LOST: The End - Wuzzon with the Island...

6.17 & 6.18: "The End"

Here it is. A long overdue ramble on events in LOST1 (on the Island) from the series finale. Before it aired, I half-jokingly explained to friends that the finale would be just like the pilot, only in reverse. Not so far off, if you allow for some liberal interpretation. But also, not that much of a gamble, given how this season has been about mirrors and mirroring events from previous seasons.

I still have not re-watched the finale since the Brattle screening. For whatever reason, I'm just not feeling it. While putting this ramble together I referred to a Lostpedia transcript of the episode to help walk me thru the finale events. All-in-all, key concepts in the Island endgame were satisfying enough, but their execution could have been tighter and some of the dialogue, frankly, better written.

I wonder how the finale would play with all of the LOST2 scenes edited out. Or perhaps with all of the Island events played first, and then the afterlife events, "in order," as "ending" and epilogue, which really is what they gave us in LOST2.

* For random visitors to this post, LOST1 refers to the original, living (they did NOT die in the plane crash, people!) reality and LOST2 refers to the sideways/alternate reality (aka the Heart-powered afterlife).

Yes, I DO wish it could've gone differently in a lot of ways, but I won't bring that into this discussion. Maybe I'll eventually motivate to go fanfic with some of my ideas...

Maybe.

Anyhow...

Jack is the new Protector. Jacob is apparently... gone.

Jacob told Jack where the Heart is and he figures out that it needs to be protected from Locke-ness.

Sawyer figures out that Locke-ness needs Desmond to destroy the Heart.

JACK: Jacob didn't say anything to me about Desmond.
SAWYER: Doesn't sound like he said anything about anything.
HURLEY: That's kinda of true, dude. He's worse than Yoda.
SAWYER: All right. Y'all head to your heart of the island and I'll go get the magic leprechaun out of that well.

HURLEY: I've got a bad feeling about this.

Not ten minutes in and they're already giving us two Hurley STAR WARS references. I'm thinking that this is how badly the creators feel they need to hedge things. Anyhow...

Sawyer leaves to retrieve Desmond while the others go on to the Heart. Ben and Locke-ness capture Sawyer at the well. Locke-ness doesn't have Desmond, but plans on using him to destroy the Island and the Candidates along with it.

SAWYER: We're not Candidates anymore.

THAT sounded like a dangerous mis-step at the time. Those words SHOULD have given Locke-ness cause to grin, transform into the monster, and then take a wack at Sawyer in an attempt to kill him. Of course, he would fail, but he could change back over Sawyer's unconscious body and inform Ben, "The Rules still apply. You're still a Candidate, James.

Instead, Ben takes yet another wack to the face and Sawyer makes his escape.

BEN: When you said you were going to destroy the island, I thought you were speaking figuratively.
LOCKE-NESS: Because I said I'd leave you in charge once I was gone? I'm sorry if I left out the part about the island being on the bottom of the ocean. That being said, you're welcome to join me on my boat. Because once we get Desmond to do what we need him to do, I'm going to sail away from this godforsaken place and watch it sink.

Turns out Desmond was helped out of the well by Rose and Bernard. They got flashed back along with everyone else and continued their Island retirement. Unfortunately, after years of peace on their own, their decision to help Desmond brings Locke-ness to their home. Desmond agrees to leave with him as long as the monster promises never to touch Rose and Bernard.

Desmond knows why he's been brought to the Island. First, from Widmore's actions, he knows his value as a person who can survive massive, deadly, amounts of EM radiation. Second, from the apparent crossover flash to LOST2 he experienced. He believes that he will have to sacrifice himself in a gambit involving a very bright light, and that sacrifice, in that bright light, will end up delivering him into LOST2.

Miles finds Richard, battered, but alive (hooray!). They still believe that the plane is the only way off the Island, and that it needs to be destroyed to save the world from Locke-ness.

Sawyer catches up w Jack and company, confirms that Locke-ness plans to destroy the Island with Desmond's help, but that he didn't have Desmond. Jack tells him that it doesn't matter if Desmond is with him or them, they'll all end up at the Heart anyway...

SAWYER: Then what?
JACK: Then it ends.

Jack's group and Locke-ness's meet on the way to the bamboo forest. To her credit, Kate doesn't blink before grabbing Sawyer's rifle and opening up on the monster. I hafta say, I like that. Like Han Solo in Cloud City when the doors open and he sees Vader standing at the head of the table. Doesn't think twice, just draws.

Now I hafta go kick myself in the ass for comparing Kate to Han Solo.

LOCKE-NESS: You might wanna save your bullets.

Locke-ness recognizes that Jack is the new Protector. He delivers one of those LOST lines that's as much for the audience as the characters...

LOCKE-NESS: Jacob being who is, I expected to be a little more surprised. You're sort of the obvious choice.

Locke-ness believes that Jack will try to stop him, but Jack reveals that he's not going to. Instead, he wants to go with him to the Heart, where Locke-ness THINKS he's going to destroy the Island. Jack informs him that he's not going to destroy anything, because...

JACK: I'm gonna kill you.
LOCKE-NESS: How do you plan to do that?
JACK: That's a surprise.
LOCKE-NESS: Okay. Then let's get on with it.

A funny-at-the-time line that is just kind of annoying afterward.

They continue on and arrive at the bamboo forest. Jack admits to Sawyer that he's basically making this up as he goes along. He believes that he can, that he will, beat Locke-ness, and that Desmond is the key to that happening. Jacob wouldn't have brought him back to the Island if all he could do was destroy it.

He's a Believer in Jacob. I hafta say, it's good to see him have so much conviction, but how frickin sad and tragic is his life's story now that it's come to this?

Locke-ness says it should just be Jack, Desmond, and himself the rest of the way, to the Heart of the Island. When Jack and Locke-ness are getting ready to lower Desmond into the waterfall cavern of the Heart, Desmond tries to explain to Jack how none of this, what happens on the Island, in this life, matters. Jack disagrees...

DESMOND: This doesn't matter, you know.
JACK: Excuse me?
DESMOND: Him destroying the island, you destroying him. It doesn't matter. You know, you're gonna lower me into that light, and I'm gonna go somewhere else. A place where we can be with the ones we love, and not have to ever think about this damn island again. And you know the best part, Jack?
JACK: What?
DESMOND: You're in this place. You know, we sat next to each other on Oceanic 815. It never crashed. We spoke to each other. You seemed happy. You know, maybe I can find a way to bring you there too.
JACK: Desmond, I tried that once. There are no shortcuts, no do-overs. What happened, happened. Trust me, I know. All of this matters.

I was really glad that Desmond actually spoke these words. An acknowledgement within the story of his EM-induced crossover, AND what he thinks about it. That it's the better and real life. That THIS life, full of pain and disaster and monsters, is some kind of workaday slog of an existence, less real somehow. It sounds so wonderfully WIZARD OF OZ, doesn't it? "And YOU were there, and YOU, and YOU!"

A quick jump over to LOST2 for something that felt a little Wrongo to me. Hurley and Boone set Sayid and Shannon up for some enlightenment. Sayid and Shannon kiss, and kiss again, and so on, while Boone and Hurley divert their eyes (or don't) by the humvee. Think Boone's a little jealous? Or is he into it? Ick.

Meanwhile, back in LOST1, on their way over to Hydra Island, Ben and Richard discover Lapidus floating in the water, hanging onto a bunch of lashed together life vests from the sub. (I'd told JB that Lapidus would make it, pretty much exactly like this, a couple hours before the finale—I mean, that plane's still there, and it needs a pilot, right? and it's Frank, this is what he does =) Together, the three of them drop Operation: Blow Up The F@ckin Plane and launch Operation: Fly The Plane The F@ck Outta Here!

Once they arrive on Hydra Island, Claire confronts them, expecting them to be agents of a very-disappointed-in-her Locke-ness. Instead, Richard tries to convince her to join them. She declines and sulks away into the jungle.

Back at the Heart cavern, Jack and Locke-ness lower Desmond into the Island's very first hatch. The episode planted that notion in my mind with Locke-ness's dialogue and a very nice camera move up the waterfall at Jack and Locke-ness, echoing the camera move up the Swan hatch shaft to Jack and Locke. Both are pretty much Desmond's POV, too. I totally appreciate how Locke-ness's dialogue offends Jack so...

LOCKE-NESS: This remind you of anything, Jack?
JACK: What?
LOCKE-NESS: Desmond...going down into a hole in the ground. If there was a button down there to push, we could fight about whether or not to push it. It'd be just like old times.
JACK: You're not John Locke. You disrespect his memory by wearing his face, but you're nothing like him. Turns out he was right about most everything. I just wish I could've told him that while he was still alive.
LOCKE-NESS: He wasn't right about anything, Jack. And when this island drops into the ocean, and you drop with it, you're finally gonna realize that.
JACK: Well, we'll just have to see which one of us is right, then.

And at the bottom of the waterfall cavern, bathed in light and filled with a somewhat familiar droning (Swan hatch, anyone?), Desmond is waved on in by some skeleton dudes and approaches the brightest part of the light. It's focused in a circular pool, surrounded by stones with marks on them, all placed in a design, possibly functional, possibly ritual. In the center of the pool is a roughly man-sized stone.

Y'know, I think this might be the chamber next door to the cavern where the Shadow Men created the First Slayer... =)

In the pool, Desmond screams, apparently wracked with pain. He pushes on into the center and grabs the stone and drags it out of position. The stone functions as a plug for the pool. Removed, the water in the pool drains and the flow of water into and out of the pool stops or dries up. The bright white light fades... and is replaced by a red glow emanating from the hole. Evil, anyone?

What up w the skeletons? Who are they? How are they? Given what we've seen about the Heart so far, those skeletons must belong to people who died before entering the cavern, or before the pool was fully energized. Otherwise, those individuals would have been transformed into smoke monsters and their lifeless bodies ejected from the cavern, a la Esau's.

Anyhow, as the red glow fills the chamber, the Island begins to rumble. Up above, at the top of the cave, Locke-ness is quite pleased.

LOCKE-NESS: It looks like you were wrong... Goodbye, Jack.

Locke-ness turns to exit the cave when Jack takes a shot at him, out of rage and frustration.

JACK: Damn it!

Locke-ness stops in his tracks, shocked at the sight and taste of the blood in his mouth. Surprise! (You're human and mortal and thusly beat-to-death-able, Locke-ness!) Jack smiles...

JACK: Looks like you were wrong, too.

His line there really should've been, "Surprise!" but, whatev. Maybe that would've been too corny, altho given what else the finale gets away with, "too corny" is a tough call to make.

So, Jack seizes the opportunity to attempt to choke the life out of Locke-ness, and Locke-ness retaliates with now-classic Island-fu—a rock to the noggin—and knocks Jack out. Locke-ness then scarpers.

I LIKE that there is a logic to the circuitry of the Island. Well, at least as far as this simple circuit of Esau's abilities and the Island's power. You put out the Heart light, Esau loses his inhuman / superhuman abilities.

What would have happened to him if he'd been in monster form? Lucky for everyone the rain kept him from transforming, eh?

What's going on in the Heart, tho? Unplugged, is it still the Heart? Is the Heart a product of the interaction of things? Is it man-made?

A stab at the "sciencey" aspect of the Heart. It seems like the natural, untouched-by-man, state of the Heart is a subterranean source of raw energy. In its pure form, it seems volcanic in nature, creating heat and pressure that require release. The Heart chamber is a kind of power station, akin to a dam or a wind farm, converting one form of energy into another. The man-made pool and stone plug are a kind of induction device that draws off a great portion of that volcanic energy, converts it into the EM energy we're familiar with, radiating some of it immediately, but also somehow charging the water with it, and distributes it throughout the Island and perhaps the world via subterranean waterways.

The Island itself, along with the snowglobe I'd wager, are all in this same circuit as well. The Island is an impossible construct, right? Existing in a pocket dimension that is adjacent to our normal everyday reality but only at a certain angle and certain location. And, that location can be changed, in time and space. Impossible. To maintain these impossibilities requires power. Power supplied by the Heart. And thusly, the Island begins shaking and quaking itself apart. If the snowglobe could be made visible, I imagine we'd see some LANGOLIERS-like cracks spiderwebbing their way across its surface.

In the disaster movie that ensues, Ben pushes Hurley out of the path of a falling tree, getting pinned himself as his reward. A demonstration of Ben's selflessness, kindness from a self-proclaimed Good Guy to one of the only truly Good Guys he's probably ever met. Hurley rallies Kate and Sawyer to help get the fallen tree off of Ben when Miles radios in, letting them know that they're at the plane, repairing it, and that they have an hour to join them for take-off.

I don't remember seeing them free Ben. How'd that happen, anyhow?

Meanwhile, Jack has recovered and tracked Locke to the cliffside where the Elizabeth is anchored. They go all Kirk vs. the Gorn in a rainy MATRIX REVOLUTIONS showdown and ultimately, Locke-ness gets the upper hand. An upper hand with a knife, stabbing Jack in his side.

I have yet to confirm this with any medical experts, but I actually kinda marvel at this move. I believe that if Jack hadn't had his appendix removed three years earlier, on the Island under the care of Juliet and Bernard, this might have been a killing stroke. Not only a knife in the gut, but a burst appendix of toxic fun! As it is, it still comes pretty close, setting Locke-ness up to finally give Jack that close shave that's been bothering him all season in LOST2 (and don't forget his confusion over his appendectomy scar).

Before Locke-ness can finish the job, a bullet hits him from behind. Leave it to Kate to shoot someone in the back, right? And what zinger does she have prepared for this moment?

KATE: I saved you a bullet!

A callback to Locke-ness telling her to save her bullets. Not terrible, but, well... Eh. No doubt Sawyer had a dozen better—Bring a knife to a gunfight? Smoking's bad for your health! Eat lead, you son of a bitch!—but whatev, it's Kate's moment, let her ruin it like all of her others.

It's not a kill shot. If I was a betting man, I'd say it was in just the right place to paralyze a man, rendering his legs useless, another mirror move compared to the pilot. Jack delivers the coup de grace, shoving him off the top of the cliff with a kick. We get a look over the side and see Locke-ness's still form on the rocks below.

On the audience reaction side, I didn't feel that there was a great moment of Victory, y'know? I had no desire to stand up and cheer for the win. What happened? A crappy fight scene, I guess? There should've been some banter, some Island-philosophical trash talking, Jack making comparisons of the Monster to Locke, and Locke-ness using the memories of Locke and Christian to push Jack's buttons. I mean, COME ON! Locke-ness has the knife in Jack's gut, and then at his throat, and not even ONE "Jack, you just don't have what it takes?!" How do you miss that?

So! Ding-dong, the Witch is dead! Unfortunately, Oz is still unplugged and sinking. Kate doesn't get why it's still doomsday if they killed the monster, but Protector Jack gets it.

JACK: Because whatever Desmond turned off, I need to turn it back on again. But if it doesn't work, if I don't get it done you all need to leave now. You need to get on that plane.

Kate and Sawyer make for the Elizabeth to get to Hydra Island and the getaway plane. Ben chooses to go down with the Island. For logistical reasons, Hurley sticks with Jack as well.

Brother Jack makes a point of telling Kate to get Claire on the plane. Do you remember Charlie's message to Jack, delivered by Hurley while at Santa Rosa's? Something like, "You're not supposed to raise him." Then Jack and Kate kiss each other goodbye and "I love you."

Eh.

On Hydra Island, Frank's just about done w repairs to the Ajira plane. Did he weld a metal panel over the windshield? He sends the Immortal and the Ghostbuster out with a flashlight and a roll of duct tape to fix some landing gear hydraulics. Cuz, hey, why not? And Miles gets one last zinger in before the final curtain call...

MILES: I don't believe in a lot of things but I DO believe in duct tape.

Back at the Heart of the Island, Jack explains to Hurley that he has to go down into the cavern alone, and that he has to pass the mantle of Protector on to him. Hurley is in touching denial, not wanting the responsibility almost as much as he doesn't want Jack to let himself die...

JACK: It was only supposed to be me so I can do this. But if someone has to take care of the Island, if someone has to protect it then... then it should be you. Hurley... I believe in you.
HURLEY: Alright, I'll take it. But it's only temporary... As soon as you get that light back in, I'm pulling you up, and I'm giving it right back to you, deal?
JACK: Deal.

So, Jack is Protector for a day for a very specific Protector project: kill Esau (and keep the Island from sinking). Hurley is meant to be the head of the next Island administration. A kinder, gentler, Protector. I know Hugo's the sweet kind-hearted sensitive and empathetic underdog choice, and I genuinely like him for Protector, but I really think that Sawyer or Lapidus would've made for a really great down-to-earth no-nonsense no-frills Protector. Of course, I would've said that about the other two no matter which guy Jack chose.

Anyhow, Jack performs the (Martian =) water sharing ritual with Hurley and...

HURLEY: Is that it?
JACK: Now you're like me.

Only, y'know, not an insecure ex-drug-addict. =)

Protector Hurley and Ben lower Jack down the waterfall, with a little boisterous help from some quaking Island tremors. At the bottom, Jack finds Desmond beside the now-dried-up pool. The once-plugged hole in the center glows an angry volcanic orange-red. Jack wakes Desmond, who's despondent at the outcome of his efforts...

DESMOND: The light... I put it out. It didn't work. I thought I'd leave this place.

Desmond expected to be zapped back to the sideways/afterlife, as he was in Widmore's EM shack. He believed that the Island and the reality outside of it wasn't real. I can't quite suss out more than that from what he's said, like, if the Island and its reality, LOST1, on and off the Island, isn't real, then what exactly does he think it is? A dream? And how much of LOST2 *did* he experience during the seconds that he passed out in the EM shack? It seems like he may have only lived the events we saw in "Happily Ever After," from baggage claim at LAX to the stadium, when he faints in front of Penny. I say that because the Desmond who unplugged the Island doesn't refer to or appear to know about how his LOST2 self played afterlife cupid and helped get the band back together. Blerg. I still really like the idea that he lived everything from LAX baggage claim to the chapel scene before regaining consciousness in the EM shack.

Desmond explains to Jack about how he removed the plug from the "drain" in the center of the pool, and tries to steel himself for the task of replacing it. Jack insists that it's his job, not Desmond's, helps Desmond over to the waterfall wall, and ties the rope around Desmond so that Ben and Hurley can pull him back up instead of himself. And of course, Jack finally gets to say it to Desmond...

DESMOND: Jack you can't. Even if you turn it back on it'll kill you. It has to be me.
JACK: Desmond, you've done enough. You wanna do something? Go home and be with your wife and son.
DESMOND: What about you, Jack?
JACK: I'll see you in another life, brother.

And whether, as Protector, he knows it or not, Jack's right. He then turns back to the dried up pool. Jack rights the stone plug and drags it back into place, covering the "drain," and collapses. Exhausted, he lies at the side of the pool as water begins to trickle back into it. As the flow of incoming water increases, the glow of the Heart returns and grows to its former brightness. Soon the pool is filled again, and Jack is in its waters, laughing.

Above, Hurley and Ben see the light shining again and begin to pull up on the rope, believing they're helping Jack up, but actually retrieving Desmond. Hurley is crushed. Ben sees to the unconscious Desmond as Hurley ponders the future, and we get to witness the birth of the Reyes-Linus administration...

BEN: I think Desmond's gonna be okay.
HURLEY: Jack's...gone...isn't he?
[Ben nods and Hurley breaks down in tears.]
BEN: He did his job, Hugo.
HURLEY: It's my job now... What the hell am I supposed to do?
BEN: I think you do what you do best. Take care of people. You can start by helping Desmond get home.
HURLEY: But how? People can't leave the Island.
BEN: That's how Jacob ran things. Maybe there's another way... a better way.
HURLEY: Will you help me?
BEN: I'm sorry?
HURLEY: I could really use someone with like, experience. For a little while. Will you help me, Ben?
BEN: I'd be honored.
HURLEY: Cool.

A few words here are supposed to imply some sweeping Island truths. That the Rules, or at least some of them, are mutable, created, modified, or even struck from the Island books by the Protector. There's got to be a baseline set of axiomatic Rules established by the Island and governed by its superphysics or whatever, but apparently, Rules that determine human behavior and capabilities in relation to the Island can be set by Hurley, and were set by Jacob.

This. Is. Crazy. This really just can't be true, or accurate, can it? The ISLAND has Rules, and within those Rules, I can believe that the Momster, as Protector, could bestow upon her adopted sons immortality, a restrictive bond to the Island, and protection from death at each others' hands and/or machinations. And I can believe that within those Rules Jacob manipulated people from near and far and granted them gifts of various kinds. What I cannot believe is that Jacob willed into existence the specific Rules which Esau ultimately learns to exploit in a decades-long master plan to kill him.

No. Yes, we are led to believe that because young Esau told young Jacob, one day, he would be able to make his own rules and people would have to listen to them, that grown-up Protector Jacob is somehow responsible for the capital-R Rules. No. He established a loose society with certain traditions and practices that work within the Rules, he visited certain people and granted them gifts, gave them nudges at forks in their roads, but he didn't write or re-write the Rules themselves.

I'm honestly not even sure that what Hurley says makes sense—People can't leave the Island. Both Ben and Hurley have witnessed and experienced arriving, leaving, and returning to the Island. If Desmond had known the correct "golden heading" (325 degrees?) he actually could have left on the Elizabeth after running off from the Swan.

All I'm choosing to take away from this exchange, as momentous and ominous in construction as it is, is that Hurley will treat visitors and threats to the Island in his own way. As Ben says, it's Hugo's nature to take care of people. Jacob's was always to observe and learn from a distance. A significant change in motivation and policy, but the Rules will be, and should be, as they always have been.

I mean, come on... Imagine a Protector basically re-designing the effect of the Island on its visitors. Using the power of the Heart, Jack should've just wished Smokey to be human and then put him on the Ajira plane with everyone else. Or if Jack just couldn't see that option with his Protector-sight, Hurley, as Protector, could probably use the power of the Island to bring Charlie back, or Libby, and Eko, and Ana Lucia. Well, who knows? Maybe he does, and learns an important lesson about how sometimes people come back wrong.

But no. That won't happen, cuz frankly, it shouldn't.

Meanwhile-ish, over on Hydra Island, Sawyer and Kate arrive, encountering a despondent Claire on the beach. Kate urges her to join them, but she resists...

CLAIRE: Look at me! This Island's made me crazy... I... I don't want Aaron to see me like this. I don't even know how to be a mother anymore.
KATE: Listen to me, none of us do. Not at first. But you're not alone. Let me help you. Come on, let's go.

A nod in the text to LOST's mother issues. It's funny, when I think of LOST's motifs, daddy issues is at the forefront throughout the series. Mommy issues...? We meet moms, a mom is one of our main characters, but we don't really think in terms of mommy issues until this last season, with a character who pretty much owns the mommy issues home game, Crazy Mother, aka the Momster, right? Or maybe that's my own chauvinistic patriarchal bias?

Or perhaps it's really about parent issues. Eh, that's too big to tackle just now...

Yeah, so, Kate social workers Claire into joining them on their run for the jetway, and in fact, they rush out of the jungle right onto the runway in front of the plane as Frank revs it up for take off. The late arrivals are brought into the plane. Everyone grabs a seat and a couple people grab hands as Frank punches it. We get a bit of a LANGOLIERS by way of Robinson Crusoe scene, of the plane racing down the crushed rock runway as the earth cracks apart beneath it. I gotta say, this was a moment where I let myself get sucked into the suspense. I KNOW they're going to make it, but I get sucked in anyway. Maybe it's Pavlovian training, exposure to similar scenes in my lifetime thus far of TV and film storytelling. Is every one of these scenes really just the Millenium Falcon blasting out of Mos Eisley? Or Flash, Dale, and Dr. Zarkoff blasting off under a red sky to fight Ming the Merciless?

Anyway *SPOILER ALERT* they make it! The plane takes to the air just clearing the trees at the end of the UFO runway.

Back on the Island, Jack finds himself in a small pond outside the Heart of the Island. I'm not sure exactly where this is relative to the waterfall cavern, and how he arrived here, but my mind connects the dots as follows...

Jack is in the pool as the water and the Heart's energy return to full strength. He passes out. The rising water carries him out of the Heart's reactor cavern through one of the subterranean waterways that flow through and beneath the Island, and this one surfaces at this small pond, depositing Jack thusly.

This for me also explains why Jack is NOT a smoke monster, although when I realized he was going down into the cavern himself, I was *really* hoping for it to happen. It could've gone somewhat positive, resulting in the creation of a full-powered Protector (like the Momster), or, seriously dark, with the transformation process driving Jack slightly mad, perhaps amplifying his desire to "fix" people into an on-the-surface philanthropic mission, but hiding a deeper god complex, with the smoke monster power to back it up.

Alas, not to be. Jack's encounter with the Source is not the same as Esau's. He is not exposed to the Heart's energy the way Esau was. Esau entered the Heart at full strength, as did Desmond (remember how he was screaming in pain, even with his resistance/immunity?). Jack, however, was exposed to the Heart as it was re-powering up, and then swept away by the flowing water, never experiencing anything close to the pain that Desmond apparently did.

Jack picks himself up and begins staggering thru the jungle, then back into the bamboo forest, all the while trying to keep pressure on his wounded side. We see the white tennis shoe hanging from a branch, three years after the crash of Oceanic 815, six seasons after the pilot. We know now that it was one of the shoes worn by Christian's corpse. Jack arrives at small clearing in the bamboo and collapses, apparently exactly in the spot that he came to after the crash. Jack is lying on his back in the bamboo forest when Vincent announces his arrival with a bark. He sniffs and greets him and then lays down beside him. Eyes on the sky, Jack sees the Ajira plane fly directly overhead and smiles. All of this is intercut with glow-infused slow-mo greetings and reunions in the LOST2 chapel, and when we come back for the final time, we're close on Jack's eye, which closes for the last time.

For longtime fans, I gotta say, a pretty perfect ending, visually and emotionally. I can imagine that that scene was written at the same time as the pilot, but with a lot of frickin question marks in between the two on the white board. Having Vincent appear to keep him company... Touching emotional blackmail. =)

So, who's left on the Island? Protector Hurley. Number Two Ben (Ha ha, he's poop! Y'know, no one else chuckled at that at the Brattle. I'm so immature =). Brother Desmond. Rose and Bernard. Vincent. They can all work together to outfit the Elizabeth so that Desmond can rejoin his family. Perhaps once he's back in the real world, he'll help take over Widmore Industries with Penny? I'm pretty sure Rose and Bernard will keep their retirement home w Vincent, while Hurley and Ben begin placing enigmatic classified and cragislist ads, quietly advertising their new not-for-profit Fantasy Island venture.

And who's on that plane? Sawyer. Kate. Claire. Richard. Miles. Frank. THAT is going to be an interesting landing, eh? Maybe Eloise and Penny have contracted a certain order of monks to build a smashed rock landing strip in their vineyards? Anyhow, once Sawyer fixes everyone up with the proper fake credentials... Sawyer will get to know and be a father to Clementine. Perhaps he and Miles go into security and/or ghostbusting in a professional way. Claire is reunited with her mother and Aaron, who, fake psychic or not, is no longer raised by another. Kate writes children's books under "Joan Heart" working days as a social worker specializing in domestic violence cases and nights as a guardian angel to those cases. Can we really believe that she doesn't keep orbiting Sawyer as part-time lover, and vice versa? No, they continue to get caught in their own little net, but when it happens, I'd like to think it's more about need and a kind of mourning. Seems like a more sophisticated romantic plot than LOST's usual fare, but whatevs. I mean, in the LOST2 epilogue, they're reunited with their apparent one-and-onlys, right? Sawyer w Juliet and Kate w Jack. Kind of a sad realization for the survivors, tho, donchathink? That they've already loved and lost the loves of their lives? It's just a lot of meaningless sex for Sawyer and Kate til the end of their days...

Yeah, tragic.

And, Richard becomes a successful actor in primetime sitcoms and dramas, and late in his career begins shilling Pearl Station Cream and other Widmore Industries age-defying products. And Frank, a man with a gift for getting people where they need to go, gets hired on by Hurley and Ben to fly "da plane, da plane!"

All in the new ABC LOST spin-offs—FANTASTIC ISLAND and LOST ANGELES, coming this fall!

=)

Keep on keepin on~