I think it’s impossible not to frame this review in a particular context: this is the last regular episode of LOST, ever. The penultimate LOST episode. The almost-an-end-of-an-era episode. The fat lady is about to sing, and it’s impossible to get past that. But, all that said, I want to take a second to step back and try to see the longview. Have hopes and expectations lined up with reality? Is it going in the direction we thought it would? What’s up?

If there’s one thing that I think every LOST fan can agree on, aside from the fact that the show is awesome, is that we haven’t been getting nearly as many answers as we expected. I think it’s funny, as this debate rages on, that there are those who act like apologists for LOST’s writers. We get the slightest little hint at an answer and they’re all over it to say, “See! We are getting our questions answered!” They work so hard to help us find merit in every episode despite the fact that we’re constantly disappointed. These guys are real troopers and I think we have to applaud their incredible faith. But, guys, let’s be realistic: no one is pleased with the amount of question that have been answered—we’re all disappointed.

But should we have expected more? Did we really think that we’d get all of our questions answered? I mean, deep down inside did we? From its inception, LOST has been about leaving us hanging, about piling on more and more mystery instead of explaining it away. This show has never been about tying things up neatly with a bow, and I don’t think we should expect anymore, not from this final season and, I would suggest, probably not from the finale either. In fact, they’ve so much as told us that they aren’t going to explain it all, that we won’t be left completely satisfied. If we chalk that up to the nature of the beast, then I think we can atleast get on with it.

The Alternaverse

Things are falling  into place in the alternaverse. I mean, you can see the pieces sliding together in what is going to end up being one great big grand slam finale, but it’s getting insane. John wants to get his surgery. Jack wakes up with that scar on his neck bothering him again. Ben and Rousseau have met and are hitting it off! And everything else is moving at break neck speed, too.

Now it’s clear that Desmond knows everything. Hurley too. Hurley’s reaction when Anna Lucia freed the prisoners was brilliant, “Oh, you’re here!” It’s that kind of hilarious view of fate: Everyone from the island is interconnected in the alternate universe too, it’s just that some of them don’t know it. Hurley and Desmond now know it and it looks like they’re about to bring about the same knowledge in Kate and Sayid. If we were ever unsure about what Desmond knew in the alternaverse it’s clear now that he knows everything. Does he know he’s Widmore’s failsafe, and what exactly that means, I would venture that he does. His mission in the alternaverse seems to have taken on a new fervor and I suspect that the alternaverse Desmond has all the knowledge that present island Desmond does, and vice versa. Whatever is happening on the island, or happened, Desmond is working to fix or repair or prevent—or something.

More about what I think might be happening, later.

The Island

Back on the island, things are finally coming together but it’s all happening so fast. Jacob appears to the remaining survivors and explains to them the nature of the island, he explains that he brought them all to the island to find his replacement, to find someone to protect the light in the island that we were introduced to last week. When Sawyer objects and says that none of them wanted to come there, Jacob explains that they needed the island as much as the island needed them—that he didn’t plunk them out of happy, healthy lives. They were all searching for something that they couldn’t find, he said. In my interpretation, they were all broken.

I’ve talked at length about this before, the candidates were making bad choices, much like the choice that Jacob made when he threw his brother into the light on the island. The island has helped most of these survivors to redeem themselves from those choices, it’s a kind of second chance, I think, to start over. But all of that doesn’t seem to matter anymore. Jacob explains that one of these survivors must choose to take over Jacob’s role on the island and to do something that Jacob couldn’t do himself: to kill the Man-in-Black, Flocke.

I do love the exchange between Jacob and Kate when she asks why her name was crossed off the list on the cave wall. “Because you’re a mother,” Jacob explains,” but it’s just chalk on a wall…” Like Anna Lucia’s appearance in the alternaverse, I think we’re being poked in the ribs a little bit and being asked to lighten up. All the speculation from fans on why Kate was disqualified from being a candidate, all the theories and conjecture, boils down to the fact that it doesn’t matter, that it’s just chalk in a cave, Jacob says.

Of course, it’s Jack who ultimately chooses to take over Jacob’s job. I think we knew that he accepted this fact a long time ago, whether he really knew it or not. Jack has been the old Jack, the leader Jack, but also the trusting, accepting Jack, for a long time now and it suits him well. He’s now in charge of protecting the island and with killing the Man-in-Black.

Meanwhile, Ben and Richard meet Widmore and his assistant Zoe at Dharmaville. As the Smoke Monster approaches, Widmore and Zoe hide inside Ben’s old house, in a secret room behind his bookcase. When the Monster arrives at the village, to everyone’s surprise, it picks up Richard and throws him off into the jungle. It’s an expected scene. The Monster just roars by and picks up Richard, throwing him off into the distance as it goes by. Is Richard dead? I don’t think so, he lives forever and there’s nothing to indicate, as far as I know, that he can be killed even by the Smoke Monster. Then, in return for being given “the island” after the Smoke Monster leaves, Ben decides to give up the whereabouts of Widmore and Zoe.

This next scene, between Widmore, Zoe, Ben and Fake John, is probably one of the most tense in LOST history. When Locke asks Zoe who she is and Widmore tells her to say nothing, John slits her throat, in one lightning-quick motion. He then explains that if she isn’t going to talk, she isn’t worth anything to him. This Nemesis dude is absolutely evil. With Zoe bleeding at his feet, the Nemesis then tells Widmore that he wants some information or, when he escapes the island, the first thing he’ll do is kill his daughter. Widmore begins giving him that information but before it looks like he’s finished, Ben shoots him, explaining that Widmore shouldn’t have the chance to save his daughter, ostensibly because Ben didn’t have the chance to save his from Widmore.

Following this exchange, the Nemesis realizes that Desmond is the failsafe, that he was the last ditch effort to save the island if all the candidates were killed. This was why Widmore brought him back to the island. When the Nemesis and Ben set off to find Desmond, where Sayid was supposed to kill him, they find that he’s escape. The Nemesis finally explains that he needs to find Desmond and get him to do what he never could, destroy the island.

Is Ben bad? I wonder, because I truly thought he was redeemed after that conversation with Ilana earlier in this season but now I’m not so sure. I hope that the reason he really shot Widmore was to try and prevent John from hearing the information that he wanted to hear. Ben is a master manipulator, but so is the Nemesis. Is Ben playing up John? I hope so, I liked redeemed Ben.

Oh Brother…

I don’t even know where to begin, so let’s work backwards.

It seems to me as through Jacob’s Nemesis has given up trying to escape the island. Now he wants to destroy the island. Is this another way of escaping? I’m not sure. He knows there are still candidates wondering around out there on the island. More than he knows, actually, if candidates whose names have been crossed out are, like Jacob said, still eligible for the job. Miles, like Kate, was a crossed-out candidate. So the submarine is destroyed, that means that way of getting off the island is impossible now for the Nemesis. The plane is all wired up with explosives, but still standing, so there is that way but he would need all the candidates to come with him, or he needs to kill them all. But, it seems this plan has been abandoned. Now he needs to find Desmond and, it seems, to destroy the island in order to secure his freedom.

But what about Jack?

Does candidacy even matter anymore now that Jacob’s replacement has been named? Jack now has the job of trying to find and kill the Nemesis, presumably with the assistance of the remaining Survivors.

But then what is Desmond working on in the alternaverse? Allow me to speculate.

Suggesting what Desmond is doing in the flash-sideways timeline necessarily requires that I explain how I think the show might end, so here goes.

I think the show will end in the flash-sideways timeline. I think the scar on Jack’s neck which keeps coming up in the alternaverse is an indication of things to come for him in the island reality. Somehow, either Jack’s throat is slit, like Zoe’s, or he’s hung on a rope or something. However it happens, I think it’s an indication of something that’s going to happen to Jack, as Jacob’s replacement, on the island. Jack and John face off, somehow, and because in the alternaverse, as we saw at the start of this season, the island was destroyed, I’m wagering that John won. The Nemesis escaped and set into play the alternative universe.

Desmond has this knowledge and as the failsafe, is working to bring all the Survivors back to the right reality, bring them to the knowledge of what happened because they must do something in order to prevent ultimate chaos, or something. Do you know what I mean? Does that make any sense? I could be entirely off, and in fact I’m sure that I am, because you never know with LOST, but it’s a thought.

Of course, every review of this episode wouldn’t be completely without a wishlist of questions I’d like answered. I do hope they address the question of Dharma and what they’re all about and Eloise’s connection. If Dharma were just a research group we have to keep in mind a couple of things. They were called to the island by Jacob, everyone who comes there is. They knew about the ancient/magical nature of the island, there is a Smoke Monster “access point” in the closet of one of the Dharma houses. They’re somehow involved with Eloise, who was once an Other. If you remember, Eloise, who is Daniel Farraday’s mother, was once an Other and the husband of Charles Widmore, who was also once an Other. When the Survivors want to return to the island, Eloise uses a Dharma station to track the coordinates of the island. What is Eloise doing in a Dharma station? Does she have some connection with the group? These are nagging questions I have, that I hope are answered.

So, if I can end it here and say this. Sunday is going to be a night to end all nights and certain a night to end one of the best TV series ever. With a 2-hour recap and another 2 1/2 hours of finale it’s going to be a very, very good time. I can’t wait.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 22nd, 2010 at 9:47 am and is filed under Television. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.