“Lost” has lived up to its name over the past five seasons by driving its viewers insane with curiousity over the twists and turns its plots make. Considering the show’s first episode was about a handful of plane crash survivors, and season five dealt primarily with time travel and getting back to the Island, the show has clearly taken some turns.

Starting off as a cross between Survivor and Stephen King’s “The Stand”, it has since lost its everyday feel, and embraced its full sci-fi nature. At the end of Season four, we found out that Locke had gone to the mainland, and that the Oceanic 6 and the others who escaped need to return to the island.

At the beginning of this season, the “Losties” were split into two groups. On the mainland, Jack and Ben were trying to gather the rest of the Oceanic 6 to go back to the Island to save the others they left behind and fix the mistake they made by leaving.

The enigmatic Sawyer took charge of those left behind back on the Island — Juliet, Bernard, Rose, Miles, Faraday and Charlotte — where the Island is out of sync with the world and is shuffling through time. They finally end up, after the death of Charlotte and separation of Rose and Bernard from the group, among the Dharma Initiative in 1974. More on that later.

Three years off-Island pass and, through many twists and turns, all the mainlanders end up on the an Ajira plane which they were told would return them to the Island by the enigmatic Eloise Hawking. While flying over the Island, Jack, Kate, Hurley and Sayid are pulled in by the time-skips and simply vanish from the plane, leaving Sun, Ben and the dead John Locke behind. The plane crashes on the Hydra, a Dharma station on the Islands smaller sister island, still in 2007.

Jack, Kate and Hurley are found by Jin — dressed in full Dharma garb — and we realize that at least three of the Oceanic 6 have made it to the rest of their group, who are stuck in what is now 1977. Things have certainly changed in the three years since Sawyer, Juliet, Miles and Faraday came across the Dharma Initiative. They had been living a fake life with the initiative, even claiming spots of power. Sawyer in particular became the head of security for Dharma in his three years there.

To make a long season short: most of the Losties have been tossed back in time, and need to deal with the Island’s mysteries, the Dharma Initiative and trying to change the time loop they discover they are trapped in. To be sure, “Lost” has maintained its title of the best and most confusing show on television.

Now that a basic recap is out of the way (yes, I know, we haven’t talked about Richard, Widmore and Ellie in the 50s, Locke being resurrected, or Hurley rewriting “The Empire Strikes Back” to make George Lucas’ life easier), last week the season finale “The Incident” aired, and for the first time in “Lost”s long history, gave us a look firsthand into the mystical nature of the island.

The episode begins with two people sitting on a beach on the Island, with a fully constructed statue of Anubis (this has been seen in previous “Lost” episodes only as a foot and finally answers the season five question “What lies in the shadow of the statue?”), arguing to each other, and watching an old ship sail towards the island (yes, that was The Black Rock). One is revealed to be the mysterious Jacob, which the Others take orders from but who has never been shown in the show before, and the other is a man who professes to wanting to kill Jacob but needs a “loophole” in order to do so.

Throughout the episode, the show flashes back to important moments in the Losties lives — right after Jack’s surgery where he used “One…two…three…four…five” to contain his fear, when Locke was thrown out the window by his father, when a young Kate was caught trying to steal from a convenience store — to show that Jacob was there for all of them. He directly impacts some, while just merely being around others. The two biggest changes are making sure that the car that hits Sayid’s wife doesn’t claim his life as well, and bringing Locke back to life after his fall that claimed his legs. He also appears and talks directly to Hurley, confirming what many fans have thought for a while: Hurley isn’t crazy; he’s special. Needless to say, Jacob has been planning for these people to make a visit to his Island well before they got on the plane.

What is interesting is the time span of when the events happened. Jacob visited Kate, Locke, Sawyer and Jack before they travelled to the Island, but visited Hurley and Sayid after they had left as part of the Oceanic 6. Whether this is important or not has yet to be determined.

It is also interesting that Jacob gave them advice — like telling Kate not to steal anymore when she was young and telling Locke to move on with his life from his father — that those characters have all since broken. We have seen from Kate’s flashbacks that she has stolen numerous time, as we know from the other characters’ backstories that they have not followed Jacob’s advice. Did he know they wouldn’t all along? Or was being brought to the Island punishment for not listening to him? But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The main plot of the episode was that Jack had gotten his hands on the hydrogen bomb Jughead that was buried at the beginning of the season and plans on destroying the hatch before it is ever made, thereby changing time so Oceanic flight 815 never would crash on the Island Sawyer and a few of the others protest this, saying that if they can’t change the future, they will just end up destroying the Island and therefore themselves. Jack, ironically now the man of faith, refuses to hear it, and ends up in a long-awaited bloody fist fight with Sawyer.

Meanwhile in 2007, Locke convinces Ben why Ben should kill Jacob instead of Locke (Locke saying he was going to kill Jacob was the cliffhanger finale from the episode before). Richard, who is leading them to Jacob on Locke’s behest, brings them to the remains of the statue and Ben and Locke enter to find Jacob.

Outside, some of the survivors of the Ajira plane crash who the season revealed had some unknown motive for being on the Island, finally met up with the Other Others. Ilana, their leader, addresses Richard as “Ricardo” and asks him “What lies in the shadow of the statue?” He is the first to answer and responds in Latin “He who saves us all.” Ilana and company had been dragging around a giant metal crate and open it to reveal — dun dun dun! — the body of John Locke. They said they found him after the plane crash on the beach, which means the John Locke Ben and Sun have been following is not a resurrected Locke like we have all believed, but instead the man at the beginning of the episode who said he wanted to kill Jacob.

Back in 1977, Juliet realizes whether Sawyer loves her or not, he will always love Kate more, and decides to side with Jack. Radzinsky and Dr. Chen are fighting over whether they should keep digging to build the Swan and set off the “incident” that made it necessary for the hatch to be built or stop. While they are fighting, Jack and company bust on to the scene guns blazing and manage to throw the hydrogen bomb in. After a precious silent “goodbye” moment, everyone squeezes their eyes shut, waiting to wake up in 2003 in Los Angeles when… nothing happens. And then the “incident” occurs. Metal objects start being sucked down the drill shaft and a chain wraps around Juliet and drags her down. Sawyer is unable to save her and heartbrokenly is pulled back from the shaft by Jack and Kate.

Inside the statue, it is clear Jacob knows Locke is the other man and says, “It looks like you’ve found your loophole.” Ben, who professed earlier in the finale to having never met Jacob, lets his jealousy shine through at the thought Locke had already met Jacob and he hadn’t. Jacob asks Ben not to kill him to which Ben replies with a really long version of “What about me?” Jacob replying with “What about you?” probably wasn’t the best move as it instigates Ben to stab Jacob multiple times, whose dead body then rolls down into a pit of fire and burns to death.

Before he died, though, Jacob whispered, “They’re coming,” which leaves us with a whole slew of additional questions. Who is “They”? Perhaps the other Losties are coming back or maybe it’s a new group of people. Perhaps even someone else from the past. It’s certainly open-ended and can’t be good, leaving us with something more to muse over for the next eight months.

In the final moments of the season five finale, the camera travels down the shaft to find Juliet still alive at the bottom. She looks over and sees that Sayid’s “detonate-on-impact” plan didn’t work as the bomb is still whole. Turns out the hydrogren bomb hadn’t caused the incident like earlier in the episode had implied. She grabs a rock and starts smashing the bomb until it explodes and there is a flash of white light and then…..

“Lost.” End of finale.

What this white flash means is certainly a mystery everyone wants to know. The bomb went off, but the ramifications won’t be known to viewers until 2010. This only hint we have gotten. The clip shows an eye opening similarly to the way the first episode begins. The eye also appears to be Jack’s like in the first episode.

Frankly, we shouldn’t be surprised if we begin season six back at episode one, right after the crash, except knowing everything that happened. This theory could allow Jacob to still be alive, Locke not to be dead, and every awful thing that happened in the past five seasons to not have happened. I would be happy to have Charlie and Boone back. However, anything could have happened. If five seasons of this show have taught us anything, it’s that there is no boundary “Lost” can’t cross. From here on out, everything is fair game.

In season six we should find out why Jacob has chosen these people and what they are needed for. He is certainly going to be a big focus of the next season, and probably has the answers that Lost fans have been craving for several years.

Since there is in fact a sixth season the bomb can’t just have killed all of the characters, but we don’t know for sure if it altered history like Faraday believed it would. It will be interesting to see if the last season can live up to the hype. After a slow start, season five hit its stride and became both enjoyable and compelling. The concept of time travel is hard to pull off, but creators Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse did it well, never making destiny solid. Everyone was always at risk, but at the same time, so was the future. The finale was the best episode of the season and left me wanting more but not feeling slighted.

At this point, everyone has different theories on what will happen in the last season. The original popular guess that the Island was Purgatory was shot down early, and since then hundreds of new ideas have popped up. A quick search on the internet will bring you thousands, but I guarantee not one of them will end up 100 percent right. Personally, I am sticking with an Egyptian motif after the appearance of the statue, and that Jacob is Osiris and the smoke monster (and the man on the beach) is Set. However, I’m sure that the writers will prove me wrong. Because of these theories and how long everyone involved has waited, season six is shaping up to be the best season yet.

But season six needs to answer a lot of questions in 17 episodes. Who are Jacob and the other man? What is the Black Rock ship doing in the middle of the Island? Why did this all happen? And most importantly: What is the Island? These are just a handful of the more important questions that the series has brought up, and I’m sure that hardcore “Lost” fans have a lot more they want answered. So if the reset button was in fact just pushed, hopefully the series will return to the feeling of the first season, when it was about not only the mystery, but the people involved. If they dredge up that first season feeling and those spectacular twist moments, then we are only just beginning, because never before has America loved being so lost.

Entertainment editor Terri Schwartz contributed to this article.

What did you think of the finale? What are the questions you think season six will answer? Let us know below!

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One Response

  1. Michael Whalen

    I am really hoping that whatever the results of the bomb going off are, it brings Locke back. And not “possesed” Locke. I want the man himself, in all his former glory (or wheelchair bound misery). I can’t believe they killed off Locke. NO WAY he stays dead.

    Again, whatever Jack’s actions achieved, I hope it brings Locke back.

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