the blast door map

damon and carlton know how to write a finale.

overall, i loved it. solid. visually inventive. plot-driven. emotionally resonant. and this is just the beginning of the payoffs yet to come.

written by: damon and carlton.
directed by: stephen williams



there was so much happening in this episode, so many concurrent stories, that it's hard to believe it all fit into 42 minutes of show, all without ever feeling rushed. we got 4 stories on the island, and 4 stories in the flashforwards. the big question to be answered next week, is: how do certain people, from each of these disparate groups, end up becoming the oceanic 6? let's look at each thread:

1. locke/ben/hurley
2. jack/sawyer
3. sun/jin/desmond/michael/aaron
4. kate/sayid

1. locke, ben, and hurley are on a mission to the orchid station to 'move' the island, which i'm thnking will reactivate whatever it was that the failsafe disengaged regarding the island's electromagnetic 'shielding.' though we -still- don't really know exactly what happened in the season 2 finale other than causing a little blip in the portugese snow station.

i'm totally stumped how hurley might end up being part of the oceanic 6 from this point. it stands to reason that jack and sawyer will converge upon the proceedings, and they're doing it specifically to save hurley, so that surely has something to do with it.

hurley: his flashforward showed us that it didn't take long for the island to start exerting it's power on him. starting with the ominous other-whispers as he approached the surprise party - i'm sure someone's slowed down, reversed, and isolated those whispers and can tell us if they are indeed strange other-whispers, of if they're surprise party chatter, saying things like "hide hide he's coming!" other than that, hurley's bit of the story didn't give us much more, but it did bridge an important gap between rescue and the opening shot of the season, where he careened in his father's car through a pile of guavas. one thing we still don't know about hurley, is why he said 'good' to sun, when she said that none of the other 6 were in korea to see her baby.



and while we're talking about opening shots, i want to discuss the opening shot of this finale, which was a direct callback to a very similar shot in the series pilot - a shot of clouds that pulls back through a window to reveal that we're on a plane. in the pilot the camera pulled back for jack's flirtation with cindy, where she gives him a few more bottles of liquor (an exchange that was riffed upon in last year's finale). but the choice of shot is important because it reminds us that this is the first time these people have been on a plane since that first, very similar shot.

ben: some great ben moments in this episode, though his 'i always have a plan' line bordered on scenery chewing. loved the 15 year old crackers line. a great way to embed exposition in organic character moments. it reveals that it was probably the last time the orchid station was used to 'move' the island. and who was he flashing the mirror to? richard alpert?

locke: i'm expecting a big revelation regarding locke this week. it's going to tie into his flashback episode, and it's going to relate to a realization that he has met richard alpert before, and it's going to have something to do with being the true 'chosen one' for the hostiles/others. beyond that, i really have no idea.

2. jack and sawyer. ok here's what we can expect to see this week from these two guys.

jack: we will see michael complete his island mission, three years later, and then finally, successfully kill himself by hanging himself in los angles. we will learn that he is in the coffin, and i will rejoice. the next day jack sees the article in the paper and understands that something has changed, if michael was finally able to die. this prompts jack to attempt suicide himself, but 'fate' intervenes, and prevents him from doing so. i'm guessing that this week's episode's second-to-last scene will be last year's final scene, played again, only this time we have full understanding of where the characters are. the final scene will be when locke pulls the timeshift lever at the orchid station, and makes the island jump ahead in time three years.



of course the other major plot point was that we finally got our moment of discovery from jack regarding claire. the scene was handled wonderfully. i love when dramatic impact comes from seeing a person react to something. there was nothing actually surprising about the scene, but similar to desmond's cathartic phone call to penny, this is a scene we've wanted to see for a long time, and one that the actors get to sink their teeth into. just fantastic. and now we know that when jack yelled at kate 'you're not even related to him!' he certainly was twisting the knife.

sawyer: sawyer really got shortchanged this season. he didn't get an episode, which makes me wonder if he's going to be around much longer, or if they're saving him for later. they closed his 'mysterious letter' story arc last season, so unless they build a new arc for him soon, i wouldn't be surprised if they sent him the way of charlie - but probably not until early next season. the one big sawyer plot point of course is finding out what favor he asked of kate. i still think that it was to find his daughter, though why kate had to wait 2 years to finally do the favor makes that one a bit strange.

3. sun/jin/desmond/desmond/michael/aaron.



sun & jin & aaron: the slow motion with music section capping off this episode really made it clear that the great divide separating sun and aaron as oceanic 6 is probably going to happen pretty quickly. my guess is that the freighter blows up, and the sun is on the raft for some reason, perhaps as part of an evacuation from the freighter. i suspect that sun watches the freighter explode from the raft, and jin is still on it. sun believes that jin is dead. we'll find out later that he survived, and their act 3 story will be about reuniting.



rob and jeff jensen were quite irritated by the size of sun's (and the 6's) 'settlement' being enough to purchase a controlling interest in a company the size of her father's. i so didn't care or even think of it. i just loved watching her bitchslap daddy. it was sun's joan crawford, 'i'm taking over pepsi cola' moment.

desmond: will desmond die soon? the poor guy hasn't had anything to do since 'the constant' but look concerned. it would be a major dramatic mistake to have desmond die before he has a chance to discover/intercept/be destroyed by ben's plans to hunt down and kill penny.

michael: like i said above, michael is in the coffin, and his flashforward will tell us what his 'work' was, show how he got off the island despite not being an oceanic 6, show us his death, and put him squarely in that coffin. it seems to be the only person that makes sense. i'd love to be wrong though. but i'd also like to see michael dead, so i'd also love to be right.

4. kate & sayid. both of them have been cornered by alpert and the hostiles/others, and are being marched off somewhere, perhaps to the orchid, led there via ben's mirror flashing? i got really excited seeing the others as a group again, because it means that yes, next year is probably going to be about finding out who the hell they actually are, and yes, it will have something to do with the 4 toed statue.

kate: in the future, is kate truly where she needs to be? is she at all haunted by the island? is it going to come for her and sun eventually? will she start having visions of her horse again? will she be wearing pants again?

sayid: sayid's story got one of my favorite shots of the episode, the wide shot of the outside of the press conference hangar, where he finally, after so long, reunites with nadia.



a scene made ironically tragic, knowing that she's gonna be dead in just a couple months.



it was really weird seeing the island folk at hurley's surprise party, wearing polo shirts and looking normal. i think this week we'll be seeing nadia get shot down at that best buy on labrea and santa monica.

5. other stuff: abc is rerunning part 1 this thursday before the new episode, and they are rerunning it with a special extended press conference scene! in the podcast damon and carlton said that many more questions and answers were shot, but they just could not get all of them in. looking forward to seeing what new tidbits of information they're gonna throw at us.

cool details: geronimo jackson makes another appearance. i've loved michelle forbes since 'swimming with sharks' and 'star trek: tng.' so great to see her on battlestar, lost, and 24 - the best serial dramas on tv.

preboomer:



'my name is benjamin linus. i believe you're looking for me.' shocking only because the boom came so soon and unexpectedly. the episode moved so fast. it was over so quick. but again, ben gets the best preboomers. i think he had about half of them this season!