[1] In 2007, O'Quinn won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series for his portrayal of Locke.

[2] Locke is introduced in the first season as a mysterious, intellectual and stoic character with an affinity for living out in the wild and a penchant for hunting and tracking.

[4] At age 16, Locke's high school teacher freed him from a locker and took him to his office, and kindly told him that being a sportsman, prom king, and a superhero were simply not who he was.

Curious, Locke hired a private investigator to track down the location of his father, Anthony Cooper (Kevin Tighe).

[6] Locke became very depressed and eventually sought group therapy, where he met his future girlfriend Helen Norwood (Katey Sagal).

[10] While Locke recovered in the hospital, an alleged orderly named Matthew Abaddon (Lance Reddick) visited him and told him to go on a walkabout for a period of self-discovery.

[3] Once out of the hospital Locke started working at a box company where he was constantly insulted by his boss, Randy (Billy Ray Gallion).

[11][12] When Claire Littleton (Emilie de Ravin) is abducted, Locke helps Jack Shephard (Matthew Fox), Kate Austen (Evangeline Lilly) and Boone Carlyle (Ian Somerhalder) search for her.

Locke carries him back to the caves and leaves him dying in Jack's care, then sneaks away to the hatch, where he bangs furiously on the door.

[15] In order to open the hatch, the survivors are led by Danielle Rousseau to the wreckage of a ship known as the Black Rock, and find dynamite.

[16] Locke enters the hatch and discovers Desmond Hume (Henry Ian Cusick), who shows Locke and Jack an orientation film explaining that the hatch was once used for studying electromagnetism and a specific series of Numbers has to be entered into a computer every 108 minutes to prevent an unspecified catastrophe.

[17] When a man named "Henry Gale" (Michael Emerson) arrives in the jungle (captured in a trap set by Rousseau), Locke holds him prisoner in the armory.

[22] Locke awakens in the jungle the next day and constructs a sweat lodge to induce a hallucination, in which Boone tells him to rescue Eko.

[23] In order to communicate with the Others to help the captured Jack, Kate and Sawyer (Josh Holloway), he and some of the other survivors travel to the Pearl station, where they rewire the circuits in the monitors to view surveillance from another hatch.

[24] After Kate returns, she, Locke, Sayid (Naveen Andrews), and Danielle (Mira Furlan) go on a mission to rescue Jack from the Others.

He makes his way to where Jack has taken the survivors, and kills Naomi, a woman from the freighter, who he believes has brought danger to the Island.

[32] Locke has a dream in which the DHARMA Initiative member who built the cabin (Horace Goodspeed—Doug Hutchison) tells him that Jacob is waiting for him.

Charles Widmore makes contact with Locke, provides him with the alias "Jeremy Bentham", and assigns Matthew Abaddon as his assistant to find the survivors that left the island, also known as the Oceanic Six.

[28] Ben later approaches Jack and informs him the only way to return to the Island is to bring everyone back, including Locke's corpse.

Outside the chamber, survivors from Flight 316 arrive at the campsite, where they present Richard Alpert with a box containing Locke's body, which was found in the plane's cargo hold.

Following his return to the island, Jack begins to adopt a more faith-based outlook, in contrast to his previous empiricism-supported views, and is even resentful of the Man in Black for using Locke's appearance.

Once the plane lands, Locke's suitcase of knives does not make it back with him and he meets Jack in the lost luggage department.

Jack then hands him a business card and tells him to call in order to receive a free consult to see if he can fix Locke's paralysis.

Locke goes there and receives a work assignment, given by Rose Nadler, as a substitute teacher at a high school in Southern California.

But Locke, losing faith and his belief in miracles, confesses to her one day that he lost his job at the box company and he thinks Helen deserves someone better.

In the midst of Ben Linus' alternate reality segment, Desmond deliberately runs over Locke with his car in the school parking lot.

After Desmond attacks Ben at their school, and learning he was the same man who ran him over, Locke slowly starts to regain his belief in destiny.

It refers to philosopher John Locke's tabula rasa thesis, an empirical conception that states that all individuals are born with a blank slate and build their bank of knowledge and their identity solely from their experiences and perceptions.

His portrayal of John Locke earned him the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series in 2007.

"[45] Although not responding to the IGN comment, series co-creator, Damon Lindelof, has stated, "we might be willing to give [Locke] the benefit of the doubt for any action he took in response to [lying, gutshot, in a pit of Dharma corpses for two days and on the verge of taking his own life], even if considered slightly 'out of character'".