LOST: Dissecting "The Substitute" (6x04)

"Two players. Two sides. One is light. One is dark."
-- John Locke, "Pilot"

Five television seasons later, an ancient entity posing as John Locke walks into a cave with James Ford, and spots a scale. On the scale: one white rock, one black rock. Locke's impostor picks up the white rock and skips it across the ocean. "Inside joke," he tells Ford.

In this final season's alternate timeline, the still-living John Locke doesn't have to make a choice as earth-shattering as good vs. evil. He just needs to pick a color swatch for his upcoming wedding.

"The Substitute" is the kind of episode that truly rewards the hardcore fans, much like last year's "Jughead." It has iconic scenes that will be series milestones, and appears to answer some rather large questions, but also gives us nice little easter eggs -- inside jokes, if you will.

But one thing at a time. An episode this dense needs an itemized entry!

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The Alternate Timeline

What's different: Locke and Helen are still together, and apparently Locke's dad isn't a conniving con-man -- he's invited to the wedding, according to Helen. A character who had a short but memorable appearance in "Tricia Tanaka is Dead" (3x09), Lynn Karnoff, is no longer a tarot-card reader -- she works for a temp agency owned by Hugo. Her boss is Rose Nadler, who must not have worked for Hugo in the original timeline. (Otherwise, she would have recognized him.) When John finally gets a new job as a substitute teacher, he meets an anal retentive European history teacher named ... Benjamin Linus.

What's not different: Yes, Hugo did own Locke's box company in the original timeline; we learned this in a throwaway line of dialogue all the way back in "Numbers" (1x18), Hurley's very first flashback episode. And Locke still didn't go on that walkabout; he even tells Helen that he complained to them about telling him what he can't do. As for Rose, she still faces terminal cancer in her alternate life.

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Answers

• Smokey tells Sawyer that he has been brought to the island as one of six potential "candidates" -- people who could replace Jacob as the island's protector. In the cave we see six names written in Jacob's hand, each paired with one of the numbers ("Jacob had a thing for numbers," Smokey says): 4 - Locke, 8 - Reyes, 15 - Ford, 16 - Jarrah, 23 - Shephard, and 42 - Kwon. (Smokey doesn't know if "Kwon" refers to Sun or Jin, but my money's on Jin.) We have heard the word candidate used before, but in reference to Frank Lapidus -- Bram and Ilana talk about him as a potential candidate in the Season 5 finale ("The Incident"). Lapidus' name does not appear to be written on the cave wall.

• Smokey still has to abide by the island's "rules," whatever they may be. A child who looked oddly familiar appeared in the jungle and told Smokey he could not kill Sawyer.

• Ben did care for John. His short eulogy for Locke spoke volumes about the character, revealing just how devastated he is after realizing he has been a patsy for Smokey for nearly his entire life. Ben and John are united in this deception, and in their blind faith, and hopefully their alternate incarnations will make peace with each other.

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New questions

• Is Smokey telling the truth about why Jacob brought James and his friends to the island? It would seem to me that the conversation in the opening scene of "The Incident" goes against the information we learn in this week's final scene. Smokey (or the Man in Black, if you prefer) told Jacob that outsiders corrupt and destroy -- that sounds like a man who thinks the island needs to be protected, not a man who says "it's just an island," and who wants to leave it behind. Smokey may be testing Sawyer, or he may simply be fed up with protecting the island. ("Trapped. Trapped is what I am," he says.)

• Why isn't Kate's name written on the cave wall? We see snippets from "The Incident" in which Jacob visited the castaways, making sure to touch each one in some way. But he did the same to Kate (hers was that episode's first flashback, in fact). So why isn't Kate a candidate? (Or did we just not see "Austen - 108"?)

• Why did Ilana take some of Jacob's ashes? Will she save those for some kind of funeral ceremony, or can they serve some kind of other purpose? (And did anyone else finally notice, in that scene, that Jacob's theme sounds eerily similar to the Ark theme from "Raiders of the Lost Ark"?)

• Was that boy in the jungle Younger Ghost Jacob? (Credit to @jacvanek for that one.)

• Would it be so bad if Smokey left the island? Would he be free to wreak havoc on the rest of the globe? Would it allow Widmore to take control of it? (And would that be worse?)

• OK, one old question: WHAT THE HELL IS THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE NUMBERS?!?!?

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Bests

Performance: Well, it has to be Terry O'Quinn, doesn't it? Sorry, Foxy: "Lost" is clearly O'Quinn's show now.

Scene: So many to pick from. I'll go with Locke's funeral, which gave us a great line from Lapidus: "This is the weirdest damn funeral I've ever been to." But it wasn't the best line in the episode ...

Line: No, that would be this all-time great from one James Ford: "I don't give a damn if you're dead, or time-travelin', or the Ghost of Christmas Past. All I care about is this whiskey, so bottoms up."

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Next week: The Jack-centric "Lighthouse"