Redeeming Sayid

Here’s my thought: Sayid might not have long left to live. According to everything we have learned about life on the Island, Sayid could very well be doomed. Let me try and explain why I think so (and how it might be averted).

Killers don’t do too well on Lost. With recent events from the latest episode, He’s Our You, this point has been brought sharply into focus and made me question the potential fate of Sayid. As we saw, just before he shot Young Ben, he acknowledged to himself that murder is in his heart and part of who he is. Sayid was unapologetic about it, simply regarding it as his truth.

The last guy that acknowledged the truth of his own murderous nature, and remained resolutely unapologetic about it, was Mr. Eko.

As we know, Mr. Eko didn’t last much longer.

Sayid ran off into the jungle after accepting his true nature and shooting Ben. If he were to run smack bang into the Black Smoke after this moment I don’t think he’d get out of it all right. Obviously, since none of us really know by what basis the Black Smoke operates by, that’s a difficult idea to either dispute or endorse. Ironically, it’s a judgement call – befitting the Black Smoke which appears to exist as a means of dispensing final judgement!

But Sayid and Mr. Eko aren’t the only murderous characters we’ve seen. What about Michael? Murdered Ana Lucia and, ultimately, it cost him his life. Ana Lucia, in return, had murdered a guy (Jason, who had shot her unborn baby), and also accidentally shot Shannon – she didn’t last long either.

However, if we follow this train of thought and extend it to other characters then this becomes an untenable idea. Murderers do not necessarily meet certain death. Consider Sawyer as a prime example. Just before he got on Oceanic 815 he tracked down Frank Duckett, the man he believed was ‘the real Sawyer’, and shot him in cold blood.

Not only that, but when Sawyer was eventually confronted with ‘the real Sawyer’, Anthony Cooper, he strangled and murdered him in cold blood. And yet Sawyer lives on. Flourishing on the Island, in fact. But that’s because he changed. It is this very point, as I shall elaborate, which is crucial for Sayid’s survival on the Island.

One of the more popular ideas about Lost, especially in the early days, was that the characters were on the Island to play out some form of redemption. Naturally, the actual concept of purgatory as a reality is not true of the Island, but the thematic notion of redemption for characters that seek to be redeemed still bears out.

Characters usually die when they are ‘done’ – either redeemed or unable to adapt any further for subsequent resolution. Mr. Eko was a full stop, unwilling to yield, to “confess” – and the Black Smoke killed him. Ana Lucia was the reverse – she had reached a point where she could not kill ‘Henry Gale’ and, as such, had reached a form of redemption over her past sin. Michael redeemed his sins by sacrificing himself and destroying The Freighter.

Charlie is a more clear-cut example. The selfish drug-user quit the heroin and learned sacrifice for love – as he drowned he even crossed himself before he died. Never was redemption more clearly presented.

Other deaths – Boone, Shannon, Libby – we can consider them ‘sacrifices the Island demanded’ or argue the merits of their character’s potential for progression as reason for their exits.

If we consider Sawyer we see a man that, after he had killed ‘the real Sawyer’, was given a new lease of life – a chance to be reborn and reinvent himself. Sawyer’s real name is James Ford. He became ‘Sawyer’ when he went on a quest for vengeance. Vengeance fulfilled, soon after he reinvented himself with a new name and a new persona: Jim LaFleur. Point is, Sawyer has shown the capacity to grow, to change, to adapt – precisely the opposite of Mr. Eko and his feet in the ground, adamant unwillingness to change.

Which brings us to Sayid. Because it is this inertia, this incapacity to become something new, to be reborn, that Lost has shown us is what indicates when characters have become dispensable and, more often than not, they are dispensed with.

(Neatly, this idea of characters no longer presenting an opportunity to be taken to new areas and have different avenues of exploration parallels the real world direction the show’s creators take Lost into. Invariably the writers realise they have nowhere else to take characters and so kill them off. Happens all the time on television and Lost is no exception – it’s just on Lost this real life creative necessity just so happens to tie-in to the thematic ideas of redemption on the show! Your character either fulfils their ‘arc’, is redeemed, and is so killed off. Or your character reaches a point where they cannot logically be taken any further, and so is killed off.)

Sayid, during He’s Our You, talked to Sawyer just before he escaped. He talked about how he had woken up on the Island and found no sense of purpose about what he was doing there. And then Young Ben showed his face, and suddenly Sayid forged meaning. . .

Sayid’s new-found sense of purpose was in the belief that he was there to kill Benjamin Linus as a boy, to stop him from being the architect of Dharma-genocide, and to prevent him sending Sayid around the world assassinating people. If Sayid, running off into the jungle, believes he has achieved this – then what?

If Young Ben survives, and fulfils the “whatever happened, happened” concept, then Sayid will merely have to face the fact that he is a murderer who can’t change his own history, or Island history. In effect, this will then put him at a point where he either changes his nature, or dies.

Sayid remaining a cold-blooded killer from here to the finish is surely an untenable proposition.

So where I think Sayid has hope is that, like Sawyer, he can progress and develop himself into something else. If Sayid can meet up with Ben in 2007, maybe he can come to the realisation he played his part, fulfilled his destiny, and then – like Ben suggested – allow himself to become free to be whatever he chooses. Rather than just join a charity foundation and make a half-hearted attempt at doing good, he could fundamentally change his nature and perspective. To “want to want” to better himself. To adapt. To be reborn. To have room, creatively, to be taken to new places.

Ironically, Sayid’s darkest hour is the moment before a new redemption dawns. Let’s just hope he gets to see it before the Black Smoke gets to him first!