simply gone to white

so in the final moments of "lost"'s fifth season finale we are treated to one of the more shocking visual moments ever on "lost". instead of the traditional fade to black with LOST spelled out in its thin white lettering, we get this:

which in the context of a possible h-bomb explosion, fits in perfectly. but it is also so disconcerting and ominous. and i can't help but wonder where the series will go from here.

but i'm getting ahead of myself, this two-part episode sees the flashbacks focus on the mysterious jacob and his interaction with the future passengers of flight 815, and the opening scene lets us know that jacob has been around for a very long time:



throughout the episode we see jacob visit with kate, sawyer, jack, sun, jin, hurley, sayid, and locke. (juliet gets an unrelated flashback to her childhood that is supposed to supply us with some motivation as to why she keeps changing her mind regarding stopping jack from detonating the h-bomb.)


i have to say that i had mixed feelings about these flashbacks, while i enjoyed seeing some of these seminal moments--kate begins her life of crime at the age of 10, sawyer's parents' funeral, jack counts to 5, sun and jin get married, hurley gets out of jail, sayid's wife is killed in a hit and run, and locke gets pushed through a window--the most significant thing about each of these moments is that jacob touches each of the characters and you are left feeling as if being touched by jacob is supremely important and these characters were all destined to meet, that jacob's touch somehow brought them to the island.


the only character who does not have a flashback with jacob is juliet. her flashback takes us to her childhood, the day her parents' tell her and her sister, rachel, that they are getting a divorce. juliet's parents say that "just because two people love each other doesn't mean they are supposed to be together." this is supposed to provide us with juliet's motivation with regard to assisting jack in detonating the bomb. but i don't think it works. 1) why was juliet's flashback the only one without jacob, her flashback was an outlier meant to explain something that didn't really need to be explained. 2)that her flashback doesn't tie in with the other flashbacks made it really dissonant, obviously juliet's destiny differs from the rest of the characters included in the flashbacks, but this could have been accomplished by keeping jacob in the flashback and having him not touch juliet.


also problematic is the focus on jacob, whom i do not find a compelling mystery. i don't mind the time travel stuff, i like the flashbacks because i love the character stuff, but i really don't care for the island mythology crap. i don't care why the island is special. i don't see that as the enduring mystery of the show. i want to see where the survivors of 815 go from here, where they end up, if they can ever reclaim their lives. a big part of me suspects that there is no going home from here, but i really hope that they don't all die in an h-bomb explosion. i also really don't want to have the timeline reset. i don't think it's possible for it to be reset, mostly because i subscribe to the "what has been lived cannot be unlived" school of thought (this was one thing i always found really confusing in the back to the future movies). but i just can't imagine starting over. to have flight 815 land in l.a. as if nothing ever happened would be the most disappointing ending to this story. because so much has happened!

what i really hope we get to see in season six is the cast to come back together in one time period. the time travel has been cool, but it's time for everyone to go back where they came from. here's hoping that juliet's actions in causing the h-bomb to detonate actually sets off the incident that proved to be so pivotal in the history of the dharma initiative.


leading up to the scene around the future hatch were some very good moments with rose and bernard, a confrontation between jack and sawyer that had been five years in the making (interesting that jack and juliet each use their love for kate and sawyer to justify the decision to blow up the bomb, in both cases i think their logic isn't really sound, and that the magnitude of the decision doesn't really mesh well with the motivation behind it), and the discovery that john locke is really dead. by the end of the episode we know that sayid and juliet remain in mortal danger, jacob and locke are dead, and the man in black (a lot of theories abound about who the man in black is, and i like the ones that speculate that he is somehow the smoke monster. somehow that seems about right to me) from the opening scene has clearly taken over locke's body (the loophole he's been looking for).

all hell breaks loose at the hatch, and jack's simple plan to detonate the bomb turns into something like the shootout at the ok corral. as the electromagnetic forces begin to pull in anything and everything metal, juliet gets caught up in some metal chains and is dragged down into the hatch hole. sawyer tries to pull her up, and in one of the most emotionally raw moments of the series she says goodbye. both josh holloway and elizabeth mitchell sell the hell out of this moment. one can only wonder where sawyer goes from here.

for that reason, i can't wait until the final season begins. (of course i will have to wait until january 2010.) but my hope is that the show will focus on answering the questions it has raised over the course of five seasons. what a ride it has been...i can't wait to see where we end up!

screencaps courtesy of abc.com and docarzt. video courtesy of abc.com.