Lost, Ep 22: Through the Looking Glass

Wow.

Attention Tim Kring: Now THAT is how you pull off a season finale.

We went into this week’s episode with Charlie stuck in an underwater hatch; Desmond unconscious on a boat; some of the Others on their way over to the beach to take away the women; Ben shouting orders from his little campsite in the jungle; Locke lying in a pile of bodies with a gunshot wound in his stomach; Sayid, Bernard, and Jin on the beach as the three shooters; and the rest of the Losties (plus Juliet) heading to the radio tower with Rousseau.

This episode didn’t really give us any new answers (I know… shocker), but then again, maybe it did. The strange thing is, yes, there’s a huge surprise ending, yet when the very first flashback occurred, I immediately thought, “Wait… is this a flash-forward?” I had peeked at the episode at 6pm and watched the first five minutes, and then said to my husband that it was a really weird flashback, and we haven’t seen Jack looking like that before, so I wonder if instead, it’s a depiction of the future. But then as the episode went on, and references were made to Jack’s father again, I thought no, it couldn’t be.

And then it was.

If you think about it, here are the major flashbacks we’ve seen:
-Charlie had issues with his brother, with heroin, and with being in a band. That flashback has been pretty much carried out, and there’s very little left to discover. He refers to himself as a flash-in-the-pan now, he’s off the heroin, and the memories that remain of his brother are good ones now.
-Locke’s major issue that dogged him in ALL of his flashbacks was his father, and the resentment and anger that left him with. Cooper’s dead now, so what more is there to mine from the flashbacks?
-Sawyer’s past was entirely caught up in killing Sawyer. He’s done that.
-Kate’s past is about what she did, which we now know, how her mother reacted, and this season she finally realized that maybe she really didn’t act out of selflessness, and she’s stopped running.
-Claire’s background was all about her becoming a mother, and this season we discovered the difficult relationship she had with her own mother, but she seems to have it all together now, and she’s a good mother herself.
-Sun and Jin’s past was all about his ties to her father, her possible affair with Jae Lee, her pregnancy, and what secrets they kept. Now we know she DID have an affair with Jae Lee, she did NOT get pregnant by him, she knew exactly what Jin was up to, and she kept a lot of secrets from him.
-Hurley’s past was all about his incarceration in a mental hospital, his obsession with the lottery numbers being a curse, and his difficult relationship with his father. We’ve seen all of it play out and we know exactly why he stepped onto that plane.
-Sayid’s past is about his life as a torturer, and while there are still many details missing – who his father was and why his father’s life dogs his; what happened to Nadia; what he did in Basra – we know how it affected him and why he’s attempted to stop. Of all of the flashbacks, Sayid’s feels like the least played-out, and I still have many questions about it.
-Desmond has always run away from relationships, but after being stuck on the island for 3 years he realizes he really can commit to Penny, and wants to.
-Jack had a difficult relationship with his father, he “fixed” Sarah, got married to her, divorced from her, fell off the deep end, went to Thailand, came back, finally revealed his father for what he was, his father basically drank himself to death, and Jack went to retrieve the body. We’ve seen most of his backstory and what’s far more intriguing about him is what’s going on in his head now, not back then.

So where does that leave us? We don’t really need to see these people in junior kindergarten, or find out what OTHER issues they have. Sayid is the only one with outstanding issues that I’d like to see, but otherwise it seems we’ve seen pretty much everything we’re going to see. I believe tonight’s flash-forward is a sign of things to come. Imagine: the idea of having 48 more episodes that show what’s going to happen in the FUTURE not only plays into that whole idea of time travel and jumping through time that has been a major theme of the series, but we also see what will happen to these people later, rather than the traditional television show that ends and we can only speculate and imagine what happened to our favourite characters afterward. (Will Veronica end up at the FBI? Will Buffy ever find true happiness and peace? Will Spike and Angel die in that battle?) Instead, Lost will show us what will happen to them in the far-off future, and now we get the enjoyment of watching the present catch up to the future, rather than how the past has affected the present. It’s BRILLIANT.

Of course, I think we could still have flashbacks, but those would involve the Others, who seem to live in a different time zone, not aging and stuff… We still need to know a helluva lot more about Ben, I’m dying for a Rousseau flashback, and I’m sure we have some other people who will be introduced.

The key is in the title: Through the Looking Glass. In the Lewis Carroll book, when Alice steps through the looking-glass, she enters a world where everything is backwards, the opposite of the way it should be. So it stands to reason that things will be the opposite now, moving forward instead of looking back.

I’ve often wondered throughout the series why certain characters even want to get off the island. Kate’s on the run from the law. Sawyer has absolutely no ties, except maybe a daughter somewhere. Jack’s mother likely blames him for what happened to his father, he’s lost his wife, his dad is dead, and his job is hanging in the balance. Locke hates his parents, would probably lose his ability to walk again, and was miserable. Rose had cancer. Sun and Jin would have to be on the run from Paik. Hurley could still be cursed. Sayid believes Nadia is dead, but she’s not, so he could go either way.

Who would benefit from rescue? Charlie was a heroin addict who had alienated everyone, but there’s likely a chance he could make a go of things now that he’s off the stuff. Claire would have a MUCH easier time of raising Aaron with more baby things around. Desmond could be reunited with Penny (and they just have to deal with Widmore). Maybe Hurley’s broken the curse after all.

One thing’s for certain: Being rescued certainly wasn’t the answer some of them were looking for. Jack turned into his father after the rescue, bumbling around the hospital, insisting on doing surgery when he’s actually incapable of doing it, being humiliated by the new chief of staff…

Deaths:
Tom: one of my favourite Others.
Ryan: one of my least-favourite Others, so, yay.
8 other Others
Gretta: the girl in the underground Hatch. Ah, we barely knew ye. So much for all that speculation about her being Annie.
Mikhail: By a speargun. OOH! Oh wait, no, by a grenade… er… did he die? Can he NOT die?

Charlie. :::sniff::: I cried. They killed him off the way he should have been – he was a hero, he made a self-sacrifice, and he was wonderful. THIS was the Charlie I knew and loved in season 1. Why do they always make me love them before they kill them? I’m seriously sad about this.

Highlights:
-Charlie telling the girls underwater that he came in his invisible submarine.
-Rose: “If you say ‘live together, die alone’, Jack, I’m going to punch you in the face.”
-Charlie singing “You All Everybody” in the falsetto to throw off the Looking-Glass girls
-The discussion between Juliet and Sawyer. “We’re building a runway… for the aliens.”
Sawyer: So, you screwin’ Jack yet?Juliet: No, are you?
HA!
-Hurley. I was so sad when Sawyer refused to let him come with them, because just like last week, he blamed it on Hurley’s weight. And then Hurley comes flying out of the jungle in the VW. WOOHOO!! He’s a hero!! Turns out that Hurley ep that we thought was standalone has actually come back a few times.
-Jack listening to “Scentless Apprentice” at a loud volume in his car. Brought back memories of how I used to drive to university. I totally need to listen to that CD again.
-Charlie convincing Bonnie: “You have the opportunity to make Ben very angry. Why would you not take that?”
-Rousseau and Alex being reunited. ::::sob:::: Their first act together: tying Ben to a tree. Was there ever a lovelier mother/daughter reunion?
-Sayid breaking the guy’s neck. Yeeowch! No wonder CTV had such a stern disclaimer on this episode.
-Hurley’s transmission: “Attention Others! Come in Others!” hahahaha. “Dude, I saved ‘em all.”

Did You Notice:
-the trekking music in this ep was used in season 1, second episode, when Charlie, Sawyer, Sayid, Kate, etc. walked to high ground to find a signal for their radio, and it was used again at the beginning of season 2 when the Tailies were trekking across the island over to the Losties’ beach.
-Ben keeps a journal. Someone needs to get their hands on THAT.
-Guess Jin WASN’T the ideal third shooter. That said, it’s a little unbelievable that with the dynamite being as unstable as it is, that a gunshot even close to the dynamite wouldn’t have set it off.
-Sarah was pregnant when she came to see Jack (Julie Bowen was pregnant when they filmed it; she’s since had her child)
-FINALLY they show that Cooper’s death has had an effect on Sawyer. I was getting a little worried that he seemed to just brush it off.
-When Desmond hides in the locker, he looks like he’s in a confessional
-Mikhail says he thought the Looking-Glass women were on assignment in Canada. HA! They always refer to Canada when talking about anything evil. I love it. :)
-Malcolm David Kelley’s voice is changing, even though he’s still supposed to be 12. D’oh… the island keeps Richard young, and ages Walt more quickly. :) By the time the series ends, the actor will be 19.
-Rousseau says she won’t go back with them, like she knows better and unlike Jack and the rest of them, has actually considered the true implications of what returning to the real world would be.
-Ben says Naomi is “one of the bad guys,” which echoes what he said in the season 2 finale, “We’re the good guys, Jack.”
-Ben predicted how Jack’s life would turn out off the island, when he told him he had nothing to get back to
-Jin, Sayid, and Bernard were the ones widely speculated to be killed off in the finale, so it’s like the writers were totally screwing with us.
-Ben’s tied to a tree in much the same way Cooper was tied to the pillar.
-Locke still can’t kill someone, even when pushed to the limit
-in the final flashback, Jack had several maps all over the floor and on the wall, like he’s been trying to find the island again to go back

Questions:
-Whose death did Jack read about in the paper? He was seriously upset about it in the car. I thought maybe Locke, but they had a hate/hate relationship. Sawyer? It had to be someone who would have lived in L.A. and no one would attend the funeral, so that still points to Locke or Sawyer. Or maybe someone likeable like Hurley or Claire, who came back, fell apart like Jack did, and committed suicide, alienating all their friends. (If whoever it was died in a bad way, it would upset Jack because he would feel responsible.) Juliet, maybe? At the funeral home, the guy says, “Friend or family?” and Jack says, “Neither.” So it could be Locke. Or Sawyer. Maybe Sawyer, since it appears Locke will refuse to leave the island.
-Why did Sarah bother coming to see Jack in the hospital?? She just seems to stand there, then refuses to give him a ride home, saying it was “inappropriate” (he’s your ex-husband, and needs a ride, don’t you care about him even as a human being?)
-Korean Translation question: What does Jin say in Korean when Ryan cocks the gun at him?
-What did Ben mean when he told Richard he could take the people to the Temple? What Temple?
-when Kate said she could be pregnant, and Sawyer said, “Let’s hope you’re not,” did he mean it to sound prickish, or does he know the pregnant women die and doesn’t want her to?
-Did anyone else think Des and Charlie’s boat was WAY further off-shore than it really was?
-How far into the future do you think Jack’s flash-forward was?
-Had Juliet and Jack been gettin’ it on before she kissed him in front of Kate?
-Is Ben a chronic liar, or is everything figured out ahead of time? He lies to absolutely everyone, and while it seems like he does it often out of desperation, things always seem to work for him in the end. He’s clearly working alone at this point. Mikhail and Tom both thought the big hatch explosion knocked out their communications, and now Mikhail finds out Ben’s been jamming it behind his back.
-Was Walt really on the island, or did Walt somehow astrally project himself to Locke the same way he did last season to Shannon?
-Bonnie says the keypad was programmed by a musician. Who? Is Brian Wilson on the island?
-Jack tells Hamilton to get his father down here right now and find out if he’s drunker than him. Does that mean his father’s really alive? Or was he simply being metaphorical, and reminding him that he’s not as bad as his father?
-How did Penny happen to be transmitting at exactly the moment the channel was opened? Has she been transmitting constantly?
-Didn’t anyone think it took Charlie a REALLY long time to shut off that switch, since he went away over 24 hours before the switch was actually shut off?
-Who is Naomi? What will happen? Will they really get rescued here, or somewhere in the near future?
-Does Ben really know that Naomi’s not on the up-and-up, or is he just saying that hoping they’ll believe him, not realizing he’s actually right?
-What did Locke mean when he said, “You’re not supposed to do this?”
-in the final flashback, Kate says “he” will be wondering where she is. Who? Sawyer? Or is she with someone else? Did she go back to her husband? How is she not in prison? She’s certainly well off with the fancy car and such.

I’m sure I’m missing a lot, but it’s late, and I need to post this. I’ve watched the episode twice, after saying I wouldn’t. It was just too good to watch only once.

So now… we wait until February. Ugh. But WOW what an ender. I’m happy. Super happy. What did you think?