In my last post I dissected the whole Ben Linus-Danielle Rousseau Sideways storyline, and while I stand by the bulk of my post, Michael Emerson's recent comments on EW's Totally Lost have given me some food for further thought which I want to address briefly.
While Emerson's not a show writer, as the actor portraying Ben (and as a guy who seems to be as much of a Lost fanboy as the rest of us), I do think his opinions carry a bit of weight. To get lawyerly on you-- his ideas aren't controlling authority, but they're at least instructive.
I confess that I initially wildly disagreed with his assessment that Ben sat down in front of that church and stayed there. I was going "nooooooo! He has to make things right with Alex and Danielle!" But as I thought about it, maybe by sitting there alone, that's kinda what he's doing. I've been approaching the alt as the World of the Big Make Up, where you get to right your past wrongs, but in doing so I may have sold short the idea that your real life matters, and that the choices you make then are the choices you're stuck with. You can try to re-enact your bad decisions and choose differently, but in the end it's illusory, and in the meantime you're not doing what you're actually supposed to, which is let go and move on. What's done is done. Ben could go back and play house with the Rousseaus, but in the end, that may be doing more harm than good. I think it's significant that the people who are doing just that-- playing happy family, while knowing what's really up-- are Widmore and Hawking, two characters not exactly known for their generous spirits. It's a selfish move and all they're really doing is ultimately holding Daniel and Penny hostage to their guilt.
So Ben sits, and he thinks, and wonders what might have been, and waits for the inevitable reckoning. It's not a hopeless situation-- he's not Anthony Cooper-- but for all he knows, Alex may leave without him (she doesn't need him to move on), and Danielle as soulmate may have the power to keep him there indefinitely, effectively stealing Alex back from him. I don't think they will be that harsh, but he doesn't know that. (And neither do we.) He needs to work out what the hell he's going to do about this mess he made that may have eternal consequences. In a way, that explains why he's so moved by Locke's forgiveness; if he can be forgiven for murder, maybe he can be forgiven for kidnapping too.
It's a more melancholy and bittersweet note, but it's truer (appreciating the graveness of the crime) to that situation, and as such may be the better conclusion. (And I'm retracting my implication that they hooked up.)
And I am now so done with this particular topic. One more Lost screed coming up, and then I'm finding some other shows.
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