Sundown: Sayid’s True Colors Redux

by Stefany Mac

In season 5, I wrote an article called “Has Sayid Found His True Colors?”. It stemmed from the fact that it had become noticeable to me that Sayid had been wearing a purple silk shirt. As often happens on Lost, his character wore the same clothing for many episodes. In point of fact, no more than a week passed in the show’s timeline from “316” on. So the idea that Sayid wore the same shirt, wasn’t that odd. However, that he was wearing such a flamboyant color was. In fact the color purple is very rarely used on Lost. And on that note it is interesting to point out that Heath and Ms. Wendy of The Lost Revisited podcast, remembering my thing for this subject matter, noted that in there podcast on “The Substitute”, when Locke went to Hurley’s temp agency both Rose and the psychic from “Everybody Hates Hugo” were wearing purple. I don’t know what that means. I wouldn’t think that Rose would be a force for evil. But the fact that they were both wearing it on the same day in the same office is disconcerting. However I was far more concerned when ABC released a cast promo photo at the end of the hiatus where they appeared in the form of the ‘Last Supper’. In it Sayid was in the position of Judas. But far stranger was that Jack was wearing, you guessed it, purple. Now I do have to admit that purple can also have the meaning of ‘royal’ as well. However, given that the best explanation that I have heard for the meaning of the title for “LA X”, is that in the comic book world ‘X’ denotes an alternate reality, I am going to have to go with the comic book meaning for purple. At least as far as Sayid is concerned.

At the time, the fact that Sayid was clad in purple, was a reflection of how he viewed himself. Though he was blaming Benjamin Linus for the depths that he had sunk to. I think it’s safe to say that Sayid has always suffered from a big case of self-loathing. Someone recently pointed out how odd it is that Sayid has done such unspeakable things, and yet we love him. We root for his redemption. We consider him a good hearted man, that’s had to do bad things to survive. Sawyer put it best when he pointed out that dichotomy and said “ Of course he’s fine…He’s an Iraqi torturer that shoots kids. He definitely deserves another go around.” Of course his statement was bitter and sarcastic, but it pointed out to the viewer, how wrong his character’s actions are, even though we like him. I think the reason for that is that we see him struggle. He may be one of the only characters that we see struggle to the levels that he does. He tries to resist when both comrades and enemies try to manipulate or force him to do the things that he has such an unfortunate talent for. Time and again we have seen him promise himself that he would never do those things again. But if you didn’t realize on your first run through on the series, a rewatch will definitely show you that one of the main themes, if not ‘The’ main theme, is choice. Every character goes through it: Michael, Sawyer, Kate, Jin, Sun, Rose, Bernard, Jack, Locke, Juliet, Charlie, Claire, Desmond, Ecko, Miles, Charlotte, Daniel and even Ben. Most of the articles that I’ve done have been character studies. That’s funny because those that know me can tell you that I am all about the theories. But the fact is, theories are harder to write about definitively. By definition they are speculation. But character traits are concrete. It’s the one thing we can hang our hat on in this show. Even now, as we are dealing with the ‘Separate Reality’ of season 6, we see the same character traits that we have grown to love and hate in our Losties. In L.A. Sayid is still struggling to be a good man, to atone for his past. Hearing Heath and Ms. Wendy mention the purple again, brought the subject back to me. And so as I have pondered Sayid’s turn to the dark side this week, I realized that my old article, was new again. I reread it, thinking it was one of my weaker articles. However it seems that it all held true still. What I’ve come to realize is that the wardrobe choice was prophetic. I had thought it was meant as a clue to what he was about to do in the shooting of young Ben Linus. But in fact, I think we can all see that it was really a clue to season 6. As I have discussed with friends what I thought was happening with Sayid, in the beginning of season 6, I was hopeful. Most of us have seen that character redemption was a strong theme in the show since season 1. However, most characters seem to meet their end on the show soon after. My friend Merideth had said how upset she was, that they were turning Sayid evil after “What Kate Does”. But I pointed out that he kept talking about his fear of where he would go after he died, fearing of his afterlife fate. With a lot of people that would seem like a hollow 4th quarter hail Mary. A pathetic attempt to atone for sins you never seemed to care about in life. But with Sayid that’s completely keeping in line with his concerns and struggles all along. At the time I told her that my feeling was that he would have the darkness grow within him, but he would fight it. He would be heroic in the end and overcome it, even if that meant taking his own life to do it. After “Sundown”, I’m not as confident in that theory. That saddens me. I love Sayid. However it fits with the pattern of Lost. I think in the end we will see that all along the way they laid it out for us. They told us what was what, we just weren’t seeing the forest for the trees. Dead is dead, dark and light, and choice. They told us Sayid was a bad man, a killer, they even dressed him as a villain. Will Sayid overcome the evil inside him? Is it even possible? I can’t answer that. But anyone that doesn’t believe he’s evil now, needs to rewatch “Sundown”. The look in his eyes said volumes. We roared with applause in my house as Ben’s face filled with terror as he slowly backed away from this new Darth Maul Sayid. He seems to be a sword for Anti Locke now. And that’s a bad weapon to have against our Losties. Here’s hoping that wherever Sawyer is, he’s running a con on Anti Locke and hasn’t succumbed to the power of his devil tongue as well. It appears the War is at hand, and we already have too many villains on this island. It looks like we need the ‘one who will save us all’.