"Time IS The Essence" - Season 5 Reflections

Hey Losties!

On the eve of the finale of Season 5, I thought I'd share some thoughts about this past season, and look ahead to the final season of LOST. (If I'm already starting to get depressed about next year, what am I going to do when the show is actually over?)

This was easily the craziest season of LOST, and I loved every insane second of it. Even though it got heavily into the sci-fi and mythology elements of the show, it also at times felt like a return to classic, Season 1 LOST. Some of the flashbacks, especially the more recent ones, had a definite old school, character-focused LOST feel to them.

The season began by answering some questions that we were left with at the end of Season 4. Where did the island go? Well, the question was more like when did the island go. How did Locke get in the casket? What happened to the Losties off the island? Well, they basically ended up working their way back to the island.

The biggest revelation of Season 5 was the role of time travel in the show. We spent the beginning of the season "flashing" through time with several of the characters. We visited "current-day" 2007, 1954, an undefined ancient time where we saw the complete four-toed statue for the briefest of moments, and of course, 1974 and 1977, where our time-traveling Losties finally settled in with the Dharma Initiative.

Much of the season was devoted to telling us much more about the Dharma Initiative, and how our Losties were carefully (at least for a while) brought into the group in 1974 and 1977. We saw the Swan and the Orchid being built, apparently simultaneously. We met new characters like Phil, Horace, Amy, and the legendary Radzinsky...and now we wish we hadn't, I suspect. We also met Dr. Pierre Chang "in person" for the first time, who it turns out is Miles's father. We also met a man by the name of Jim LaFleur, who of course is really James Ford, who is otherwise known to us as Sawyer. Sawyer became a mastermind of ingratiating himself into the DI, even taking the leadership role of head of security, before things came crashing down due to one bad decision to act and not think first. And while Sawyer was in control, Jack was anything but. For the first time on the show, he wasn't trying to fix things, or lead, or force the issue; he was content to just be. After all he saw this season, especially with Locke, he finally decided to let things happen without his involvement. He was finally convinced of what Locke had been telling him for four seasons: let the Island handle things.

Speaking of Locke, there was quite a story going on off the island, too. We mainly saw Locke attempting to get the Oceanic 6 back to the island, which seemed like such an impossible task, but he did it. Some of them may have ended up in the 1970s, but he did it. And just as Richard told him (because Locke told Richard, because Richard told Locke, because Locke told Richard...), he had to die to do it. (Did he really, though? Why exactly did he have to die? Maybe we haven't seen the reason yet, but his death really had nothing to do with convincing the O6 to return, except for maybe Jack, who it seems is going to have great importance going into tomorrow night's finale.) Of course, Locke's death at the hands of Ben, and his subsequent resurrection upon returning to the Island was a huge development in the story this season. Just more proof that he really seems to be special to the Island.

We were introduced to "Jughead" - a hydrogen bomb that was left by the U.S. military in 1954 and was then placed in the tunnels under what is now the Dharma barracks. Obviously, we know now the importance of the Jughead in tomorrow's finale. It is figuratively and literally a bomb waiting to explode.

Another major player in Season 5 was Eloise Hawking. We saw her as a gun-toting 17-year old Other in 1954, a young mother of - SHOCKER! - Daniel Faraday, and an older, modern-day Mrs. Hawking. She is noteable for
1) helping the O6, and especially Jack, go back to 1977 by getting on Ajira Flight 316,
2) maintaining the first off-island Dharma station, the Lamp Post, and
3) helping her son invent a method of time travel just so he could go to the past to be killed by...her. All because it was supposed to happen this way.

And when we mention Ellie, we must also mention Charles Widmore, who we saw much more of this season. He is an arrogant teenager in 1954, an arrogant young man with a love of horseback riding, an arrogant older man who gets kicked off the Island after the Purge (I think?), and an arrogant modern-day old man who almost loses his daughter Penelope to Ben's vengence.

Aboard Ajira 316, we are introduced to two new characters: Cesar and Ilana. While Cesar didn't last (thanks, Ben), Ilana and another minor character, Bram, are certainly up to something. Ilana took Sayid into custody supposedly to bring him to Guam to face retribution for killing Peter Avellino, but we now suspect that it was just a ploy to get to the Island. She and Bram have a large metal crate that they have yet to open. Maybe tomorrow night... Many fans, including myself, are convinced that they are working for neither Ben nor Widmore, but are in fact the reconstituted Dharma Initiative.

Oh yes, Sayid. Yeah, uh, he tried to kill a kid.

In an effort to end the misery in his life that was Benjamin Linus, Sayid decided that if he killed Ben as a boy, he wouldn't grow up to become the monster that he is as an adult, and it would change everything. This, coupled with Jack's refusal to help save a dying boy Ben for the same reasons as Sayid had for shooting him, actually ended up making Ben who he is. His choice to let Ben die of his gunshot wound at the hands of Sayid forced Kate and Sawyer to bring Ben to the Others, where he was healed, but at the cost of his "innocence." Whatever that means...

To be healed, Ben was taken by Richard into an outer wall of a structure surrounding the Temple, and this place was one of several hieroglyphic-covered locations that we were shown this season. The others were the tunnels, the underground vent in the tunnels which Smokey emerges from, and the strange drainage pool that lies behind the secret door in the closet in Ben's house that he used to summon Smokey. And of course, we were also given a glimpse (finally!) of the pre-destruction four-toed statue, which fan-led internet research suspected was one of several possible Egyptian gods, especially because of the ankhs it is holding in each hand. We also saw that same ancient symbol on a necklace around Paul's neck after he was killed for having a picnic with Amy in Others' territory.

Speaking of dead people, we lost Cesar (we hardly knew ye) and Charlotte this season. Of course, Charlotte was far more noteable because we discovered that she was a child of Dharma, and because of her revelation that Dan had warned her as a child to leave the Island and never return. She came anyway. You could also say that Locke and Ben were both killed, but both managed to make a comeback in pretty dramatic ways.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, before we revel in the finale tomorrow night, I wanted to let you know that this blog will not end with the finale. Please keep checking the blog in the "off season." I will still be posting occasionally, whenever something interesting shows up on the internet, or if they have an online game this summer. I am also going to be doing "The Great LOST Rewatch" this summer; I will be watching every episode from the beginning, from Season 1 all the way through to tomorrow night's Season 5 finale, and I plan to blog about it. I am also toying with the idea of a podcast, but we'll see about that.

I also wanted to try to put things in perspective for a moment. As I mentioned at the start of this post, I am already saddened to think that we are this much closer to the end of this incredible television show. The writers and producers of LOST have managed to get me, a non-TV watcher, completely and utterly addicted to a television show. LOST is like no other, and there could never be another show like it. Keep this in mind: the next few months after tomorrow night will be long and difficult to sit through without new episodes, but this is the last-ever hiatus for LOST. The next break after a season of LOST will be the longest, because it will be forever. From now until then, I'm going to have to learn to just enjoy the last season, and not constantly pay attention to the countdown to the end.
I don't know if any of you are quite as taken with this show as I am. If you are, then you get what I'm talking about. Most people who are fans of the show will go on to other shows simply because there will be other shows on TV and they kind of look a little interesting. For me, though, this is THE SHOW; it don't get no better than this. Not since the original Twilight Zone, and the first season of Twin Peaks, have I enjoyed a TV show this much and this deeply, but those other shows pale in comparison to LOST. As I posted before the start of Season 5, this feels like a show that was created just for me. It's everything I could ever want to watch.
And I can't believe that at this time next year, it will all be over.

So, I hope you enjoy "The Incident," and I will leave you with these questions:

Will the bomb go off?

Will it not go off?

Is the bomb a red herring, and something completely out of left field will take place instead?

If it does go off, will they really erase the last three years? Will the show's creators really show them landing in LA in 2004, having never met each other, and walk off into the sunset...with an entire season left? I have to admit, I kind of like this idea - they could literally do anything in Season 6!

But what would they be going back to? Kate? Prison. Jack? The aftermath of his father's death and a divorce. Hurley? His self-described cursed money, and a possible return to Santa Rosa. Sayid? A search for Nadia. Sawyer? A likely fruitless search for "Tom Sawyer," the con man who caused his parents' death, and Locke's father. Sun? An unhappy marriage to a desperate, raging man. Jin? A dangerous, violent job pursued in an effort to please a father-in-law that will never be pleased. Desmond and Penny would never reunite. Charlie would still be strung out on heroin. Claire would give Aaron up for adoption and might regret it for the rest of her life. Michael would continue to struggle to connect with his son Walt and to make ends meet, and Walt? I'm really not sure. Maybe his powers would never be fully realized.
And then there's Locke. Locke would never find his purpose. He would remain in a wheelchair and work at a box company for the rest of his life. That may be the worst fate of all, especially for a man like Locke: to never realize your destiny.

Good Luck everyone, and Namaste!