In contrast to last week’s episode of LOST, this week’s episode, “The Substitute,” actually got down to answering some long-standing questions. Like I had hoped for, this week’s plot focused around John Locke. We learned what happened when Fake John dragged Richard off into the jungle. And we get a glimpse into Locke’s life in the alternative universe. While there’s a lot that can be said about the alternative universe, and the John that lives there—the Hurley that lives there too—I want to focus instead on a pet theory of mine, and run it through a test case.
We learned about Jacob and his nemesis at the end of last season. We meet them sitting on a beach, and it becomes clear that Jacob has some ability to bring people to the island. The nemesis seems frustrated as Jacob is “bringing” a tall ship (the Black Rock) to the island. This concept—of Jacob bringing people to the island—was further flushed out last night when the nemesis showed Sawyer the seaside cave, with the survivors’ names, along with lots and lots of other names, written on the roof and walls. He told Sawyer that Jacob had come to them, all of them, at a certain point in their life and from then on they were on a course towards the island. This course, the nemesis said, was not their choice but instead they were manipulated by Jacob to come to the island. We saw some of these flashbacks, where Jacob touched the lives of different survivors, at the end of last season and again, briefly, last night.
The nemesis said that Jacob wanted to bring these people to the island, but I have a different theory. If you notice, Jacob came to these people at a critical time in their lives: Kate when she was stealing; John when his dad just pushed him out of a window; Sawyer when his parents were buried; Sun and Jin when they were just married. Jacob came and gave these survivors advice, advice that was intended to steer them away from the island, advice that would’ve seen them never get on that plane. If Kate had given up her life of crime, she wouldn’t be on the plane. If Sun wasn’t trying to escape a terrible marriage, her and Jin wouldn’t have been on the plane. If John hadn’t become so bitter, etc. etc., he wouldn’t have been on that plane.
Jacob tried to prevent the survivors from coming to the island.
My working, pet theory is this: that Jacob and his nemesis have some ability to “call” or bring people to the island. Their motives, however, are not the same. I think, and perhaps this is thinking a bit ahead of myself, that Jacob and his nemesis are both trapped on this island. They do not originate on the island; as the nemesis himself said, he was once an ordinary man. Somehow, I think, calling people to the island is a way to free themselves, maybe having someone take over their jobs, as the nemesis seemed to indicate on last night’s episode. For the nemesis, killing Jacob was a step towards freeing himself.
Yet, once the survivors reached the island, they more or less redeemed themselves from the choices that led them there in the first place. Kate became a better person; Sun and Jin repaired their marriage; John gained faith and strength. And what did Jacob mean when he said, “in between there is progress,” during that scene on the beach. His nemesis seemed frustrated that more people were being called to the island, he said it always ended the same way (in violence), and Jacob told him that in between there is progress. What kind of progress? Progress towards their being freed?
So why Mr. Eko? I thought we’d apply a little test case scenario to try and figure out why people are being called to the island, and who exactly is calling them. Since Mr. Eko is dead, if we can trace his life out, and try to discern his role in things, maybe we can figure out why or who called him to the island, and what his purpose was.
We’ve learned in the last few episodes that Jacob’s nemesis is the Smoke Monster, and that he can also inhabit the bodies of dead people. In most cases, he takes over their physical bodies but in the most recent case, he appears as John Locke, while leaving John’s physical body behind on the beach. Ilana said that in this new form, without taking John’s physical body, the nemesis can no longer change. Is that an important difference? Dunno.
What we do know is that he has this ability. Now, try to think back to Mr. Eko, remember him? Do you remember how he died? Mr. Eko was confronted, in the jungle, by his dead brother who demanded that he confess his sins to him. Mr. Eko replied that he’d only done what he had to do, committed no sins, and was promptly killed by the Smoke Monster—who we now know was Jacob’s nemesis.
In flashbacks we learn that Mr. Eko was originally a drug dealer. He was remorseless and violent. His brother, a priest, begs Eko to give up the drug smuggling and, in the process, gets himself shot and trapped on a drug smuggling plane that ends up crashing on the island. Eko isn’t on that flight. Eko takes over his brother’s parish, eventually becoming a respectable priest himself. He seems to redeem himself. Later, Eko is sent to Australia to investigate a supposed miracle: a resurrection. He meets with the resurrected girl and their family and then hops on the Oceanic flight which crashes on the island. Notably, the father of the resurrected girl is the same man—a fraudulent psychic—who convinces Claire to get onto that same Oceanic flight.
It get thick here, and I’m not sure I can follow it entirely. While on the island, Mr. Eko is mostly good, I think this is important. Unlike the other survivors, who Jacob touched, Eko, while not touched or given advice by Jacob (that we know of), seemed to have redeemed himself and his life from the bad choices he’d made. Kate kept stealing; once Eko’s brother was killed and taken away, he turned from the life that he’d previously lived. He gave up being a drug dealer, and became a priest.
On the island, Eko is doing good things, he’s building a church, he’s helping people, etc. Then he has a dream. In his dream his brother visits him and tells him about the hatch, tells him that pushing the button down in the hatch is important. Is this really his brother or, I think, Jacob’s nemesis appearing as his brother? Eko has faith, and pushes the button faithfully until John, who’s lost faith (didn’t follow Jacob’s advice), prevents him from pushing it and the hatch explodes.
After the hatch explosion, Mr. Eko sees his brother a second time. This time, his brother tells him that it’s time to confess his sins and baits Eko to follow him out into the jungle. His brother, who we now know is actually Jacob’s nemesis, tells him that he must confess for the things he’s done. Eko tells him that he didn’t choose the life he’d been given, and that he did the best with it that he could. At this, Eko’s brother disappears and the Smoke Monster appears and kills him.
At this point, we can draw a couple of conclusions, I think. Since the Smoke Monster killed Mr. Eko that means that either (1) he had served his purpose, (2) he was unable to serve his purpose, or (3) the Monster didn’t want him to serve his purpose. Unlike the other survivors who Jacob visited, we don’t know if Mr. Eko had this same experience. From what I can tell, Mr. Eko redeemed himself from his bad choices, but still ended up on the island. If we assume that Jacob’s nemesis called the survivors to the island—and Jacob tried to prevent it by setting them straight—can we assume, perhaps, that Jacob called Eko to the island, to be a force of good, as a candidate to take over his position? As a “substitute”?
While I’ve been hashing out this theory, Maria reminded me of another incident: the death of Charlie. Charlie was killed, if you remember, by a grenade from Mikhail, the eye-patched other in charge of communication. Except, Mikhail died, twice. While this was explained away, at the time, as the island’s “healing powers” what if Jacob’s nemesis had taken on the form of Mikhail, as he did with Eko’s brother, and killed Charlie. A comparison of these two characters, Charlie and Eko, reveals some striking similarities.
Most notably, it seems to me, that both Eko and Charlie were performing selfless deeds: Eko pushing the button and Charlie trying to save the island, and save Desmond, down in the Looking Glass station. It seems to me that maybe both Eko and Charlie got too close to something, and had to be killed by Jacob’s nemesis. Perhaps whatever Jacob’s motivations for calling people to the island, perhaps whatever “progress” people who he calls have been making, maybe this is what Eko and Charlie were close to and they had to be killed.
There are, of course, a lot of loose ends. Why, for example, would Jacob’s nemesis (who came to Eko in a dream, as his brother) want Eko to push the button to keep the electromagnetism at bay?
Before my head explodes, I want to make one more suggestion. If this is some kind of good-against-evil situation, which it obviously is, and Jacob and his nemesis are trying to escape the island, or are calling people to the island for their own motives perhaps it goes like this: perhaps people like Eko and Charlie are “candidates” for Jacob’s side of the battle. They perform selfless actions, they’re good. And perhaps people like the Sawyer, from last night’s episode, who seem truly capable of doing bad things, are “candidates” for Jacob’s nemesis’ side.
Whatever this show has going on, it’s pretty intense. This post is so late in the evening because I’ve truly spent all day thinking, and rethinking about everything. A show that’s this thick and deep, you’ve gotta applaud that. I’m sure I’ve missed things, because I’ve learned that the more you think, and the deeper you get, you run into more and more layers. There are so many layers, and that’s what makes a show like LOST so fantastic. Oh, and in case you think my theory is too batty, in reading around I’ve found out that the producers hinted that Eko, will reappear in Season Six. Interesting, no?
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