| “ | I watched my daughter Alex die in front of me. And it was my fault. I had a chance to save her. But I chose the island over her. All in the name of Jacob. I sacrificed everything for him. And he didn't even care. Yeah I stabbed him, I was... so angry...confused...I was terrified that I was about to lose the only thing that had ever mattered to me - my power. But the thing that really mattered was already gone. I'm sorry that I killed Jacob. I am, and I do not expect you to forgive me because...I can never forgive myself. | „ |
| ~ Benjamin Linus |
Benjamin "Ben" Linus is the secondary antagonist of the TV show, Lost. He was a long-time resident of the Island and a leader of the Others. Though often a calm, eloquent antagonist, Ben's insecurity and jealousy sometimes brought out a petulant, reckless side. However, he eventually does see the error of his ways, and becomes a better person in the process.
He is portrayed by Michael Emerson, who also portrayed Harold Finch in Person of Interest. As a child, he was portrayed by Sterling Beaumon, who also portrayed Max Doyle in Mostly Ghostly.
Bio[]
Story[]
Benjamin Linus was born in a wooded area roughly 32 miles outside of Portland, Oregon. He was born on December 20th, presumably in the early to mid 60s. His mother, Emily, was seven months pregnant and hiking with his father, Roger, when she went into premature labor and suffered complications after giving birth to Ben. Roger managed to carry Ben and Emily to a nearby highway and flag down two motorists, Horace and Olivia, but Emily passed away before they could get her to a hospital. Roger spiraled into depression over the death of Emily, silently harboring resentment towards his son and blaming him for Emily's death, and had trouble finding work.
Years later, when Ben was a young boy, Roger received help from Horace in finding work. Horace was a mathematician with The DHARMA Initiative and secured a job for Roger, bringing him and Ben to the island via the DHARMA Initiative's submarine. Ben and his father lived at the barracks, and it was there he met a young girl named Annie and the two became close friends. Life on the island was not entirely pleasant as Ben's father discovered that, although Horace talked about the world-changing work that was being done there, his job was as a mere "workman". Roger's issues were further compounded when he found himself in a middle of a shootout between DHARMA personnel and "the hostiles", a term given to the island's native inhabitants. These factors drove Roger to drink heavily while off work and to neglect Ben.
On one of Ben's birthdays, Roger was intoxicated and bluntly blamed Ben for Emily's death. Ben fled from the house and to the barracks' sonar fence. Hearing whispers all around him, he saw his deceased mother on the other side of the fence. Emily prevented Ben from crossing the fence, telling him it wasn't time yet, and disappeared into jungle. Ben later crossed the fence in search of his mother, but drew the attention of one of the hostiles - Richard Alpert. Richard was intrigued by Ben's story of his mother and, after Ben requested to go with him, told Ben that it might be possible if he was very, very patient.
Four years later, in 1977, Jack Shephard, Kate Austen and Hugo "Hurley" Reyes joined the DHARMA Initiative with the help of James "Sawyer" Ford, Juliet Burke, Miles Straume and Jin-Soo Kwon. Unbeknownst to the rest of the DHARMA Initiative, all of these people were actually from the future and had travelled back in time to 1977. They also all knew Ben as an adult in the year 2004. Although they all knew Ben would eventually betray the DHARMA Initiative and become their enemy, they accepted the fact that they couldn't change the past, and thus did not intervene. However, when the DHARMA Initiative captured Sayid Jarrah in the jungle, problems ensued. Sayid had also travelled back in time, but James and the rest of his friends were unable to cover for him. Sayid was locked up and kept prisoner, since DHARMA believed he was one of the "hostiles".
When Ben heard a hostile had been captured, he wanted to meet him, believing that Richard may have sent the prisoner to get him. Ben managed to get into the security building and to the jail cell by telling Phil, the security guard, that Horace asked him to take food to the prisoner. Sayid was shocked when he learnt that the young boy was Benjamin Linus, his future enemy. Knowing the pain Ben would cause him thirty years later, Sayid played along and pretended to be a hostile. Believing that Sayid would take him away with him, Ben managed to create a diversion and let Sayid out of his cell by stealing Roger's set of janitorial keys. Once in the jungle away from the barracks, Sayid shot Ben and ran off into the jungle.
Ben was found bleeding to death by Jin, who rushed him back to the barracks. Juliet, a fertility doctor, worked frantically to save him, but Ben needed a proper surgeon to stop the bleeding. Jack was a surgeon but refused to help Juliet, also carrying a grudge against Ben for his future sins. Eventually Juliet and Kate decided that their only hope to save Ben was to ask the hostiles if they could help. Kate and James went into the jungle carrying Ben. They were found by a group of hostiles and asked them to take them to Richard. Richard remembered meeting Ben in the jungle four years earlier and Kate asked him to please save Ben's life. Richard warned Kate and James that if he helped Ben, he would never be the same again. Ben would forget what happened to him and he would forever be one of the hostiles. Knowing it was Ben's only chance at surviving, Kate and James accepted the conditions and handed Ben over to Richard, even knowing that this is what would make Ben into the man he would become thirty years later.
Richard took Ben to their temple, a place with magical properties, and Ben was healed. However, when Charles Widmore, another hostile, found out what had happened, he was very displeased that Richard had brought an outsider to their temple. Richard told Charles that the Island had chosen Ben and that Jacob wanted him healed. Charles accepted this and went on to introduce himself to Ben.
Ben returned to his life with the DHARMA Initiative, since the hostiles had a bigger plan for him. Ben lived at the barracks for many years, but regularly met with the hostiles in the jungle. Eventually Ethan, Horace's 11 year old son, also joined Ben. One night, in January 1989, Charles sent Ben and Ethan on an assignment. Their job was to kill Danielle Rousseau, a French woman who had shipwrecked on the island. According to Charles, she was an outsider and a threat to the island. Ben and Ethan found her camp on the beach, but when Ben entered her tent he saw that she had a newborn baby with her. Ben took the baby and held Danielle at gunpoint. She pleaded with him not to harm her baby girl, whom she called Alex. Ben decided to take Alex with him and warned Danielle never to come looking for her child. He told her that if she wanted Alex to live she would stay away. Ben and Ethan left with baby Alex, leaving Danielle helpless and alone. When they arrived back at the hostiles' camp, Charles was not impressed at Ben's decision. He ordered Ben to kill the baby, but Ben refused. Charles claimed that the Island wanted it that way. Ben however, claimed that a baby didn't pose any harm to them and told Charles to kill the baby himself if he wanted it done. Charles was displeased, but walked away. Ben then decided to raise Alex as his own child.
Back at the DHARMA Initiative, Ben had also started working as a workman. One day, in 1992, the hostiles finally executed their plan with help from Ben. After delivering supplies to The Pearl with his father, Ben killed Roger by popping a gas canister in their DHARMA van. He returned to the barracks to find everyone there dead; the result of an attack launched by the hostiles to purge DHARMA from the island. Richard had the bodies of Ben's former co-workers collected and tossed into a mass grave.
After this purge, the hostiles moved into the barracks, along with Ben, Ethan and a few other DHARMA employers who joined the hostiles' side. Somehow, it came to Ben's attention that Charles regularly left the Island and had had a daughter with an outsider on the mainland. This was against the rules of their people and Charles was then banished from the island. When Ben went to see Charles off, Charles believed that Ben was only there to gloat. There had been an uneasy tension and battle for leadership between the two men for a long time and Charles blamed Ben for him having to leave the Island.
Years passed and Ben became the leader of the hostiles. Ben became concerned with their inability to procreate - any woman who conceived on the Island died along with their baby after their immune system turned against the fetus. Attempting to find a solution, Ben sent Richard and Ethan off the island, to Miami, Florida to recruit a fertility doctor - Juliet Burke. Juliet was a highly skilled doctor who had managed to get her sister pregnant after chemotherapy had made her sterile. This was the very woman who helped save Ben's life when he was a child, but he would have no recollection of her. Juliet was recruited and brought to the Island to work on a solution at The Staff, their medical station, but tragically she lost nine pregnant women to the fertility problem. Ben refused to allow Juliet to take a pregnant woman off the island to further test the possibility that it was the Island itself causing the problem, so Juliet requested to leave, as she was out of ideas. Ben revealed to Juliet that her sister's cancer had returned and told her Jacob would cure the cancer if Juliet remained on the island to solve their problem. Juliet agreed.
Over two years passed with Juliet still working on the problem. Ben began to experience back pains and Juliet took X-rays of his spine to see if there were any fractures. Two days before the crash of Oceanic Flight 815, Ben learned from Juliet that the back pain he was experiencing was due to an aggressive tumor on his spine that, if left untreated, would be fatal. As Ben pointed out how no one on the island had a trace of cancer when convincing Juliet to stay if he cured her sister's cancer, Juliet believed he had lied to her and that her sister was dead. Ben maintained that Juliet's sister was cured and that he never lied, but wouldn't allow Juliet to leave. Two days later, Ben and his people witnessed the mid-air break-up of Oceanic Flight 815 - a plane carrying Jack, Kate, Hurley, Sawyer, Sayid and over forty other survivors. Once again, Ben had no recollection of these people, not even of Sayid, the man who shot him as a child. Ben ordered Goodwin and Ethan to head to the tail-section and mid-section crash sites, respectively. They were to infiltrate any survivors and have lists of names ready in three days. Turning his attention to Juliet, Ben brought her to see Mikhail Bakunin at The Flame. Mikhail was in the process of watching news feeds of the disappearance of Oceanic Flight 815 and compiling information on the passengers. At Ben's request, Mikhail patched into a video feed Richard was shooting off-island. This video showed Juliet's sister and her son, both alive and healthy, and allowed Ben to prove to Juliet that he wasn't a liar.
Personality[]
Ben has an unsettling way of talking, both in the idiosyncratic way he speaks and the occasionally terrifying threats he makes. Deep down, though, there seems to be some pain driving his icy decisions. That’s just one of many things the survivors are going to have to learn about him if they have any chance of staying alive – and getting home. He finally realizes what a monster he has been in his quest for power and decides to redeem himself of his actions. In the afterlife, he is shown to be a much better person, and despite all of the forgiveness and redemption, he still decides not to move on since he feels he hasn't earned it yet.
External Links[]
- Benjamin Linus on the Villains Wiki
- Benjamin Linus on the Lostpedia Wiki
- Benjamin Linus on the Wikipedia
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