Rewatching LOST: 5.07 "The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham"

Locke’s fateful mission off the island to recruit the Oceanic 6 into returning is revealed, along with the circumstances surrounding his death.

• Ajira 316 has landed or crashed on Hydra Island, and the man named Caesar has put himself in charge of the survivors. As Caesar searches an office somewhere inside the Hydra station, he discovers a large gun that he places in a knapsack and keeps hidden from others. Ilana, the female federal officer who escorted Sayid onto the plane, comes to tell him that someone new has appeared at their camp. He was just suddenly there, standing in the water, she says. She takes him back to the beach to show him, and on their way, they pass the downed Ajira 316, which seems intact. At the beach, the new arrival in camp is revealed to be John Locke, alive and well, and still wearing his burial clothes.
• The next morning, Ilana tells Locke that the plane’s pilot, Frank Lapidus, took the passenger manifest and left Hydra island for the main island early that morning with another passenger. Ilana asks how he got there, and he says he doesn’t remember. All he remembers is dying.
• Flashback to the moment Locke disappeared after turning the wheel beneath the Orchid station. Just like Ben before him, Locke is transported through time and space to the Tunisian desert. But something’s changed since Ben was here: there are wooden poles surrounding the place where Locke lays, and they hold video cameras pointing down at him. As night falls, a group of locals arrive in a pickup truck and cart Locke off to a rather medieval local hospital, where the on-call physician sets Locke’s broken leg. Later, Locke wakes up in his bed with a visitor: Charles Widmore, who says that the cameras in the desert are his, and they’re pointed at “the Exit.” Widmore explains that he was once leader of the Others, until Ben tricked him into turning the wheel in order to exile him and take his place as leader. Locke is surprised to learn that three years have passed for the Oceanic 6 since their escape from the island, and they’re scattered all over. When Locke asks why Widmore is helping him, Widmore says that Locke is very special, and the island needs him. Widmore says a war is coming, and that if Locke’s not on the island when it happens, then the wrong side is going to win.
• Widmore supplies Locke with the fake ID “Jeremy Bentham,” as well as the locations of the Oceanic 6, and a driver to take him to each of them: Matthew Abaddon. From there, Locke visits each of the Oceanic 6 (except Sun, since he promised Jin he wouldn’t bring her back) to ask them to come back with him, and is turned down by every one. Sayid is no longer in Ben’s employ, and has moved to Santo Domingo to do humanitarian work, building houses. Hurley’s still in the mental hospital, Kate is living alone with Aaron, having broken off her engagement with Jack. And Jack well on his way to his downward spiral into drugs and alcohol, though he’s still working as a surgeon. Locke even visits Walt in New York, briefly considering asking him to come back as well, but deciding at the last minute to leave the boy be because “he’s been through enough.”
• Along the way, Locke remembers Abaddon as the man who suggested he take a walkabout in Australia, and asks just exactly who Abaddon is. Abaddon replies that his job for Charles Widmore is to help people get to where they’re supposed to be. Later, Locke asks him to locate his old flame Helen, and Abaddon takes him to a graveyard in Santa Monica, where Helen has been buried after dying of a brain aneurism a year ago. As they’re leaving, Abaddon is shot and killed by a mystery attacker, and Locke grabs the wheel of the car and tries to get away. But he soon winds up in a three-car pile-up, and is rushed to the nearest hospital.
• The nearest hospital just happens to be the hospital where Jack works, leading to their meeting when Locke is in recovery. The meeting goes poorly, with Jack bitterly accusing Locke of being a “sad old man” who isn’t special at all. Locke tries to convince Jack that his father is alive on the island, but Jack warns him to stay away from him and the others, too.
• After he’s discharged from the hospital, Locke writes a suicide note in his hotel room and prepares to hang himself. Just as he’s about to do the deed, Ben bursts in and stops him. Ben admits to being the one who shot Abaddon, but says he did it to protect Locke. He says he’s watching all of the Oceanic 6, just like Widmore is. When Locke complains that he couldn’t get any of his friends to return with him, Ben reveals that Jack has just bought a plane ticket and intends to use it to fly over the South Pacific, in the hopes he might crash on the island again. Ben talks him down by, like Widmore, telling him he’s special and has a lot of work to do. Locke explains about Jin’s wedding ring and how he promised not to bring Sun back. He also mentions Eloise Hawking as his means of returning to the island. After hearing this, Ben strangles Locke to death, murdering him on the spot. He takes Jin’s wedding ring, cleans the room and arranges it to look like Locke succeeded at committing suicide, and leaves.
• Back on the island, after his resurrection, Locke tells Caesar some of what he knows about the Dharma Initiative and the Hydra Station. Locke needs to find his friends, so Caesar takes him to the people that were injured when the plane went down, in case any of his friends are there. But instead, he finds Benjamin Linus, “the man who killed me.”

• Presumably, they know one another because they’re both Others.
  Question: How does Ben know Ms. Hawking? 5.02
• Because Ben supplanted him as leader of the Others.
  Question: Why does Charles Widmore want Ben dead? 4.06
• Essentially, yes. Ben took Widmore’s position as leader of the Others, and exiled Widmore from the island.
  Question: What did Ben take that was once Widmore’s? The island? 4.09
• Using the Exit transports one not only through space but time as well.
  Question: Why didn’t Ben know the date when he arrived in Tunisia? 4.09
• Apparently, it was Charles Widmore.
  Question: If Ben was telling the truth about not being directly responsible for the Purge, then who was the leader of the Others at that time, who did make the decision? 4.11
• It was given to him by Charles Widmore as a means of protecting him.
  Question: Why did “Jeremy Bentham” use a pseudonym? 4.13
• Locke spoke to Kate of “anger and obsession,” suggesting that such things were in his past. But she pointed out he was still just as angry and obsessed as ever, and hadn’t changed at all.
  Question: What did “Jeremy Bentham” say to Kate to convince her he was crazy? 4.13
• The survivors left behind were dislodged in time, jumping randomly from time to time throughout the island’s history, until it began to take a physical toll on them, endangering their lives.
  Question: What “very bad things” happened on the island after the Oceanic 6 left? 4.14
• Sayid was right, though he didn’t know how right he was. Locke was indeed murdered — by Sayid’s former boss, Benjamin Linus.
  Question: Did Locke, aka “Jeremy Bentham” really commit suicide, or was he murdered as Sayid believes? 4.14
• I think one of the biggest takeaways we get out of this episode is that Ben and Widmore are engaged in an endless Cold War against one another, constantly spying on each other, each of them watching the Oceanic 6, and anybody else with connections to the island. All of it is in service of each man’s desire to regain control of the island. And they’ll do absolutely anything to get back to the island — manipulating, killing, or using others. I think this notion of the Oceanic 6 being in danger comes from the dangers they were placed in at the hands of both Ben and Widmore, and not any one particular villain.
  Question: If Locke’s death was a murder and not a suicide, does that mean that all of the Oceanic 6 are in similar danger? 4.14

• How did Ajira 316 wind up on the island? Did it land? Did it crash?
• How did Locke wind up standing in the ocean just off the shore of Hydra Island, apparently resurrected after killing himself in Los Angeles?
• How exactly was Locke resurrected?
• Why did Frank steal a canoe to go to the main island?
• Which passenger did Frank leave Hydra Island to go to the main island with?
• What is the “coming war” that Widmore told Locke about? Is it between Widmore and Ben? Or two other parties?
• If Abaddon’s the reason Locke went to Australia for his walkabout, and Abaddon works for Widmore… does this mean that Widmore knew Oceanic 6 was going to crash on the island, and he arranged for Locke to be on it?

• “The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham” is the ninth Locke-centric episode of the series.
• I still don’t know if Locke’s planned suicide was a decision made out of his own feelings of failure, or if he was going to do it as a last-ditch effort to fulfill Richard’s prophecy on the only way he’d be able to get the Oceanic 6 back to the island. Locke was certainly wallowing in his own feelings of uselessness, but I wonder if he might have hoped that this final, desperate act would also succeed where he couldn’t while alive.
• The thing that struck me the first time I watched “The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham” was how anti-climactic it felt. Sure, there was the twist of Ben murdering Locke, and we got some interesting answers about Widmore, but otherwise, almost nothing happened that could be described as “exciting” or “surprising.” It was more of a character piece than anything else. I do like the way the writers chose to wait until the Oceanic 6 returned to the island to go back and explain just what happened to Locke after he left the island. It was a perfectly self-contained storyline, worthy of its own episode. But it’s also a perfect example of how the questions are often a lot more interesting than the answers. So much time was spent in the last year alluding to these wildly dramatic and pivotal things that happened when each of the Oceanic 6 met “Jeremy Bentham,” but when we finally saw what happened, the events in question felt pretty ho-hum.

Need more depth and detail? Read my full recap of “The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham”.

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Image credits: “Rewatching Lost” logo by Robin Parrish. Season 4 cast promotional image: American Broadcasting Company.