The best twists totally recontextualize everything that’s come before them. Mystery-box series master Damon Lindelof (Lanterns, Watchmen) once cited The Sixth Sense as the definitive example: The movie works if Bruce Willis is simply a psychiatrist helping a child who sees dead people — even if it’s a child hallucinating these haunting visions. The revelation that Dr. Malcolm Crowe was dead all along, however, changes not just the ending, but the entire movie. Lindelof told Vox in 2004 that the reaction is, “Oh, I didn’t even think I was sitting in that movie.” The twist makes The Sixth Sense “completely and totally transcendent.
At the time, Lindelof was discussing his new series, Lost — which just four episodes in, had pulled off a mind-blowing twist arguably on the same level as The Sixth Sense. For its first few episodes, Lost seems like an ambitious survival drama with a dash of horror. Oceanic Flight 815 crashes on a seemingly deserted tropical island. Its survivors contend with dwindling supplies, a rampaging monster, an inexplicable polar bear, and the unfortunate realization that rescuers are probably searching a thousand miles away from where they actually crashed.
The flashbacks Lost uses initially seem pretty straightforward. Many of them jump back to just before the fateful flight. Charlie (Dominic Monaghan) is secretly addicted to heroin. Kate (Evangeline Lilly) was a captive fugitive being escorted in handcuffs on the plane. These details complicate the characters we meet on the island, but they don’t fundamentally alter our understanding of the show. For most of its 43-minute runtime, the fourth episode, “Walkabout,” isn’t all that shocking either. But it is a bit surprising to see that John Locke (Terry O’Quinn) — who seems like some kind of strange, dangerous, and capable survivalist perfectly suited to Island life — suffered through a humiliating office-drone existence before the crash. Everybody underestimates or even ridicules him. Then, right at the end, we finally get a wide shot and see that he’s in a wheelchair. The same guy with a case full of hunting knives who boldly walks around the Island.
What!?
This revelation doesn’t just help explain why Locke comes off as a bit strange. It suddenly forces viewers to reconsider every carefully framed flashback in every episode. It also establishes that the Island can literally perform miracles. The crash is an absolute tragedy that leaves everyone stranded and fighting for survival, but for Locke, it has given him a new life. When we learn the truth about his past, Lost transforms from a survival story into a spiritual mystery about destiny, magic, and faith.
“Walkabout” hides its twist in plain sight
Four days after the crash, the survivors are running out of food. When wild boars invade their beach camp and disturb the bodies still trapped inside the plane’s fuselage, Locke whips out his suitcase filled with hunting knives and suggests they kill the animals for food.
Until this point, Locke has been one of the show’s stranger supporting characters. He has a lofty, almost zealous quality, but he doesn’t preach his beliefs outright. Instead, he befriends people through acts of kindness. He finds Walt’s missing dog, but lets Michael take credit for returning it. He plays backgammon with Walt, gently introducing the boy to a game built around opposing sides of light and darkness. When everyone else panics, Locke seems confident that he is exactly where he needs to be.
He's also a bit creepy. In one of his earliest scenes in the series, he stares at Walt and smiles with an orange peel in his mouth. But he never registers as an obvious villain. He seems more like a quirky survivalist, the kind of person you wouldn’t want to be friends with, but you’re also grateful he’s here on the Island.
We’re led to assume the flashbacks in “Walkabout” will explain how an unassuming office worker becomes so comfortable with knives and hunting. We see Locke eating lunch alone at his desk while playing a tabletop military strategy game. His supervisor, Randy, mocks him for calling himself “Colonel” and laughs at his plan to embark on an Australian walkabout. Locke insists he has trained for the expedition and knows exactly what he is capable of. Randy seems like another bully dismissing an introvert’s ambitions. Every flashback adds another humiliation like this, but we still expect to see the narrative arc play out as Locke gradually transforms into a more capable man deserving of respect.
Director Jack Bender carefully frames Locke sitting in bed, behind a desk, or inside a car, without revealing his wheelchair. Eventually, it’s time for the titular walkabout, but the Australian tour operator refuses to let Locke participate. We assume he is just another bully. Then the camera pulls back.
Locke isn’t merely being underestimated because he is old, meek, or inexperienced. He cannot walk and uses a wheelchair. His furious refrain — “Don’t tell me what I can’t do!” — changes from stubborn bravado into the desperate plea of a man confronting a limitation that no amount of preparation can overcome.
Even O’Quinn didn’t know Locke had been paralyzed when he filmed the pilot. He told the Television Academy that nobody informed him Locke used a wheelchair aboard the plane. He learned the truth when he received the script for “Walkabout,” and the revelation blew his mind just as it would the audience’s.
That separation between O’Quinn’s performance and the truth makes the twist even cleaner. He wasn’t playing a man secretly concealing his disability during the first three episodes. He was playing the Locke everyone else saw: an eccentric, confident survivalist.
The Island gives Locke a blank slate
The preceding episode, “Tabula Rasa,” establishes one of Lost’s defining ideas. After learning that Kate was a fugitive, Jack ultimately decides he doesn’t need to know what supposedly terrible crime she committed. Their old lives ended when the plane crashed, and everyone on the Island deserves a fresh start. (The Latin phrase tabula rasa literally means “blank slate.”)
Kate is ostensibly exonerated for her previous crimes, but the stakes are fundamentally different for Locke. “Walkabout” returns to the moment immediately after the crash. Locke lies on the beach as chaos unfolds around him. He stares down at his legs, wiggles his toes, cautiously moves one foot, and then stands. While Jack races among the wounded trying to save everyone he can, Locke quietly realizes that he has already been saved. While everyone else panics, he’s in a state of bliss — which probably explains the weird moment with the orange. For every other survivor, the crash is a disaster they hope to escape. For Locke, it is an act of divine intervention.
O’Quinn described Locke’s experience more succinctly: “This guy just went to heaven.”
Locke’s miracle establishes Lost’s central conflict
Once the Island heals Locke, his faith in it becomes almost bottomless. How could it not? Locke has spent much of his life being dismissed, manipulated, and told what he cannot do. The Island immediately provides the validation he has always wanted for his faith. It rewards him before asking anything in return and confirms his deepest belief that he is meant for greatness. Locke’s dedication to the Island is both sincere and transactional. Locke expects further signs, further instructions, and further confirmation that he is special.
That makes his miracle feel increasingly troubling in hindsight, given what we know about how the show plays out. Did the Island restore Locke for some larger purpose? Or does it just have cosmic healing properties that affect everyone equally? Notably, Rose’s terminal cancer disappears. Jin’s infertility is also cured. Repeatedly, Locke heals from injuries and wounds faster than he should. What this does do, at least for Locke, is make him uniquely susceptible to manipulation by others — like the Man in Black — who are willing to exploit his faith for their own gains.
His need to believe that he has been chosen repeatedly overrides his skepticism and, eventually, his self-preservation. He dies away from the Island believing he has failed to bring the Oceanic Six back, and the Man in Black is then able to use his body and appearance to manipulate the people who trusted him. He becomes the vessel for the Big Bad. Knowing what's to come, the image of Locke's wheelchair burning amidst the wreckage of the plane feels like grim foreshadowing.
Lindelof’s comparison to The Sixth Sense explains why the ending of “Walkabout” remains so powerful. The best twists do not undermine the story we have watched. They reveal that it was simultaneously telling another story we failed to recognize because we didn’t have all the information yet.
The flashbacks in “Walkabout” work perfectly well if Locke is an able-bodied man whose ambitions are mocked by people who don’t understand him. The Island story works perfectly well if he is merely an experienced outdoorsman who thrives under pressure. Learning the truth doesn’t feel like deception, nor does it invalidate O’Quinn’s performance. And here, it affects more than the 40 preceding minutes of this episode. It changes the meaning of the entire show.
That’s when Lost started asking bigger questions about more than just survival and began exploring whether the Island represents chance or purpose, prison or salvation, exploitation or grace. It is about damaged people receiving the opportunity to become someone new and whether that transformation liberates them or makes them vulnerable to another kind of control. The first three episodes made Lost a television phenomenon. “Walkabout” revealed why it would become something closer to a religion.