The Beginning of the End

I was struck by many things when watching tonight's new episode (at last!) of Lost. One was that this was by far the most emotional material that had ever been given to Hurley's character, and that the actor, Jorge Garcia, did an amazing job of delivering it.

Another realization was that I think I'm going to find these "post-island" mysteries the show is now creating to be far more compelling than the "on island" mysteries have been (both those that have been answered -- like "the button," and those that haven't, like "the smoke monster"). I say this because it seems the post-island mysteries are going to be much more grounded in character and personal drama than in exterior supernatural weirdness. What made Hurley go crazy again? What happened with Locke on the island that made him regret turning against Jack? What happened to Jack after between the event's of tonight's "flash-forward" and last season's finale that sent him to the edge of crazy too?

Most of all, though, I was struck with this: the writers of Lost have now taken on a very dangerous game. The flashback model of the first three season served the show very well. Not only were they a great vehicle for fleshing out the characters, but they often offered up mysteries of their own. And yet, even as pieces in the puzzle were laid out in the flashbacks, no major "spoilers," if you will, were at risk.

Let me try to put this better. Viewers paying close attention, for example, figured out ahead of time that the man who originally conned Sawyer's mother, and from whom he took his fake name, was actually the same as Locke's father -- some fans nearly a year ahead of the show actually confirming this. But nothing tremendous was lost in figuring out this revelation ahead of time. Some people got the thrill of saying "see, I was right!", but nothing of the final direction of the story was given away.

Now that we're getting glimpses of the future instead of the past, things have changed entirely. Thus far, of course, we only been given the thinnest of scraps. Hurley, Kate, and Jack all make it off the island alive. There's a group of survivors called "the Oceanic Six." Hurley's seeing the "ghost" of Charlie.

But already, with just these few pieces, you might start to speculate about what's going on. In Jack's flash-forward in the third season's finale, he has a moment where he refers to his father as though he were still alive. Is it possible that some time between tonight's future and that one that Jack also began to see the ghosts of the dead?

I'm not saying I guarantee this is right. I'm simply saying that as enough clues of the future trickle in, someone is gonna figure it out. And unlike with the flashbacks, here the direction of the story could be spoiled if the writers don't play things very, very carefully.

So, like I said, a very dangerous game they're now playing. And one I think they're bound to pepper with as many misdirections as possible. For example, just because there's a group known as "the Oceanic Six" doesn't mean that only six people made it off the island. Obviously, anyone who didn't get there because of the crash (the Others, Rousseau, Desmond) wouldn't count in that total. Possibly neither would Kate or Sawyer -- both were wanted criminals at the time of the crash, and might contrive a ways to simply vanish again once returned to the mainland.

Speculations aside though, I'm going to end where I began, by saying that I was most impressed by the emotional heft of tonight's episode. I actually felt Charlie's death more in this hour than I did in the previous installment in which he actually sacrificed himself. Good drama, which is Lost is first and foremost above all the mystery, in my opinion.