Back To The Island: Lost Reconsidered
What Does It Take To Be An Other? And What Do You Get In Return?
At the end of ‘Every Man For Himself’ Ben has a conversation with Sawyer about a con he’s pulled on him. “The only way to earn a con man’s respect is to con him,” he tells the resident con. “And you’re good but we’re better.”
The thing is Ben doesn’t need to prove that to Sawyer or the audience because even by this point (early Season3) we already know that the one skills the Others have in spades is conning. Ethan managed to fool the survivors long enough to kidnap Claire and Goodwin did the same thing to the tail section survivors to grab the majority of them. They fooled the raft long enough to abduct Walt; they manipulated Michael long enough to take him prisoner to a village that convinced him that was where they all lived. We’ve only seen them in ragged clothes and covered in a dirt and when there at home, their clothes are clean and their hair is combed.
And that’s all before you consider ‘Henry Gale’ who Rousseau caught in a net and told Sayid that ‘he is One of Them’. ‘Henry’ claimed that he was from Minnesota and that he’s been stranded on this island for three weeks. He stuck to this story under torture, multiple interrogations and even after the real Henry was found in a grave near the ballon. He managed to manipulate Locke into thinking he was on his side; then when his story was revealed a fraud, he convinced him that the button he’d been pushing for weeks did nothing. (Something to be clear he knew very well was a lie.) The Others then convinced Michael to free him and when he reappeared he told Michael with great sincerity: “We’re the good guys.” And I’m not sure even then if he was convinced of that.
So yes the Others were masters of the con. But they had something else in common with Sawyer: all of them were also incredibly easy to con themselves. And as we found out, that was just as true of Ben himself.
A few episodes prior Jack asked Ben if they could leave why wouldn’t you go? In his fashion Ben turned the question on Jack: “Why wouldn’t we go?” He didn’t try to make the same argument that he would with Locke later on, promising Jack a ride home if he helped him (which was just another con). Even then, he had a clearer picture of his adversary.
When Locke came to the barracks ostensibly to rescue Jack but really to blow up the submarine that was the sole way to get people to and from the island Ben changed his tactics. He explained to Locke that his people needed ‘the illusion that they could come and go as they pleased’ and that the sub maintained that illusion. Now he needed Locke to blow up the sub so that he could maintain his hold on power as leader of the Others which was already beginning to crumble and he thought Locke was that tool. What he didn’t know — but clearly suspected — was that Locke was special and a threat to his power.
Because on an island where no one got sick Ben had developed a fatal tumor on his spine, one that required him to kidnap Jack and force him to operate on. He also knew that Locke had been in a wheelchair for four years before getting on the place and was now walking around. Locke immediately called him on it, using it to challenge his authority. Ben asked him: “You’ve been on this island eighty days. I’ve lived on this island my whole life. What makes you think you know better than me?” And Locke momentarily checkmated him: “Because you’re in a wheelchair and I’m not.”
Much of the story of how Ben managed his rise to power on the island has never entirely been made clear, though we get a strong sense of it in Season 5. After being shot he was taken to the Others by Sawyer and asked if he could be healed. Richard said that there would be consequences among them: “He’ll always be one of us.” What that meant was never clear though viewers can interpret as they see fit.
What is clear is that this decision was made against the leadership of the Others at the time, Eloise Hawking and Charles Widmore. When this was pointed out Richard said dismissively: “I don’t answer to them.” When Widmore came and was infuriated by this, Richard dismissed it with: “Jacob wanted it to happen.” There’s no evidence of this but as we’ve seen just the name of Jacob was enough to silence Charles’s objections though he clearly had them.
Over the next twenty years or so, Ben became a trusted member of the Others, orchestrating the Purge that led to the slaughter of the Dharma Initiative (whom he’d been a member of for years) challenging Widmore, usurping him as leader and eventually banishing him when he ‘broke the rules. (In this case, he left the island, had an affair with a woman who would give birth to Penny, which may explain in part why he was so cold to her in life.) And for the next decade he seemed to spend time recruiting people like Juliet to deal with fertility problem, raising Alex who he’d stolen from Rousseau as an infant, and decided to torture her boyfriend when he thought she would have sex and possibly get pregnant.
And while he claimed he would rule benevolently, his interactions with Juliet would seem to speak otherwise and the way so many of his people spoke of him either dismissively or in fear show a man who is ruling very much like a religious cult leader. And it seems very clear that all of that leadership was based on the fact that he spoke for Jacob, a lie that Richard was aware of but did nothing to contradict while he was in power. In this sense Ben was the best con man on the island and like Sawyer, he’d managed to con himself that he was special and important.
This became very clear in ‘The Man Behind The Curtain’, the first episode to be Ben-centric and one of the masterpieces of the series. In a classic scene Ben has just told Locke about Jacob for the first time, saying that he has the answers. Locke wants to be taken to him and Ben says it’s not that simple. John asks if Richard could take him and Ben makes it clear (lying) that he is the only person to talks to Jacob.
In one of the great lines in his magnificent tenure on Lost Terry O’Quinn says: “You know what I think, Ben? I think there is no Jacob. I believe your people are idiots if they think you take orders from someone else. You’re the man behind the curtain, the Wizard of Oz. And you’re a liar.” Ben managed to persuade him otherwise but Locke was dead on about that part, because when it came to Jacob Ben was nothing but a humbug. As we learned in the finale of Season 5 Ben had never met him, talked to him, or even knew where he really lived.
What we’ve learned long before this is that just the mention of Jacob has been enough to get all of his underlings to go on what amounts to suicide missions. In the leadup to the Season 3 finale, he convinced his team to move up their assault on the beach to abduct the pregnant women a day early ‘because Jacob wanted it.” In the season finale we learn that he has been lying about the Looking Glass station being flooded all this time and that he has sent two people there to operate it, lying and saying they were on assignment in Canada. He convinced them to do so based on the order. When asked why they never questioned Ben, one of them says: “The moment I start doing that, everything falls apart.” And if that doesn’t tell you how much the rank-and-file have been hanging on Ben’s vision nothing will — as well as the fact that Ben has just persuaded Mikhail to ‘clean up the mess he made’ based solely on the idea of Jacob. Mikhail does it “saying he is following orders” and he is willing to pay for it with his life.
There’s a part of me that’s always wonder what the sales pitch has been to be an Other. “Give up your family, your friends to come to an island in the Pacific. You’ll have to kill your own food, sleep on the ground and you can never see anyone you know and love ever again. You do this in the name of a magnificent man who has a higher purpose for this island and everything. You can never see him, but you must trust that you are doing his work.” Much of the debate of Lost is about science versus faith and its clear not only that the Others come down hard on the side of faith, to the point of being religious fanatics. That Juliet, the last recruit, never bought this dream shows that it has a limited appeal.
The question is therefore what does it take to be the leader of the Others? And based on the series, the answer isn’t flattering: you have to be a sucker.
During ‘The Incident’ Ben is having a conversation with ‘Locke’ who’s just asked him to kill Jacob for him. Ben asks why ‘Locke’ wants him to do it. “Because this island gave you cancer. And then you saw your daughter killed in front of you. And in reward for your lifetime of service, you were banished. And you did all of this in the name of a man you never even met.” Ben has spent his time on the island manipulating people by telling them what they want to hear. The tables are turned when he is told what his entire life on the island has led to.
And by this point, mostly during Season 5, we’ve come to realize everyone who’s led the Others has basically done variations on the same thing, over and over. Charles Widmore is hardly a sympathetic figure but his reward for nearly four decades of loyalty to the island he’s already lost his son, his daughter has forsaken him and he’s never met his own grandson, all of which came after forced exile from the island. His predecessor, Eloise Hawking (who he had an affair with) served the island for at least twenty three years, left to give birth to her son who she knew that she was going to have spend all of his life pushing him in the direct of the island so that he could meet his destiny — which was going to be at her hands. And it’s pretty clear that John Locke was headed down this same road in the four and a half seasons he was on Lost. He knew better than anyone what a miraculous place the island, pledged his service to it at the cost of all friendship, killed two people, was indirectly responsible for countless more and by the time the Oceanic 6 left had isolated everyone on the island. Near the end of Lost, it’s cynically said: “He was stupid enough to think he was brought it for a reason…and pursued until it got him killed.” There’s a certain truth in that, particularly considering that he died alone in a filthy hotel room and the last words to go through his head were “I don’t understand.’
Some Others have a similar devotion. Dogen was met by Jacob not long after an accident left his son in a coma. Jacob said he would save his life but he had to go to the island to guard the Temple and could never see him again. (Critically, we never know if Jacob actually saved Dogen’s son.) Jacob shows up at Ilana’s bedside and tells her “he needs her to do something.” He gives her the name of the six remaining candidates and to protect them but doesn’t tell them what all of them look like — including Locke. Despite that she remains certain that Jacob knows what he was doing when he told her what to do next and believes it despite the evidence of her eyes. The moment she does her job, as Ben says almost dully, “the island was done with her.”
I once argued that Locke was the greatest example of blind faith, and it’s clear now that the Others all showed that similar level of blind devotion. In the penultimate episode of Lost ‘Locke’ addresses the Others and tells them that they’ve all been serving Jacob but for some reason none of them have met him. By making the argument in front of Richard, he does something that clearly no one on the island has ever done and it unsettles Richard immensely. At one point ‘Locke’ says bluntly ‘I’m beginning to think you just make up these rules’ and you honestly wonder about that.
Because in the final season we learn that Richard, for all his years of service to Jacob, has been as much in the dark as everybody. He has no idea about who the Candidates are and when he learns of Jacob’s death he becomes suicidal. When Jack asks him why: “I’ve devoted my life — longer than you can possibly imagine — to a man who told me a plan, a plan that I was to play in a role in and that would one day be revealed. And now that man is dead. So why do I want to die? Because I just found out my life had no purpose.” Jacob seemed willing to go to his grave — and even beyond — without telling anyone what the grand plan of the island was. It’s kind of hard to believe that no one wanted to kill him before.
By the final season it becomes very clear that everything that has happened to this point is essentially moves in a great game. The Oceanics are pieces in the game but they spend basically the entire series never knowing the rules or even why they were chosen to play. The Others seem to have some understanding of the rules — or at least how the game works — but they’re not allowed to play the game and don’t seem to know who the playing pieces are. They seem to have immense trust that their roles are important, but in a way they don’t know what they are any more than the survivors of Oceanic 815. They’ve conned the Oceanics as to who they are, but they’ve done a far better job conning themselves about their own roles.
This will be made clear in the next piece in which I commemorate the 15th anniversary of Ab Aeterno, the episode that told us the story of Richard Alpert — and really everything else we needed to know about the island.