LOST 6.17: The End

“I got a bad feeling about this.”
– Hugo

I wonder how many LOST fans felt the same way as the final episode unspooled with the sort of musical montage that usually ends episodes. Well, in the words of Sawyer: “Sonofabitch.”

They did it.

LOST ended nearly perfectly.

The-powers-that-be chose to end the story, rather than merely answer questions. Here we the viewing audience were, wondering how the lingering questions were going to be addressed, but it looks to me that show-runners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse said, “Screw that, we’re closing all the character arcs.” After watching the characters finish their journeys, I’ll be damned if I can think of any nagging leftover questions that still seem to matter. I feel totally satisfied by the story. So what if we don’t know the original human name of the Man in Black. Walt was “special” because…well, because he was. Maybe all kids were revered because of the pregnancy thing.

Far more important to me, was the fact that the main characters reached some kind of closure. Almost everybody got happy endings in the Sideways universe, while events unfolded on the Island the way they had to. In a way, TPTB had it both ways: They gave the fans the sweet ending they wanted but also played out the brutal endgame on the Island. And on this show, it made total sense for Jack to die, yet still be happy. And the final funereal moments, when everyone was gathered in the church, made clever use of the concept of the hereafter to gather all the characters together no matter when they died. Everyone was dead. Some folks died before Jack (the Kwons), some long after (Hugo). “There is no ‘now’ here,” Christian told Jack. They all gathered because needed to be together. Jack needed all of them, and they needed Jack. And this was a true ending. As Jack told Hurley, “There are no shortcuts. No do-overs. What happened, happened. All of this matters.”

LOST: 6.13: Come together, right now

Jin and Sun

THE A-TEAM’s Hannibal Smith famously loved it when a plan came together, and LOST the-powers-that-be reunited key characters this week as they position their players for the endgame. And that made longtime viewers the winners this week.

The most important development was the reunion of Sun and Jin, who have not seen each other (in the original timeline) since the explosion of the freighter Kahana at the end of Season 4! Let’s hope he can keep his vow: “We’ll never be apart again. I promise you.”

LOST 6.12: Hugs for Hugo

Libby jogs Hugo's memory

“Everybody Loves Hugo” is the kind of episode that every LOST fan can love: not only did viewers get to see old friends Libby and Michael again, there was some important new information.

Checking in on Hugo in the L.A.verse, we saw he is still a sad-sack, despite being a rich, philanthropic businessman. His mother still gets on him about meeting a woman. And then he does. And what a woman she is!

There was something off about Libby — as once again personified by Cynthia Watros — from the moment she appeared. And it was more than this strikingly beautiful woman crossing the room to talk to Hugo. She insisted that she somehow knew him. Or felt like she should know him.“Do you believe two people can be connected, like soul mates?” she asked him. Of course, we at home know they are connected, and are soul mates.

LOST 6.9: Poor Richard’s Almanac

Endless life's a beach for Richard

So how terrific was LOST this week? After all these years, we finally get the scoop on Richard — and it was worth the wait. We learned everything we needed: Who Richard is, whose death he has on his conscience, why he is on the Island, and what he is doing there.

It’s no surprise Richard insisted to Jack, Hugo and the others that they are all dead and the Island is hell — because from his perspective that’s all very true. What it boils down to is, Richard (Nestor Carbonell) is something of a modern Job: He’s a powerless pawn locked in the crossfire of a battle between higher powers he cannot begin to understand. Woes have been visited upon him for the amusement of others. Everyone who has wielded power over him has let him down or even outright betrayed him — from the doctor who scoffed at the idea of riding out in the rain to minister to Richard’s sick wife, to the corpulent priest who withheld God’s grace and condemned him to hell. There was Magnus Hanso, who instead of rescuing Richard from death by hanging ultimately condemned him by setting him on a course to a far worse living death. And then there are Jacob and the Man in Black, mysterious forces in human form who amuse themselves by using Richard. Only the poor guy isn’t a chess piece — he’s more like a ball they kick around.

LOST 6.4: Your Number’s Up!

John Locke

You wanted answers to the big questions? How about “Where did the Numbers come from?” Now we know. They came from Jacob, who wrote the names of people aboard Oceanic Flight 815 on a cave wall. And the so-called magic Numbers correspond with the survivors – well, the survivors and John Locke, depending on how you classify him. Nonetheless, the explanation was suitably spooky; c’mon, names and numbers scratched into the stone of a nearly inaccessible hidden cave. That’s pretty cool. And hey, that scale was balancing one white rock and one black rock. The Man in Black pitched the white one into the sea. How many times have we seen black and white rocks – not to mention The Black Rock slave ship?

The numbers and the people associated with them are as follows: 4 – Locke. 8 – Reyes, 15 – Ford, 16 – Jarrah, 23 – Shephard, 42 – Kwon (but is that Jin or Sun?).

This leaves us with one gigantic question: What about Kate? What’s her number? Did Locke/Smokey simply not show her to Sawyer? Why didn’t Sawyer ask about Freckles? See below for my theory.

LOST 6.1, 6.2: Kate’s in a Tree!

Juliet hangs in there…

So, after spending some eight months chewing over the Big Questions left by the LOST finale last May — Did Juliet really detonate the nuclear device? Will the white flash reset the clock? Will Oceanic Flight 815 avoid crashing on the island? Will our friends end up forgetting each other and never meeting? Will absolutely nothing happen? — it turns out the answer is, Z: All of the Above and More.

Jack and Faraday’s plan was to detonate the nuke within the confines of the electromagnetic pocket and “reset” the island’s timeline. And it worked. Only it didn’t.

Juliet (Elizabeth Mitchell) insisted she set off the bomb (and “It worked”), but the Swan site remained intact. At least, in one version of the story. It would appear that instead of resetting time, the blast splintered reality. I think the show began by showing us Jack (Matthew Fox) on the plane in another universe, one in which Flight 815 avoids the original White Event and lands safely in Los Angeles. Perhaps the close encounter with the island left Jack 2.0 with some kind of vague imprint that made him notice the people he otherwise would have been trapped alongside — Desmond, Rose, Bernard, Sayid, etc. It was great fun to once again see such dearly departed characters as Boone (Ian Somerhalder, now Damon on THE VAMPIRE DIARIES) and Charlie (Dominic Monaghan, now Simon on FLASHFORWARD). Mitchell will be seen again as Erica when V returns. Heck, even goofy science teacher Arzt was worth a laugh. Oh, and the island itself is now underwater.