Uncharted Island

Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf?  Locke’s father is shaping up to be the big bad guy here on LOST.  We got to know him as Anthony Cooper.  But he’s also gone by Adam Seward.  For simplicity’s sake, I will refer to him mainly as Cooper.

What’s in a name?

Cooper (noun) - a person who makes or repairs casks, barrels, etc.

Sawyer (noun) - a person who saws wood.

Seward didn’t have a similar definition, as I first thought it did, but it does sound similar to Sawyer.  Many fans have long speculated that Locke’s father is the “real Sawyer” who slept with James Ford’s mother.  Considering the importance of names on LOST, it would make sense for the con man to choose similar pseudonyms.

The big baddie

It was bad enough when the man conned his own son out of a kidney.  It was sick and twisted, but it was at least self-preservation. Literally.  He would’ve died without a new kidney.  It was bad when he faked his own death and convinced John to get the money from the safe deposit box for him, only to be ambushed by thugs.

When Peter Talbot ended up dead, I thought that Cooper may have paid someone to take him out.  But when he took a running start to push his own son out an eighth story plate glass window… killing Peter Talbot would’ve been nothing to him.  He is bad.  Evil might not be too strong a word.

This helps the case for Cooper being Sawyer, the man who was responsible for a murder-suicide that scarred a little boy for life.  Cooper is not just a con man.  He’s a very good con man.  And he was willing to murder his future son-in-law and his own son - even though the second attempt failed - to keep his cover. He is narcissistic.  Ruthless.  Is there anything good about this man?

The Man from Tallahassee

“Bring me the man from Tallahassee,” Ben said. Locke wanted to know if it was some sort of code word.  It was, just not how he had assumed.  Ben didn’t want to tip his hand too soon and reveal that he had Cooper before Locke blew up the submarine for him.  Locke wouldn’t have known that Cooper ever ended up in Tallahassee; the police detectives told him in the hospital that he could’ve been anywhere in the world.  And they really meant anywhere.  But before turning up at the ends of the Earth here on the island, he first made a stop in Tallahassee.

What was Cooper doing in Tallahassee?  Dodging the authorities, for one thing.  Did the Mittelos recruiting team of Ethan Rom and Richard Alpert swing by Tallahassee after picking Juliet up in Miami?  They certainly could find a place for a man with Cooper’s talent for lying and manipulation… It seems second nature for the Others.  Cooper could’ve been recruited.  Maybe the con man got conned into whatever he ended up on the island for.  (This moment?)

Or maybe he hasn’t been on the island that long.  He could’ve been recruited, conned, or kidnapped sometime after Flight 815 crashed.  Once Ben’s crew had done their research on John Locke and realized he was valuable to them, they still had mainland communication and the ability to come and go from the island as they pleased.  They could’ve sent for Cooper at that time in order to use him to manipulate Locke.

The question now is whether Cooper’s been locked up in a cage all this time, or if he’s been walking around freely as an Other in Otherville until Ben needed him for this.  That would be a nasty surprise.  I’m just wondering when “bring him to me” suddenly meant “bind and gag him and throw him in the back room.”