Outlaws
From Lostpedia
| Lost Season 1 (Flashbacks in Parentheses) | S2 >> • S3 >> • S4>> | |||||||
| #01 | "Pilot, Part 1" | (Jack) | #10 | "Raised by Another" | (Claire) | #18 | "Numbers" | (Hurley) |
| #02 | "Pilot, Part 2" | (Various) | #11 | "All The Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues" | (Jack) | #19 | "Deus Ex Machina" | (Locke) |
| #03 | "Tabula Rasa" | (Kate) | #12 | "Whatever the Case May Be" | (Kate) | #20 | "Do No Harm" | (Jack) |
| #04 | "Walkabout" | (Locke) | #13 | "Hearts and Minds" | (Boone) | --- | "Lost: The Journey" | (recap) |
| #05 | "White Rabbit" | (Jack) | #14 | "Special" | (Michael & Walt) | #21 | "The Greater Good" | (Sayid) |
| #06 | "House of the Rising Sun" | (Sun) | #15 | "Homecoming" | (Charlie) | #22 | "Born to Run" | (Kate) |
| #07 | "The Moth" | (Charlie) | #16 | "Outlaws" | (Sawyer) | #23 | "Exodus, Part 1" | (Various) |
| #08 | "Confidence Man" | (Sawyer) | #17 | "...In Translation" | (Jin) | #24 | "Exodus, Part 2" | (Various) |
| #09 | "Solitary" | (Sayid) | ||||||
Episode transcript
[[{{{transcript2}}}|Part Two]]
"Outlaws" is the sixteenth episode of Season 1 of Lost. Sawyer becomes convinced that a wild boar has a personal vendetta against him after it ransacks his tent and attacks him in the jungle. Meanwhile, Hurley and Sayid try to help Charlie come to terms with what he did to Ethan. Flashbacks in this episode center around Sawyer's time in Australia and his hunt for the real Sawyer.
Contents |
Synopsis
Flashbacks
As a child, Sawyer is placed under his bed by his mother. She tells him not to come out, no matter what. He lays there, and hears a gunshot from outside the room. The door opens, and a man enters. Sawyer’s father sits on his son’s bed, and shoots himself.
Years later, Sawyer enters a hotel room with a young woman named Mary Jo. They kiss, but before they can continue, a man reveals himself. Sawyer recognizes him as Hibbs, and ushers Mary Jo out. He then threatens the intruder, due to some apparent history between the two. Hibbs offers Sawyer a document, to make them “even for the Tampa Job". Hibbs explains that he had found the “real Mr. Sawyer”, the man who conned Sawyer’s parents and caused his father to shoot his mother and then himself. Hibbs tells him that the man, now named Frank Duckett, is in Australia.
Arriving in Australia, Sawyer heads out to the harbor to acquire a gun from one of Hibb’s contacts. The man warns Sawyer that "you never know yourself until you point a gun at a man", and that if he will find that he is not the killing type, there is no refund.
Sawyer heads to a shrimp stand, where Duckett is working. He loads his gun, and has a perfect opportunity to kill the man. However, after engaging in conversation, Sawyer finds he cannot not go through with his plan, and Frank turns around to see nothing but a car driving away. Sawyer heads to a bar, drinking shot after shot, and meets Jack's father, Christian Shephard. The two chat, and Christian mentions his trademark saying "that's why the Red Sox will never win the World Series". He also talks about his son who hates him, and that he is truly more proud of him than his son will ever know. Christian admits that one phone call of “I love you” could fix everything, but he is too weak to do it. Sawyer says that his business in Australia would ease his suffering, and so Christian convinces him that he must therefore do it.
At night, torrential rain hits as Duckett puts out the trash. Sawyer watches him from his car, and pulls out his gun. He walks over to Frank, says “Sawyer”, and shoots him in the chest. He pulls out the letter he carries since he was a child, and begins to read it. However, as he says “Dear Mr. Sawyer”, Duckett’s response of “Who?” causes him to stop. Hibbs has lied to Sawyer; Duckett was merely in debt and Hibbs tricked Sawyer into being his free mercenary. Before he dies, Frank’s last words are that “it’ll come back around”. A stunned Sawyer simply stares at what he has done.
Real-time events
Sawyer wakes up after dreaming about his traumatic childhood experience, only to find a boar ransacking his tent. He chases it into the jungle, but before he returns he hears something: whispers. Amongst them are the faint words “it’ll come back around”.
The morning after, Sawyer tries to salvage items from the wreckage left by the monster. Sayid arrives to mock him, and Sawyer asks him about what he heard when he was returning to camp after being kidnapped by the French woman. Sayid speaks about the whispers, but Sawyer shrugs it off when he is asked if he heard them too.
In the jungle, Kate returns Jack a gun that she has borrowed, and Jack mentions that there is just one gun left to get back, and that Sawyer has it. While Jack does not mind, Kate is defiant that she can get it. Meanwhile, at the caves, Claire tells Charlie that she had started to remember things through dreams about him. Her attempts to reach out to him don't seem to work, however, as Charlie brushes off her offer of going for a walk together.
Sawyer is tracking the boar in the jungle when he once again hears whispers, and again hears “it’ll come back around”. The boar then appears behind him. Sawyer tries to run but is knocked to the ground in the mud.
Back at his tent, Kate is enjoying herself as Sawyer tells her about what has happened. He is convinced that the boar is harassing him, and he grabs his gun to take revenge.
Further down the beach, Hurley and Charlie drags Ethan’s body to an area where he can be buried. Hurley asks Charlie if he is alright, but he does not respond. Hurley heads for Sayid’s tent, saying that he thinks Charlie might be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, as he has recently shot and killed a man.
Kate catches up with Sawyer in the jungle, highlighting his complete inability to track the boar. She offers to help him in return for carte blanche, a blank check. If she wants anything from his stash in the future, she will get it, no questions asked. Sawyer reluctantly agrees. As night falls, the two make camp, and Sawyer offers Kate some liquor from the plane if she will play a game of “I never” with him. The two then ask each other a number of questions, revealing a lot of sensitive facts, such as that Kate was once married. The game ends dramatically, however, as both drink when on the topic of “I never killed a man”, revealing that they both have, at a point in their past. Sawyer comments that it looks like they have something in common after all.
During the night, Sawyer dreams of his childhood, hiding under the bed. Instead of his father in the room, however, he sees a boar as well as hearing “it’ll come back around” once again. Kate wakes him up, saying that he is shaking. They realize that the camp has been attacked by the boar for a second time, but that it only destroyed Sawyer’s items and left Kate's untouched. Locke finds them, saying that he was looking for plane wreckage and thought he would come and say hello. They tell him about the events that happened, and Locke talks about a dog that appeared to his foster mother after her daughter died. The pet stayed up with her, sleeping on the daughter’s bed every night until his mother died. Kate asks whether he thought it was his sister, but Locke says what mattered was that his mother believed it.
Sayid finds Charlie by the shore, but Charlie soon understands why he is there. Charlie says he feels no guilt over what happened, as it was to protect the survivors from an evil man. Sayid tells Charlie about the first man he killed, and how he woke up every night after for a long time before he could accept what he had done. What happened with Ethan will be with Charlie for the rest of his life, and Sayid says that he is not alone, whether he pretends he is or not.
Sawyer and Kate manage to find the boar’s wallow, and discovered a baby hog. Sawyer waves the boar in the air to attract its parent, much to Kate’s disgust. She shouts for him to let it the defenseless creature go, and on his refusal she kicks his leg, causing him to trip and release the young piglet. She flatly tells him to find his own way home, and walks away.
Continuing his search, Sawyer finally comes face to face with the adult boar. He pulls out his gun, ready to shoot, but decides he cannot kill it. The similarities between the boar and Duckett in his past are not lost on Sawyer, and when Kate reveals herself again, Sawyer says that “it's just a boar”. He heads back to camp.
At the beach, Charlie finds Claire, offering to take that walk with her now. The two head off along the beach, as Charlie finally begins to overcome his deep inner feelings about killing a man. Elsewhere, Jack is chopping wood when Sawyer arrives with his gun. He hands it over, and when Jack said “that’s why the Sox will never win the Series”, Sawyer remembers Christian saying the same thing in Australia. He realizes that the son Christian spoke of was Jack all along, but neglects to reveal this fact to Jack.
Trivia
Production notes
- The first episode in which neither Boone nor Shannon appear.
- Jin, Michael, Sun, and Walt appear without speaking lines.
Bloopers and continuity errors
- When Charlie and Hurley are burying Ethan, the blankets of the corpse move up and down which makes it appear that Ethan is still breathing.
Recurring themes
- The Boston Red Sox are a Major League Baseball team. (Games)
- Locke tells a story about his mother's Golden Retriever. (Animals)
- Charlie says that Ethan was an evil man. (Good and bad people)
- Sawyer becomes obsessed with finding and killing a wild boar. (Animals)
- The episode starts with a close-up on young Sawyer's left eye. (Eyes)
- Sawyer's father killed his wife before turning the gun on himself. (Parent Issues)
- At the beginning of flashbacks, Sawyer is attempting to con a young woman. Hibbs conned Sawyer into killing Frank Duckett. (Deceptions and cons) (Life and Death)
- Charlie suffers from guilt over killing Ethan. (Life and Death)
- Kate and Sawyer play "I Never". (Games)
- While playing "I Never" it is revealed that both Sawyer and Kate have committed murder in the past. (Character Connections) (Secrets)
- Sawyer met Christian Shephard in a bar in Australia. (Character Connections)
- Sawyer hears whispering twice in this episode. (The Whispers)
- Sawyer shoots Frank Duckett and reads him the letter from his childhood during a rainstorm in Australia. (Rain)
- Claire tells Charlie she had a dream about him. (Dreams and Visions)
Literary techniques
| Literary techniques in Lost |
|---|
| Comparative: Irony • Juxtaposition • Plotting: Cliffhanger • Plot twist • Stock Characters: Archetype • Redshirt • Unseen character• Story: Flashbacks • Flashforwards • Regularly spoken phrases • Symbolism • Unreliable narrator |
- In his past, Sawyer went out to get revenge on the "real Sawyer"; on the Island, Sawyer went out to get revenge on the boar. (Foreshadowing)
- Sawyer killed Duckett in order to try to get away from his past, and tried to do the same on the Island. However, he realized that killing the boar wouldn't help him escape his problems, and left it alone. (Juxtaposition)
- In his past, both Hibbs and Christian Shephard indirectly or directly goaded Sawyer on to kill "the real Sawyer", and he impulsively did. On the Island, Kate went with him, and actively persuaded him not to. (Juxtaposition)
- Sawyer will later find and kill the real 'Sawyer' on the island. ("The Brig"). (Foreshadowing)
- Both Jack and Christian use the phrase "that's why the Sox will never win the World Series." Ben would later prove his access to the outside world by showing Jack footage of the Red Sox winning the 2004 World Series in "The Glass Ballerina". (Foreshadowing)
- Kate reveals that she was once briefly married. ("I Do") (Foreshadowing)
Unanswered Questions
- What happened on the Tampa Job?
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| Flashback episodes | "Confidence Man" • "Outlaws" • "Exodus, Part 1" • "The Long Con" • "Every Man for Himself" | |||
| Flashback characters | Arthur • Bartender • Boy • Detective Calderwood • David • Frank Duckett • Mr. Ford • Mary Ford • Agent Freedman • Gordy • Warden Harris • Hibbs • Diane Janssen • Jessica • Kilo • Laurence • Mary Jo • Munson • Peter • Cassidy Phillips • Clementine Phillips • Prison guard • Christian Shephard | |||
| Items | Dart • Pacemaker • Sawyer's letter • Sawyer's stash | |||
| See also: Main Characters | ||||
