Rewatching LOST: 1.15 “Homecoming”

Claire returns to the survivors seemingly having escaped from her captivity, but Ethan returns as well, with a warning: give Claire back, or he’ll kill one of the Oceanic survivors per day until they do.

• Charlie awakens in the night to commotion at the caves when Locke and Boone return with an unconscious Claire, who they just found alone in the jungle (in “Special”). Jack gets her to come around, but she panics when she sees the crowd of people standing around watching things, because she doesn’t remember any of them — not even Charlie. Or Ethan. After she calms down, Jack and the others try to explain the situation to her. But she doesn’t remember anything that happened after she got onboard Oceanic 815. Later, Charlie tries to reacclimate her to her life before the abduction; he returns her diary to her as well. When he reveals that Ethan abducted him as well, she wants to know why Charlie was ultimately left behind while she was taken away from everyone for two weeks. Charlie tables the issue, not feeling it to be the right time.
• The other survivors talk privately in small groups about Claire’s return, what it means, and whether or not Ethan could be nearby. Sayid in particular is very dubious about Claire’s seemingly selective amnesia.
• The next morning, Charlie briefly visits the beach but then heads back for the caves, alongside Jin. But Jin is knocked out by a rock that flies out of the jungle, and Charlie is suddenly confronted by Ethan. Ethan carries a sling (which he flung the rock at Jin with) and has four clawed scratches on his cheek. He grabs Charlie by the throat and orders Charlie to bring Claire back to him, or Ethan will kill one of the survivors. Every day at sundown, Ethan says he’ll kill another one until Claire is returned to him, but he’ll save Charlie for last. With that, he drops Charlie and disappears into the jungle.
• At the beach, Charlie reports Ethan’s threat to Jack and Locke, and says they have to rally the survivors, and go hunt Ethan down and kill him. Jack agrees with Charlie, but Locke suggests a more cautious approach.
• Sun and Jin share a mutual frustration at not knowing exactly what’s going on with Claire, and after Jin is attacked by Ethan, his resentment at his inability to communicate with the group grows deeper.
• As Locke and Jack work to fortify defenses around the survivors’ two camps, Claire asks Charlie if anything is going on, telling him that none of the others will tell her anything. They won’t even talk to her. He lies and tells her nothing is going on.
• Kate suggests to Jack that they use the four guns in Marshall Mars’ steel briefcase, which Jack still has the key to. But Jack refuses, unwilling to “put guns in untrained hands.”
• Despite sentry duty all night around both camps, a castaway named Scott Jackson is discovered dead at the beach the next morning, with his neck, both arms, and all the bones in his fingers broken. Locke determines that Ethan got past their defenses by entering the camp from the ocean. The castaways bury Scott and Hurley presides over a funeral ceremony.
• It’s hours later before Claire finds out something’s wrong. After grilling Shannon, she confronts Charlie, furious that he withheld the truth from her about Ethan and about Scott’s death. He says he wanted to protect her since she’s already been through so much, but she’s too angry to hear him.
• Jack and Locke confer about the situation, neither wanting to lose another one of their people, but uncertain how to stop Ethan. Locke reminds Jack that they’re still on Ethan’s turf, and Ethan has the advantage. Jack finally decides to take Kate’s advice and use the Marshall’s guns to turn the advantage around. The two of them, along with Sayid, formulate a new plan: they’ll use Claire as bait to lure Ethan out of hiding and capture him. Charlie won’t hear of it, but Claire steps forward and agrees to the mission. Charlie wants to come along, but Locke points out that Charlie’s never even fired a gun before. But Locke is forced to agree that there are four guns and only three men on their team, so Jack reluctantly approaches Sawyer and asks him to join. Sawyer agrees, but Kate overhears and wants to join the team, too. When Jack points out that they’re out of guns, Sawyer retrieves the empty gun he took from the Marshall and shot the polar bear with, which he’s held onto all this time. It’s the same kind of gun as the other four, so the ammo Jack has will work with it. Kate takes the gun and joins the party.
• While a storm approaches, Charlie watches from afar as the six-person team (including Claire, the bait) makes its plan and leaves the beach. Sayid reminds everyone that they want Ethan alive. A rainstorm gathers and pours rain down onto the jungle as Claire wanders in, seemingly alone. But her five protectors watch from carefully placed hiding positions. Ethan takes the bait, but Jack tackles him, getting in several good retaliatory punches and kicks. The others swoop in and protect Claire, but Jack’s got him on the ropes. When Ethan tries to stand, four guns are trained on him, but before Ethan can say anything for himself, the fifth gun — which Jack dropped when he tackled Ethan — fires repeatedly into Ethan’s chest, killing him. Charlie holds the weapon at point-blank range, having followed the hunting party into the jungle.
• Later, Charlie tells Jack he did it because Ethan deserved to die, and he wouldn’t let him anywhere near Claire ever again. Claire approaches him not long after and says that she remembers something from her time on the island: peanut butter. Charlie explains that it was imaginary peanut butter, from a moment in their budding friendship. Claire says she wants to trust Charlie, but for now merely leaves it at that.

• After DriveShaft broke up, Charlie struck up a relationship with a woman named Lucy Heatherton. What Lucy didn’t know was that Charlie’s feelings weren’t entirely sincere at first; she was from a wealthy family, and he was attempting to use his status as a former “rock star” to get Lucy’s money — all in a bid to fund his heroin addiction. But when Lucy’s Francis father took a liking to Charlie, bonding over a familiar history — he too was once in a failed rock band, but decided it was time to show some responsibility when his daughter was born — he offered Charlie a job selling copiers, and Charlie accepted. But his first day at work, he experienced heavy heroin withdrawal, having had no “fix” over the entire weekend before, and his first in-office demonstration went badly. Despite Lucy and her father’s many kindnesses, Charlie stole an expensive collectible from the Heatherton home, but it was returned to them after an incident at Charlie’s new job. Lucy pieced together the truth, and when Charlie came to the house to apologize, she was furious and hurt, and wanted nothing more to do with him.
• It was roughly a year after DriveShaft broke up that Liam’s daughter (Charlie’s niece) was born. Charlie also mentioned that over the course of that year, he had had “some problems with royalties,” meaning that for some technical legal reason, he was no longer getting paid residuals for anything DriveShaft recorded.

• Where has Claire been since Ethan took her? What happened to her there?
• Why is Claire back? Did she escape? How?
• Why does Claire have amnesia? Was her memory really “reset to before the crash” by the trauma she experienced from the abduction, as Jack suggested? Or was it something else?
• How did Ethan enter the beach camp from the ocean? Did he swim from someplace nearby, or does he have access to a boat?

• “Homecoming” is the second Charlie-centric episode of the series.
• Scott is the third person to perish that was one of the original 48 survivors of Oceanic 815′s midsection. There are now only 45 survivors remaining.
• And with that, the infamous “Scott and Steve” — a running gag throughout most of Season 1 — are no more. Only Steve remains.
• Two things about this episode made me, like a lot of fans, cry fowl: 1) Just when it seemed we were about to get some greatly-desired answers about Ethan Rom, they killed him; and 2) Claire’s amnesia? Yawn. Granted, it was an interesting twist to see a character forget everything that happened since the crash, which in Lost time was only a month ago. But how often has genre television played the amnesia card? I remember I was desensitized to it as a “plot twist” because of its over-use, and I’m betting a lot of you were, too. Even Charlie’s gunning down of Ethan wasn’t that much of a shock at the time. The previous 14 episodes proved that Lost was the most deliciously unpredictable show on television. “Homecoming” made that feeling stall.
• “Homecoming”‘s flashbacks did little for me, as well. I realize it was intended to give us context for Charlie’s path of redemption, as he first learns the value of responsibility, but unlike most of the other flashbacks from Season 1, it gave us almost no new information about the character’s past that was worth anything in the long run. It was, frankly, more like the many “treading water” flashbacks that would soon plague Seasons 2 and 3. I remember wishing at the time that the flashbacks had instead revealed what happened to Claire during her captivity. But those answers wouldn’t come for another year, in episode 2.15, “Maternity Leave.”
• Another major Season 1 confrontation… another ominous rainstorm. I could be wrong, but I’m sticking to my earlier theory that there’s no mystical reason for the island rain at these pivotal moments; it’s just poetic license taken by the writers for dramatic effect.

Image credits: “Rewatching Lost” logo by Robin Parrish. Season 1 cast promotional image and Oceanic Airlines logo: American Broadcasting Company.