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AKA: Mr. Eko, Father Tunde, Ulu Oduduon
Resided in: Nigeria
Occupation: Former drug lord, Impersonator of priest
Reason for Travel: Was in Australia investigating case of suspected miracle for Church; flying to LA for Mr. Caldwell
Flight Seat #: Uknown

Mr. Eko grew up in Nigeria with a Catholic background.  At a young age, his village was invaded by violent militants.  To protect his younger brother Yemi from being forced at gunpoint to shoot an unarmed man, he shot the man himself.  The militants laughed that "He is a born killer," and kidnapped him.  

His life turned along a dark path and he eventually became the most feared drug lord of that part of Nigeria, known for ruthlessly murdering those who stood in his way.  His brother, meanwhile, took up the cross which was taken from him when he was kidnapped, and became a Catholic priest.  Their paths crossed again when he asked his brother to help him smuggle drugs out of Nigeria under the cover of church relief aid supplies (he was saying that he can use the money earned to help with polio relief).  His brother initially refused to be involved.  But Mr. Eko came back later to threaten him with two other men, saying that they would burn down his church if he didn't cooperate, and Yemi was forced to sign papers that will falsely ordain them as priests to carry out the plot themselves.  Mr. Eko and his associates hid the heroin in Virgin Mary statues, and started loading them into the Beechcraft plane on the runway.  At the last minute, Yemi drove up, and told Mr. Eko that he had called the authorities, and that they still had a chance to stop this plan.  They refused, and got in a gunfight with police that were driving up to the plane.  In the crossfire, Yemi got killed, but was dragged onto the plane with the drug dealers.  Mr. Eko lost his spot, and was kicked out by a man with a gold tooth.  The police, mistaking him to be the real priest who called, helped him up.  

From this point on, he went on acting in the role of a real priest.  While in Austrailia, he was sent by the Monsenior to investigate the supposed "miracle" of Charlotte Malkin, a girl whose mother Joyce believed "came back from the dead" after a near-drowning incident (the Monsenior said that Eko was "chosen" because of his skepticism).  He met  Ian McVay, the coroner who worked on the case, who claimed that Charlotte woke up in the middle of the actual autopsy.  He proved it with a tape of the incident.  Eko went to the Malkin house to investigate further, but was met by the father, Richard Malkin, who happened to be the psychic that talked to Claire.  Richard Malkin told him that there was no miracle, and that the only reason his wife was making a fuss was because she's a religious zealot, and was partly acting out of spite towards him.  He claimed that he's a fraud, and that the psychic business is a scam.  

Eko closed the case and later prepared to board Flight 815 with a fake passport made by a document forger named Caldwell.  He was unnerved as Charlotte Malkin approached him in the airport, and claimed to have a message from Yemi, who she saw "in the in between place" after she was pronounced dead.  She told Eko that he may not believe it now, but that he is a good person and will believe this soon.

Mister Eko is with the tail section survivors from Flight 815. He was originally the strongman and protector of that group, and at one point killed 2 of the Others in self defense; in repentance, he took a vow of silence for 40 days.  He appears to be an experienced tracker, and aids Jin through the jungle to find Michael. Eko also leads the tailies to the middle section survivor's area. Along the way, when Sawyer passes out, Eko goes against Ana-Lucia, and helps Jin and Michael build a stretcher for Sawyer. Eko appears to be someone of compassion and respect. Ana-Lucia blames Eko for Cindy's abduction, telling him he chose to help Sawyer despite the risk it placed on everyone else.  He is the one who makes the decision to carry an unconscious Sawyer back to the beach camp (being the first tail section survivor to make contact with that camp), saving his life.

After the two sections merge, Eko sees the Virgin Mary statues again, he realizes they are the same as the ones from his past, and forces Charlie to show him where he found them.  Along the way, they meet the Smoke Monster, and he faces it down head-on and fearlessly (and there are images of his past reflected back in the smoke) until it shrinks away.  When he finds Yemi's body (recognizing the cross) in the Beechcraft plane, he is able to say goodbye.  He and Charlie burn the plane and everything in it in memorial (except a few statues full of heroin Charlie has secretely snuck out), while saying the 23rd psalm.  He tells Charlie he is a priest.

Back at camp, he carves out the books of the Bible on his stick as a reminder to himself.  He is the one who baptizes Aaron and Claire.  Eko is also the one to find part of the Swan orientation splice while in the Arrow, hidden inside a Bible, which he later watches with Locke.

He marks "special" trees, and enlists Charlie's help with building a church out of them.

Mr. Eko has a dream in which Ana-Lucia (recently killed by Michael) and Yemi tell him that he must help Locke find the question mark on the map.  After coercing Locke into the jungle with him to find it, and hearing Locke's prophetic dream about Yemi, Mr. Eko climbs atop the cliff from which the Beechcraft plane had once fallen.  He sees nothing on the other side, but finds a large mark in the earth when looking down the cliff.  They realize that the ? mark in the ground is marking the entrance to another hatch (partly obscured by the now burnt Beechcraft), and underneath, find the Pearl Station.  Learning that the purpose of the Pearl is observation (of the Swan Station) affirms Eko's faith that what they are doing ("pushing the button") is of great importance, but has the opposite effect on Locke's faith.

Eko abandons the church project, and takes over Locke's role as button pusher in the Swan.  Locke resolves to prove the task meaningless, and locks Eko out of the computer room one day, with Desmond's help.  Eko, determined to get in, makes Charlie get the hidden dynamite, and ends up setting off an explosion in the Swan.  This, however, doesn't breach the blast doors.  During the final moments of the EMP, Charlie and Eko are caught in the Swan.  

--Last edited by ILovedEko on 2006-11-04 18:36:34 --

I heart Eko!

yes - and tomorrow night (7/12/06) is probably the best episode of S2 - 23rd Psalm..... which is ALL Eko!

GREAT character - and very good actor.

And who would "Mr. Eko Tundun" be? The thread name says Tundun, but it says Tunde inside. I'm so confuzzled! Help me plz. ty.

Quote :

Algo wrote : And who would "Mr. Eko Tundun" be? The thread name says Tundun, but it says Tunde inside. I'm so confuzzled! Help me plz. ty.

its been corrected sir

Why?! *cries*

please change your name back! It makes me so sad!!!

There are many questions left for Mr. Eko's story *grumbles*

I'm praying we'll at least see him in flashbacks at some point... *sigh*

From http://www.ew.com/ew/report/0,6115,1553848_3_0_,00.html

After the surprise death of Mr. Eko, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje pursues a dream: to tell his life story on the big screen by Jennifer Armstrong



EKO'S OF THE PAST Akinnuoye-Agbaje and the producers agreed his character would meet his end before the series did


When the producers of Lost first conceived the character of Mr. Eko, he was simply a gentle, upstanding Nigerian priest. And after an onscreen career full of drugs and thugs, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje jumped at the chance to play such a role. ''When you're a large black man in Hollywood, the obvious stereotype is one of force and menace,'' says the 39-year-old actor, whose 6'2'' build and hulking shoulders are just as imposing in person. ''I thought I wouldn't mind showing a different facet to my character.'' The good news? Once the producers saw a tape of his breakthrough performance as prison bully Simon Adebisi on HBO's Oz, they knew he was the man for the job. But his sheer power in the role compelled them to give Mr. Eko a new complexity, to add a darker edge, to make him...a former drug thug.

It was as if Akinnuoye-Agbaje himself had been plopped down in the middle of an irony-filled Lost flashback. The switch, he says, came as ''a bit of a shock. I was devastated.'' But he ultimately embraced the backstory, in which Eko assumed the identity of his Catholic clergyman brother, Yemi, who'd been killed by government troops when he tried to stop a drug deal. ''This guy murdered and plundered to stay alive, but he traded his soul for his brother's,'' explains Akinnuoye-Agbaje, referencing Eko's childhood decision to kill a man so his brother wouldn't have to. ''He's running around in his priest outfit still killing people. If you're an actor, that's just delicious.''

As soon as Akinnuoye-Agbaje arrived in season 2 as part of the ''Tailie'' invasion, Eko's struggle to embrace his dual nature instantly helped make the character a looming presence on Lost — no easy task on a sprawling series that at the time featured 14 regular cast members, including some scene-stealing Emmy nominees. Eko made such an impression on castaways and fans alike that his Nov. 1 death — after the island's mystical smoke monster gave him a brutal bashing — was all the more unexpected.

Though producers say they envisioned Eko's death from the beginning and knew Akinnuoye-Agbaje might not be sticking around for the long haul, the actor is the first Lost star to vote himself off the island. (He's the fifth series regular to leave the show.) After Eko's first flashback episode aired last season, Akinnuoye-Agbaje felt ''the character was complete. It was such a well-written episode that I knew I would be able to sew him up in a season.'' Says exec producer Carlton Cuse: ''In a perfect world it would've been great to have Mr. Eko for a little longer. But it was the best time to go our separate ways.''

Tearing into a lobster at Cafe Med in L.A., Akinnuoye-Agbaje looks more like a pre-priesthood Eko, sporting braids, ripped jeans, and a white tank top. He sprinkles his speech with casual references to his devout Buddhism, but exudes a high-energy charisma that's nothing like Eko's Zen state. He also talks more — a lot more — than his character, and often explodes with deep laughter.

Speaking in his native British accent (which he's never used in any role), he explains why leaving ABC's hit show was actually a ''joyous'' moment. His heightened profile, he says, has opened doors to potential financiers for his longtime pet project: Akinnuoye-Agbaje plans to direct and star in an autobiographical film he wrote about growing up in foster care and on the tough streets of London. (Africans who emigrated to England in the 1960s and '70s often willingly placed their children in foster care while they adjusted to life in a new country.) ''People that I'd approached [for funding] are now approaching me,'' says the actor. ''It's an opportunity I can't miss.''



The scrïpt ends when he reunites with his parents as a teenager in the '80s, but in real life, what happened next provided plenty of material for a sequel. While he planned to follow in his lawyer father's footsteps, he got sidetracked by modeling gigs that eventually led to acting. After landing an episode of the Fox cop series New York Undercover in 1995, he was hooked. Roles in films like Congo, Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls, The Mummy Returns, and The Bourne Identity soon followed, but Akinnuoye-Agbaje made his biggest impact with a tour-de-force stint from 1997 to 2000 as gang leader Adebisi on HBO's violent prison drama Oz. Five years later, as he was shooting his role as (what else?) a powerful drug lord in the 50 Cent drama Get Rich or Die Tryin', the casting director for Lost — a show the actor had never seen — came calling.

Akinnuoye-Agbaje swears that he's never been as bad as his most memorable characters. ''I've never dealt drugs, killed anybody, [or] raped anybody,'' he says. ''But I know what it is to suffer. You don't have to go chop somebody's head off to know that pain.'' As such, it was his own pathos-filled history — both on screen and off — that gave Mr. Eko such a gloomy edge. At his suggestion, producers changed the original name, Omecca, to Eko in order to be consistent with Akinnuoye-Agbaje's own Nigerian tribal lineage; he also advised them to add a ''Mr.'' to the wayward priest's moniker. ''Carlton and I looked at each other like it was the silliest thing in the world,'' exec producer Damon Lindelof says. ''Then we kept saying it, and we realized there was something really cool about it.''

Akinnuoye-Agbaje's active involvement in his character's development became both a blessing and a curse over the course of his first season. ''Adewale's process is complicated,'' says Cuse. ''He needs to discuss it, process it, and make it his own. That's harder to do on a television schedule, but it ultimately leads to great work.'' His time in Hawaii — which can (for better or worse) leave a person feeling distanced from the rest of the world — proved difficult for him. He had to move to Oahu, a place he'd never been, in about two weeks. He was afforded little of the prep time he relishes. And he struggled with his newfound visibility. ''I felt like I'd landed on the moon,'' he says. ''I'm very private, and I don't like public influence on what I'm doing.'' Mostly, though, he struggled with playing the same person every week. ''I'm primarily a movie actor because there's a lot more flexibility,'' he notes. ''I never like to get lazy, sitting in a character two or three years, him getting fat and having grandchildren. I like to hit and run.'' Toward the end of last season, he met with Cuse and Lindelof to discuss his future, and agreed to stick around for a few season 3 episodes. ''There was an ongoing dialogue [when he signed on] about what the longevity of the character would be,'' Lindelof explains. ''And we all decided the shocking and emotional death would be the best way to go.''

As Eko's end grew imminent, the actor's offscreen life became more trying: Both of his parents passed away over the summer (''I'd rather not even mention it, to be honest. It's still too fresh''). In September, he was pulled over in Waikiki and charged with driving without a license, an unfortunate circumstance that called to mind the 2005 DUI arrests of fellow Tailies Cynthia Watros and Michelle Rodriguez. Charges were dropped when he produced his license — which he'd left in a pants pocket at home. ''[Media reports] tried to lump me [with Watros and Rodriguez],'' he says, ''but I don't drink.''

Despite leaving behind a powerful character on a huge hit show, Akinnuoye-Agbaje is happy to be scouting for projects back on the mainland. (So far, he's signed to voice the town crier in the upcoming Jim Carrey CGI feature Horton Hears a Who.) Already, island life is becoming a faded memory. ''When you're out there, you're trekking, you're sweating,'' he says. ''It's not the paradise that you think it is.'' He does, however, still keep ''a little bit of Hawaii'' with him in the form of a single black pearl on a black rope necklace. And lest you think he's ungrateful for an experience that made him a star, he carefully adds this coda: ''Lost has been a huge learning curve — spiritually, professionally, culturally. It'll always be a part of me.''

(Posted:11/03/06)  

--Last edited by ILovedEko on 2006-11-03 09:36:21 --

I was just gonna post this for you ILE!  

Hehe.

Wow what a great read.
I'm pleased to see that he was not the on-set diva we'd been hearing about.

Eko was awsome it sucks that he died!