Russ McBee

The fourth season of "Lost" ended with a bang.

In my opinion, this has been the best season so far, due in no small part to the narrative discipline imposed by the writer's strike. With or without the strike, though, Season 4 has focused more on exposition than any of the previous three. Where each of the prior three seasons raised about ten times as many questions as those that were answered, Season 4 has delivered on many of the promises made in the run-up. The finale gave us answers about the rescue of the Oceanic Six and left us with tantalizing possibilities for the two remaining seasons.

The two-hour finale, "There's No Place Like Home, Parts 2 and 3," completed the set-up established in Part 1 from two weeks ago. Although we are left with many new questions, some familiar old ones have finally been resolved.

Back at the airport

This season's finale opens where last season's finale ended: drug-addicted future Jack at the airport with Kate. She says that she had "spent the last three years trying to forget all the horrible things that happened on the day that we left" the island. So, that would place the airport scene sometime in 2008, since they were rescued in early January 2005. The obituary for Jeremy Bentham (whom we discover was John Locke) was dated April 5, 2007, but this contradicts the newspaper shown in "Something Nice Back Home," which dates from late August 2007. The latter episode depicts the relationship between Jack and Kate before it dissolved, and the flash-forward to the drug-addicted and bearded Jack of the present episode happens after that. If the obituary had read "April 2008" instead of "April 2007," this would match Kate's statement that she had been trying to forget the island for three years. I think that makes the date of the obituary nothing more than a prop error, off by one year.

The return of Walt

Also in that future time, Walt visits Hurley in the mental hospital. Walt would be about 14 years old if the scene happens in 2008, but he looks quite a bit older (the actor playing Walt is actually 16 this year).

Walt tells Hurley that Jeremy Bentham (Locke) had come to see him. Walt also says to Hurley about the cover story, "I don't understand why y'all are lying." Hurley replies, "We're lying because it's the only way to protect everyone who didn't come back." That's true enough, since anyone left behind would be at risk if Charles Widmore could find the island, but why would Locke go see Walt in the first place? I know Locke and Walt were close in the beginning, right after the crash, and I realize that Walt has been described repeatedly by other characters as "special", but Locke risked blowing his cover as "Jeremy Bentham" by seeking out Walt. Ben says to Jack at the funeral home that all of them have to go back to the island, and they even have to take Locke's corpse with them. Did Locke know the same thing that Ben alluded to, about all of them having to go back, and is that why he went to see Walt? Does Walt have to go back to the island along with the Oceanic Six?

Ben's rage

Although Ben has made many statements in the past that indicated he will do no harm to innocent people, this episode included another major exception to that rule. His rage over his daughter Alex's murder compelled him to kill Keamy in revenge. Ben knew that Keamy's booby-trapped heart monitor would cause the freighter to explode if Keamy's heart were to stop, yet Ben killed him anyway. After Keamy died, Locke said to Ben, "You just killed everybody on that boat." Ben's reply was a flippant "So?"

Ben's casual murder of everyone on the freighter seemed just as evil as his participation in The Purge, in which all of the remaining DHARMA people were gassed to death, including Ben's own father. Ben seemed oblivious to the karmic symmetry of Ben casually killing his own father and Keamy just as casually killing Ben's daughter.

Ben's one-word response ("So?") was a dismissive attempt to justify his own evil.

A couple of months ago, Martha Raddatz of ABC interviewed Dick Cheney; among other topics, she brought up the American public's dissatisfaction with the Iraq occupation:

Let me go back to the Americans. Two-thirds of Americans say it's not worth fighting, and they're looking at the value gain versus the cost in American lives, certainly, and Iraqi lives.

Before she could ask him a question, he interrupted with a churlish and patronizing "So?"

I'm not directly comparing the real murder and mayhem inflicted by the Bush regime to a fictional story on a TV show (that's Antonin Scalia's job), but I do believe Ben's response is cut from the same cloth as that of the power-mad vice president.

Miracles and saviors

At the Orchid station, Locke tries to convince Jack to stay on the island, since Locke believes Jack is destined to do so. Locke tells Jack that if he leaves, he would have to lie about everything that happened since the crash in order to "protect the island." Jack scoffs at the idea that an island would need protection, to which Locke replies, "It's not an island. It's a place where miracles happen." Jack says, "There's no such thing as miracles." This is a mirror of the conversation Locke had with Matthew Abaddon when Locke was in the rehab center, except in that conversation, Locke was the one who didn't believe in miracles.

The last thing Locke says to Jack is this: "Lie to them, Jack. If you do it half as well as you lie to yourself, they'll believe you."

Speaking of miracles, I don't see how any of the Oceanic Six could have survived that helicopter crash into the ocean, much less come away from it almost completely unscathed. It hit the water at high speed and immediately plunged beneath the surface; that would have been like slamming directly into a concrete wall. Maybe Hurley was right when he said none of the Six made it off that island (here we go with the Purgatory theories again). There was hardly a scratch on any of them (although Jack had to do CPR on Desmond, who comes back to life Lazarus-like). Are they dead, or is the island keeping them alive for future purposes?

On the life raft, after the helicopter crash, Hurley asks Kate if Aaron is OK. She says that he is, and that "it's a miracle." The camera cuts to Jack's face; his expression is just shy of rolling his eyes (remembering the conversation he had with Locke just hours earlier about miracles).

Then, miraculously, Penny's yacht appears nearby. Everybody starts yelling, but Jack's only response (as he looks down from another apparent miracle) is "We have to lie." This is both a denial of the miracles of their safety and of Penny's boat, and an acknowledgment of what Locke told him would be necessary. Of course, Jack and Locke were both right: they had to lie. But Jack's continuing denial of "miracles" makes him something of a Doubting Thomas to Locke's (or Ben's) Christ (even though Jack was the one with the Christ-like wound in his side).

Jack has consistently been the Doubting Thomas character since the beginning, yet he is also the one whose last name is Shepard. He's the "shepherd" of his flock, yet he doubts the direction the flock is headed. Jack is ultimately a pessimist, which is neither a flaw nor a benefit -- that's simply his nature. Miracles have no place in his world view, not because he's an empiricist, but because he doesn't think the universe is organized and methodical enough to encompass such things.

If Jack is Doubting Thomas, Ben and Locke are competing for the role of Christ.

The act of moving the island (using a machine the producers called the "Frozen Donkey Wheel" -- love that name) requires the person doing the moving to leave the island and never come back. Ben offers himself as that sacrifice; obviously Locke didn't know how to operate the contraption, but Ben also says that he is the sacrifice that Jacob demands. Right before he begins moving the wheel, Ben looks up and says, "I hope you're happy now, Jacob." He's acknowledging that he's the sacrificial lamb, but why him? Has he displeased Jacob in some way, or does Jacob simply prefer Locke over Ben? Whatever Jacob's reason might be, this act settles once and for all the leadership of the Others, with Ben surrendering his role to Locke.

While Locke is now the leader of the Others on the Island (Richard Alpert even greets Locke by saying "welcome home"), Ben is teleported off the island during the act of moving it. Ben is represented in this sequence as something of a Christ figure: he agrees to sacrifice himself to save the island, and he does so by descending down into a womb-like subterranean cavern, from which he is teleported to (or reborn in) the Tunisian desert halfway around the world.

His descent and rebirth have obvious resurrection parallels, and they're reinforced by looking at the calendar. Ben moves the island on December 30, 2004, and he appears in the Tunisian desert on October 24, 2005. That means he teleported 43 weeks into the future. Human gestation takes 40 weeks.

The Frozen Donkey Wheel sequence also reminded me of Gandalf's sacrifice in the mines of Moria, where he descended deep into the Earth, fighting the Balrog. He (sort of) died in that struggle and was reborn atop a snow-covered mountain. Ben descended into a cold, frozen place and emerged in a hot place. Gandalf descended into a hot place and emerged in one cold and frozen.

We've already seen Ben take on a new role after his emergence in Tunisia: that of crusader against Charles Widmore. Just as the resurrected Gandalf adopted a more active leadership role in the War of the Rings, the reborn Ben takes on the task of actively engaging in a war against Widmore.

The future war

Speaking of Widmore, Sun's flash-forward indicates that she will have an active part in that future war.

Sun said to Widmore, "You and I have common interests. When you're ready to discuss them, call me. As you know, we're not the only ones who left the island." I take that to mean she knows that Ben is after Widmore.

In part 1 of the finale, Sun said to her father that he is one of the two people she blames for Jin's death. In the flash-forward at the funeral home, drug-addicted Jack said to Ben that Sun blames him for Jin's death, but it would seem more logical for the second person to be Charles Widmore. If Widmore is the second person she's after, the scene between Sun and Widmore in London could be construed as Sun approaching her enemy to deceive him into trusting her. Widmore was in business with her father, and the two of them together were somehow connected to the Hanso Foundation and/or the island. I think she's baiting Widmore for a trap, and I think she's in league with Ben, Penny, or both of them.

I think the future war could include Penny and Sun teamed together (possibly with Ben and Sayid) in a conflict against their respective fathers over control of the island.

Foreshadowing for Charlotte, bad omens for Daniel

On the beach, Miles says to Charlotte: "I'm surprised you want to leave. It's just weird after all that time you spent trying to get back here." Charlotte says, "What do you mean?" Her reaction indicates that she's either keeping something from Miles, or maybe she really doesn't know what he meant by the remark. In either case, it foreshadows something possibly interesting about her. What is Charlotte's history with the island?

Later, Charlotte says to Daniel that she's staying on the island "for now," and Daniel tells her that "for now" could end up being "forever." She says she's staying because she's "still looking" for the place she was born. He then leaves in the Zodiac with a bunch of redshirts. If she was born on the island, does that mean she was conceived off-island (like Aaron), or does it mean that the fertility problem on the island arose after she was born?

Speaking of Daniel, he seems to know that the island could be moved, given his "forever" comment. In spite of that, Daniel keeps ferrying people from the beach to the freighter, knowing that he runs a serious risk of being stranded. When the island vanishes, Daniel and the redshirts are still in the Zodiac, far from the beach. We can probably assume they don't make it, and I think that act of self-sacrifice says a lot more about Daniel's integrity than we've seen before.

Seeing dead people

OK, OK, I get it -- Christian Shepard really is dead.

On the freighter, right before the bomb goes off, Michael hears the Whispers and sees Christian Shepard. Christian says, "You can go now, Michael." Michael replies, "Who are you?" In other words, the island is finally letting Michael kill himself. The fact that Michael had never met Christian convinces me once and for all that Christian really is dead, and he's either a ghost or some kind of apparition or spectral artifact created by the island to give itself an intelligible voice.

Maybe Claire, Charlie, Eko, Eko's brother, and Jacob all serve that same purpose. It's taken me a while to come around to that idea, but there it is. The presence of all these ghosts would then be the reason that Miles was chosen to be part of the freighter's expedition team.

Is Kate's dream about Claire a manifestation of the island, or is it Kate's own precognition of danger, away from the island's influence? Or was the dream an actual visitation by Claire's ghost? Or was it just a product of Kate's discussion with Jack at the airport?

When Sayid visits Hurley in the mental hospital, Hurley is playing chess with Mr. Eko's ghost (reminiscent of the chess game between the knight and the Angel of Death in Bergman's "The Seventh Seal"). While trying to convince Hurley to leave the hospital with him, Sayid says, "We're being watched." Hurley replies, in his inimitable way, "Dude, I've been having regular conversations with dead people. The last thing I need now is paranoia."

Sawyer's redemption

Sawyer began transforming as a person after he killed Anthony Cooper. After that event, he slowly began treating people with more dignity and respect, and he started looking out for others, and not just himself. Slowly but surely, Sawyer has changed from a self-centered scavenger competing against his co-survivors into a supporter, a champion, and (here's that word again) savior. Disregarding his own safety, he jumped from the helicopter to lighten the load, in an attempt to save the others on board. That's pretty much the definition of "heroic."

Right before he jumped, Sawyer whispered something to Kate. I'm pretty sure I heard him say "I have a daughter" and "find," which of course suggests that he told Kate to find Clementine and give her a message. Presumably, that message would include the fact that Sawyer opened a bank account in Albuquerque under Clementine's name which contains a substantial sum of money.

Sawyer manages to survive the jump from the helicopter and begins swimming back toward the island. Once on the beach, he meets Juliet, who's sitting there drinking rum and looking at the smoking ruins of the freighter. As far as they know, no one survived from the helicopter (since Sawyer knew it was running low on fuel). As far as they know, no one survived from the freighter either. So how could Locke have known in 2008 that the Oceanic Six made it back to civilization? The remaining people on the island would have no way of knowing there were any survivors from either the helicopter or the freighter. Maybe at some future date, Locke also has to move the island and leave it, and maybe that's when he finds out about the Oceanic Six.

Whatever the outcome, I'm glad Sawyer is still alive.

Another milestone

This episode marks the first time in my life I've ever heard anyone utter the phrase "time-traveling bunnies."

Man, I love that show.