Locke indeed has MAJOR cabin fever.
It starts with Locke’s premature birth. In what looks to be somewhere in the 1950s, a teenager named Emily is getting ready for a date, even though her mother is forbidding her to go. As she runs out of the house, she is hit by a car and rushed to the emergency room, where she tells the nurses she is six-months pregnant. After she delivers the baby, he is quickly whisked away–but not before she calls out that his name is “John.”
Later, Emily and her mom are looking at little Locke in his incubator–and is told that he is apparently a fighter. The youngest preemie to live. But Emily can’t handle it and runs off, while the mom wants to set up adoption. Suddenly, there’s a man looking in on them. The nurse asks if that’s the father, and the mother says she doesn’t know who he is. We can’t see him at first, but when the camera gets close, we see it’s Richard! Holy crap! There’s a fountain of youth on that island, I’m convinced. In fact, the theory is Richard is one of the original crew members from The Black Rock.
John is now about 5-years-old and in a foster home. Richard shows up to talk to him. He says he runs a school for special children, and he believes John could join them. Then he notices a picture John drew of the black smoke monster. “You drew this?” The little boy nods. OK, this is just weird. How come Locke doesn’t remember any of this? Richard then lays out a bunch of items: A comic book, a vile of sand, a baseball glove, a knife, other stuff. Then he asks which of the items already belongs to him, and John starts picking up stuff. Richard smiles. But when John picks up a knife, Richard quits smiling. “You’re sure that’s yours?” John nods. “Well, it isn’t.” Richard grabs it out of the boy’s hand, packs up and leaves. “He’s not ready, yet,” Richard tells the foster mother.
Then when Locke is a teenager, he is teased all the time. A guidance counselor pulls him aside and tells him about a special science camp that a “Dr. Alpert” wants John to go to. But being a science geek is exactly what John doesn’t want to be–so he’ll get teased more. He wants to box and fish and play sports. The counselor tells him he can’t do all that, that he isn’t meant to be a superhero. John leans in, “Don’t tell me what I can’t do!” Now, where have we heard him say THAT before?
Jumping forward, Locke is in physical therapy, trying to walk again but not having much luck. After his session, he is wheeled back to his room by none other than the same black guy claiming to work for the Oceanic airline. The same guy who talked to Hurley in the mental hospital and the same guy who organized the freighter with Naomi. Again, another “Richard.” He tells John that he should go to Australia on a walk-about to find out who he is. Aha! That’s where the idea came from.
Back on the island, Locke, Hurley and Ben are trying to find Jacob’s cabin. And none of them knows where it is. Nice. Locke has one hell of a freaky dream, though, with Horace–one of the dead Dharma guys–chopping down a tree over and over again. He tells Locke to find him and then he’ll find Jacob–who has been waiting for Locke for a long time. When Locke wakes up, Ben is looking at him. “I used to dream,” Ben says wistfully. They head out and Locke takes them to the pit where all the Dharma peeps are rotting. Hurley says, “Whoa. Who did this?” Locke turns to Ben, “He did.” Locke finds what he was looking for: A map to the Jacob’s cabin in Horace’s pocket.
Once they have the directions, Locke gives Hurley the opportunity to back to the beach, but Hurley balks and wants to stay with them. Ben thinks Locke did that so Hurley would stay with them. “I’m not like you,” Locke says to Ben. “No, you’re certainly not,” he shoots back. Apparently, Ben is feeling the sting of no longer being the chosen one now that Locke has taken over. But he warns Locke about having the responsibility. “Destiny is a fickle bitch, John.” Suddenly, Hurley stops the conversation. “Hey, guys. The cabin.” There it is.
Meanwhile, on the freighter, Frank and the other mercenaries come back via helicopter. Keamy, the main badass, is pissed off. He thinks the captain gave him up to Ben, but then they realize it was Michael, who is handcuffed down below. Keamy wants to kill him but can’t because Michael is the only one who can fix the boat.
Keamy pressures the captain to let him open the safe to get a secondary protocol–something the captain doesn’t know anything about. “Linus knows we are going to torch the island, and there’s only one place he can go,” Keamy says as he opens the document. Torch the island? The captain thinks they are there just for an extraction, not to kill everyone. Keamy doesn’t have time to debate; he’s a man on a mission.
The captain goes up on deck and plans to get Sayid and Desmond off the ship. Sayid knows they only way they are going to survive is to get his people off the island, so the captain offers the zodiac raft. Desmond says he can’t go with Sayid. He knows Penny is coming for him so he is going to stay.
The mercenary guys are arming themselves to the teeth, getting ready to go back to the island. The ship’s doctor is prepping, and one of the guys tells him they got a call that he, the doc, washed up on the shore with his throat slit. “Well, I’m the doctor.” Frank says he won’t fly them, and Keamy proceeds to slit the doc’s throat to show he means business. Again, with the freaky time thing. The captain shows up and points his gun at Keamy, telling him he is not going to let them go. But Keamy shows him some device strapped to his arm–a bomb?–and easily outmaneuvers the captain, shooting him dead. Needless to say, Frank changes his mind and says he’ll be flying them. But before they take off, he turns on one of the beacon radios and stuffs it in a backpack.
On the beach, Juliet is scolding Jack for being out his tent when they hear the helicopter. It flies over them as a backpack is dropped. Jack finds the beeping radio: “I think they want us to follow them.”
Locke, Hurley and Ben walk up to the cabin. John wants to go in, but Ben says he can’t go with him. “The island wanted me to get sick. It wanted you to be healed…It’s your turn, John.” Hurley opts out of going to. So, John walks in–and there’s Christian, Jack’s dad. He says he’s not Jacob but can speak for him. He asks John why he thinks he is here. “I’m here because I was chosen to be.” That’s correct. Then Locke hears something behind him and turns to see Claire sitting there. “Where’s Aaron?” Christian says the baby is where he is supposed to be, as is Claire–and he shouldn’t tell anyone where Claire is. Locke starts asking a bunch of other questions but Christian stops him. He says the guys on the boat are coming back and when they get there, none of the questions will matter, except one. “Do you know what that is?” Christian asks. John looks at him: “How do I save the island?” Christian and Claire share a look and smile.
Ben and Hurley wait outside for Locke, sharing a candy bar. He finally comes out. “Did he tell you what to do, John?,” Ben asks. “Yes. He says we have to move the island.”
With what? A giant whale?
