Rewatching LOST: 1.19 “Deus Ex Machina”

Locke‘s troubled history with his father is revealed when he believes the island is leading him and Boone to search the jungle for another downed aircraft. Elsewhere, a bemused Jack diagnoses the source of Sawyer’s recent headaches.

• Locke and Boone have continued their work at clearing away the land around the buried Hatch, and have discovered it to rest at the top of a narrow, underground silo-type tunnel leading straight up to the surface. What kind of structure lies beneath this remains a mystery. In their latest bid to open the Hatch, they’ve constructed a large trebuchet to deliver a half a ton of force down onto the Hatch. Boone points out that everyone on the island has a story, but in all the time they’ve spent together, he hasn’t heard Locke talk about himself once. Locke replies that his story would bore the young man, so Boone lets it go. They wind up the trebuchet and let it fly; it doesn’t even make so much as a dent in the Hatch, and then falls apart from the blunt impact. Locke is injured from the trebuchet’s destruction, with a piece of metal embedded into his leg — but he doesn’t feel it or even notice it until Boone points it out. That night, he dresses the wound himself and then tests his legs for signs of pain, but no matter what he does, he can’t feel anything in either of his legs or feet.
• The next day, Locke and Boone argue about what to do next. Locke intends to build a bigger, stronger trebuchet, but Boone has doubts that it will work any better than the first one. Locke mumbles that “the island will tell us what to do” if this plan doesn’t work, and Boone catches it, but doesn’t pursue it. Already, Locke shows signs of losing control over his legs. Later, they argue again over whether or not the trebuchet will work, and Boone declares that he’s done with all of this. Locke argues that they are “supposed to” do this, that the island wants them to; their current failure is merely a test of their faith. He suggests that the island will send them a sign of what to do if they just believe, and as if on cue, Locke spots a small airplane — a yellow beech craft — damaged and descending from overhead. When he looks back at Boone, he sees a vision of Boone covered in blood, reciting the strange words, “Theresa falls up the stairs, Theresa falls down the stairs.” He also sees visions of his mother, pointing into the sky at the falling aircraft, and of himself back in his wheelchair. Locke suddenly awakens in the night to find that all of it, including this last argument with Boone, was a dream.
• Sawyer consorts privately with Sun over a natural remedy for his headaches, which have gotten worse. Sun reveals this to Kate, so Kate takes the information to Jack. But Jack points out that Sawyer isn’t likely to submit to a checkup, and says he’s “just over” Sawyer’s irritating qualities. Jack later visits the beach to see how things are progressing with Michael’s new raft, and notes that Michael has picked up a few choice Korean words from his time with Jin. Jack spots Sawyer nearby trying to relieve his head pain, and decides to inquire about his symptoms. In addition to the pain, Sawyer is sensitive to light, though he notes a concern about brain tumors, which run in his family. Jack rules that out quickly, and asks to run some tests, but Sawyer declines the offer. When Kate finds out he’s being so stubborn, she forces him to visit Jack at the caves. Jack has some fun with Sawyer by asking unnecessary questions about Sawyer’s sexual history, but when Sawyer storms off, Jack reveals to Kate that Sawyer is having headaches because he’s farsighted. Glasses will correct the problem, so Sayid fashions a pair for Sawyer using parts of other glasses retrieved from Oceanic 815′s casualties. Jack later tells Kate that he didn’t help Sawyer for Sawyer’s benefit– he did it for her.
• At dawn, Locke awakens Boone with a new sense of urgency, and they return to the Hatch. He tells Boone about the dream, but when Boone is skeptical, he asks who Theresa is. The fact that Locke knows of someone in Boone’s past named Theresa is enough to convince him to come along, and the two of them set off to find the crashed beech craft that Locke saw in his dream. While they search, Locke stumbles clumsily, his legs momentarily giving out. But while he’s on the ground, he spots nearby a beaded necklace with a cross hanging from it, and then frees a dead body dangling from the same tree. The body falls to the ground and is revealed to be that of a priest, and the body is already well into the process of decomposition, so it’s not anyone from Oceanic 815.
• Locke continues stumbling through the jungle until he can no longer get up, and is finally forced to admit the truth to Boone about being paralyzed and confined to a wheel chair for the four years prior to their crash on the island. He says that the island fixed him, but now it seems to be taking it back. He’s absolutely certain that the island wants them to find this small airplane, and that whatever they find there will help them to open the Hatch, so Boone agrees to help him keep going. Boone later tells Locke that Theresa was his nanny growing up, and he blames himself for her death — which happened after she fell down a flight of stairs at his home. At that moment, Locke spots the beech craft lodged high atop a cliff face, just over Boone’s shoulder. Locke affirms that this is the plane he saw in his dream, and tells Boone that he’ll have to climb up to the craft and find out what’s inside it, since Locke is in no condition to go himself.
• Boone makes the perilous climb up to the beech craft, and finds the plane to be wobbly there on its high perch. Inside the plane are several maps, another dead body — this one not wearing priestly attire, and a crate full of small statues of the Virgin Mary — all of which contain smuggled Heroin. Boone angrily realizes the plane’s passengers weren’t clergy at all — they were drug smugglers, just posing as men of God. In the cockpit, he picks up the radio and is surprised that it still has power. The plane shudders dangerously and will soon inevitably fall, and Locke cries out from the ground for Boone to get out, but Boone keeps trying to use the radio. Boone manages to make contact with a man, explaining that he’s one of the survivors of Oceanic 815; the transmission is slightly garbled, and the man on the other end excitedly says something about Oceanic 815 in response. Just then, the plane plummets over the cliff and lands flat on its nose — where Boone was talking on the radio. Locke stumbles over to the craft, and digs Boone out; Boone is conscious but badly injured. Locke throws the young man over his shoulder and struggles to carry him back to the caves.
• At the caves, Locke delivers Boone to Jack, and lies about what happened. He claims that Boone fell off of a cliff while they were hunting boar. When Jack sets to work on Boone, he soon discovers that Locke has gone.
• Back at the hatch, a distraught Locke beats on the Hatch door, demanding answers for why things have suddenly gone so bad. But as he continues to pound on the door, suddenly a bright light pours out of the tiny window in the Hatch.

• Years ago, before he went to work for the box company, John Locke worked at a Toys ‘R’ Us-type megastore, where he specialized in selling board games. One day, he was approached by a woman who revealed herself to be his birth mother, Emily Locke, whom he’d never met. She was a schizophrenic. Unbeknownst to him, she was playing a part in a Machiavellian plot concocted by Locke’s birth father, a man named Anthony Cooper, to fill a hole in Locke’s life by being the family he always craved — only to use him for personal gain. Cooper’s kidneys were failing and needed a kidney transplant to survive. Knowing that his son would be an ideal donor, he created the entire plot to con Locke out of one of his kidneys, a con job that worked all too well on Locke, who was left devastated and betrayed upon waking up alone after the surgery.
• Locke’s interest and skill in hunting at least partially stems from his “relationship” with his father before he learned the truth about Anthony Cooper.
• Locke has only one kidney, having donated the other to his dying father.
• Sawyer has an uncle who died of a brain tumor.
• Boone had a nanny growing up named Theresa. His mother wasn’t around much, so as a boy, he took out his frustrations on the nanny, calling to her all day from an intercom, and forcing her to go up and down the long flight of stairs at his home. One day when he was six, she took a bad step on those stairs and fell, breaking her neck.

• Locke was tricked into donating one of his kidneys to his father, Anthony Cooper, an experienced con artist. Cooper convinced the orphanage-raised Locke that he’d found the family he’d always wanted, prompting Locke to volunteer to give up his kidney. After the surgery, Locke found himself suddenly cut out of his father’s life; Cooper had gotten what he wanted, and no longer had any use for him. Locke was left utterly devastated.
  Question: Based on Locke’s reaction to Walt’s question, there’s some major baggage between Locke and his father. What’s the story? 1.17

• Why did Locke lose the use of his legs again? Put another way, whatever on the island that repaired the paralyzing damage to his legs — why did it stop working?
• How did a drug-smuggling beech craft from Nigeria wind up on the island?
• Who were the two dead bodies from the beech craft? Was the “priest” really a priest, or was he just a drug smuggler in disguise, as Boone believed?
• Was Locke right about the beech craft — will anything Boone found onboard help to open the Hatch?
• Who did Boone talk to on the beech craft’s radio?
• What was the source of the light inside the Hatch, and why did it light up when it did?

• “Deus Ex Machina” is the second Locke-centric episode of the series.
• “Deus Ex Machina” has the distinction of being the very first episode of the series to be co-written by the powerhouse duo of Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, who together would soon become known as the true masterminds behind the show’s over-arcing story. They would go on to write every season’s premier and finale, and many of the most pivotal episodes in between.
• In real life, actress Swoozie Kurtz, who played Locke’s mother, and actor Kevin Tighe, who played his father, are both only 8 years older than actor Terry O’Quinn.
• The use of the board game “Mouse Trap” was a clever metaphor for the elaborate con job used on Locke by his father, Anthony Cooper, to get his son’s kidney. It required a great deal of scheming and patience on Cooper’s part.
• Locke recovered a pistol from the body of the supposed priest, bringing the survivors’ total of guns up to six. (One from the Federal Marshall, four from the Marshall’s steel case, and now this one from the beech craft.)
• I have no idea if this is an inside joke or not, but the first pair of glasses that Jack has Sayid try on — and which become the right side of his “prescription” reading glasses — are the same style of glasses that show co-creator J.J. Abrams favors.

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