BEWARE THE SPOILERS 

Lost had an astonishing 2 hour finale last week (and part 1 two weeks earlier wasn’t too shabby either), answering a number of our burning questions and giving fans a great deal to think about and look forward to for the next six months before season five. This season has done a fantastic job of picking up the pace, remaining cinematic, and feeling like a full season even with only thirteen episodes.

With a three-part episode to cover, I’m going to deal with a lot of elements by just laying out my predictions for season five.

1. Michael will return as a “ghost.” I say “ghost” because we’re still not entirely sure what Christian, Charley, et. al really are now after their deaths, but I believe Michael will be one of them. Christian comes to him just before the boat explodes and says that now he can go. Remember that when he got off the island, all Michael wanted to do was die and for some reason he couldn’t while he was off-island. Michael finally redeemed himself, at least somewhat, trying to help his old friends from the island, and I think this is the island’s way of rewarding him for that.

 2. Jin isn’t dead and will be back. Okay, Jin MIGHT not be dead– it’s really hard to tell. But the way the explosion was shot makes me really suspicious. We didn’t actually see him die. The camera went to a birds-eye view as soon as the explosion happened. Michael was standing too close to the C4, but Jin was already up on the deck. Did he jump off and somehow survive? The question then is, where would he go? The island was gone! But perhaps anything in a certain radius outside the island also disappeared with it. Jin could have swam back to the island and never known it was moved. The way the last several episodes have handled Jin’s death, how hard Sun has taken it and everything, makes me wonder if he’s coming back. On the other hand, he may return to Sun in flash forwards off-island as a ghost, which would blow my theory… but more on that later.

3. Claire is dead and has been ever since she disappeared. I said this a few weeks ago, and I think the fact that she comes to Kate in a dream is pretty good confirmation to that. Keep in mind that sometimes the “ghosts” have come in person and sometimes there have been bizarre dream sequences like this one (many of which Locke has had) but if the person who appears in the dream is dead, I think it’s one of these “ghosts” and that’s one of their special abilities. I thought Claire might already be one when she was with Christian in Jacob’s cabin, and now I’m sure of it. And by the way, the scene with Jack and Claire’s mother at the funeral, where Jack finally learns she was his sister, was both one of the best scenes written in Lost and one of the creepiest– her grandson is right there and she doesn’t even know it!

4. We haven’t seen the last of Desmond. I love that Desmond finally gets to be with Penny. I honestly didn’t think this would happen– I thought he was going to die in the helicopter, and the writers even faked us out to think he did for a minute. At the same time, I think it’s too good to be true. I’ve been complaining all season about Desmond’s vision that never came true– Claire never gets in a helicopter. And then my fiance came up with a theory (I really can’t take any credit at all for this one) that makes complete sense and I think explains a whole lot. She thinks that his visions last season weren’t predicting Charley’s death, but rather telling Desmond what would happen, as long as he saved Charley. So when he predicted finding Penny’s picture and that Charley would get killed by a dart, it wasn’t his death that had to happen, it was saving him, and the vision was telling him what he had to avoid. So Charley didn’t have to die to communicate with the boat– he already got through before he locked the door behind him and drowned! And somehow, because Desmond didn’t save Charley that last time, Claire doesn’t get on the helicopter– she dies! (or at least I think she did). If this is the case, Desmond may have to atone for it later. I don’t know if that means he’ll come back to the island (I don’t think he’s one of the people Ben insists has to return– I think that’s only people from flight 815) but he’ll be back so the writers can, hopefully, explain all of this too us.

5. John Locke is going to try and move the island again. There are some potential issues with this prediction, but it just makes a lot of sense to me. We know that something horrible happens on the island which makes John, somehow, return to the states. And we can be pretty sure that the reason he dies is related to the idea that he was never supposed to leave. Ben has a very specific line in Part 1, saying that moving the island is dangerous, unpredictable, and “a measure of last resort.” If things get so bad on the island while John was leading the others, he might try that last resort again. Remember that although he has the deepest connection to the island, he also has a history of doing the opposite of what he’s supposed to do. He stopped pressing the button in season two, and I could see him trying to move the island again. Also, how else could he possibly get off the island but through the same means that Ben did? Moing the island also moves Ben through time and space, ten months into the future and onto the desert, as we saw a few episodes ago. I think Locke is going to do the exact same thing. By the way, I said at the beginning of the season I thought Locke was a candidate for being in the casket, and I changed my mind. Oops.

6. Ben was lying about not being able to return to the island and planned the whole thing. This is maybe a radical prediction, but the writers were careful to give Locke the line, “when are you ever entirely truthful” in this episode, and I think that was deliberate. Ben claims that the price he has to pay for moving the island is to never return. He says that his time is over and now it’s Locke’s time to lead the Others. He also says, in the future, that the Oceanic Six all have to return, and so does Locke. Here’s one of the problems with my last prediction– if Ben can’t return, then does Locke try to move the island, because wouldn’t that mean he couldn’t return either? Yes, unless Ben was lying, he really can return, and all of this was another of his elaborate setups. I have no idea what exactly he would be trying to accomplish with all of this, but if he knew John was destined to take over for him on the island this whole time, why did he try to KILL HIM in season 3?? He couldn’t have gotten that information from Jacob because he hasn’t seen Jacob sense before he tried to kill Locke.

7. The smoke monster has something to do with the “horrible” things that happen on the island after John takes over. We know that Ben has some kind of control over the smoke monster, and I think John will have all the powers and privilages Ben had. I also think he’ll screw some of them up– don’t get me wrong, I love John Locke, but that’s just consistent with his character. I think he’s going to “misuse” the smoke monster somehow and that’ll be the bulk of the “problems” he deals with.

8. John Locke will be resurrected by the island. This one’s probably a no-brainer. They’re not going to kill Locke off for good– he’s too important. The fact that Ben says he’s got to go back just before we know who is in the casket is good evidence that I was right a couple blogs ago when I suggested that the island could bring some people back to life. I even thought once that Christian might not be dead– that’s a hard sell when he’s been visiting people off-island– but maybe there’s still something to that idea. Again, I don’t think the “ghosts” are traditional ghosts. They seem to be something in between and something a lot more powerful.

9. Daniel and Charlotte will be revealed to be part of Dharma. We now know that they used to be on the island, but I wondered if they were Others are Dharma? Considering they knew how to get to a particular station and what was there toward the middle of the season, I vote Dharma. Plus, neither seemed to know enough about Ben if they were ever Others. I don’t think they’ve been to the island since they were kids.

There are a lot of other things I could go into, but those are the big ones. I’m glad that the Six did get off at the end of this season, and I’m glad we finally got an explanation of how long they were in the states before the bearded-Jack scenes. Disregard everything I ever said about Aaron’s age. It makes sense now. I guess I didn’t think they would be off for three years because I was worried the show would have to cover that distance. But it already has in flash-forwards. I think the idea was to show all the off-island stuff the writers wanted to as flash-fowards this season, and then next season they’ll bring the Six back to the island. That’s really clever, because now the series has finally reached 2008– it’s been 2004/05 for four years on this show! I just hope it doesn’t take all next season to bring them back. If it did, we’d have future footage, and we’d have Locke with the Others footage, and for a whole season, that’d be a little boring.

Join me in the fall for reviews of Chuck and Heroes, and then in the spring again for more Lost. And remember that you can go back and refresh yourself on any previous Lost episode (including seasons 1-3 if you don’t have the dvds) at abc.com.

LLAP

-Cap’n Logan

Well, I finally scored on a prediction. Michael is confirmed as Ben’s guy on the boat. Like I said last week, I still don’t think is a great surprise and I wish we hadn’t had to wait seven episodes for it. The big problem with Lost’s experimental format is that if you keep leaving an audience hanging, sometimes for unbearably long amounts of time, there has to be a GREAT payoff. Sometimes it works, in cases like the revelation last season of how Dharma met its fate. And then again, sometimes it doesn’t. This isn’t the only bad payoff in this episode, but I’ll revisit this theme a little later…

I certainly appreciate Desmond getting the news that Whitmore is the man behind the expedition this early after the audience found out, just last episode. The Captain of the boat is quite interesting, especially how “forthcoming” he is, as Sayid says. Considering how secretive the whole expedition h as been, this was surprising, but welcome. On the other hand, it still begs the question of why they’re so secretive and what they still aren’t telling us. And although I think we could already infer that the “wreckage of Flight 815” found back in civilization was fabricated, it was nice to have a character confirm this. Perhaps the only big revelation in the episode, besides who the last member of the Oceanic Six is, is the idea that Ben had something to do with that fabrication. I never considered this, but I’m starting to think I should have. Is it possible he went to all that trouble just over his obsession with Juliet? He wouldn’t ever let her leave the island and why else would he want civilization to think there were no survivors?

In a lot of ways this is the best Jin/Sun episode of the series. As much as I never loved the Sun affair story I’m glad to see it concluded here and in a very sensible way. Juliet lets the cat out of the bag to Jin, but she apparently only does it to save Sun’s life (keeping her from joining Locke so she can get off the island before it kills her). Jin’s mad– who can blame him?– and it looks like it might be the end of their marriage. Then Bernard, of all people, calms him down and reminds him how hard but worth it marriage is. I doubt anyone with much investment in this series didn’t get a little misty eyed when Jin and Sun worked it out. A conflict that was beautifully executed and beautifully resolved.

Some of the drama is lost, of course, by the fact that we know Sun isn’t going to die because we see her flash-forwards and know she’s going to have her baby. This is another necessary evil of the format, I think, so I can mostly forgive it. But what I absolutely cannot forgive is the way flashbacks were mixed with flash-forwards simply to throw us off to the fact that Jin dies in the future.

I’ve come to appreciate big revelations from flash-forwards. They’re hard to follow, we never know exactly when they happen, but I’m getting used to it and it’s often quite worth it in the end. But this was the most pointless and obnoxious plot device I’ve ever seen– in any show whatsoever. Jin goes to buy a panda bear. It’s a cute scene because we’ve seen his wife in labor and assume it’s part of the same flash-forward. Then later he loses the bear in a taxi and goes back to get another one. It’s still cute but now we’re wondering why he’s so obsessive that it has to be a panda. Finally, when he shows up at the hospital, we find it’s for a client of his boss, Sun’s father. After all this heart-warming stuff, I the viewer am immediately crushed. I’m not hating it yet, though, because I think it’s a reveal– I think this is the show’s way of telling us Jin makes it off the island only to go back his crappy life again and Sun’s father comes before Sun.

Then, the unthinkable happens: he says he’s only been married two months. Two months? It’s a flashback! Suddenly it only serves as a way to screw with the audience and I’m quite offended by it. It contributes nothing to the plot, gives us nothing new about Jin’s character, and doesn’t even do anything to foreshadow his death, which might have almost made it worth it. And what was with Sun calling out for Jin during the delivery and a nurse saying he hadn’t arrived yet? We’re supposed to buy that she was calling for him and didn’t even realize it, but that’s a lame excuse– it was really just the writers trying to throw us off some more so that when Jin’s footage turns out to be a flashback, we’ll all be impressed and say how clever that was because we didn’t call it. No. It’s only clever if there are signposts and you still can’t call it, so that you can look back and say, “oh, I should’ve realized that!”

The final problem with it is that I knew something was fishy going on because now there were SEVEN survivors that made it back instead of six. It’ll be a little interesting to see how exactly he dies and if it’s on or off-island, but I hate the way it was revealed.

This does raise a question, of course. Despite the age of baby Aaron in Kate’s flashback (at least two) it seems people are going to have to get off the island now earlier than we were lead to believe the last few episodes. If Juliet’s right, Sun has to get off in three weeks or she’ll die, and she must, because we know she doesn’t die. This seems inconsistent to me. Sun has been pregnant for at least two or three months, so these flash-forwards are probably about four months from now. If Kate’s was a year or two from now, it doesn’t make sense, unless it really took that long for her to go to trial. Let me know if you have ideas on this because I’m quite confused.

LLAP

-Cap’n Logan