Just as 1×04 (“Walkabout”) shocked us and changed the game (This Island is crazy! The crippled guy can walk now!) this weeks episode, called “The Substitute,” has changed the game again five years later. Up until this point, we’ve been told that Desmond failing to push the button was the sole reason Oceanic Flight 815 crashed on the Island. Now all of a sudden, fake Locke/MIB tells Sawyer that Jacob pushed all of these people toward the Island, essentially making it their destiny to come to this place. Not only were they destined to come to the Island, but they were all candidates to take over his position as protector of the island. Whoa, dude.
Last week we ran around Los Angeles with Kate the Fugitive, this week we’re wheeling around with John Locke the Boxman. The mechanical lift that helps him get out of his van decided to only go halfway down to the ground, and the man of faith took a leap of faith and ended up face down on his front lawn, just in time for the sprinklers to go off. Locke’s fiance Helen(!) turns off the sprinklers, and we next find him in the bathtub. Now, the last time we heard the name Helen, Matthew Abaddon was telling Locke that she had died. The last time we saw Helen, she caught John in the middle of a scheme with his father, who had just faked his own death. Locke proposed to her on the spot, but she turned him down and drove away in a rage. In this timeline, her and John are engaged to be married. “What do you say we just get my parents and your dad and do it shotgun style in Vegas?” she asks. Does this mean that John and his father are still on speaking terms? If so, it’d be hard to imagine the 8-story window tackle still happened, which opens things up for a few questions. If that window tackle never happened, did Jacob still ever meet Locke? If that window tackle never happened, how did he become paralyzed? “What are the odds of you just running into a spinal surgeon?” is her next question. The man of faith is engaged to a woman of faith, it seems. This also reminded me of Juliet asking Ben what the chances were of a spinal surgeon just falling out of the sky right when he needed one.
Back in Island times, we begin with a great point of view shot of the smoke monster himself. He winds and clicks through New Otherton, stopping only to peer through a window to check on Sawyer. Once he gets into the jungle and sees his knife, he takes the shape of John Locke once again. He immediately cuts a rope which lets Richard down out of the trap he’d been put in. “Alright, Richard. Time to talk.” Uh oh.
Boxman Locke rolls to his desk. At his desk, he has a photo of him and his father from when they were hunting and a photo of him and Helen. This again makes it hard to believe that Mr. Cooper is the reason for Locke’s paralysis. Randy, his asshole boss comes over and fires him for not actually going to the conference when he was in Sydney.
Locke gives Richard some water, and says that he wants Richard to come with him. He also says that John was a candidate, and then a blonde kid with bloody hands appeared out of nowhere. Richard noticed Locke staring at him, but when he looks over the child is gone. Could it be taller ghost Aaron? He’s too young and not on the island, but Walt appeared when the same was true of him. Little Locke? Little Jacob? We’ll have to wait and find out. I’m not sure if any of them make any sense at this point. Richard is very confused by all of this. “You mean you’ve been doing everything he told you all this time and he never said why?” Locke asks. “Come with me and I promise, I’ll tell you everything.” Richard says he isn’t going anywhere with him, and Locke leaves after telling him that they’ll be seeing each other again soon.
Continued belowInside the statue, we find Ilana crying, and then she collects Jacob’s white ashes. Is she related to Jacob in some way? She took the news of his death very hard, which makes me wonder. She tells Ben that Locke is out in the jungle recruiting. He failed to recruit Richard, but he stops at Sawyer’s house hoping to have better luck with him. Sawyer can tell that something is different about Locke, because the old Locke was scared even when he pretended not to be. Locke tells him that he can answer the most important question in the world (“Why are you on this island?”) and that the answer has nothing to do with a plane crashing, the raft blowing up or him jumping off the helicopter. That’s enough to get Sawyer to follow him.
A dejected Locke is leaving work but a yellow Hummer is parked a bit too close to him. Hurley drives a yellow Hummer. Could it be him? Locke attempts to put his lift down anyway, but no wheelchair lift is going to scratch the car of the luckiest man in the world! He bangs on the Hummer to set the alarm off just as Hurley comes out. Locke is back to being old Locke; he didn’t park in the handicap spot because he doesn’t have to, and he doesn’t want that little blue sign (and bigger than that, society) to tell him what to do. I enjoyed the subtle irony in the line “I haven’t seen you before.” After introducing himself as the owner of the company and agreeing that Randy is a douche, Hurley gives Locke the number of the temp agency he owns
Locke sees the mysterious kid again, and is surprised that Sawyer can see him too. Could Richard not see him before or did he just disappear when he glanced over? After chasing him, the kid tells him “you know the rules; you can’t kill him.” Could he be referring to Sawyer, since we find out later that he’s a candidate? Richard hears Sawyer yelling for Locke and tries to convince him to come to the Temple with him, but Sawyer wants his answers so he decides to stay. It was interesting to see Richard so worried and frantic; he’s always been composed and in control of everything in the past. The stakes on the Island have really changed.
Fact: the first woman that Locke speaks to at the temp agency was also the fortune teller that Hurley saw in “Tricia Tanaka is Dead.” Locke doesn’t like the line of questioning he gets from her, so he asks for her supervisor, who turns out to be our old friend Rose. We find out here that she still has cancer.
Sawyer brings up Of Mice and Men (which is after MIB’s time, he says) and considers shooting Locke, who is not bothered and challenges him to do so. He tells Sawyer that he is “trapped” and that he was once a man. According to Ilana, MIB can’t change his face anymore. “He’s stuck this way,” she says. I wonder why. Does he take the form of a body and then have to stick with it? Was he Christian Shephard before Locke’s death? Does he need to replace Jacob before he can change again? They have a short funeral and bury Locke. Ben says “he was a much better man than I will ever be, and I’m very sorry I murdered him.” Sun’s eyes light up at this revelation. Frank responds with another great line: “This is the weirdest damn funeral I’ve ever been to.”
Locke wakes up in his home, and his alarm makes the exact same sound as the hatch alarm. Weird. He decides to call Jack, but changes his mind as soon as the receptionist answers. He realizes they were right when they said he couldn’t go on the walkabout, and says there are no such things as miracles. He admits to Helen (whose shirt says peace and karma) that he didn’t go to the conference, and he apologizes that he won’t be able to walk down the aisle with her at the wedding and tells her not to wait for miracles. She says that the only thing she ever waited for was him. She rips up Jack’s card, but I still think that Jack and Locke will meet up sometime this season in this timeline. Imagine Jack fixing him so he can walk down the aisle at his wedding like he just said he’d never be able to. What a scene that would be.
Continued belowLocke and Sawyer get to the cliff and they climb down. This scene was terrifying, as I believe we’re at the point now where any character can die at any point; it’s the last season so no one is safe. This place was almost death, but Sawyer managed to swing his way over to safety and they descend into the cave. There’s a scale with a white rock and a black rock, and the black rock is just a bit heavier. Does that mean this is a dark time for the island? A subtle way of saying evil is always stronger and fighting the good fight takes a little more effort? Locke takes the white rock off and throws it out into the water, and calls it an “inside joke.” Sawyer is incredulous that he came all this way to see some rocks on a scale in a cave, but just then Locke lights a torch and leads him into the cave to see one of the most surprising things we’ve seen in the last six years: there are names written on the walls and ceiling. These names correspond with the numbers. (4 – Locke (this gets crossed out during his speech), 8 – Reyes, 15 – Ford, 16 – Jarrah, 23 – Shephard, 42 – Kwon.) Carlton Cuse’s tweet that told us “a number of things will be illuminated” makes much more sense now. Well played, Cuse. Locke explains that Jacob pushed them all to the island, and choices that they thought they made for themselves were never theirs at all. They are all candidates to take over Jacob’s position as protector of the island. He then explains that Sawyer has 3 choices. One is to do nothing and have his name crossed out. His second choice is to accept the job, become the new Jacob and protect the island. However, he says that it’s just an island, and there’s nothing to protect it from. His third choice is to get off the island together and never look back. That’s what Sawyer chooses.
In between the scenes in the cave, we see Locke as a substitute teacher. That is the title of the episode after all; in the new timeline he is a substitute teacher and on the island his body is a substitute home for MIB. Who does he meet in the breakroom? One Ben Linus, professor of European history. Now, who was Locke subbing for in the class? Does that matter? I have a feeling we might see more of this school, especially since now we see that Ben is off island and working there.
This weeks episode was significantly better than last weeks installment. I’m fascinated with everything happening on the island, and while I’m still not totally enthralled by the new timeline, I’m into it enough, and excited to see how it relates to what happened previously and/or what’s happening now on the Island.
