From the Field

The Outsider’s Guide to Lost’s Last Season: Episode Three

February 18th, 2010

Zombie John is on a mission. I can see it in his eyes, those fearless eyes, and they don’t betray a thing. They are nothing like Zombie Jacob’s eyes; no kindness, no empathy. Zombie John is a man of darker origins. He has answers, he’s said as much, but damned if he’ll share them with anyone he can’t trust. What he needs then is a confidant of sorts, a pawn to play, and so he coils up into smoke and plunges back into the jungle in search of Sawyer.

Sawyer, to his credit, has done the wisest thing and gone off to drink himself to death. Who can blame him? He’s stuck on some godforsaken island, stranded in space-time and struggling with the loss of the woman he loved. He’s a broken man, and no one suffering the same fate can say they wouldn’t want to watch the world wither away through a lens clouded with whiskey. And so there he sits, holed up in his house on the lake with his lips wrapped around a bottle and The Stooges playing on in the background. This is how his world will end. As the light dims and the alcohol-induced hallucinations mix with waking dreams, Zombie John shuffles into the room and takes Sawyer by surprise:

Sawyer doesn’t actually say those things; most of it is implied. Instead, he changes course and decides to follow Zombie John back out into the jungle after he is promised answers (and after he pulls on some pants).

There are few things in this world more dangerous than a man who is both drunk and unafraid of death, and as Sawyer stumbles along behind Zombie John it’s clear that he’s reached the fuck it stage of sensitivity. He and Zombie John both see the vision of a boy running ahead of them in the foliage, but Sawyer brushes it off without much thought. Richard, who was clubbed and beaten and left behind by Zombie John in an earlier scene, emerges from the trees to tell Sawyer that Zombie John is, in fact, a zombie, and that he can’t be trusted. Sawyer fairly ignores this advice and continues on, but he pulls a gun on Zombie John for good measure. Zombie John stares back with those fearless eyes, tells him that he’s just an old trapped soul looking for release, and Sawyer gives him a fuck it shrug before soldiering on.

They soon arrive at a cliff and climb down to a cave, at the mouth of which sits a scale with two rocks: one black, one white. The scale is balanced, static; no more black than white. Zombie John steps toward the scale and hefts the white rock in his hand. He turns to the sea and casts it out into the great beyond as the scale, now free of its weight, tips affirmatively to black. A contemplative stillness descends, Sawyer is ushered into the cave, and Zombie John’s torch reveals the scrawled names of Island survivors written there by Zombie Jacob. Zombie Jacob, the man who brought all of them to The Island. Zombie Jacob, the man who touched their lives and weaved this terrible web, the man who wants one of them to become his permanent replacement there on The Island.

I only want one thing, Zombie John tells Sawyer, and that’s to get off The Island. Sawyer pauses, considers, and gives him the fuck it shrug: Let’s do it.

The iris is opening, my friends! There are mysteries unraveling before our very eyes, emerging from darkness unto the light. A cave scratched with names and numbers, an unholy alliance formed, an unbalanced scale. Something unsavory is afoot!

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