"Cabin Fever" Initial Thoughts

"His name is John!"

"Are you sure that knife's yours? Well, it's not."

"Don't tell me what I can't do!"

"We have to move the island."

Yes, tonight was a big night for Locke as we discovered some crucial, Easter Egg-laden scenes from his past; in the present, meanwhile, the stage was set for the future. This was Lost at its peak: gaining momentum, expanding its mythology, and fleshing out its characters beyond what we thought possible.

It turns out John Locke was one of the "chosen" since he was a newborn. Richard Alpert - finally proven to be ageless! - appeared to recruit him at least twice. A kindly teacher told Locke to follow the signs, too. And finally, Matthew Abaddon subtly guided him toward his inevitable path, too. So Locke accepted his destiny.

Wrong.

Locke wasn't having any of it. As a child, he could've been the Walt of his time - except that he chose the knife, which apparently made him unfit for Mittelos. (That's the same company Alpert recruited Juliet to; it's an anagram for "Lost Time.") As a teenager, he didn't want to be different - he wanted to be normal. And his meeting with Abaddon in physical therapy, well, that's when he was finally pushed in the right direction. So did Abaddon send him on the walkabout and orchestrate the entire plane crash? No -- although Abaddon probably did know Locke was fated to end up on the island, and was playing his part to get him there.

That's what Locke eventually realized: you have to accept your destiny eventually. (In a smartly understated subplot, Ben, now rocked by the death of his daughter, seems fully content to let Locke take over for him.) Though he fought it every step of the way, fate finally brought him to the island, and when he regained the ability to walk, he became a true believer. And he ends the episode ready to save the island itself.

A terrific tale, excellently told.

Some various points about Locke's flashbacks:

Locke's mother looked distractingly like Claire. Not so much in the post-birth scene, but during the opening I had to keep reassuring myself that it wasn't.

It's interesting that Locke's penchant for hunting knives never left him, even after he fully accepted his destiny. Alpert viewed choosing the knife as nothing less than total failure, while Abaddon encouraged him to go on a very weapons-&-tools-friendly walkabout. If the two are on opposing sides, that's a nice under-the-surface contrast.

Is Abaddon indeed working for Widmore? I'm a little confused about his motivations. He sent Naomi and the four musketeers to the island on Widmore's freighter, but exactly how connected is their mission to Keamy's? Is Widmore the puppet master behind everyone or just Keamy and the mercenaries? When he first appeared, to Hurley, Abaddon came across like the devil incarnate; to Locke, he was downright helpful.

Moving past Locke, things weren't going very well on the freighter, to say the least. Michael's locked up, Keamy has a little cabin fever of his own, people are wounded from Smokey...hey, at least the captain turns out to be a really cool guy. And then he gets shot.

I liked all the movement, even though I still feel Keamy's ascent to "main end-of-season bad guy" happened too abruptly (a result of the strike-abbreviated season, no doubt). I don't know what that thing strapped to Keamy's arm is either, but I'm assuming contained within it is the means to blow the island to kingdom come...or something like that, anyway. Sayid, meanwhile, is heading back to the island, while Frank drops a phone down to Jack's camp so they're able to track the copter. Desmond and Michael are left on the freighter - and are they the only ones? Unless I'm forgetting someone, everyone else from the freighter we've ever met is either dead or on the copter. And could they both go home, perchance?

And finally - Claire. I called Claire's appearance at the end, but I was surprised how sad it made me feel. Because it can hardly even be considered a theory anymore, it makes way too much sense:

Claire's dead. Already.

My post earlier today touched on this halfway and also explained my theory about how ghosts exist in Lost. But the full explanation: Claire died when her house was blown up. Upon death, she saw the ghost of Charlie (she said his name when Sawyer found her). When she, Aaron, Sawyer, and Miles hiked back to the beach, Miles kept behaving oddly toward her because, being a ghostbuster, he could almost tell she was one. They come across Danielle and Karl buried in the ground and Claire immediately gets freaked out and asks to move on. That night, she sees Christian and realizes the truth. Since she's dead and therefore can't care for Aaron anymore, she leaves him behind for Sawyer, while she and Christian head for the cabin.

So when Locke went in the cabin, and found the ghost of Claire, she was peaceful, almost in a trance - she had fully accepted her fate. But to have to give up her own baby, and her own live, and to have come to terms with that - it recalled memories of when Charlie accepted his own death. Something about it was just terribly sad.

TAGS: Cabin Fever, Claire, Locke, Matthew Abaddon, Richard Alpert, Season 4
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