Lost: Third Time Lucky

Warning: There be major spoilers ahead!

I didn't get to "sleep on" my reflections on last night's Lost Season Three finale, thanks to a midnight call from European traveller Tammy who'd managed to have her purse stolen ("... it was right on the seat beside me!") in the first 24 hours of an 8-week trip (how's that for Instant Gratification?) She was smart enough to have a moneybelt with her along with a plan to keep her passport, credit and debit cards in it, and stupid enough to not use it while she was out painting the town red at 4:00 in the morning. After several phone calls and mad scribbling of information by Vicki, along with all kinds of worrying by both of us, sleep proved to be elusive for most of the night.

And yet... I do feel better qualified now to ponder what we watched last night. It just so happened that we saw the 2 parts with a 2 hour break in the middle, because CTV devoted 8:00 to 10:00 to some crap called American Idol, and bookended it with our finale. I'm not sure if that helped or hurt the experience, but I mention it for posterity.

I also noticed that both the 24 and Lost season finales this year featured scenes with the lead hero - both named Jack - standing on a high ledge, contemplating suicide. Coincidence? Well, yes, but kind of weird, wouldn't you say?

It seems to me that any consideration of this episode - "Through the Looking Glass" - has to deal upfront with what has to be one of the best shock endings in TV history: the revelation that Jack's misadventures back in Los Angeles, interwoven with the Island scenes throughout this double-length episode, are actually from the future, rather than the past! We've been well-trained, over three seasons now, to expect that these backstories are flashbacks, of varying vintages. The notion that we're being shown even a glimpse of life after the island should be so foreign to us by now, that this shock ending can knock your socks off. And, speaking for Vicki and I at least, it did! The one thing that bothered me about it, though, which I need to get off my chest right off the bat, is the cheat scene that seems to invalidate the ending. That scene occurs during one of Jack's drunken rampages in L.A., where he says in the hospital, "You get my father down here right now... and if I'm drunker than he is, you can fire me!" That piece of dialogue makes absolutely no sense if spoken in the future, when both Jack and the hospital staff all know Christian Shepherd's been dead for months (or years). It obviously makes us think this is happening in the past, when the senior Dr Shepherd was still alive. That's a cheat, if you ask me. And it's not like the episode would've been significantly dimished without that line, either.

With that out of the way, there's still so much to take in that it's ridiculous. The scenes in L.A., that we now know are in the future: are they the end of the story, or the middle? Will Jack and Kate get off the island, and never get any closure to whatever and whoever they left behind, or will their attempts to return and find the rest of the survivors make up the final arc of Lost? What's the lie they're having to keep that's tearing Jack apart, and what was the mistake he thinks they made? And having seen Jack sunk so low, is it possible to even believe he'll ever recover?

Here are just some of the other questions that occur to me:

- what's the temple that the Others are headed to?
- why was Benry so willing to re-unite Alex with her mother, after 16 years of lying to her (was her betrayal really enough to turn him against her)?
- was Naomi really "one of the bad guys," as Benry stated, and if so, why did she have that photo of Desmond and Penny, and does her real agenda put into question her comments regarding Ocean 815's remains having been recovered (maybe not, as didn't Locke's dad say something similar during his time on the island)?
- how did Desmond get out of the water and into the locker without the girls hearing him or seeing the water trail he would've left? (I doubt we'll ever find out on that one!)
- was the woman, whose car accident Jack inadvertantly caused, anyone we know? (she sort of looked like Sawyer's girlfriend/con artist, which would make her son Sawyer's kid? probably not, as he's 8 years old and that's likely too old)
- why did Juliet really volunteer to go back to the beach with Sawyer? (and was "Don't wait up", to Jack, as she left, the coolest exit line all year?)
- what was the "assignment in Canada" that the two girls in the Looking Glass were supposed to taking care of?
- is Benry really in contact with the island, or just plain crazy?
- how many lives does Mikhail really have?
- why's Walt appearing to Locke looking so much older than he did before (just the reality of the child actor having noticably aged in 2 years, or some plot-based reason)?
- was Locke actually right for a change, and this time it was Jack who was making a grave error by using the satellite phone to contact the ship?
- what kind of guy just throws out a "because I love you" line to one girl before walking off, right after he's kissed his other girl goodbye in front of the first girl?
- is Jack's screwed up state, back in the real world, simply the result of getting off the island without rescuing everyone else, or is there more to it than that?
- who's the dead body in the funeral parlour that Jack visited (and no one else did) and why are they "either" friend or family to Jack? (or was it "neither" that Jack said, as the closed captioning seemed to think it was?) Vicki guessed it was Locke inside the casket...
- what does it mean that the first real words exchanged between estranged mother and daughter (Danielle and Alex) are, "Will you help me tie him up"?
- why have the bad guys on the freighter, if they really are bad, been trying to find the island for years?
- has Jack ever had a harder decision to make than letting the one-minute countdown run out on Sayid, Bernard and Jin?
- was it just a coincidence that Charlie was the one 'destined' to turn the jamming device off and it required knowledge of musical notes to do so?
- did Sawyer really care so much about Walt being taken off the raft at the end of Season One that he'd kill Tom over it, or was it just payback for things Tom had done to Sawyer while on the second island?
- will Hurley ever have another moment like the one where he drove the van onto the scene to save the day?
- how did Charlie know what tones buttons 1 through 16 would play, anyway?
- is Charlie really dead, just as I was starting to like him?
- where the Hell's Penelope, anyway? (she's not on the freighter, obviously)
- will "Through the Looking Glass" ever replace "Z'Ha'Dum" as my all-time favourite cliffhanger season finale? (unlikely, but it's probably moved into the Top 5, which is quite the feather in Mira Furlan's cap, let me tell you!)
- and since when did Sawyer start calling Kate "Kate"??

Wow. Any episode that raises that many questions, and makes me desperate to come back to find out the answers, is pretty damn impressive.