From the Field

The Outsider’s Guide to Lost’s Last Season: Episode One

February 3rd, 2010

I’m two hours into Lost’s final season and I already feel as though I’m trifling with a world of which I know too little. I have stumbled upon an ancient book of spells in the forgotten wing of the library and conjured the road to hell with a cursory reading. I’m the wayward square who wanders into the roadhouse bar and is greeted with a record scratch and pitying stares. The grizzliest man at the bar sneers and spits at his side. “You look lost, boy.” Everyone falls about the place with laughter and knowing pats on the back, and I sheepishly nod my head in agreement. In other words, I have no idea what I’ve gotten myself into.

Two hours in and I don’t have much to go on besides a few hard facts culled from this evening’s viewing. Juliet’s dead. I say this with assurance, but one can never be sure of death’s permanence on The Island— she’s the only one of three dead from this episode who remained dead, and a 66% chance of returning from the grave is pretty good odds for anyone. She was granted a brief session of afterlife communication in which she relayed to Sawyer that “it worked.” I presume the ghost of Juliet was referring to the bomb she set off in the magnetic well, but the meaning was ambiguous and her words were small comfort to Sawyer who was still pissed at Jack over the whole thing. I hope she returns in one form or another; the tender moment she shared with Sawyer down in that hole seemed to soften his edges in a disarming sort of way.

There are two Johns in this tale. One lies on the beach, asleep or unconscious or dead in the sand, and the other is an evil sort that inspired Ben to murder. Bizarro John is the embodiment of something cursed, there’s no doubt. His flesh deflects bullets and when he’s cornered he becomes a roiling cloud of black smoke that is capable of coiling up men in dusty tendrils and tossing them haphazardly around a room. A frightening beast to be sure, and he seems particularly upset with Richard, assuming the beating Bizzaro John gave him just before dragging him off into the foliage is any evidence.

Jacob is a helpful jungle zombie who emerged from the green in time to give Hugo a guitar case and some advice on how to save Sayid, who is rapidly expiring from a gunshot wound. He had kind eyes, and its hard to imagine why Ben was compelled to stab and set fire to this agreeable soul. Jacob’s influence on the characters’ course of action remains strong despite his otherworldly existence and thanks to Hugo’s ability to see zombie ghosts. Their partnership and Jacob’s suggestions to care for Sayid lead the group to a temple of angry Others who would have just as soon killed the entire crew if it weren’t for Hugo dropping Jacob’s name. They reverse course and agree to help Sayid after Hugo produces the guitar case, a giant wooden ankh is lifted from it and broken in half, and a note from Zombie Jacob is discovered therein. Everybody likes a guy with kind eyes.

The Others appear to be a survivalist group of mixed interests and one Australian flight attendant. They are led by a stony-faced man who dislikes the way English tastes on his tongue. His henchmen dunk Sayid in a dirty life-giving pool and end up drowning him, though it’s hard to say whether this was their fault or whether Stony-face wasn’t watching his over-sized hourglass closely enough. The group is naturally grief-stricken, but they brighten when, miracle of miracles, Sayid wakes from death some time later and asks the same question most of us would ask after drowning in a life-giving pool: “What happened?”

And with that, the first episode in the final season comes to a close and my journey down the dimly lit road of Lost’s story line has just begun. Viewer’s will note that I have not touched on the parallel world in which the Oceanic flight touches down safely in L.A. and life carries on as usual, but the split narrative was too much for me to digest on the first pass. I hope this parallel world bears more Bizarro fruit, and that John’s counterparts get their own superhuman copies. Now that I’ve had my first immersion, I realize that I am doing a cruel disservice to Lost’s storytellers and their aim to create a narrative arc that is not open to the casual interloper. I am a trespasser, but I look forward to dissecting the next installment.

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