Locke’s Two Deaths
As usual, I apologize if anyone has already written this theory. I’d actually be surprised if this wasn’t already suggested. If so, hopefully what I say will be seen as supporting it, not competing with it.
I think John Locke died upon impact of the 815 crash and was taken over by the smoke monster. This has some holes, but I’ve come up with some ideas to account for a lot of them. One of the key concepts here is that when the smoke monster takes over a body, some of the personality, memories, etc. of the person live on, and over time the smoke monster becomes less himself, and more like the person whose body he used. That’s why this season we saw Flocke say, “Don’t tell me what I can’t do”…because he’s already taking on some of the traits of Locke. This is also why Locke seemed so confident in season 1 and by season 4 he was more like the John Locke that worked at the box company.
First, here are some reasons why it makes sense:
I have been re-watching seasons 1 and 2, and it seems like he knows too much about the island to begin with and has some sort of agenda. He can do things like predict when it is going to rain. When he initially fails to get in the hatch he says, “This isn’t how it’s supposed to happen.” At the time, I just attributed this to some crazy man who thinks he has some sort of ‘destiny’ to be on the island. But what if he was working toward a goal the whole time? “You have no idea what I went through to get here.”
John Locke was no longer paralyzed after the crash. I initially attributed this to the island being “a place where miracles happen.” Now I think he was not paralyzed because he was the smoke monster.
The smoke monster is for some reason now stuck in the form of John Locke. Perhaps this is because once the smoke monster possesses someone for the second time, it can no longer change into another form.
Now for the holes:
He was already off the island, why didn’t he just stay there? When someone uses the donkey wheel to get off the island, they become themself when they arrive back in the real world. The smoke monster can’t travel off island via donkey wheel.
Why did he do so much to prevent them from getting off the island in the first place? Jacob had to die and he needed things to do according to plan in order to make that happen.
Didn’t the smoke monster grab him once and try to pull him in a hole? Yes, and he begged Jack to let him go. A pretty weird request if he was actually worried about dying. I think the smoke monster can be part smoke / part person as the long as they are connected. This is why the smoke monster was able to appear to grab Richard’s wife on the Black Rock. His wife was the smoke monster, but the smoke monster can look like he is attacking someone that he is taking the form of.
Tell me what you think.
cool post, it would have been cool if john was the smokie the whole time. like in the first season after the crash locke looks at his legs and he can move then and he was so happy, but maybe the joy was smokie taken a new form. to me there are to many holes for any of this to be true but either way it was a good thought.
The smoke monster doesn’t inhabit a person’s body. Normal Locke is dead, The Locke now is merely the Smoke Monsters physical form (smoke is physical, but form of a body per se).
Anywhere I say inhabit or possess, what I really mean is “take the form of”. The corpse remains. There are two Locke corpses…one from the Ajira flight and another one somewhere in the 815 wreckage.
i would have thought that when hurley et al went through the fuselage they would have found locke’s body..
and i was just wondering, if locke was “cured” because he was smokey, what about Rose?
i’m really not trying to pick holes, just helping out
I was thinking more like Locke’s dead body is laying in the sand, smokey clones it and then ditches the body…in the ocean or something.
When someone is cured of paralysis, the signs are pretty obvious. I’m not sure how someone knows they are cured of cancer without testing. I never understood that about Rose. Were there some lumps that disappeared or something?
dude, seriously the bodies in the cave are rose and bernard 😉
what if the body of locke is the locke from the ALT universe?
Don’t think Locke has been smokie all along, but I do think the losties, when they were talking to Locke, weren’t always talking to the real mccoy. His radical shifts in position and character seem to indicate that he wasn’t always himself. Could be bleed over like we’re seeing in ALT but maybe not.
He also came face to face w/ smokie a couple times in the first two seasons. Could this be smokie from the lost timeline like seeing himself and going WTF!?