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

 BEWARE SPOILERS

My reaction at the end of this episode was much like how I responded to the beginning: wha– huh? That’s to be expected with Lost, but I’ve never been so confused. Did Locke really say they had to MOVE the island??

The writers have really restored my faith this season, revisiting a lot of very old arcs I was never sure would come back again, but now I’m wondering if things are getting a little too convoluted. We’ve waited eleven episodes (most of the season) to learn more about Jacob, and when Locke finally finds the cabin again, we get (big surprise) a bunch of new questions and not too many answers. The one thing I’m pretty confident about is that Jacob’s a ghost, but I gathered that more from the events of last week’s episode.

I am happy that we didn’t have to wait another episode before they came back to the ghost stuff– they set it up last week with Jack seeing his father in the future and Claire in the present, and that lead directly to what we had here. So here’s the big question: is Claire alive?? She’s certainly not acting like herself and wherever the baby is, considering how close we are to the end of the season and we know Aaron gets off the island, she’s probably never going to see him again. And she seems very content. I’m glad they finally decided to resolve the Jack/Claire/Christian thing, though I never thought it would be so twisted and weird. But again, I’m much more interested in knowing about Jacob at this point, and as far as they’ve stretched that, the reveal better be really fantastic.

I’m going to harp on the Desmond vision thing again because I’m afraid that mistake is worse than ever now. If Claire is dead or if she refuses to leave her father, she never gets in a helicopter! Desmond saw that in his vision last season and it’s important because it was what predicted that help was coming to the island. Not much of a prediction if whohe saw in the helicopter was wrong! And the writers are screwed on this one anyway because even if she does get in a helicopter, it’s been too long– none of his other visions took this long to come true.

Nice to finally get a Locke-centered episode this season. The flashbacks were jarring and nothing short of bizarre. It looks like the island has actually been in control of Locke fora  long time. One of the Others came to him as a kid– though I really didn’t understand that scene. Locke was supposed to say which items used to belong to him, and when he picked the wrong one, the guy was disappointed and left (can’t remember his name for the life of me but he told Locke in the present last season that he had to kill his father). Is it possible there’s some time travel involved here, like what happened to Desmond? Maybe the Other knew about the future and was hoping that somehow kid-Locke had memories from the future as well.

I realize that’s a leap, but the way Ben was acting this episode also makes me suspicious. In his episode a couple of weeks ago, he seemed very surprised to find himself in the desert in the future, and it looked like he might have transported from his room (where he went to control the smoke monster) to the future where he wreaked havoc and made Sayid work for him, then returned to the past just a split second after he left. I’m not sure if that’s what happened, but it’s the widely-accepted theory across the net at the moment (so I’m not taking credit for that theory at all). That would explain why Ben conceded this episode, telling Locke that his time is over and Locke’s has just begun. If he knows what happens in the future, he has nothing to lose by laying low and pretending that losing his daughter has broken him. What I’m getting at is this: maybe he’s not the only one who can time travel? It’s been established that it’s the consciousness that transcends space-time (at least it was for Desmond) and so maybe Ben and some of the Others figured out how to control that.

 And the guy who said he was from Oceanic and made the offer to Hurley in the future is the one who told Locke about the walkabout, presumably to make sure he got to the island. How does that guy fit into everything? Is he working for Whitmore or Ben or someone else?

Meanwhile, there’s mutiny on the boat and some guys want to kill everyone on the island. I’m still not liking all the mystery surrounding this. I don’t really know why they want to do this unless they have a directive from Whitmore, and that would be consistant with Ben’s line at the start of the season that the man who sent the boat would kill them all to have the island all to himself. If that’s the case, I don’t know why they’re treating it like such a giant mystery– they’ve set it up already. I also think Michael is headed toward some sort of a redemption and that he’ll join the regular cast again sometime soon.

The information came to the people on the boat that the doctor washed up on shore with his throat slit, but of course, that hadn’t happened yet. I wonder what would have happened if they didn’tslit his throat and changed the future… because the future for them is apparently the present for us. Suddenly we wouldn’t be able to trust anything that happened on the beach. Or perhaps it isn’t possible to change the future in this continuity. If that’s the case, I’d like it established soon. It looks like time anomalies are essential to this show so I hope a consistant science is decided on. That’s always mirky territory and dangerous to the whole continuity of a series when done wrong.

Again I wonder: why does Locke have to move the island? How do you move a whole island? And does this have something to do with all the time stuff? Maybe when it’s moved the people from the expedition won’t be able to get to them because the time field will be too big to cross through. Or maybe moving it will stop the time lag.

The plot thickens and my brain comes closer to exploding. Please share your thoughts!