Anthony Cooper

Original Timeline
(Oceanic Flight 815 crashes on the Island)

Anthony Cooper
Actor	Kevin Tighe
First	"Deus Ex Machina"
Last	"The Candidate"
Episode Count	7
AKA	Tom Sawyer Alan Seward Paul Ted MacLaren Louis Jackson "The Man From Tallahassee"
Death	19 December 2004
Death Episode	"The Brig"
Place	Tustin, California, USA
Profession	Con man
Island Reason	Prisoner of the Others so that Locke can kill him
Family	John Locke - Son Mrs. Talbot - ex-Fiance Emily Locke - ex-Lover

"Anthony" redirects here. For other uses of "Anthony", see Anthony (disambiguation).

You may be looking for his counterpart in the flash-sideways timeline.

Anthony Cooper was the presumed name of John Locke's biological father. Cooper was shown to have used the alias of Alan Seward, and he claimed to have used Tom Sawyer, Ted MacLaren, Louis Jackson and Paul, among others. He is, by his own admission, a con man. As "Tom Sawyer", he seduced James Ford's mother, Mary Ford and then used her in order to swindle money from her and her husband, which resulted in the death of both. This prompted James to take on the alias "Sawyer", and to hunt down his namesake. Cooper was killed by Sawyer on the Island. ("The Brig")

Off the Island

Early life

Emily Annabeth Locke became pregnant while she was fifteen. His grandmother referred to the man she was dating at the time as being twice her age. If this were confirmed as Anthony and taken literally it would make him born as early as 1924 and as old as 80 when he died. ("Cabin Fever")

Earlier in Cooper's life, he conned a woman named Mary Ford under the alias of Tom Sawyer for $38,000. This con resulted in her husband killing her and himself over the incident, and sent their son, James Ford, on a quest to murder the man he perceived as killing his parents. He wrote a letter when it first happened, and vowed to make him read it out loud to him before he killed him. ("The Brig")

Conning Locke

Locke meets Cooper for the first time. ("Deus Ex Machina")

When John Locke first found him, Anthony was on dialysis and in need of a new kidney. He got close to John by taking him hunting occasionally. Locke volunteered to give his father one of his kidneys. However, after the surgery, Locke woke to find Cooper had already checked himself out of the hospital. Locke's mother admitted that she had worked with Cooper to con Locke into donating his kidney. ("Deus Ex Machina")

Cooper moved in an attempt to get away from Locke, who was stalking him, but John managed to find his new home. Locke waited outside his house nearly every day in his car. Eventually Anthony opened the car door and got in, telling Locke that he knew he'd been stalking him and wanted it to stop, finally telling him, "Don't come back; you're not wanted."

Cooper reveals his true status to an amazed Locke.

Helen eventually convinced John to move on, and he and Anthony were out of contact for a while. ("Orientation")

Some time later, he faked his own death to avoid retribution for a $700,000 dollar retirement con he pulled on Jimmy Bane. He followed Locke around town in a white car until Locke found out it was him. He asked John to retrieve the money from a safety deposit box and left him $200,000 as promised for his help. Later Locke brings the money to him, who waits at a local motel. Cooper offers Locke his part of the money, but Locke refuses. Cooper is leaving but suddenly Helen stands in the door way. She asks "Are you him?", and slaps him. After he has left, Locke proposes to Helen, who tearfully rejects Locke. ("Lockdown")

Locke's attempted murder

Cooper tackles Locke, pushing him through a window. ("The Man from Tallahassee")  (promotional still)

Several years later, John stumbled into another of Anthony's cons. Going by the name "Alan Seward," he was attempting to marry Mrs. Talbot in order to steal her money. Peter Talbot, her son, suspected his plan and attempted to intervene and went to ask John. Locke confronted his father at a flower shop, demanding that he call off the wedding. He told Cooper that Peter was aware of the con and threatened to tell Mrs. Talbot the truth. Cooper agreed to call off the wedding. However Peter Talbot died suddenly and mysteriously. John went to Anthony's apartment to confront him over the death, but Anthony said he had nothing to do with it. Locke went to the phone to call Mrs. Talbot. When John turned his back, Anthony suddenly rushed and pushed him out an eighth story window, leaving John's back broken and leaving him permanently paralyzed. His actions make it very likely that he did kill Peter Talbot. Soon after, Cooper was suspected to have fled to Mexico and he disappeared. ("The Man from Tallahassee")

According to his own later account, Cooper heard with the rest of the world that Flight 815 had gone down in a trench near Bali, and he believed that John had died along with all of the other passengers. Some time later, he says, he was driving down I-10 through Tallahassee when someone slammed into the back of his car, sending him through the divider at 70 miles per hour. He remembers being put in an ambulance, where one of the paramedics smiled at him, receiving some kind of injection, and then waking up gagged and tied to a chair on The Island. ("The Brig")

On the Island

Cooper tied up in the basement of Ben's house ("The Man from Tallahassee")

When Locke arrived at the Barracks, Ben told him about a "magic box" on the Island that could grant wishes and later asked Locke if he wished to see what Ben had found inside. He then opened the door to a small basement room in which Anthony was sitting bound and gagged. Previously, Ben had referred to Cooper as "the man from Tallahassee". ("The Man from Tallahassee") Locke asked Ben how he got to the Island, and Ben told him to ask Cooper. When Locke removed his gag cloth, Cooper bit him on the hand, then yelled out "Don't you know where we are, John?" ("The Brig")

Locke contemplates on whether or not Cooper should be murdered. ("The Brig")

Cooper was brought with the Others when they left the Barracks, and was later seen tied to a stone column at the edge of their camp site. Ben informed Locke that he could not become a full member of their group until he made a definitive break with his past--by murdering Cooper. When Locke balked at killing him, Cooper started to mock his son, claiming he still "wants his daddy." Shortly after this, the Others broke camp and left Locke and Cooper behind, with Ben telling Locke that he shouldn't follow them unless he's carrying his father's corpse on his back.

A captive Cooper is strangled by Sawyer inside of the Black Rock. ("The Brig")

Acting on knowledge obtained from a file given to him by Richard Alpert, Locke carried Cooper to the Black Rock and then lured Sawyer there to kill him, claiming that the man he was holding captive was Ben. After Locke locked Sawyer and Cooper in the Brig together, Cooper told Sawyer about how he came to the island, corroborated Naomi's claim that Flight 815 was found with no survivors, and shared his belief that the island is actually Hell. Cooper then inadvertently revealed his past connection to Sawyer, who handed him the letter he wrote to the original Sawyer as a child, demanding that he read it. When Cooper mocked Sawyer and tore up his letter, Sawyer strangled him to death with a chain. ("The Brig")

Afterlife

The extent of Anthony's injuries are revealed. ("The Candidate")

In the afterlife Anthony enjoys a much healthier relationship with his son John. He is still however responsible for the conning of James Ford's parents.

He was described by his son as a "great father", and after John received his flying license he took Cooper along as his first passenger. This first flight resulted in a horrendous crash that resulted in the paralysis of John Locke, and the cause for Cooper being in what can be described as a "vegetative state". ("The Candidate")

Years later, a photograph of Cooper and his son Locke was tacked to the wall of Locke's cubicle at the box company on the day that Randy Nations fired him. ("The Substitute")

Chasing a lead that "Sawyer" was in Australia, Ford did not find Cooper, but finally learned his real name. Upon returning to Los Angeles, Ford began sorting through various Anthony Coopers who may have been present in Alabama in 1976. ("Recon")

Tired of making wedding plans, Locke's fiancee Helen suggested that they bring Anthony and her parents and get married "shotgun-style" in Vegas. ("The Substitute")

After fixing John Locke's back, Jack Shephard wanted to find out more about the accident that got Locke paralysed. Thanks to informations from Bernard, Jack went to the Palms Nursing Home. He met Helen there, who reluctantly introduced him to Cooper.("The Candidate")

Trivia

• Cooper's episode count so far is 7.
  • He died in his fifth appearance in "The Brig", he sixth appearance was as a dead body in "The Man Behind the Curtain" and his seventh appearance was made by his flash-sideways counterpart in "The Candidate".
• Out of all the main characters, Anthony has met Locke, Ben, Jack and Sawyer.
  • Anthony saw Richard when he was a hostage in Ben's basement.
  • Anthony saw Jack Shephard in the flash-sideways timeline.
• Cooper's apartment number, where Locke fell from the window, is #3801.
• Anthony Cooper is the second of four people Sawyer has killed on the Island, the first and the more recent were unnamed Others.
• In "The Man from Tallahassee" we can see this picture in his room, before he pushes Locke out an eight-story window: [1]
• Anthony Cooper's mysterious appearance on the Island in "The Man from Tallahassee" was at first completely unexplained, and a plot twist to both John Locke and the Lost audience. (Literary techniques)
• Technically, Cooper saved Locke's life. Ben's gunshot in "The Man Behind the Curtain" would have been fatal if he still had a kidney. (Irony)
  • The kidney transplant also allowed Cooper to survive well into old age.
• Although, to be fair, it's reasonable to assume that Cooper, in a broad sense, caused Locke to end up on the Island in the first place. Aside from essentially creating Locke's depression and anger issues, he paralyzed him as well, and both things played a significant role in causing him to come to the Island (for example, it's probably true that Abaddon's suggestion of Locke taking a walkabout, given while Locke was recovering from the fall in the hospital, caused Locke to to think that perhaps his depression could be cured as a result). Cooper also introduced Locke to hunting, interest in which conceivably led Locke to attempt a walkabout.
• Despite being on the Island alive for at least nine days, Cooper has never been seen alive in an episode that wasn't Locke-centric.
• The producers confimed in "Access: Granted" that the Others did indeed bring Cooper to the Island, having staged an accident.

Cultural references

• The alias Cooper may be derived from Anthony Cooper, the First Earl of Shaftsbury, a leader of the early Whig party in Britain and a formative influence on the philosopher John Locke. (See main article, Philosophy)
• The alias Tom Sawyer is taken from the title character in Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876). Cooper claims he took it because "I was young and Huck Finn was taken. And the ladies loved that one." Huck Finn was Tom Sawyer's best friend in Twain's novels. ("The Brig")