Through the Looking Glass

The third season of Lost has had quite its share of rough patches, but it went out in style with tonight's finale. It wasn't an ending that will have me waiting with baited breath like the "what the hell's in the damn hatch!" cliffhanger of season one, but strangely, at the same time, I'm more pleased by this ending.

It all comes down to this: I've said many times that I am more fascinated by the stories of the characters in the show than I am at the myriad mysteries of The Island. And a while back, before the announcement of Lost's "final end date" in 2010 (but when the talk about them actually setting an end date had begun), I was starting to wonder about how the show would ever be able to wrap up some of character issues it had dangling. Some of the questions about the characters seemed to demand knowing about their lives after The Island.

Will Sayid ever be reunited with Nadia? How will Kate avoid being arrested for murder when the survivors are all rescued? And if some of the characters who have been "healed" by The Island leave, would their problems return? Would Hurley's curse return? Rose's cancer? Would Locke lose the ability to walk? (Well... would he ever actually he leave, even if given the chance?)

Unfortunately for folks like me actually interested in the answers to some of those questions (and not just "what exactly is that smoke monster?"), it seemed inherent in the narrative structure of Lost that once they're rescued, the show is over. You couldn't really continue to do episodes after The Island -- hell, that would make AfterMASH seem brilliant by comparison.

So, the solution? Change the narrative structure of the show. And so tonight, we have the first flash-forward. And it's great on many levels. For one, it was dramatic and emotional, and Matthew Fox gave a terrific performance. It was by far the most interesting Jack-centric episode we've seen in ages. Secondly, it "shows the way" by which some of the questions I mentioned above can actually be answered. And thirdly, it actually introduced some new questions to the mix that I for one find much more engaging. Sure, "what the hell is Jacob?" is an interesting brain tickler. But I can get emotionally invested in asking, "whose funeral was it that only Jack (as neither family nor friend) attended?" or "what happened to pull Kate and Jack apart in the future?"

I don't know if this flash-forward device is going to be used sparingly, or if we're now in store for entire seasons of nothing but "future flashes." Either way, the door is open now, and I like the possibilities behind that door.

But there was one thing about tonight's episode that did disappoint me a bit -- Charlie's death. I accept that it had to be done. We'd been strung along all season on Desmond's visions, far too long to buy out of them with any other ending than Charlie actually dying. But I find I wish he'd actually died last week. That episode was a perfect, emotional sendoff for him, and I wish the closure had just happened there.

This mini-escapade with the two women in the Looking Glass station didn't really add anything, dramatically speaking. And we didn't really need Penny to show up and tell us Naomi was bad -- I think it was pretty clear that Ben was telling the truth on that one. (Ben does actually tell the truth quite a lot -- just a ridiculously abbreviated version of it.) Instead, the moment of Charlie's actual sacrifice was separated from the buildup to it, and in the end... frankly... it didn't make a lot of sense to me. Why could Charlie not get on the other side of the door before he slammed it? Or why couldn't he stop to put on one of the wet suits they said were there before punching in the code that he had every reason to think would bring the water crushing in on him? Or hell, the water wasn't going to crush the whole station -- why in the world couldn't he just forget about sealing the door and try to swim out the same way he swam in?

In other words, Charlie's sacrifice was a meaningless one, when the episode last week had set us up for exactly the opposite. And as a character, he deserved that better ending.

At least even though Charlie no longer has a future on the show, the other characters do -- in a very vivid way I had not imagined just a few hours ago. Very good move by the writers, and I'll enjoy watching where the story goes from here.