The Last Recruit

Many times throughout this final season of Lost, there have been moments where you think "the sprint for the finish line has really started now." But I think tonight's episode upped the ante on that; tonight, it really felt like the beginning of the end. Interestingly, it wasn't really the goings-on on the Island that gave me that impression. Instead, it was the events in the Sideways World that showed the final threads pulling together.

Nearly every storyline we've seen all season in the Sideways World came back to be continued tonight. Jack met his sister Claire and was brought in to perform surgery on Locke, Sawyer dealt with Kate and apprehended Sayid, Sun survived her gunshot wound with her baby alive... threads crossing every which way, starting to be pulled taut.

But there were a few events of note on the Island too. Number one was literally years in the making: at long last, the reunion of Sun and Jin. It's probably impossible for something that long coming to really pay off, but it at the very least came close, a poignant moment.

There was the story of Sayid, continuing to dance around the notion that's he's probably thinking of the "dead woman he loved and lost" as Nadia, when the same could apply to Shannon. Desmond's zen-like state allowed him to pose very pointed questions to Sayid, questioning his actions. Enough to pull Desmond back from the "dark side?" Well, we didn't see the body now, did we?

A redemption we did get to see on screen was Claire's, as Kate simultaneously talked Claire into coming and Sawyer into letting it happen. But I find just as much uncertainty in this development. It seems like Sayid probably didn't shoot Desmond, but what turned him, and why is he deciding to lie to UnLocke now? By the same token, Claire can't really have come back from years of crazy on the Island just like that, right?

Add Widmore to the "what's going on with them?" pile from this week. Though off screen in this episode, he called in to order the defecting castaways taken into custody. Of course, Widmore Good or Evil is a game we've been playing a while now, so this shouldn't shock anybody.

Unfortunately, however, the continuation of all these threads won't be coming next week, from the look of it. According to the schedule, next week's episode of Lost is a re-run. So the only Lost mysteries you can contemplate next week is why they decided to inject one re-run in an otherwise uninterrupted season. Perhaps you can ponder if there's any significance to why that one re-run was chosen to be the Richard-centric episode from just a few weeks ago. Was it judged to be especially important to the conclusion by the producers?

At least Glee is back now and I still have that in Lost's absence next week. (Though you know what? Screw you, American Idol, for running long and cutting into the scheduled run time!)