SPOILERS BELOW FOR EVERYTHING THAT HAS AIRED TO DATE.
Before we reach the end of the series next year, I hope we get some explanation for why the Others don’t want other people on the island. Why are they “hostile”? Why are they on the island in the first place? Other than the technological differences (VW buses versus horses), they don’t seem all that different from the Dharma Initiative. They both crave information from each other, yet tend to greet interlopers with violence and demands rather than questions. We know the Others ultimately wipe out the DI — so there’s no hope of any kind of peaceful coexistence there — but what will be the fate of the Others in 2007 and beyond?
It appears that will be determined by Mr. John Locke.
As you might expect, “Follow the Leader” was about leadership, specifically how one acquires a leadership role and what he or she does with that power once in possession of it. As demonstrated in this and previous episodes, authority rarely goes unchallenged on Mystery Island. While Eloise Hawking is killing her future son Daniel, Charles Widmore discovers Jack and Kate lurking in the woods. Once they are dragged into camp, Eloise picks their brains about Daniel, whom she realizes is from the future. Jacks tells her about Daniel’s plan to detonate the nuclear warhead and, you know, put everything back the way it’s supposed to be or something. Kate abhors this plan — people will probably die and worse, she and Jack will never meet — but Eloise agrees to take them to Jughead, despite Widmore’s protestations.
Jack has been the leader of the Losties since the beginning, and though he seemed relieved to not have that responsibility in the Dharma village, there are just some parts of our nature that cannot be changed. Jack makes decisions. He’s not a follower. And Jack decides he wants to blow up the nuke even though it’s buried underneath the village. Kate follows for awhile, but can’t tolerate it when Jack talks about changing the course of the future as his “destiny”. The word carries too many shades of Locke, and so Kate bolts (but not before Sayid appears out of the jungle and shoots one of the Others).
Sayid has no qualms about changing the future. He believes he’s already done it, in fact, because as far as he knows, Benjamin Linus is now dead. Kate breaks the news that she rescued Ben, and Sayid makes a mental note to strangle her as soon as it becomes convenient. In the meantime, Sayid joins Jack, Eloise, and Richard Alpert on their journey toward the bomb.
And I know I mentioned this last week, but it still bugs the hell out of me: if whatever change they’re able to make actually stops their plane from crashing, then it also means they won’t have ever journeyed back to 1977. And if they never travel to 1977, then they won’t be there to blow up the bomb! Surely someone will figure this out before long, won’t they?
Back at the village, Radzinsky has basically staged a coup, and is torturing Sawyer and Juliet. He wants to know the location of the Others’ camp. Sawyer — selling out his former friends in order to save himself and Juliet — finally agrees to give up the location in exchange for their safe passage on the submarine. Dr. Chang has finally been convinced that Daniel was telling the truth about the electromagnetic discharge, but with Radzinsky calling the shots, the best he can arrange is to get the women and children off the island. This provides the completely predictable explanation for why he abandoned his wife and baby Miles. Of course we don’t know for certain that the map drawn by Sawyer is accurate, but he seemed too defeated in that moment to not tell the truth. Where just a few weeks ago he was enjoying his comfortable DI life, now he’s sick of it. “Good riddance” he says to the island as he slumps down into the sub.
Radzinsky’s tenure as leader of the DI will be a disaster, of course, and he’ll spend his last days living in the Swan station pushing the button and drawing maps on the blast doors. Just like Idi Amin.
The third leadership situation this week puts us back in 2007 with Locke and his merry band of post-Dharma Initiative Others. Locke walks into the Others’ camp carrying a dead boar, proclaiming, “I brought dinner.” After brushing off Richard’s questions about, you know, where the hell he’s been for the last three years — and after pulling off the neat trick of sending Richard to provide first aid for a time traveling Locke recently shot in the leg by Ethan — Locke demands to be taken to see Jacob. And not only that, he asks everyone else to come along too (much to Richard’s chagrin). When Ben asks Locke what he plans to do, Locke drops this bombshell: he’s going to kill Jacob.
I have speculated previously that I thought Jacob was actually Jack, trapped in some kind of interdimensional vortex or something metaphysical like that. That still may be the case, and I’d like to think it is. But when Locke says he wants to kill Jacob, I don’t think he means it literally. During his speech to the Others, he asks if any of them has seen Jacob. I believe he means to “kill” Jacob by demonstrating that he doesn’t exist. Kill the myth of Jacob. And yet if he does that, it will probably be the least Locke-like thing he’s ever done. Maybe he really is different now.
The island is still speaking to him though. So at least he’s not giving up all his faith. I do hope, though, that he’s wrong about Jacob (or that I am), because I’ll be disappointed if that’s all just a big hoax. But it was interesting to me how eager the Others were to follow Locke. Who has been leading them over the past three years? Richard? Probably not, since … well, that’s never been his job. If Locke’s quest to destroy Jacob (whatever that means) doesn’t go the way he hopes, what will that say about his destiny? Will the Others still follow him? I don’t know, but maybe being dead for a week causes you to lose some of those incidental worries.
By the way, if I’ve never said it before, I want to mention how much I enjoy Nestor Carbonell as Richard. What a wonderfully underplayed performance week after week. I’ve come to really enjoy that character, and I’ve never been more intrigued about his true identity.
I thought this was the most solid episode of Lost since “316″. It gave us three strong, thematically connected storylines, and left me anxious to see the resolutions to all three. I don’t have much interest in the Sawyer-Kate-Juliet triangle. I do kind of want to know what the hell happened to Rose and Bernard. It’s been three years! Where are they?!
I feel properly prepared for next week’s season finale. I don’t know if they’re going to give us another game-changing plot twist in the form of an altered crash-free timeline, but though it doesn’t seem reasonably possible, I’m curious to see how it plays out.
Rating: 
Best exchange of the night: Chang quizzing Hurley on his age in an effort to prove he’s a time traveler.
CHANG: “So you fought in the Korean War?”
HURLEY: “…There’s no such thing?”
