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“What was truly devastating to him was the loss of his power.  They allowed him to keep the title of Emperor, but without any power it was meaningless.”

Ben knew well the significance of his history lecture, for in another reality, he had been Emperor, only to be stripped of power and exiled off the Island.  Likewise, Richard knew the power of immortality, but it carried no value for him.  Death had more meaning.

For both men, power was an illusion, and they gave it up.  They surrendered:  To Ilana’s forgiveness, to Jack’s faith.

Ben’s exile is over now.  Richard’s life has just begun.  They discovered something more potent, more meaningful, more triumphant than power:  They discovered purpose.

Fathers and Sons

“The Chosen”, the book Ben discovered among the ruins of Sawyer’s tent on the beach, was a most appropriate choice as LOST’s book of the week, for several reasons.  “The Chosen” is the story of two boys growing up in mid-twentieth century Brooklyn, New York.  Like LOST, “The Chosen” is an engrossing story rich with meaning at several levels.  In a strange parallel with our favourite television programme, one of the boys sits down with his friend and says, “I wanted to kill you.”

Those who have read “The Chosen” will quickly identify one of the major motifs of LOST.  However, I believe it is not the recurring theme itself, but the way in which the theme is developed in “The Chosen” that has deepest relevance to this evening’s episode.

“The Chosen” seems to focus on the lives of two boys, but the novel really hinges on an entirely different issue.  The story is similar to W. P. Kinsella’s “Shoeless Joe”, which at first seems to concern Ray’s quest to bring peace to Shoeless Joe Jackson and renewed purpose to J. D. Salinger’s writing career.  In both novels, final resolution is achieved not by bringing closure to the early plot threads, but by reconciling father with son.

I believe “Dr. Linus” was similarly structured.  As with many installments of LOST over the years, tonight’s episode contained multiple references to father/child relationships.  “The Chosen” seemed to be about two boys growing beyond the limitations of their childhoods to carve out new pursuits and new careers, but was really about two boys making a perfect circle back to one boy’s father.  In the same way, much of LOST seems to be concerned with father/son reconciliation, but tonight’s episode tells us something more important is at issue.  We can be sure this is true because of a quiet conversation around a keg of gunpowder on which was placed a stick of dynamite with short burning fuse.

Good Day at Black Rock

The first of two major revelations tonight occurred on the Black Rock.  The event changed two lives, and probably altered the balance of power between the Smoke Monster’s group and Ilana’s pro-Jacob band.

Richard, admired for his eternal youth and unperturbed bearing, found life suddenly meaningless and unbearable.  Jacob’s death, the growing power of Jacob’s nemesis, and the destruction of the Temple convinced Richard that another day of tortured existence was intolerable.  “I devoted my life–longer than you can possibly imagine–in service of a man who told me that everything was happening for a reason, that he had a plan, a plan that I was a part of, and when the time was right that he’d share it with me–and now that man’s gone.  I just found out my entire life had no purpose.”

Then he and Jack had a short conversation, facing each other across a makeshift coffee table, a soon-to-explode stick of dynamite acting as unique centerpiece and focal point of the nineteenth century decor.

Jack has come a long way from convinced Man of Science to floundering and indecisive cork bobbing aimlessly on the currents of spacetime to his breathtaking confrontation on the Black Rock.  The Man of Science is gone.  Doubt no longer has any hold over this man.  Jack, facing what would have been certain death for anyone else, demonstrated the depth of his faith.  He has not yet moved mountains, but he has accomplished something that will have immense impact on the end game:  he saved Richard from annihilation.

Ageless Richard not only has renewed purpose, but he again has a leader to follow.  What secrets will he reveal to Jack?  How will Jack exploit this information?  One hundred and sixty years or more as consigliere to an angel (or whatever type of entity most appropriately expresses Jacob’s substance and form) must have made him privy to stories and events known to no one else in the world.  Having Richard on the team will expand their chances of short-term survival and improve their odds of final success.

But neither Richard’s salvation nor the revelation of Jack’s faith provided the essential lesson of this short scene.  The central element was not faith, salvation, or any other matter of the spirit.  We saw it in the focus of Jack’s piercing gaze, in the positioning of palms on thighs, in the tensed legs ready for advance, not retreat.

Jack is ready, eager to learn the task for which he has been chosen.  He recognises his importance as Candidate.  He probably doesn’t realise that among the Candidates he is special, chosen for a task no one else can perform.  But he is committed, energised, engaged, burning bright with new-found certainty and desire.

The importance of Jack’s unyielding conviction, an assurance that not even the prospect of death can perturb, is that it trumps every other concern he has ever had.  In particular, he has not reconciled with his father.  Many believe that he will, and a few commentators believe father/son reconciliation is a central focus of the series.  But Jack’s new vigour, his certainty and sense of  purpose, has no dependence on the outcome of any future interactions with Christian.

It seems likely that Jack’s focus will make him more amenable to reconciliation with Christian, with Kate, with Sarah, with everyone else he has alienated or refused or tried to “fix”.  But this means in the end that reconciliation flows from Jack’s new drive, and is not pre-requisite to it.  There is no Shoeless Joe for Jack.  No ancient professional ball player is going to whisper, “If you build it, he will come.”  Jack and Christian may at some point share a game of catch (or do whatever it is surgeons do for fun), but he need not come full circle, like Danny and Reuven in “The Chosen”.  The final curtain does not fall when Jack and Christian embrace as father and son, but when Jack’s assignment is complete.  The outcome of Jack’s task will determine the end of this story, and he’s taking us there, father’s blessing or not.

Captains and Kings
Potentates and Pretenders

Or emperors and principals.

Not Linus or Mr. Linus.  It’s Dr. Linus, thank you.  Ben Linus’ mastery of European history, long years in graduate school, genuine love of his discipline, intoxication with the stuff of history and the ability to instill that wonder in his students has earned him this:  a week of supervising delinquents in after-school detention.  Not only is he over-qualified to teach high school history, but he is tasked with an assignment that could as easily be performed by a teacher assistant.  The Ph.D. after his name earns him neither better pay nor higher esteem.  He has the honorific, but no authority.  As he said of Napoleon in exile, “They allowed him to keep the title of Emperor, but without any power it was meaningless.”

So sideways Ben sought the very centre of power in his high school.  Leslie Arzt was impressed.  No longer would Dr. Linus be subject to the whims of administrators “above his pay grade”.  He would have real power, not the undeserved backwater exile of a truly gifted educator.

Ben of the Island, the man who controlled the lives of scores of devoted followers, who had it within his power to summon demons and Smoke Monsters, could have taught the good Dr. Linus a thing or two about the real significance of power.  Ben began to understand the futility of appointed leadership late last season.  He was, for fifteen years or more, Leader of the Others.  He learned from bitter experience that the title was hollow.  He might as well have been an exiled emperor; even as Leader his real ability to effect meaningful improvement was kept in check by forces beyond his control.  Being Leader had no appeal to him.
What if you could have anything you wanted?  Anything in the entire world?  Perhaps Cerberus should have posed the question to Ben.  Instead, he assumed Ben spent days and nights yearning for the restoration of power.  “Follow me, Ben, and I’ll make you ruler of the Island when I leave.”  More likely, it seems to me, the MIB will devote his talents to the sinking of the Island, merging its fate with the sideways reality.  If the Smoke Monster wins the coming war, Ben will have no island to rule, and probably no life to live.

He should have posed the question.  Ben has been rudderless since long before the murderous night in the foot of the statue, since even before he moved the Island.  Alex’s murder changed everything for Ben Linus.  Lust for power neither animates his faculties nor determines his actions.  “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.”  Arrogant, sure of the unopposable power of temptation, the Smoke Monster reveals his own weakness and commits a major error.  Ben cannot be tempted in this way.

What if you could have anything you wanted?  Cerberus didn’t pose the question, but Ben did provide a response, in his confession to Ilana.  Ben does not seek leadership.  He does not seek diamonds or a better parking space.  He seeks to belong.  His motivation for following the Smoke Monster:  “He’s the only one who’ll have me.”  It’s a place Ben could belong.  If only Cerberus had known, or had the desire to find out, or possessed the humility of an open mind.

But humility was not among his strengths.  He offered only cold comfort and a moldy bag of Ol’ Roy for this beaten and broken follower.

Ilana heard his confession, heard the rare words of honest pain and sorrow from lips that had never before spoken from the heart.  And then she granted something not even the Smoke Monster could bestow:  True absolution.  “I’ll have you,” she said.  It was one of the most powerful scenes in the six years of LOST.

Faith of Our Fathers

The story of Benjamin Linus’ redemption does not end with absolution and acceptance.  Ben, too, will have a job to perform in the coming conflict, and he will need to skills requisite to the task.  We’ve known his strengths for some time, but tonight’s episode permanently fixed these in the plotline.

The sideways spacetime is all about potentials and instabilities and connections.  We know of sideways Jack’s strange connection to the Island:  the feeling of deja vu on Flight 815, the wound at his neck, the appendectomy scar he can’t seem to remember.  We know of sideways Kate’s strange discomfort in seeing the photograph of the stuffed animal she’d given to Aaron, now a gift to unborn Aaron from his mother, Claire.  The connections are obscured, chaotic, partially recognised.  Faraday’s Boulder–the splitting of spacetime into separate streams–is a destabilising entity.  The streams will converge at some point; Ben’s long-ago connection to the now submerged Island gives us fresh insight into the fragile and temporary nature of the separation.  These points of solid connection between the two realities will likely prove useful to enterprising travelers and seekers in future episodes.

Tonight we witnessed the explicit connection of Ben and Roger to their former island home.  Ben gassed his father again, this time with life-saving oxygen rather than the respiratory poison he administered at the purge.

Roger was a different man, choosing to join the Dharma Initiative on his own, and for the good of his son.  No longer hiding his love as he did on the Island, Roger was the firm foundation for Ben’s scholastic achievements.  Roger’s faith in his son’s abilities allowed him to blossom into a man passionate for bringing his love of learning to ready minds.

Ben began to show what we took to be his true colours:  conniving, scheming, always ready to manipulate people and situations to his advantage.  The opportunity to simultaneously ruin Principal Reynolds’ life and take ownership of the biggest office in the school must have had him salivating in anticipation.

But something happened.  We’ve seen it before, but it always seems a new occurrence, because it is so out of character for this manipulative mouse of a man.  “Kill it,” Charles Widmore said when he learned of Ben’s abduction of baby Alex.  “Get it out of here.”  Ben was horrified.  Did Eloise overrule Charles?  Did Richard talk Charles into accepting the infant into their midst?  Years later, Ben carried out a coup and had Charles exiled, officially for the sin of having fathered a child off-island.  But we know Ben well enough by now to discern the true reason for Charles’ exile.  Charles hated children.  Ben loved children.  Motherless Ben knew that children need to belong.  They need parents.  On Island and off, Ben has shown himself time and again heartless, cold, and cruel–except in any situation involving children.  “You’re the best, Dr. Linus.”  Alex meant it.  And it was true.  The high school kids loved him, because he had their interests foremost in his thoughts.  “Taking care of the kids.  That’s what’s important,” he told Arzt.

Ben has his priorities straight.  It was that clarity of purpose that made him realise the error of his attempted coup at Sideways High.  He had something better, more enduring than power.  He had the interests of his students in mind.  He had the ability to touch their lives in the most profound manner, sparking their interest in the world around them.  They had a place in his heart, and he found his way into their hearts.  He belonged.  He served.  He had purpose.

The Seven

“Six remain,” Ilana said.  But for several years, across a span of decades, seven Candidates walked the Island and affected events significant and small, temporary and enduring.  Thanks to Jack and Kate and company, the “Incident” tore asunder the reality of not only the Island, but of all spacetime.

There were seven:
04        Locke
08        Reyes
15        Ford
16        Jarrah
23        Shephard
42        Kwon
51        Austen

Only three of the numbers are odd (Ford, Shephard, Austen), and only one is prime (Shephard).  One is dead.  Has been for a long, long time.  His rotting corpse lies next to Boone’s.  Could even the miracle of resurrection apply in such a case?  Perhaps we will progress through three days over the course of these eighteen episodes, from the Last Supper of Maundy Thursday to the Empty Tomb of Sunday morning.  Doc Jensen’s idea appears to be sound, in keeping with the Christian theology of the Triduum, in keeping with his theory and mine that Locke will again walk the Island.

But I don’t see the necessity of a physical resurrection of the buried corpse.  Locke is alive and very well–in the sideways reality.  We see growing connections between the two realities.  Could sideways Ben, guardian of children, see Aaron safely through the unstable vortex separating his world from the Island he and his father once inhabited?  Could sideways Jack and Island Jack, working together, perhaps through Desmond as spacetime intermediary, transport (teleport?) Locke to the Island?  Richard’s been around a while.  He’s never observed a resurrection.  He’s been unwilling witnesses to the MIB’s macabre re-animation of long-dead corpses, but that is something entirely different from the Easter event.  Perhaps the coming resurrection will be more like an awakening of spirit, an end of exile, a discovery of the Candidates’ principal purpose.

Two realities rush forward with unrestrained velocity, accelerating toward a grand collision.  Upheavals of immense scale will unify some and tear others apart.  The powerless will confront the omnipotence of evil incarnate, but they will discover in their unity something more potent, more meaningful, more triumphant than power:  They will find their purpose, and their cause will prevail.

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