TV Verdict

Tonight: History Repeating, Grave Digging, and Black (Rock) Dynamite. Spoilers follow.

When the character of Benjamin Linus was introduced back in season two, he was only supposed to be around for a few episodes. Thanks in large part to actor Michael Emerson, he stuck around, and has been part of just about every significant story arc since. After years of manipulating, usurpation, betrayal, and murder—including the stabbing of island protector Jacob, which set the deadly events of this final season in motion—has Ben finally found redemption?

There are many fan favorite characters on Lost: Locke, Hurley, Sawyer, Charlie, Sun, Jin. Heck, even Kate has her supporters. But ask any Lost viewer which character they love to hate, and the answer will inevitably come back Ben Linus. As much as I loved the Locke-centric episode “The Subsitute” a few weeks back, I have to hand the favorite season six episode title to tonight’s installment: “Dr. Linus.” Michael Emerson gave the performance of his life—a haunting mix of terror, desperation, and self-loathing that ended with an emotional moment of clarity earned by four years of being a complete bastard. Are you watching Emmy voters?

The titular Dr. Linus is not the broken man we see at the beginning of the episode, running from the temple destruction on the island. He’s the LA X timeline history teacher we first met at the end of “The Substitute,” giving high school students the lowdown on exiled emperors and 18th century ships. Unlike island Ben, he’s a powerless man, at the mercy of a nasty principal who cares more about budget cuts than the kids he watches over (and who looks awfully familiar; haven’t we seen him before?). Frustrated and angry, Ben complains loudly enough in the teacher’s lounge that new sub John Locke asks him why he doesn’t just take over as principal. Ben dismisses the idea, until an early morning tutoring session with prize pupil Alex Rousseau (yes, that Alex) yields a juicy bit of gossip about the principal playing doctor with the school nurse. Ben takes the information to his equally fed-up co-conspirator, science teacher Leslie Arzt, who agrees to look for incriminating email in the nurse’s account. He finds 30 salacious messages, which Ben takes to the principal with a demand: step down and give Ben his job. But the principal has an ace up his sleeve. Alex has asked him to write a letter of recommendation for her. She needs it to get into Yale. The principal gives Ben a choice: power, or Alex’s future.

Back on the island, Ben has an entirely different problem. Ilana, suspicious about Mr. Linus, asks Miles to take what is left of Jacob and tell her what really happened in the statue. He goes into one of his trances and comes out with confirmation that Ben killed Jacob. Furious that he took the closest thing she had to a father, Ilana marches Ben to boot hill, chains him up, and forces him to dig his own grave. He’s just about finished when fake Locke shows up and offers him a deal: If Ben joins him, the Man in Black will give him the island when he leaves. He frees Ben, tells him about a nearby rifle leaning against a tree and disappears. Ben runs into the jungle, with Ilana following close behind. He reaches the rifle before she does, however, and—as the Man in Black promised—gets the drop on her. Instead of shooting Ilana, though, Ben explains himself to her. Yes, he killed Jacob, but he did it because he was angry. Angry that he chose the island over his daughter, Alex, and let her die. Angry because after having sacrificed the one person he truly loved, Jacob didn’t seem to care. He tells Ilana that he doesn’t expect her to forgive him, because he won’t ever be able to forgive himself. He says he won’t shoot her. He just wants her to let him go, to Locke. Why? she asks. “Because he’s the only one who will have me,” he replies. Ilana sees him, broken, defeated, and resigned to a dark fate and tells him that he has another choice. “I will have you,” she says, and walks away. Ben, dumbfounded at her forgiveness, follows after her—perhaps not a new man, but a redeemed one. That scene between Ben and Ilana stands as one of the best ever on this show. All the sci-fi kookiness can take away from Lost’s character-based emotional core. Michael Emerson’s bravura performance showed just how in tune the writers are with that core, and how well they know that Lost just wouldn’t work without it.

In last season’s finale, Jacob gave Ben the choice to kill him or not. Tonight, Miles tells Ben that, up until the moment he stabbed him, Jacob thought Ben would do the right thing. Tonight, Ben was faced with another choice, but this time he didn’t fail the test. Not only on the island, but in the flash-sideways story, where Dr. Linus traded a position of power to buy the academic future of a bright pupil. Of someone who wasn’t even his daughter.

Speaking of Alex, the last time we saw her, she was the smoke monster in disguise, telling Ben to follow Locke (also the smoke monster) and to do whatever he asked (to kill Jacob). The moment the real Alex was murdered by Keamey, Ben started a campaign of revenge, aimed at Charles Widmore, who “broke the rules” by sending the mercenaries who killed Alex. Ben left the island by turning the frozen donkey wheel instead of Locke, sending himself back to the real world so he could kill Widmore’s daughter, Penny. When that assassination attempt failed, Ben came scurrying back to the island, murdering Locke along the way, and ended up in the arms of a waiting smoke monster. As misguided as his actions have been, everything Ben did after Alex’s death was motivated by his love for her—a girl he took from a crazy jungle lady and raised as his own (I guess he and Kate have more in common than I thought).

It was great to see Ben and Alex together again tonight, although it was bittersweet to see how wonderful a father he could have been if he hadn’t been so power-hungry. We also got to see him taking care of his own father, who was recruited to the Dharma Initiative in the LA X timeline, too. Seems like didn’t go well for Roger, though, and he left the island with his son (before Ben could be shot by a time-traveling Iraqi and become evil). Ironically, Ben’s father sees leaving the island as him failing his son. He wonders what Ben could have become if they’d stayed with the Dharma Initiative? If only he knew. The flash-sideways storyline also raised a fascinating question about Alex: is her off-island mother still Rousseau? That is her last name, but even if Danielle’s expedition never landed on the island, how did a French girl end up in L.A., and how did her daughter end up sounding so darn American?

This episode wasn’t just about Ben, though. We also returned to the Jack-Hurley storyline, meeting up with them on their way back to the Temple. Jacob’s warnings about the “bad man” in mind, Hurley tries to trick Jack into going the wrong way, only to be sidetracked by Richard Alpert, who appears mysteriously and offers to take them to the Temple himself. Only he doesn’t. He takes them to the Black Rock—his first time “back”—and tells them that he wants to die. At Hurley’s prodding, Alpert says that his seeming immortality was a gift from Jacob, brought about by his touch. Now that Jacob is dead, Richard sees that gift as a curse. He wants to die because he realizes that his life had no purpose—a crisis of faith that sounds an awful lot like another chosen castaway who is currently being impersonated by a smoke monster. Richard tells Jack that he can’t kill himself (another one of the “rules,” perhaps?), so he asks Jack to do it for him. Jack obliges by lighting a stick of dynamite, but instead of running away, he waits for the explosion with Richard. Jack tells him that ever since he saw his childhood home in the lighthouse mirror, he knows that Jacob brought him to the island for a reason, and that it wasn’t to be blown up in a landlocked slave ship. Seconds before reaching the unstable dynamite, the lit fuse fizzles out. In awe (and maybe a little annoyed) Richard asks Jack what they’re going to do next. “Go back to where we started,” Jack says—which just happens to be the beach where Ilana, Sun, Frank, Miles, and the newly forgiven Ben are setting up camp.

Another week, another lack of crazy theories on my part. This episode gave us plenty of mythology tidbits in the Jack storyline (Richard telling them that they “weren’t ready” to know about his chosen method of island transport, confirmation that Richard is ageless because of Jacob, a clear suggestion that he was indeed a passenger on the Black Rock, and Jack’s transformation into a man of faith giving him some kind of magical protection). It probably didn’t give as many answers as some overeager fans wanted, but I thought it was a masterful episode. At this point, I care more about getting a solid story than a boatload of answers. Fortunately for the aforementioned fans, however, the episode ended with a cool reveal: a strange submarine has just arrived to the island, and it’s carrying Charles Widmore. Looks like his story—and his part in the impending “War”—isn’t over yet. Will he and Ben bury the hatchet and fight together against the greater foe? Maybe Widmore will resume his position as Other leader (with Ben as second-in-command?) when Jack inevitably becomes the new Jacob.

What did you think of “Dr. Linus”? Were you as impressed with Michael Emerson’s performance as I was? Do you feel sorry for Ben? What do you make of Widmore’s arrival? Is he the “they” Jacob warned the Man in Black was coming? Was he the person he wanted Hurley and Jack to help find the island? If so, he did pretty well for himself even without the lighthouse. When Richard warned Hurley not to listen to Jacob, was it because he thought it wasn’t really Jacob, or because he was disgusted with his dead deity? Oh, and did you appreciate the metaphorical resurrection of Nikki and Paolo in diamond stash form? Hilarious, and such a Miles thing to do. Hats off to the writers for finding the time in these packed final episodes to reference forgotten characters from seasons past. As if Lost fans needed another reason to love the show, or to miss it when it’s gone.