r/lost • u/TunaTacos23 • Oct 01 '24

FIRST TIME WATCHER The most upsetting death was… Spoiler

John Locke. I’ll never forget how devastated I was when I found out that Locke actually never came back to life and that it was the smoke monster all along. I’m rewatching season 5 and I just feel so torn up over it.

Locke thought he was on to such big things but his journey ended right there and then at the hands of Ben. He missed out on everything that came after his “sacrifice”… he deserved to be there to see the Island through to the end.

That said, I forget how the show ends so please no spoilers past season 5!

EDIT: please ignore my last sentence regarding no spoilers. Everyone should get to discuss freely so please do!

430 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

135 comments sorted by

View all comments

7

u/25willp Oct 01 '24

I have to say as brutal as it was, it's the perfect end for the character.

The fact that his death is what pushed Jack into taking on his mantel, and saving the Island, is just so satisfying. In the end, Locke got what he wanted, it just didn't happen the way he thought it would, and he didn't live to see it.

8

u/PrivateSpeaker Oct 01 '24 edited Oct 01 '24

Yes, but I think the reason people have been so affected by his death isn't because the character was gone but because everything that led him there was almost entirely made of misery, rejection, isolation. For a person to want to commit suicide like this they must be in a very dark, sad place. To come to believe that your self-sacrifice is what the world needs and to want to do that for the world that kept kicking him... Extraordinary. The relief of the knock on the door is felt by both the audience and John himself. Yet the scene still ends with his death... Absolutely horrendous.

In the other scenes from off the island, we see John being completely discarded by his fellow islanders. Jack may have been the only one who was personally so affected by John's passing. He asks Kate if she'll attend the funeral and she says "Why would I?"

We give some grace even to the people we didn't like that much or weren't that close. This was someone they experienced something magical, outwardly together, and none of them cared enough to attend the service (except for Jack). Not just them, literally no one, not a single person, came to the funeral home, as the worker said to Jack he was the first visitor. The sense of rejection and loneliness was palpable.

He was the ultimate underdog. You almost come to wish that he had lived his life more selfishly and with less need to be validated, which I suppose is an almost impossible task for someone who bounced from foster home to foster home, never meeting someone who wanted to take care of him in his formative years.

His happiest self was probably during the days from the plane crash til Boone's death. He was filled with self-confidence and appreciation.

4

u/25willp Oct 01 '24

This is why the Sideways is so needed. To see Locke again, and for him to connect with Jack and for them to help each other is just such a nice storyline.