Well it’s come and gone. The Lost season four finale aired and now I feel that emptiness. You know it too probably. It sinks in when you realize there aren’t going to be anymore Lost episodes for like eight months and really not much else on TV can fill the void.
As I said in the last recap, I thought tonight’s episode might result in a bloodbath. Well, a few major characters bit it big time. At least, that’s what we think happened.
If I was to rank all four season finales thus far, this one might sit in the bottom two when it comes to “jaw dropping” endings. But it was still fantastic, full of information, great scenes, beautiful moments and of course…many, many questions for next season.
The show was wrought with all kinds of storylines and a true recap would just go on and on and on. So I’m going to try to highlight the important parts (because there were many of them) and attempt to make sense of it all.
There’s No Place Like Home – The Finale
Back Where We Ended
The episode begins where we left off last season. Jack has just yelled at Kate, “We have to go back! We have to go back!“. But as we rejoin the scene, Kate slams on the brakes and reverses the car. She jumps out and basically rips Jack a new one for even suggesting such a thing.
Kate starts talking about Jeremy Bentham, a man who apparently came looking for all of the Oceanic 6. He’s the guy on the newspaper clip that Jack read at the end of last season. The man dead in the coffin. The man who’s real name is…oh, just you wait a bit!
Kate thought Bentham was crazy, but Jack didn’t. He finally saw the truth. He should never have left that Island. After all his attempts to ignore what he saw there and what Locke was telling him…the error of his ways comes full circle.
It’s amazing to me how awesome the writer’s of Lost are. Last year’s finale ended with Jack making a decision that he was never supposed to make. Locke tried to tell him not to make that phone call, but he did anyways.
Turns out…that was the choice that changed everything. I think we all knew it was a big moment, but now we find out just how much it screwed things up.
When their conversation ends, and Kate zooms off yet again…and as we realize we’re now in the present, the Lost flashback music plays in the background and we are suddenly back on the Island. We’ve just gone from being in the past and having flash-forwards, to now being all caught up and looking at the Island in flashbacks.
I love this show.
This was a brilliant way to start the finale. I didn’t really know what to expect tonight, and the fact that they started with the end from last year was perfect. Just perfect.
Walt and Hurley
Hurley is in the psychiatric ward when out of nowhere, Walt comes to see him. He’s certainly grown up and the producers were right when they said we’d see him again and his age difference would make a lot of sense.
Walt claims Jeremy Bentham came to see him, and he wonders why not a single Oceanic 6 came to visit, and why they are all lying about what happened. Hurley says it’s to protect everyone on the Island who didn’t come back. Like Michael.
I guess Walt doesn’t know the truth behind that story. Michael is dead.
Jack and Locke
Up at Greenhouse/Orchid, Sawyer and Jack catch up with Hurley and Locke. Locke tries one last time to get Jack to stay on the Island, but that goes nowhere of course. We know Jack it dead set on getting off the Island. And then, like we saw in the finale last year, Locke brings it up once again: “You aren’t supposed to leave, Jack.”
And if he does go, he’ll be plagued with wanting to return. Clairvoyant much, Locke? And he’s the one who puts the idea in Jack’s head about having to lie to everyone back home about the fate of Flight 815.
These scenes with Locke and Jack debating their beliefs about the Island are great. Locke leaves Jack with a great line, that comes to fruition later:
“This island is a place of miracles. And if you can’t believe that Jack, just wait until you see what I’m about to do.”
In the Orchid
Ben is taken back to the helicopter by Keamy, only to be rescued by Richard, Sayid, Kate and the others. The deal for helping bust out Ben was that Kate and Sayid could leave the Island freely. Keamy is shot a few times in the back, but they should have checked his pulse. Good armour on that boy. Also, a nice fight scene with Sayid.
Catching up with Locke, Ben shows him where the door to the Orchid is and they descend way into the depths of the mountain. It’s a strange place, with a weird room called “The Vault.” It’s built right up against a wall of negatively charged exotic matter. Ben gives John a tape to watch explaining it, which results in something weird happening.
The video talks about a rabbit being sent forward in time, but as he’s about to see more, it just starts rewinding. You heard a click of the rewind button, but no one touched it. Why did it rewind? I’m baffled.
Keamy, not dead, shows up and reveals that the device strapped to his bicep is a heatbeat monitor that will set the bomb on the boat off if he dies. Well, that’s too bad, because Ben jumps him and stabs him a few times, and the guy dies after a few minutes of bleeding out.
Which leads to the best, most evil line of the night. Locke is shocked that Ben killed him despite knowing that it would blow up the freighter, and he points that fact out to Ben.
Ben’s response: “So?”
Yikes. He’s seriously one of the best bad guys ever.
Charlotte, Miles and Daniel
Back on the beach, Daniel tries to tell Miles and Charlotte that it’s time to go to the freighter and that they really need to get off the Island. Miles says he’s not going anywhere, and when Charlotte says she’s going to leave with Daniel, we get an interesting tidbit.
He tells Charlotte that he thought she was trying to get BACK to the Island. So why would she want to leave?
Woah. What the heck? When she tells Miles later that she’s changed her mind and will stay behind, she says it’s because she’s still looking for the place she was born. So, has she been there before? And if so, how was she born? Don’t babies die in childbirth along with the mothers?
Daniel takes the last load of people (all extras), leaving Miles, Charlotte, Juliette, Rose and Bernard behind.
The Ship Explodes
Before Keamy dies, Desmond, Michael and Jin are trying to stop the bomb. But despite his military training in explosives, Desmond can’t figure it out. The thing has an unbelievable amount of wires. Michael comes up with the idea of freezing the battery so that a charge can’t be set off.
This part didn’t make much sense to me, but maybe I’m just not a bomb expert. I figure if you need the battery for it to explode, then removing it should stop it. But whatever the case, they froze it with liquid nitrogen to buy some time.
In the meantime, the helicopter is returning to the freighter, with Jack, Hurley, Frank, Kate and Sawyer on-board. But the chopper got hit with a bullet during the Ben rescue, so they have to bail out weight. It’s still not enough, so Sawyer decides to bail out himself, but not before asking Kate to do something.
In the last episode, she was talking on the phone to a mysterious person and running a secret errand, which we discovered was something Sawyer asked her to do for him. And now, we see how it happened. He whispers in her ear, kisses her and then jumps out of the chopper.
The red light on the bomb goes off, meaning it’s going to explode once the battery thaws, which wont be longer than five minutes. The chopper comes in for a landing, but Desmond tries to stop them. Frank lands anyways, and they all rush to refuel it. Michael and Jin are still below deck, but Michael tells Jin to get out of there, since he’s got a baby to be the father of.
But the chopper takes off, because no time is left. Desmond, Jack, Kate, Frank, Hurley, Sayid, Sun and Aaron are all on-board. As they float away, Jin runs onto the deck and Sun starts screaming for them to turn around.
And then, we get the second awesome moment of the night.
As Michael realizes the bomb is about to thaw and go off, he suddenlye hears those strange whispers and Christian Shepherd is standing in the room.
Christian says, “You can go now Michael.”
Meaning, we kept you alive this long, now we’re done with you.
Michael asks, “Who are you?” Too late Michael. Boom, the ship explodes, Jin and Michael go down with it, and Sun sees the whole thing. The screams of agony were hard to watch.
Hurley and Sayid
In the present day, we see Sayid kill a man in a car. Turns out he is watching the nutty ward where Hurley is staying. Sayid sneaks in, and tells him he’s there to rescue him. That they are being watched. Hurley, funny as always, responds that’s he’s been talking to dead people, but that he really doesn’t need paranoia as well.
Sayid tells Hurley that Bentham is dead, and while it was said to be suicide, he obviously doesn’t believe that.
As they leave, Hurley looks down at a chess game in progress. He makes a final move and says:
“Checkmate, Mr. Eko.”
Awesome.
Sun And Widmore
Sun is in London, and is there to meet Charles Widmore. He seems to know her father pretty well, having played golf with him a few times.
She confronts him, says they both know that the Oceanic 6 have been lying about where they were and what happened to them there. She says they have common interests, and when he’s ready to talk, come see her.
Her final line is interesting. “As you know, we’re not the only ones that left the Island.”
Charles asks her why she’d want to help him…and gets no answer.
Moving the Frakking Island and Locke Leads
Okay, I’ve seen a lot of stuff this year on Lost, but when Ben moved the Island, I was blown away.
First off, Ben piles all kind of metallic objects in The Vault, despite instructions on the video saying it is dangerous and volatile. Ben turns on some gadget, The Vault starts winding up and boom, the objects inside explode.
He then tells Locke that it’s up to BEN to move the Island, since Jacob didn’t tell Locke how to do it. Jacob wanted Ben to suffer the consequences:
Whoever moves the Island can never come back.
And with Ben leaving, Locke is now the leader of The Others. Ben tells him the way to their camp and that they’ll follow his every word.
Dressing up in his Dharma Parka, going someplace cold, he proceeds to open The Vault and crawl through a new gap in the wall. As he goes down a tunnel, he reaches a ladder that goes even deeper. There is a wall of ice in the way, which he breaks and continues on. But he slips on a broken piece of ladder and cuts his arm pretty good.
And that is how he ended up in the desert with a Parka and bleeding arm.
He arrives in a rock room, with a few of those strange hieroglyphic symbols on the walls. There is a massive crank, almost like the steering wheel of an old ship that is turned on its side, half buried in the wall. It’s stuck, and Ben breaks ice off it and struggles to get it to move. And it starts to turn. As it does, a light begins to glow from behind it and a loud, winding wail sounds all over the Island. The beach, the boat headed out to the blown-up freighter and the chopper can all hear it.
(in the meantime, Sawyer swims up to the beach before it moves, finding Juliette drinking some rum in mourning of the burning freighter on the horizon. He looks back, seeing it for the first time.)
You have to admire Ben for his devotion to the Island and to Jacob. While he’s turning that crank, the tears are coming down his cheek because he knows he can’t and wont be coming back. But he does it anyways. He gets enveloped in light, and the Island starts to glow brighter and brighter, much like that magnetic burst in the second season finale.
As Jack watches from the chopper, he sees the whole thing. The Island disappears in brilliant light, and then with a soft boom, is gone…leaving a slight ripple where it used to be.
Damn that was awesome.
Penny Widmore and The Rescue
Without an Island to land on, and low fuel, the chopper crashes in the ocean, with all the passengers surviving. All this time though, you are wondering what happens to Desmond and Frank because obviously the Oceanic 6 are the only ones to make it back. Or so we think.
As they float around, suddenly a boat comes out of the dark. Not sure if it was just me and the wife, but we both got that creepy vibe when The Others took Walt so very long ago.
As it gets closer, you hear familiar accents and suddenly see Penny Widmore leaning over the bridge area. Desmond sees her and jumps on-board. They embrace and it’s just awesome. They are finally back together.
Penny had tracked their location by tracing the phone call that Desmond made to her in The Constant.
Being all business though, Jack makes sure they all realize that they cannot tell the truth, and that Penny needs to help them make it believable. So the Oceanic 6 get on a raft 8-9 hours off the shore of some island called Mambata. This gives them enough time to get sunburned and look pretty tired, which would be very convincing.
We see them make it to the shore and get to safety.
Kate and Claire
In the present, Kate wakes up in the middle of the night, hears a door open, grabs a gun and goes to Aaron’s room. Someone is leaning over the little guy…and it’s Claire.
Claire. And she has something to say to Kate:
“Don’t you dare bring him back Kate. Don’t you DARE bring him back!”
Woh. that will be a problem as we find out in the final scene.
The Coffin
Still in the present, where we end the episode, Jack returns to Hoffs Drawler – the funeral parlor – for some reason. One of them is so we can friggin’ know who the heck is in that thing!
He busts in, opens up the coffin and just looks. And if you thought it might be Ben, you got freaked out by him appearing BEHIND Jack out of nowhere. That made me jump a bit.
Now up until this time, I really hadn’t been trying to figure out who it was. And once the scene progressed, I realized how obvious the answer would turn out to be.
Ben asked Jack if he’d seen Jeremy Bentham at all, and Jack nodded yes. He spoke to him a month ago. Bentham told Jack that after he left the Island, some very bad things happened. And it was Jack’s fault for leaving. And that he had to come back.
Because Jeremy Bentham is none other than John Locke.
How or why he got off the Island is a mystery. Why is he dead? Who killed him? Did the Island let him die to help bring the Oceanic 6 back?
Ben is there to tell Jack that he can’t get back to the Island alone. He has to bring ALL OF THEM. And that means Aaron too.
Oh yeah, and Locke.
Really, Locke too? Why? To bring him back to life?
Parting Thoughts
I thought the coffin scene got a bit too built up over the season, but it still worked very well. While I figured out who was in it pretty much when Ben walked in the door, it nonetheless was an awesome way to end things.
So who is watching the Oceanic 6? Widmore’s people?
Is Jin alive? What about Michael? I think they are dead, but you never know. What happened to Daniel on the raft as he was headed to the freighter? Did he go with the Island?
I really loved two moments towards the end. In the raft after the helicopter crash, Hurley says that he can’t believe Locke actually moved the Island. Jack replies, “No, he didn’t.” Even after he saw it happen, he wouldn’t believe it.
And when Jack and Desmond part ways at the end, Jack repeats the line that we heard in season 2: “See you in another life, brotha.”
He also added: “Don’t let them find you Desmond.”
Next year should be great. I don’t know if we’ll get flashbacks to what happened on the Island since Locke is dead and there is no one to “remember.” How will they get back? What is Sun up to? How can Kate return and NOT bring Aaron? They need him to get back, but Claire obviously doesn’t want him back.
So many questions.
What did you think of the finale? Did it live up to the Lost standard of awesome for you? What did you notice or see that I missed?
Definitely a good episode.
I’m a little worried now, though, that next season is going to spend too much time off of the island. I hope that’s not the case.
I still say there’s a time travel element involved that will allow some of the people we’ve seen die come back…
They will take Locke back to the island where he will be resurrected.
doc’s girls last blog post..1
@ Jason – The blog I posted yesterday about time travel stuff indicated that the Lost producers say that things can’t be changed…they can only be corrected I think.
So nothing can change now, but they can come BACK to the Island to set things straight.
Still, like Doc’s Girl said…I think Locke could come back and be resurrected by the power of the Island.
First off, great episode. So much to digest over the summer. I think Michael is dead, but Jin may not be…time will tell. Also interesting that we’re learning that there are others who have left and then returned to the island. Could Christian be one of them? Could his death and return in a coffin only to be resurrected as Jacob have been planned? Is that why he was such a drunken mess in real life? If so, could Locke be resurrected if he returns?
So much to think about, but you gotta love it. Lost doesn’t disappoint.
Scotty Dubs last blog post..Casual Dress Friday; The Will Ferrell Job Interview
Great episode as always.
I’m not so sure about Locke coming back to life. The Island LOVES Locke, but I don’t think he’ll be resurrected. People who are controlled by the island can’t be killed until their job is done. This is why Michael couldn’t kill himself when he was trying again and again. This was happening off the island so it has control everywhere. When Michael finally does die Christian tells him that he can go. As if giving him permission to die. Locke’s dead, so the island must have been done with him too.
Good episode, but the creators had warned that it was not going to be a huge ending as in past seasons, so I wasn’t expecting something amazing. However, it still beats any other shows finale’s and that’s all that really matters, right?
@ Mike – as soon as the ship light shinning in the darkness showed up, the first thing I said was, “We’re here for the the boy,” but I had meant Aaron, not Walt – lol.
Good stuff and as always, they leave us with a ton of unanswered questions. I’m really excited for the final two seasons. To fill the void, I’ll be taking in J.J. Abrams new series on Fox called Fringe – which looks amazing in the trailers. Also, I’ve got the last 3 seasons of LOST to watch (again). Seasons 4 is targeted for a Dec 9, 2008 release date on DVD and Blu-ray!
The Trousered Apes last blog post..Who was Jesus of Nazareth? Parts 5 thru 10 of 10 with Dr. Craig
Greatest episode of Lost, ever. I was totally blown away. I deserves another viewing, maybe two more. I think this is the greatest drama TV has ever produced.
I don’t think Jin is dead. I bet that Danelle picked him up in the raft. Michelle, however, is as dead as you can get. But what a heartbreaking scene. Sun’s screams were nerve shattering. My jaws on the floor, my wife’s crying. Good stuff!
Two lines that gave me goose-bumps:
“So?”
“Checkmate Mr. Eko”
The thing that I love about this show is that is forever evolving. We’ve watched it since the very first episode and it’s a completely different show now than it was in the first season. That keeps the show fresh and is the reason we’ve have never stopped watching. That being said, they’ve completely set up for season five. Kudos to the writers. They’re brilliant.
This is going to be a long eight or nine months. Bring on season five!
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Michael is probably dead, given his release by Jacob/Christian.
Jin is probably history too given that if he survived the explosion uninjured he was still too far away from the Island to swim to it before Ben moved it. He would have died in the ocean from exhaustion.
Locke in the coffin became obvious when Jeremy Bentham got mentioned as the deceased. Him taking his rightful place as leader of The Others was interesting too.
The Island moving was certainly a WTF moment. Jack still thinks denial is just a river in Egypt.
Charlotte could have been born on the Island just like Aaron and Alex were with the mother arriving after the ‘deadline’.
Sun has turned to the dark side and will be a force to be reckoned with or redeemed in the upcoming episodes.
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@ Frank – How is Jeremy Bentham obvious? I missed that I guess.
Also, Jin was probably surrounded by debris that he could have floated on for awhile…and we still don’t know if he was caught in the wake of the island moving.
Because remember…the Looking Glass station is underwater…so SOME of the surrounding area goes with it.
As well as the “sister” island that the Others were living on.
Jeremy Bentham, like John Locke, was an English political philosopher. Bentham expanded upon Locke’s ideas in his books. Interestingly, Bentham’s body was preserved and stored in a wooden cabinet that is currently displayed on the campus of University College London.
Jin could have survived I guess but the chances would be rather low I would think. You just don’t want to be that close to that much C4 when it turns a freighter into flying shrapnel. Somebody else mentioned the people on the launch picking him up. That would be a way to logically get him back to the Island.
Will the remaining 815 and freighter survivors in the beach camp conflict with the Others now led by Locke? That’s going to be interesting to see.
Frank Cs last blog post..MacBook Air – It Slices, It Dices
@ Ape – good point. See, I think Jin is alive and Sun wants to get back because she thinks so too.
@ Frank – Ah, I think I missed those key tidbits about Bentham.
But I am curious about what we’ll even see regarding the Island next year. With Locke dead, who will we “flash back” with to see what happened?
I assume we’ll now continue in the present…with their attempt to get back.
The way I see it laying out now: Next season is about getting back, the final season is about the resolution to the entire thing.
@Frank -good catch with the Bentham angle. I remembered Locke from poli-sci in college, but not Bentham, thanks for the refresher.
@Mike -makes sense for next season to cover the return and then season 6 be centered on resolution. Can’t wait.
Scotty Dubs last blog post..Casual Dress Friday; The Will Ferrell Job Interview
Ben what a bastard. As much as he may have been upset with his daughter being killed he would have killed Kemy regardless.
I think Jin is dead, going with the DUI angle, although he lasted longer than Michelle Rodriguez did.
Sometimes I think the writers aren’t playing fair, why wouldn’t they refer to him as Locke, instead of Bentham or other descriptors. Also the voices you hear when the smokemonster, ghosts, or others appear, it was played during Hugo’s party, but apparently there weren’t any dead characters there.
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I know this is an ancient topic, but I am hoping you guys still drop by from time to time…
I usually watch each Lost episode 4-5 times until the next episode is aired. That gives me enough time to absorb all the details in the episode. But when I watched this Finale a few months ago, I was so upset. John is my favorite character on any TV show.ever. Seeing him dead in the coffin made me speechless. I really had no idea how and what to feel. I decided to stop watching Lost altogether and just pretend the show was terminated. So I get to remember the amazing show Lost used to be before this shocking moment. Recently I started reading some sites and interviews with the creators of Lost, turns out Locke and Jin will STILL appear in Season 5. As “Death” on the island isn't the same as the “Death” we all know and hate. That restored my faith a bit.
Now I have the urge to watch the show to find some answers to these questions:
Who killed John?
Why did they kill John?
How did he die?
People keep saying that Locke died because the island was done with him. But I am not so sure about that statement. Keep in mind that John told the Oceanic 6 that “Bad things started happening” after they left. What if the Island / Jacob lost control of their power? What if the Island can't protect or change things outside anymore? And I thought of something else that made more sense…
What if Locke dying IS the way for him to serve his purpose. Locke's death had a very huge impact on Jack and it is pushing him to get back to the Island. So maybe John being allowed to die will be reveresed when John gets back to the Island?
This may have been mentioned somewhere, but uhhh, what happened to Desmond's visions? He told Charlie that he had to die for Claire to get on a helicopter and be rescued. The season ended, some of the Losties got on a helicopter and got off the Island. Claire was stuck in Jacob's cabin all drugged like… Did I miss something? Whatever happened to that? Charlie just died in vain?
I wonder lost will going to continue under season 7 or not. Heard it will stop production until season 6 only. Don’t you guys want Lost to keep on showing? I have bought the dvd and the series is excellent.