful than their individual combined strengths would indicate, not for any benefit to them, but for the benefit of others.  The six at first are hesitant; some refuse the first offer to work for nothing with the risk of giving up their lives.  But when they become the Seven, they are unstoppable, because they have achieved perfection, and perfection means they fight for the Common Good, not for themselves.  They fight to establish and uphold our common humanity, which is our culture.  It is the only correct side of any fight, and the full force of human goodness is on their side.

In the sixteenth-century Japanese village three of the Seven died.  In the nineteenth-century Mexican village three of the Seven gave up their lives.  On the twenty-first century island, three of the Seven are likely to die.

Like Kambei Shimada and Chris Adams, he is bald.

His name is

Man of Faith
Sodding Old Man
Geek
Prince of the Island
The Colonel

He goes by many names, but his final name is Leader of the Seven.  Most of us know him as John Locke.

Locke.  Man of faith.  He stands ready to put his trust in anyone.  But those around him are not so pure, and his easy faith in others has been twisted time and again into gullibility.  Duped, deceived, taken advantage of, made into buffoon and worse, he has suffered the cruelty of others, but has never made others suffer.  He has never unleashed righteous anger on anyone other than himself.  Locke is pure of heart, pure in his defence of the Island.  The Dark Angel cannot touch him, because judgment can be meted out only against those who transgress the laws of the Island.  Locke has broken no laws.  He will become the final defender of law, freedom, and human culture on the Island.

Unbridled free will leads to hedonism.  Culture is the only valid human origin of personal autonomy.  Most of us, like Radzinsky and Widmore, never learn the lessons of youth.  Freedom begins with responsibility, not with the momentary impulses of personal desire.  This is a concept foreign to Radzinsky and Widmore, foreign to almost everyone trying to make sense of life on the Island.

Law without compassion leads to the dark judgment of Cerberus.  Those of us who do not become slaves to momentary desires surrender ourselves to arbitrary law.  But even those who believe themselves “law-abiding citizens” break laws we consider to have no moral hold on our lives.

Locke obeys the law, but he is compassionate, too.  He is Dark Angel, Light Angel, and reservoir of human culture:  The complete human being.

Claire’s dream in Season One contains the essential clue to the end of the story.  Locke will faithfully execute both the MIB’s mandate and Jacob’s mission, providing his faith and trust in eventual human goodness as the solid foundation for fair and compassionate judgment and the complete freedom of action that will allow humanity to proceed on the road to perfection.

LA X.  The Locke-Aaron Crossroads.  Locke and Claire’s child are the two remaining essential players not yet on the Island.  But with the flight of 815 through the vortex over the sunken Island, the crossing of Locke and Aaron from the sunken-island spacetime over to the unsunken spacetime is now a possibility.  Sayid will realise the first glimmer of this possibility, and he will try to rally everyone to the cause.  He may achieve just enough for Kate to take charge, but she will not be able, on her own, to bring Locke back to the Island.  That role was pre-destined to fall to Jack.  His love for Kate will prevent him from committing himself immediately to the duty.  But Kate will convince him, and he will make the final sacrifice.  Kate will most likely die, too.  At least one other among the Seven will die, most likely Sun, but possibly Sayid.   Of the Seven, Hurley is least likely to die.

The Final Chapter

Shangri-La will be restored.  Adam and Eve, the two who allowed a return to Eden, will be revered for their heroic sacrifice.  Most likely we will find out the skeletal guardians of Light and Dark are the remains of Jack and Kate.  Less likely possibilities include Sawyer and Juliet, Rose and Bernard, Sawyer and Kate, or Sun and Jin.

Jacob and the MIB cannot die, but neither will they hold power.  I get the feeling the MIB will be granted his wish, and he will be summoned home.  So too, Jacob.  Humanity has not achieved perfection, but the Island will be safe in Locke’s hands.

The final page will tell us all we need to know.  There are places in this world, and places inside each one of us, where we can find the enduring traces of our deepest humanity.  It is the unabashed assertion of human goodness in all of its cultural forms that provides the only possible basis for true freedom.  At the end of Episode 6.18 we will discover we are free, but more importantly, we will see in ourselves the deep roots of value, truth, respect, and collaborative enterprise that make us civilised, cultured human beings, magnificent in bearing.  And with the final word on the final page, we will no longer be LOST.

Related posts:

1. “Whatever Happened, Happened” Recap & Analysis by Chris Kirkman
2. SL-LOST Podcast – Ep 5.11 “Whatever Happened, Happened”
3. The Wounds That Heal Us – A Cultural Analysis of LOST 6.01/6.02

Tags: Aaron, Jack, Jacob, John Locke, Kate, LOST Theories, man in black, numbers, Pearson Moore, Widmore