Rewatching LOST: 2.14 “One of Them”

Danielle leads Sayid to a strange man she’s captured in the jungle, claiming that he’s one of the Others, and Sayid takes it upon himself to ascertain the truth about the man — at any cost.

• Ana-Lucia spots a stranger moving through the jungle, and runs to warn Jack. But she finds Sayid instead, who returns with her to find that it’s merely Danielle Rousseau, who happens to be looking for him. She wants to take him to see something important, “something that will help” him, and offers him her rifle as a gesture of trust. She leads him to a man who’s been caught in one of her traps. Danielle claims that the man is “one of them,” and that Sayid shouldn’t believe a word he says. He claims that his name is Henry Gale, and he’s from Minnesota. Sayid cuts him down against Danielle’s protests, and when Henry tries to flee, Danielle shoots him with a crossbow, impaling his shoulder but not threatening his life. Danielle insists that Henry is “one of them,” and that Sayid should tie him up and take him back to Jack, with the arrow still lodged in his shoulder. She insinuates that after that, Sayid should consider persuading “Henry” to talk. She warns him that Henry “will lie for a long time.”
• Sawyer is agitated by a loud frog that’s keeping him awake, and tries to recruit help to go find it. Jin gives him the cold shoulder, but he stumbles upon Hurley in the jungle, who has himself a secret stash of Dharma food from the Swan station. Hurley’s seen the tree frog Sawyer is looking for, so in exchange for his help, Sawyer agrees to keep Hurley’s food stash a secret. After a lengthy search, Hurley locates the frog and Sawyer catches it in his hand. Hurley offers to take the frog far away and set it free, but Sawyer squashes it in his hand, instead.
• Sayid takes Henry to the Swan station, where Locke is on watch. Henry claims that he and his wife Jennifer crashed on the island four months ago in a hot-air balloon, during an attempt to cross the Pacific. He says that his wife got sick and died one week after their arrival. Jack enters the station and begins treating Henry’s wound, but at Sayid is adamant that Henry not be untied. Jack extracts the arrow, while Sayid privately asks Locke to change the combination to the armory so that Jack will no longer have it. Though hesitant to condone Sayid’s plans, Locke finally agrees, because they need to know what Henry knows. At their urging, Jack reluctantly agrees to move Henry to the armory, while he’s still unconscious. But once he’s in there, Sayid locks Jack and Locke out of the room, much to Jack’s frustration. Inside the room, Sayid interrogates Henry, questioning him at length about his story of how he wound up on the island. Henry repeats his story, adding in new details to answer Sayid’s questions, after which he asks who Sayid is and why he’s doing this. Sayid replies, “My name is Sayid Jarrah. And I am a torturer.”
• Jack and Locke argue outside the armory. Jack tries to get Locke to open the door, but Locke points out that Jack himself has been trying to build an army, because they are at war with the Others. He of all people should understand what Sayid is trying to do. Jack is angry, but lets it go for the moment. As he’s cleaning up Henry’s blood from the floor, he notices that a set of pliers are missing — meaning Sayid must have them.
• Sayid’s questions turn to the hot-air balloon, and Henry gives very convincing, detailed statistics on its dimensions, how it operates, and what it looks like. But Sayid is suspicious at a slip of the tongue, when Henry claims that he “was rich,” and not “is rich.” Henry covers his tracks well, but Sayid doesn’t believe him. He pulls out the pliers, clamps Henry’s index finger in them, and asks where Henry buried his wife. Sayid’s recent loss of Shannon makes him angry and emotional when Henry can’t answer his question about how deep in the ground he buried Jennifer. He cries that Henry would remember if he was telling the truth — if he truly loved her. Henry realizes that Sayid lost someone on the island himself, and asks what happened, but Sayid becomes enraged, remembering that ultimately it was because of his people’s fear of the Others that Shannon died. Sayid begins beating him, demanding the truth.
• Outside, Jack hears Sayid’s attack on Henry and orders Locke to open the door. Locke refuses — until the countdown alarm begins to go off from the computer room. Jack and Locke engage in a tense standoff, as Jack holds Locke pinned up against a wall, refusing to let him go push the button until he opens the armory door. Locke finally relents and unlocks the door, before running to the computer station. But he’s too late, and when the countdown timer reaches zero, the numbers disappear and are replaced by a series of strange symbols that look like hieroglyphs. Loud mechanical sounds can be heard from beneath the station, and it sounds like they’re winding up to something. But Locke finally gets the Numbers entered before it can get too far, and everything reverts to normal, the clock returning to its 108-minute countdown. Jack drags Sayid out of the armory over his cries that Henry is lying. After the commotion dies down, Jack asks Sayid privately what he was trying to accomplish. Sayid is absolutely certain that Henry is an Other, though he can’t put into words why he knows.
• Later, at the beach, Sayid sits alone with Charlie and tells him that they’ve captured a stranger who’s being held down in the Swan station, and that Sayid beat him up. Sayid explains to Charlie what he couldn’t articulate to Jack: he knows that Henry is one of the Others because he doesn’t feel guilty for what he did to him. Sayid suggests to Charlie that Jack and Locke have forgotten that the Others are dangerous, merciless, and have already attacked and killed many of them. But Charlie remembers his encounter with Ethan Rom, where he nearly died after being hung by the neck.

• At the end of the Gulf War, Republican Guard soldier Sayid was taken by the U.S. Army as a prisoner of war, and used by the Americans as a translator to the rest of his people. Sayid met an American soldier named Kelvin “Joe” Inman, who taught him the art of torture so that he could help them interrogate Sayid’s former superior officer, in order to find the location of a fallen U.S. pilot. Having fulfilled the duty requested of him, Sayid was let go, and over the next six years, he served as a torturer for the Republican Guard.
• Sayid is the “son of a great hero” to the Iraqi people.

• Why did Danielle believe that “Henry” was one of the Others?
• Is Henry telling the truth, or is he one of the Others?
• If Henry is lying and he is an Other, what was he doing in the jungle when he was caught by one of Danielle’s traps?
• Why were there hieroglyphic symbols on the countdown clock after it went past zero?
• What happens exactly if the countdown is allowed to go on beyond zero?

• “One of Them” is the third Sayid-centric episode of the series.
• Kate’s father, Sam Austen, is among the soldiers Sayid meets during his time as a prisoner of war.
• “One of Them” is best remembered as the introduction of actor Michael Emerson, who went on to become a series regular after his guest starring role in Season 2. In hindsight, it’s fascinating to look back at a time when the man we know so well as Benjamin Linus was known only as the enigmatic Henry Gale.
• I remember being a bit frustrated by this episode when it first aired, because of the introduction of a new character as the focal point for the survivors’ conflict with the Others. Who was this newcomer, and why should we care if he’s an Other or not? But, as has happened so often on Lost over the years, our patience was rewarded, and it turned out that this “new guy” was someone a heck of a lot more important than it first appeared.
• Benjamin Linus was not the only important character to be first introduced in this episode. Let’s not forget Kelvin “Joe” Inman, who was never once called by name here, but would go on to become very important in the season finale. His name had already been mentioned on the show once before, when Desmond explained to Jack and Locke about how he arrived on the island, and the man who rescued him — Kelvin. But when “One of Them” aired, we had no way of knowing that this Army grunt who taught Sayid how to torture was the same guy Desmond referred to a dozen episodes ago. I still wonder if the writers had it planned all along this way, or if actor Clancy Brown impressed them so much with his performance that they decided to find a way to bring him back.

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Image credits: “Rewatching Lost” logo by Robin Parrish. Season 2 cast promotional image and Dharma Initiative logo: American Broadcasting Company.