Hey everyone. It's that time, LOST time.

Previously, on LOST: Oceanic Flight 815 crashed on a not-deserted island. Everything's weird between the survivors and the cult of island dwellers who were already there (who I call "Jacobians" for their worship of a man named Jacob, and who our protagonists call "the Others" because it distinguishes them from our protagonists). In recent weeks, the Oceanics have captured the Others' leader, wily schemer Ben "Spine Tumor" Linus, and then Ben escaped and the Others captured the Oceanics' leader, frequently angry-eyed surgeon Jack "Of Course" Shephard, and then the Oceanics mounted a rescue party consisting of (in descending order of their score on the Capable/Trustworthy Island Index) soulful soldier Sayid Jarrah, plucky fugitive Kate Austin, French loner Danielle Rousseau, and bald maverick former paraplegic proto-zealot John "Explosives" Locke. This away team recently arrived at the Others' compound and discovered that—shock!—Jack Of Course is apparently football-tossing friendly with the Others!

Also, back on the Oceanics' beach settlement, there's a Scotsman. For magic-slash-science reasons, he can see various possibilities before they happen, which he and his friends think of as "seeing the future." This will become important, in time.

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O B S E R V A T I O N

Rolling Stone used the occasion of LOST becoming available on Netflix to publish an article in praise of network TV's bygone ways, back when seasons came packed with plenty of throwaway episodes and discursive one-time stories that let viewers exist in the world of the show and spend time getting to know its characters—in contrast with the streaming/prestige era's practice of shorter seasons and season-spanning, plot-driven arcs. I agree with the article's premise, and love that they even used one of my favorite examples of the former type of episode—Tricia Tanaka is Dead, which I just covered last installment—as their proof-text.

But never mind all that; we've come to bury shaggy-dog LOST, not praise it ... because we've reach the long-awaited moment when the LOST showrunners were able to negotiate an actual end date, and the narrative rope is about to pull taut for good. You could even say that this is the moment when LOST transforms from a classic network-era hit into an early prototype of a streaming-era prestige drama. The seasons will even shorten as we go.

I think it's for the best, despite Rolling Stone's very good points. LOST had at this point mined whatever value it could get from a more languorous, character-driven pace, and the cracks were starting to show. Too many of the series' many mysteries were starting to feel as if they had been left to rot on the jungle floor. The narrative, then, demanded the change, and luckily, the showrunners demanded it, too. It's going to be mostly forward momentum from here on out.

As if in anticipation of setting a new pace toward a distant but distinct finish line, the writers are going to use the episodes we're watching as an opportunity to trim the fat, go Michael Corleone, and take care of all family business in one fell swoop. This is generally good news if you're a fan, but pretty bad news if you're a Nikki or a Paolo.

Hopefully you're not one of those.

Episode 13: THE MAN FROM TALLAHASSEE (Locke): Kate, Jack, and Sayid have conflicting responses to the revelation that Jack has apparently been red-rovered over to the Others. Rousseau, always the practical if wild-eyed survivor type, nopes the hell out, retreating back into the underbrush, where she will spend the rest of the episode engaged in her favorite activities: lurking, gazing upon her kidnapped daughter from a distance, and tending a serious case of jungle madness. The rest of the team, with various degrees of enthusiasm, decide to go see whether or not Jack wants a rescue, or maybe kisses. (This last part might only be Kate, though Sayid, who plays his cards close to the vest, remains a placid pool of mysteries as regards his intentions, so who can say?)

But Jack's being surveilled, so Sayid and Kate get captured pretty much right away. Locke fares better, mostly because he had no interest whatsoever in rescuing Jack. He's more having a "learn where the Others' submarine is so he can blow it up with stolen Russian C4" kind of moment. Which is exactly what he does before finally being captured. Krakatoa! Jack can't leave the island now, and he fumes at Locke as only Jack can fume. Before this happens, though, Jack secures Ben's promise to let his friends go, as only Jack can, and before that happens, Jack promises Kate he'll come back to rescue her, as only Jack can. Jack's got skills, son.

Turns out Ben's thrilled to have lost the submarine. As he tells Locke afterward, he had been twisting on the prongs of a very sharp barbecue fork. On the first prong: Ben promised Jack safe passage off the island, which he very much doesn't want to go through with, since this would make him look weak at an already-weak moment (Ben's recuperating from spinal surgery) and probably lose what is starting to seem like a tenuous grasp upon his leadership status. On prong two: Ben couldn't figure out how to deny Jack without publicly going against his word, which would cause him to lose all credibility, and ... well, see his aforementioned tenuous grasp on leadership. As with most things Ben, some of this is a lie—we'll get to it—but mostly I think this is true.

In the flashback, we learn that Locke—whose desperation for belonging and meaning leads him time and again (and again, and again) to make self-destructive decisions predicated upon giving his trust to the wrong people—finally decided to stand up to his grifting father, septuagenarian con man Anthony Cooper. This also doesn't work, since it turns out that Cooper is perfectly willing to be Locke-destructive if Locke won't be self-destructive, and pushes his own son out of an eight-story window. Crunch. So, after endless teases, we learn how Locke wound up in the wheelchair. Brutal.

Back on the island, Ben—attended by the mysterious Other Richard Alpert—reveals to Locke that he, Ben, knows all of these flashback details about Locke's injury. This isn't a massive surprise to us, since the Others seem to have mysteriously complete dossiers on all our heroes ... but there is one reason they might have the goods on Locke in particular, and it is a doozy. After telling Locke that the Island contains a "magical box" that might contain anything you can imagine, Ben opens up one of his many holding cells and shows Locke that it contains somebody Locke never would have guessed—somebody whose presence on the island Ben himself claims to be mystified by.

"Dad?"

It's the Man From Tallahassee himself. Anthony Cooper, bound and gagged.

End of Episode 13.

Episode 14: EXPOSÉ (Nikki and Paolo): I don't think I've said much about Nikki and Paolo so far, and that's because they haven't mattered much. Nikki and Paolo were presented to us in this season as characters who had ostensibly been there all along, just two of the unnamed survivors we see in the background that rarely get lines or even an in-focus shot. At the time, N&P were taken to be the writers' answer to the frequent fan complaint that these background figures were never promoted to the foreground ... and maybe that's all they were.

Anyway it was all done in a rather ham-fisted way, where suddenly and apropos of nothing, these two people we've literally never seen before are suddenly joining Locke on a trip to the Pearl station, and quipping here and there with Hurley or Charlie or Sawyer (the latter of whom lampshades the whole thing by never knowing who the hell they are) or whoever. It's all very Poochie.

Fans hay-ay-ah-hahahaaaaaaaAAAAY-ted them. Be careful what you wish for, fans.

As a result, this N&P-centric episode is often held up as the worst of the series. I disagree, if only because it features the smooth malt-liquor-picker himself, the always welcome Billy Dee Williams. But also, as a standalone episode, it's not terrible—just ask Rolling Stone! We learn that Nikki was a TV star who, with lover/accomplice Paolo's help, seduced and murdered her series' director to steal his stash of diamonds. On the island, N&P spend their time lurking in the background of familiar LOST moments, trying to find the diamonds in the wreckage. Once they find the diamonds, they spend their time scheming on each other. Greed eventually does to them what greed always does: makes them poison each other to a catatonic state with island spiders that put their victims into almost instant deathlike paralysis.

Faced with a pair of apparent corpses, The Gang Tries To Solve a Murder. Suspicion falls upon Sawyer, especially once it's discovered he scavenged the diamonds, but eventually Sawyer mostly convinces the gang that he is innocent—of murder, anyway. Our friends never guess that N&P are only paralyzed, so in a Twilight Zone twist, they unwittingly bury N&P alive, which goes pretty hard.

It's a grim farewell to characters who never meant much and never did much and then died. Still, I maintain it's not a bad episode of TV. Rodrigo Santoro and Kiele Sanchez do a respectable job with their relatively thankless roles; given that they are here for a good time, not a long time, there's some fun to be had in watching our two temporary antiheroes interacting with departed characters (welcome back, Dr. Artz!) and events of Seasons 1-3. And, again, I cannot state strongly enough that Lando freaking Calrissian is in this episode.

There are a couple points of plot-relevant interest here. Charlie comes clean to Sun that he is the one who attacked her, which does not endear him but is a necessary little bit of character work that needed to be dealt with if Charlie was to have a satisfying redemption arc. And Paolo overhears Juliet and Ben scheming before Ben is captured, so I guess that confirms that Ben got himself captured on purpose—further establishing Ben's Machiavellian bona-fides, and Juliet as somebody in Ben's inner circle ... which might be relevant to next episode.

However, given that we aren't going to see many more throwaway episodes from now on, fans can be forgiven for thinking that the whole Nikki and Paolo saga was a big waste, and the episode is nothing but disposable filler. To an extent, I agree ...

... but I have my theories. Stay with me.

End of Episode 14.

Episode 15: LEFT BEHIND (Kate): Nope, it's not a Christian rapture movie—though I assume that Evangeline Lilly could still star in one of those without having to get vaxxed, so fingers crossed! In the A story, Kate is still a captive in New Othertown's rec room until she's gassed and wakes up in the jungle handcuffed to her newish nemesis—Juliet, the Other from another brother who has an apparent crush on Jack and a penchant for getting the better of Kate in hand-to-hand combat, even when armed with nothing but a sandwich.

Apparently Juliet has been placed there by her colleagues. Kate is suspicious, and with good reason: Juliet is lying like The Dude's rug. She claims to have never seen the black smoke, but when the creature appears, she goes right to the sonic pylons and keys in the code to stop it—which works, interestingly enough, in a scene that is in my opinion cool. (I'd like to know more about how the sonic fence works. The Adversary truly can't fly over this fence? Perhaps It finds it more useful to Its schemes to make people think it can be so constrained? Let's hold on to that idea for another day.) Juliet also has the keys to the handcuffs. It turns out she was the one who chained herself to Kate, and she claims she did that only because she had been left behind by the Others too, and was hoping to make a case for herself to the Oceanic team as somebody who'd been thoroughly abandoned enough to be trusted. It's a weirdly convoluted way to build trust.

In a very LOST 1.0, network-TV-style, spending-time-with-beloved-characters B-story, Hurley cons Sawyer into acting like the leader that the Oceanics need, even if he isn't the leader they deserve right now. The big dude does this hilariously, by convincing Sawyer that the rest of them are going to have a Survivor-style vote over whether or not to banish him from the beach, which fools the acerbic con-man into straightening up and acting nice. It's enjoyable fun, and also very nice foreshadowing for the eventual styles of the leadership roles that both characters will come to inhabit.

The flashback has Kate hooking up with Sawyer's baby-mama, Cassidy (though Sawyer's never mentioned by name). Cass helps defeat police surveillance to allow Kate to meet up with her mother. Kate wants to know how her mother could possibly have turned her in to the cops. Her mom's answer—"um you burned my husband alive"—is a very welcome reminder from the show that whatever Kate (or we) may think about her justifications, she actually did commit murder. She is not wrongfully accused! Mom lets Kate escape, but promises that if there's ever another meeting between them, she'll yell for the cops ... which is something that we have already seen happen, actually, so this doesn't really progress anything but the story at least makes sense for the character for a change, and Kate and Cass have fun Thelma & Louise chemistry, so chalk it up as a win.

Kate and Juliet return to New Othertown to collect Sayid and Jack, and discover that the Others have absconded. Apparently Juliet wasn't lying about that. Whether it's because she murdered her colleague, or because Ben wants to plant an infiltrator with the Oceanic beach, the Others have left Juliet behind. Still not clear to me why she needed to handcuff herself to Kate. Oh well. It's a Kate episode, and that character just does not get a fair shake in her episodes.

Sayid and Kate have no interest in bringing Juliet back with them, which seems extremely sensible, considering ... well, everything. But Jack of Course insists that Juliet—again, like The Dude's rug—really ties the room together, so Juliet returns with our heroes, and Sayid looks extremely annoyed.

End of Episode 15.

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B E L I E F

All right, I've been holding off but it's time for a massively spoilerific rundown of what exactly is going on with Ben Linus and John Locke. If you've been following along since the start, I've mentioned this in the introductory installments, but I haven't really returned to it during the episode breakdowns: John Locke is going to become a time traveler.

He doesn't know it yet, but I think Ben Linus does.

Let's get into it.

1) Nikki and Paolo. But first, let's have a bit of fun. Take this one or leave it; like most things Nikki and Paolo, it doesn't really matter either way.

I've already said that I think that the anomaly in the Season 2 finale—which ended when Desmond turned the failsafe key—ended the universe and moved our heroes into a parallel one.

I've spent a lot of time talking about iterations where things are almost the same—almost—and about things that might be a little different than they were before ... the geographic position of the island, the location of the nuclear device that in the previous iteration had been a failsafe beneath the Swan station ... and maybe, just maybe, a couple of people who hadn't been there before and who, suddenly and without explanation, were present and always had been present, in ways that seemed to confuse even the other people who had been living with them.

Desmond has been told by somebody who seems to know that the universe has a way of course correcting, to remove things that aren't meant to be there, and that Desmond has spent recent episodes discovering that certain course corrections (like the apparently inevitable death of a heroin-addicted hobbit rock star) cannot be avoided, only forestalled.

If you're meant to be a part of the world, the island won't let you die. I see a flip side: If you're not meant to be a part of the world, the island will make sure you aren't a part of it.

Goodbye, Nikki. Goodbye, Paolo. You weren't too good for this world, but suddenly, because of quantum energies mediated through a metaphysically unique Scotsman, you simply weren't supposed to be a part of it anymore. Probably.

Like I said, believe it if you find it fun to believe it. As for me, I believe.

2) Locke & wheelchair: Way back at the start of this journey, I told you there's something very important to always remember about John Locke, which is one of the very first things that happened following the Oceanic crash.

Here's what I wrote then:

Locke’s early encounter with The Adversary is one of the primary hinges of the series. It’s very easy to forget this, because Locke himself never talks about this actual encounter with anybody directly, and the first early hints as to what this encounter must have entailed don’t arrive until around Season 3, with the full picture coming more clear in Season 6, if you remember that this encounter happened, which you probably won’t, because (again) Locke doesn’t mention it but … it is crucial to understanding Locke, and everything Locke does in the series.

Never forget this encounter happened.

It’s ABC: A = Always. B=Be. C=remembering this enCounter happened.

One of the first things we ever learn about The Adversary is that It is engaged in an epoch-long argument with another even more powerful entity we're calling The Island, over whether or not humanity is worthy to exist. The Island brings people to the island, usually in groups, to observe them. The Adversary grooms one or more of them to corrupt them, specifically to prove to The Island that human beings are naturally corrupt. It has vast powers, including taking the form of an amorphous smoke monster, mind reading, supernatural persuasion, impersonation of the dead, and (it's implied) the ability to control both the weather and the extent to which a person will benefit from the island's healing properties.

It's safe to say that if somebody is important on the island, you can be sure The Adversary is taking a very direct interest in them. For this reason, I think it's safe to say that everything that we see Locke doing is based on understandings he's received from The Adversary. "Things don't stay buried on this island," Locke tells Paolo when he catches him trying to bury his diamonds—which sure sounds like somebody who has been having conversations with dead people, or an entity that can impersonate them. We have to take this on faith, because of all the presumed interactions between Locke and The Adversary, only the first encounter is ever even suggested. Nevertheless, Locke's actions are consistent with somebody who is communing regularly with The Adversary, and even more than that, the existence of somebody within the Oceanics who is secretly communing with The Adversary and acting on Its behalf would be consistent with the dynamics we will see play out within every other group that has ever come to the island. So, while we are never shown that Locke's been enthralled, the empty space of what we are not shown takes on the exact shape and form of that conclusion, so our faith in that conclusion is likely to be rewarded.

So now let's go to a key scene in Episode 13. Locke is holding a convalescing Ben at gunpoint, enjoying some chicken from Ben's fridge, and waiting for Ben's daughter Alex (who is actually Rousseau's daughter but never mind that for now) to return with the C4 so that he can enter his Mad Bomber era. They have this exchange:

Ben: Why are you so angry, John?

Locke: Because you're cheating—you and your people. Communicate with the outside world whenever you want to. You come and go as you please. You use electricity and running water and guns. You're a hypocrite, a pharisee. You don't deserve to be on this island. If you had any idea what this place really was, you wouldn't be putting chicken in your refrigerator.

Ben: You've been here 80 days, John. I've been here my entire life. So how is it that you think you know this island better than I do?

Locke: Because you're in that wheelchair and I'm not.

Much to consider! I think we're seeing the result of a lot of information that The Adversary has been giving Locke, including the idea that there is an edict against using technology or leaving the island. (Interesting things to tell Locke, since we will learn one of The Adversary's main interests involves using technology, specifically to leave the island.) It has pretty clearly told Locke that the Others have become corrupted, and that Ben is one of the corrupting influences. I believe It has also been telling Locke the thing Locke most wants to hear, which is that he, John Locke, is destined to become the leader of the Jacobians—protector of the island, Chosen of Jacob, a man of destiny and consequence. And he's almost certainly told Locke that a clear proof of Ben's unworthiness and Locke's worthiness is that the island allowed the former to get sick (or even made him sick) but healed the latter.

I think it's best to watch this show with the understanding that, since the very first episodes, John Locke has been operating on information that The Adversary has fed him, including knowledge of many of the properties of the island, and of many of the factions on and off the island, and what his destiny is meant to be. I think it's best to understand that, since nearly his first day on the island, Locke has seen himself as the rightful leader—not just the eventual leader, but the leader already—of not just the Oceanic survivors he arrived with, but of all human beings on the island.

As with all things having to do with The Adversary, some of Locke's information is a lie, but most of it is truth told to promote the lie. The false part includes the alleged edicts against technology or leaving the island, which are imposed by the Island but apply only to The Adversary Itself. Also, Locke isn't the fated chosen elect of The Island, although Locke is one of many candidates for the role that Jacob is testing and that The Island would in theory be willing to accept.

But it is true that Locke is indeed fated to replace Ben as the leader of the Others. Locke is the chosen, not of Jacob, or The Island, but of The Adversary. The Others have been waiting for John Locke to appear for years—decades. They've been waiting for John Locke since before either he or Ben Linus were born. The Adversary has seen to that.

It's also true that the Others have been corrupted, and partly true that Ben is the corrupting influence. But Ben is only the corrupting influence on the surface of the pool. In the deep lurks the greater truth: Ben is working with The Adversary, too—and he now sees unmistakable hints that he's being abandoned.

And this fills Ben's heart with hate.

3) Ben & Box. Ben will later admit that his "magic box" is a metaphor; one he never explains, and which I think might be fruitful to return to someday. He's utterly lying, though, about not knowing how Anthony Cooper arrived on the island. It will become clear that at some point Ben ordered Cooper abducted and brought to the island—something Ben would absolutely have been able to do. I think it's quite clear that Ben did this because from the moment Oceanic 815 crashed, he knew that he had a serious John Locke problem, and he was looking for tools to fix it.

Ben is perhaps the greatest student of The Adversary; in terms of resourcefulness, and ruthlessness, and his ability to manipulate others into doing his will, he matches his teacher. For example, here's something he says to Locke:

John before you go you should know Jack and I made a deal. In less than an hour he's leaving this island on that submarine, and it's a one-way ticket. That anomaly wiped out our communications; we have no way of contacting the outside world—which means that when the sub leaves, it can never come back. So whether you destroy the submarine or let it go the end result is the same: No one will ever find this island.

It's a lie that they have no communications, and no way of leaving or returning—and Locke probably knows this, and Ben may know he knows. We must admire Ben's penchant for finding the exact blend of lies and truth that would most incentivize Locke to destroy the sub, especially the idea that it might allow one of the people whose fate is tied to the island—Jack—to leave, and not only to leave, but to leave forever.

I believe Ben suspects that Locke is already in communion with The Adversary. I'm sure he recognizes the signs. He certainly recognizes the authority this bestows, and fears the abandonment this suggests. This means that Ben, who is motivated to hold onto his leadership position, must find a way to re-establish his authority. Little wonder that Ben would frame himself to Locke and Richard as the greater authority, as he does here:

I don't know how it happened, but you seem to have some communion with this island, John, and that makes you very very important. You have no idea what you're talking about of course, but in time you'll have a better understanding of things.

It's very important that Ben is attended in Episode 13—for the first time, I believe—by Richard Alpert. We know that Richard Alpert actually is the "voice of Jacob" on the island—the only person on the island who ever has access to Jacob. It's never stated, but we can easily discern that Richard's support of Ben conveys authority upon Ben in the same way as support of a high priest might convey authority to a king. Very bad to lose, in other words.

Ben is aware that he is in danger of losing that association.

The reason for this is that John Locke is about to travel through time. Ben might not know that fact exactly, but he almost certainly knows that some 50 years ago, John Locke came striding out of the jungle, and told Richard Alpert and all the Jacobians that he, John Locke, was their leader. Which, by the time he tells them that, he will have become.

So, for 50 years, the high priest of the island, and the cult of which he is the figurehead, have been awaiting the arrival of their leader, a man named John Locke. I believe we'll see very clearly that this expectation is shared by the rest of the Jacobians, particularly the older and more established faction that lives in the temple rather than the Dharma facilities.

They have been awaiting their prophesied leader. And now here he is.

Ben Linus has a serious John Locke problem.

L O S T

Next Time: Midgame Mindgames

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A.R. Moxon is the author of The Revisionaries, and the essay collection Very Fine People, which are available in most of the usual places, and some of the unusual places. He is also co-writer of Sugar Maple, a musical fiction podcast from Osiris Media which goes in your ears. His thirsty wanted whiskey, but his hungry needed beans.