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Lost Re-View: Season 1 episode 5 – Jack’s hero complex

We start to examine Jack’s need to be a hero and his strained relationship with his father, his father believes that Jack rushes into situations beyond his control and doesn’t have the character to cope with failure.

Jack again glimpses his father once more and in rushing after him into the jungle he almost dies when he careens over a cliff to then be pulled to safety by Locke. We now know that Jack’s father Christian Shepherd (and there has to be some significance to that name surely) is really on the Island after a fashion. Whether he has been resurrected (like we now know Locke really hasn’t been) or is a ghost or some other supernatural creature is unknown, but we do know that whatever he is he does identify himself as being Jack’s father unlike say the manifestation that appears to Eko as his brother but states he is not. I’m still not certain which side Christian is on, is he an aspect of Jacob?

Locke asks “How are they? The others.” Different context to how the phrase The Others will be used later but again it is setting up a dualism the idea of them and us. There is a lot of conflict over the course of the series both between different factions and within factions.

As Jacob’s nemesis puts it “They come. Fight. They destroy, they corrupt. Always ends the same.”

Jacob’s response is “Only ends once. Anything that happens before that is just progress.”

Whatever progress Jacob means it doesn’t seem to be an end to conflict as that seemingly has been going on right up to the present day.

By Matt Wharton

Matt Wharton is a dad, vlogger and IT Infrastructure Consultant. He was also in a former life a cinema manager.

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