The writers and creative staff of Lost enjoy their job, not just crafting one of the most fascinating narratives ever to appear on TV, but playing with us, the viewers and fans of the show. I don’t mean to say, as some believe, that they toy with us, merely adding weirdness to the scripts for its own sake and fabricating puzzles and mysteries that will never be answered, that they themselves don’t even know the answers to. No, in fact, part of my thesis in these articles is that the writers DO know what they are constructing, that they already knew before the show had even begun. They knew from the start what the Island is, its strange powers, its bizarre history, its unusual inhabitants. And as we are beginning to see with these recent episodes, our journey will not be in vain – we will, like John Locke, find what we are looking for. But along the way, those who are taking us on this trip enjoy the game, playing with us, surprising us, keeping us guessing.

Even in the first scene of “The Man from Tallahassee,” which is a simple flashback to John meeting with a case worker about his disability benefits, we are not sure if this is a scene of the handicapped John or if this occurs previous to whatever injury put him in the wheelchair. When the woman tells him that she is temporarily suspending his benefits, he asks her “Do you think I’m temporarily disabled?” – an amusing question since, as we know, his disability will not last forever. And at the end of the scene, John stands – this is not the physically handicapped John, merely the mentally distressed one. It is a small surprise, a minor suspension of certainty, but it is a fitting prelude to an episode full of major shock and awe.

The plot of “The Man from Tallahassee” is straightforward and requires little recapitulation. Sayid, Kate, and John plan to approach Jack after dark, though John’s true intentions are to confront Ben and find out the location of the submarine. Sayid and Kate are captured, and Kate subsequently learns that Jack has made a deal with The Others and is on the eve of being released and returned to the real world, to home. Meanwhile, Sayid, shackled to a swing set, addresses Alex by name and tells her that she looks like her mother, giving Alex a little something to ponder. Of course, being a teenaged girl who was raised almost from birth by The Others in a place where almost no other children exist and seeing a man handcuffed to some playground equipment should be more than enough for her to try to process. Later, Rousseau, who has been lurking in the foliage, catches the first glimpse of her daughter in sixteen years.

In the obligatory, though in this case highly intriguing, flashback sequences, John is approached by a young man who is concerned about his mother and has been investigating her fiancé. It turns out that John once donated a kidney to this man, his manipulative and cold-hearted father. John dismisses the youth, telling him it was an anonymous donation, and then bravely goes to confront his father, demanding that he call off the engagement and leave town immediately. John’s father, Mr. Anthony Cooper, grudgingly assures John that he will, but instead decides to murder his fiancée’s snooping son. It is not clear that Mr. Cooper actually killed the woman’s son (the boy merely turns up dead), but, as we see in the final scene of these flashbacks, this man is truly a vile and heinous individual.

Beyond the plot, though, it is the interchange between John Locke and Ben that is the centerpiece of this episode. Through it all, John and the actor who plays him, Terry O’quinn, shine. Well, actually, he looks a little dull and dreary in the flashbacks… But, seriously, it is this amazing contrast between the John of the past, weak and frightened, content to live through vicarious fantasies (such as the secret agent TV show he is watching near the beginning), and the John of the present, commanding and confident, nonchalant and even snide in the face of Ben, that makes “The Man from Tallahassee” such an outstanding episode and that reveals the true transformative power of the Island.

Everyone responsible for this dramatic juxtaposition, not just the writer, director, and actor, but the various crews, especially the makeup and lighting crews, deserve kudos for showing us that a sniveling and despairing man, beaten down by horrific circumstance, can stand upright and become something of a mystical warrior, an avenging avatar. (They also deserve a swell round of applause for nicely mirroring the submarine hatch shot to the original Hatch shot from Season One.)

Some may argue that John is no divine embodiment, but is simply selfish, especially for having blown up the sub despite knowing that Jack was about to gain his freedom and leave the island. But for one thing, we don’t yet know for certain that he did blow it up. He never said he was going to – those were Ben’s words. It’s likely that he did sabotage the sub – it is doubtful that he managed in less than an hour to start it, move it somewhere hidden, moor it somehow, swim back, and then blow up something along the dock that might look like the wreckage of a submarine (but there remains the fact that he is soaking wet when captured… Meaningless? Or another relevant mystery that the writers have dangled before us?)

In either case, yes, John is selfish in many ways or, at least, self-centered, but he is also a True Believer. He confronts Ben with righteous zeal, in the way that Jesus confronted the Pharisees and kicked the moneychangers out of the temple. You live upon this otherworldly place, John seems to say, a place of magic, and yet you taint it with houses, electricity, and leftover chicken in the refrigerator, casually stepping back and forth from the reality of the Outside World instead of fully embracing the true Spirit of the Island.

Perhaps John is crazy in addition to being selfish. After all, as Ben says, “How is it you think you know this island better than I do?” – a reasonable question. But John, knowing his own strength and having seen Ben’s weakness, keenly replies, “Because you’re in the wheelchair, and I’m not.”

Perhaps John is just scared, as Ben suggests, trying to hide away from the outside world, from his father, not willing to risk being disabled again. Or maybe he is full of rage, angry that The Others appear to be “cheating.” Perhaps John’s assaulting of their connections to the rest of the world is similar to his confronting his father in the flower shop, when John told him “It’s not fair!”

But though we must always be leery of what The Others say, Ben does seem to give credence to the idea that John does hold some special significance, that he does have a unique communion with the Island. And apparently Ben is even willing to help John discover the secrets of the Island. Why? Because, as Ben so astutely notes, “I’m in the wheelchair, and you’re not.”

Speaking of that wheelchair, the single greatest revelation of these past three episodes is that we finally have learned how John ended up in the wheelchair. This is not a great revelation simply because we’ve all been wondering for so long. It is not a great revelation simply because of the shock and intensity of the scene itself, seeing a person so amoral that he would shove his own son through an eighth-story window. No, it is a great revelation because we see a solid glimpse of what type of power the Island possesses. We see what the island is capable of.

Miracles.

Miracles beyond our imagining.

Certainly, we have seen before that the Island is endowed with some wondrous force of healing. Rose’s cancer. Jin’s infertility. But, even in our mundane world, cancers can amazingly go into remission. Someone who appears to be completely incapable of giving birth can suddenly become pregnant.

Broken backs! on the other hand, do not spontaneously heal! A person with a broken back does not just stand up and start walking around and hunting boar. I myself had thought that John’s paralysis was an indirect result of his donating a kidney, some complication that had arisen. Or perhaps it was something else relatively minor. I never imagined that his backbone had actually been snapped in half!

John’s recovery from paralysis is, thus, a True Miracle, the most miraculous thing we have seen thus far on the Island. And it is John’s daily realization! As Ben said, John has “no right to be up walking around.” And yet the man walks.

So, what is the true power of the Island? What is its secret? How can it enable a man with a broken back to stand up again?

Well, Ben (if he’s telling the truth, and that is certainly a big “if”) gives us and John a peek at one of the Island’s “special features” – a Magic Box. Whatever the box may actually be, it is described by Ben as something quite extraordinary: “Whatever you imagined, whatever you wanted to be in it – when you opened that box, there it would be…” And when he shows John what “came out of” the box, John comes face to face with his insidious father, the abominable Mr. Cooper, bound and gagged and looking as though he had finally ended up on the wrong side of a con.

Along with the miracle of John’s broken back spontaneously healing, this Magic Box is the most incisive look we’ve been afforded of the full capabilities of the Island. Could it be? that the Island can produce whatever you desire, whatever you can conceive? Could this “force” be the source of many of the Losties’ strange visions and “coincidental” discoveries, such as Kate’s seeing a horse in the jungle or Jack’s seeing his father or even Hurley’s discovery of the VW van? Could the Nigerian plane been drawn to the island by the force of Eko’s desire to see his brother again and Charlie’s addiction to heroin (even though this would defy the “logic” of our perception of time!)?

And if John is truly so scared of his father that he would maroon himself on a mysterious island, why would the Box bring forth Mr. Cooper? Perhaps, as some have speculated, Mr. Cooper is the original Sawyer, the man who conned and murdered our Sawyer’s mother, the man whom our Sawyer has been trying to find for years. If so, then it could be that Sawyer’s desire for revenge brought Mr. Cooper to the island. Or perhaps, Ben, knowing that John’s father would be a weakness of John’s that could be exploited, summoned Mr. Cooper himself.

But maybe there is no Magic Box. Maybe The Others just kidnapped Mr. Cooper from the mainland and brought him on the sub. Or maybe his ship or plane or whatever crashed on the island by “coincidence.” Is it even plausible that he could have just magically appeared on the island, whether through someone’s subconscious desire or through Ben’s invoking? The likelihood is probably about the same as a person’s smashed vertebrae experiencing an “immediate” regeneration. Either case could only be described as miraculous.

At the end of the day, perhaps we are (once again) left with more questions than answers, but I believe that, with the recent revelations and with Jack and John coming more closely under the influence of The Others, we have reached a turning point and that the next two and a half (or three and a half) seasons will prove to be quite rewarding.

Despite whatever the miracles may ultimately prove to be and despite whether there is a Magic Box on the island or not, I know that I personally have witnessed a miracle: the box that has been sitting in my living room, dusty and unattended, has, through the creators and producers and the cast and crew of Lost, once again become a Magic Box.