Lost
Season Three: Through the Looking Glass
“We need to go back.”
With those
words the third season of the ABC drama Lost came to a close.
Spoken by a Los Angeles-residing Jack Shephard in the two-hour finale,
“Through the Looking Glass,” the phrase was not uttered
in the expected past or present but in the future instead. While the
first two seasons of the show centered on the survivors of Oceanic Flight
815 attempting to survive on the island which they find themselves stranded,
the third season evolved into Jack, the de facto leader of the group,
executing a carefully constructed plan in order to finally be rescued.
The irony, of course, is that not only does his plan apparently come
to fruition, but a drugged-out, suicidal and off-island Jack Shephard
later believes his actions were a mistake.
While the
third installment of Lost started off slow and included such
duds as the “how Jack got his tattoos” episode, the series
picked up steam half-way through the season when it delved into an exploration
of the Others—the natural inhabitants of Lost Island—as
well further developed the growing dichotomy between Jack Shephard and
John Locke. The series had already established Jack as the man of science
and Locke as the main of faith, two men with strong wills who more often
than not saw themselves at odds with each other in regards to the mystical
elements of the series. While the two shared only a handful of scenes
the entire season, their stories dovetailed nonetheless.
The greatest
difference of opinion between the two centered on the island itself.
From the very beginning, John Locke believed it to be special. “Do
you think we crashed on this place by coincidence?” he asked Jack
in season one. “We were brought here for a purpose, for a reason.”
Jack naturally had the opposite opinion and more than once told Locke,
“I don’t believe in destiny.” While these opposing
viewpoints were mainly limited to brief philosophical debates in the
past, the prospect of actually being rescued and leaving the island
raised the stakes in season three. Thus while Jack was making deals
with the Others to leave the island via a submarine under their control,
Locke was doing his best to ensure such an agreement was never finalized
by first blowing up the Dharma Initiative communications center and
then the submarine itself. At the end of “Through the Looking
Glass,” he again took matters into his own hands by throwing a
knife into the back of Naomi, the would-be rescuer of Oceanic Flight
815.
While Jack
Shephard and John Locke had separate storylines throughout season three,
the differences between the two men became sharper and more focused.
Before the plane crash, Locke had been a sad-sack loser raised in foster
care who failed at everything he tried; Jack, meanwhile, was a medical
surgeon who—despite relationship problems with both his father
and wife—lived a pretty successful life. On island, however, Locke
transformed into the “special and with purpose” individual
he had always longed to be. Even the Others took notice, especially
since Locke was confined to a wheel chair before arriving on Lost
Island. Not only was he accepted into the group but at least one them,
Richard Alpert, believed he should challenge leader Benjamin Linus for
supremacy amongst the group.
Jack Shephard,
on the other hand, found himself a captive of the Others at the start
of the season and continued to be at odds with them throughout the twenty-three
episodes. When he finally was able to escape, Jack brought along Juliet
Burke despite the fact that she was not only an Other but one who appeared
to have authority within their ranks. Fellow Lostaways James
“Sawyer” Ford and Sayid Jarrah distrusted Juliet, and in
turn Jack, keeping the would-be leader in the dark in regards to both
Naomi’s presence on the island as well as the fact her freighter
was only miles off shore. But like some sort of scale that allowed only
one of the two—Jack or Locke—to be on the rise at any given
moment, fate intervened and allowed Jack to finally assume the leadership
role he was reluctant to fulfill while Lock was shot and left for dead
by Benjamin Linus.
“Though
the Looking Glass” thus became the story of Jack Shephard leading
his people like some proverbial Moses to the rescue that they had long
sought after. While the title of the episode directly relates to the
underground Dharma Station that is blocking all transmissions both to
and from the island, it is also an indirect reference to Lewis Carroll’s
sequel to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Just as the
world Alice entered was not necessarily what it appeared to be, the
same is true in Lost’s version. Whereas everyone believed
Naomi and her freighter were sent by fellow castaway Desmond Hume’s
long-lost love Penelope Widmore, Charlie Pace finds this not to be true
when he succeeds in shutting down the Looking Glass’ jamming system.
Before he dies, Charlie is able to write the prophetic message “Not
Penny’s Boat” on his hand in an attempt to warn Desmond
of what he has learned.
Then there’s
Benjamin Linus, who intercepts Jack Shephard on his way to the radio
tower and basically tells him the same thing. Like some island manifestation
of Tweedledum and Tweedledee—who teased Alice that she merely
resided in the sleeping imagination of the Red King—Ben warns
Jack that his rescue mission will not bring about the outcome he desires.
“The woman you’re traveling with,” he says of Naomi.
“She’s not who she says she is. She’s a representative
of some people who’ve been trying to find this island. She’s
one of the bad guys.”
In the
end Jack does not believe Ben, nor a still-breathing John Locke who
makes one last plea for his counterpart to alter his plan, and in doing
so apparently went through the “looking glass” himself.
Throughout the episode, Jack Shephard was seen in “flashbacks”
as a broken and desperate man who was strung out on prescription drugs
and alcohol. Viewers realized, however, that the “looking glass”
allegory extended to them as well when it was revealed in the closing
moments not to have been a “flashback” at all but a “flashforward”
instead.
While Lost
had been about “how will the survivors get off the island”
during its first three season, “Though the Looking Glass”
not only changed the story but squarely put the series’ focus
on Jack Shephard, the successful surgeon and island leader who apparently
converted to John Locke’s way of thinking only to believe it was
too late. It also transformed his repeated “I don’t believe
in destiny” mantra to “we need to go back,” altering
viewers’ perception of the series as well.
Anthony
Letizia (March 29, 2010)
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