Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” And by that he meant: “I forgot to post the Lost Discussion Group on Wednesday—get off my back.”
So today’s question is simple: How dead is Locke? And yes, I know we have asked this question before, but it means something quite different now.
He’s totally dead, right? Dead as Monty Python’s parrot. We saw the body. What’s walking around now as Locke is just some shape-shifting Esau/Smokey who has taken his form. Right?
But I wonder. Since he manifested on the Island, Esau/unLocke has not just behaved like some other entity walking around in his body. He seems—and argue with me if you think this is wrong—to have access to Locke’s memories. Which makes me wonder if Locke is still in there somewhere, spiritually anyway—if this is more akin to a possession / multiple personality situation, in which unLocke still has Locke stashed away somewhere in his psychic makeup. Is Locke’s soul still in there somewhere?
I may well be thinking this simply because it’s too horrible to accept that Locke actually ended his life broken, frustrated and terrified, looking into the eyes of Ben Linus. But I wonder if we will yet see Locke—actual, if not physical, Locke—before this is all over.