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To start things off on tonight’s episode of ABC’s Lost, we see the crash of Flight 316 from the point of view of the pilot, Frank Lapidus (Jeff Fahey). Through the course of events we see that the Oceanic Survivors that were on the plane all disappeared except for Sun (Yunjin Kim), and went back in time 30 years to be synched up with Sawyer (Josh Holloway), Jin (Daniel Dae Kim) and the others who are now fully integrated into the Dharma Initiative.
The big question that came out of this opening sequence is why did all of the Oceanic 6 that were on the plane go back in time except for Sun (Yunjin Kim)? Could it be because she wasn’t supposed to return to the island according to John Locke and somehow what Locke wants makes some kind of cosmic difference?
For a while we believe that Sun is going to trust Ben (Michael Emerson) and go with him to the main island until Sun suddenly brains him with an oar from a boat. This is apparently how Ben came to be in the injured state that John Locke found him in at the end of the episode “The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham.”
Sun and Lapidus make their way to the main island where they see some rustling in the trees shortly after getting out of their boat. They soon come across Jack’s alive-again father, Christian Shephard (John Terry), who tells Sun that she has quite a journey ahead of her because Jin and the rest of her friends are in 1977—hinting that he’s going to set her on a journey to reunite them. What came to my mind after seeing this scene is that perhaps the smoke monster and Christian Shephard are one and the same. It appeared that they found him very shortly after seeing the movement in the trees, and that it might not have been just a coincidence. Just a thought.
In previous seasons of Lost I was getting a little impatient with all of the flashbacks to the character’s past. Now that the series is progressing, we’re not seeing glimpses into their backstories, but instead we’re jumping back and forth in time within the main storyline. For me, this is much more satisfying because they all serve to move the story of their adventures on the island forward. Tonight the flashback was 30 years ago where Jack (Matthew Fox), Kate (Evangeline Lilly) and Hurley (Jorge Garcia) must put their trust in Sawyer as he successfully integrates them into the Dharma community.
All of Sawyer’s plans go almost exactly how he hopes except for a small hiccup where Kate is almost revealed as an outsider when her name isn’t on the new arrival manifest. She is supposedly “saved” at the last minute by Juliet (Elizabeth Mitchell), but I think that it was the first sign of hostility that Juliet is going to have for Kate out of protectiveness of her 3 year-old relationship with Sawyer. It’ll be interesting to see if we can continue to trust Juliet now that they’re all back together again.
Probably the least interesting storyline for me tonight was the capture of Sayid (Naveen Andrews). It was impressive to see Sawyer so on top of things and handling all of the situations so well, but I’m afraid that his incarceration is going to last a while and might get kind of tiring.
One interesting revelation from tonight was that Ethan, the Other who worked with Juliet trying to help women give birth on the island, who kidnapped Claire and who was ultimately shot and killed by Charlie Pace was actually the baby that Juliet successfully delivered in the last episode, “LaFleur.”
An interesting new mystery introduced to night is where in the world is Daniel Faraday? During the van ride to the Dharma compound Sawyer reveals that for some reason, Daniel isn’t with them anymore. The only time we saw him in what we think would be this time period is at the beginning of this season where he briefly showed up during the excavation of the “frozen donkey wheel” at the construction of the Orchid Station. Did something happen there that either killed him or removed him from this timeline? I guess only time will tell, eh?
The final scene in tonight’s episode was the inevitable meeting between one of the time-displaced survivors and a young Benjamin Linus (Sterling Beaumon). The lucky survivor who had the joy of his acquaintance is Sayid who ironically was the beneficiary of Ben’s kindness as the 14 (or so) year-old brought him a sandwich. It’ll be interesting to see if this pairing of characters develops into anything in the future.
The episode was named, “Namaste,” which literally means, “I bow to you” in Hindi. It seems like this could inform the future of the relationship between Sawyer and the rest of the Oceanic 815 survivors where it appears that he has found a leadership position for himself where he can make great use of his con artist’s ability to think on his feet.
Lost is a rare show that, at least for me, keeps getting more interesting as they continue to reveal secrets while introducing new mysteries. It has already proven that it’s a very difficult show to predict and I’m looking forward to see what happens next!
