"Through the Looking Glass"

We were promised that everything will change with this season finale of LOST. We were expecting to be thrown a major curve ball. We expected lots of characters to die. Did this episode live up to the hype?

STOP READING NOW TO AVOID SPOILERS!!!!!

I don't know who was involved in making the mediocre first six episodes of the season, but they weren't the same people who were responsible for this fantastic arc of the third season. I have loved just about all of the episodes of the past two months and this finale ranks up there with the best of them. There was action, surprises, answers and of course more questions to mull over for the next eight (!) months.

Everything certainly changed with this episode. I was faked out throughout most of the episode about Jack's "flashback" trying to figure out where in his past this story fell. Was it after his trip to Thailand? However, in the final flash with the maps strewn about his hotel room floor, I realized that this was actually a flash forward and that this is the Jack that got off the island! This could result in a major change is how the story of LOST is told for the rest of the show. Up until now, the story has been unfolding in 2004 with flashbacks to the character's pasts. Going forward, we can continue as such, or we could begin to see story told from the present day with flashbacks to the island. I'm not sure which I would prefer or if a mixture of the two would be better, but I can say that whatever method is chosen, I am on board!

The big question in Jack's flash forward is who's funeral did he go to. One can assume that is someone from the island because of his conversation with Kate. I believe a few hints were dropped about the identity of the deceased. When asked by the mortician if he was family or a friend, Jack replied that he was neither. No one else came to the funeral. When he told Kate that he thought she might have gone, she replied with,"Why would I?" This all leads me to believe that this was Ben's funeral. He has no living family on and presumably off the island and he definitely doesn't have any friends. Assuming that nothing changes in his relationship with the Losties in the next three seasons and is forcibly "rescued" from the island, there would be no one who cared to attend his funeral. That is except Jack who seems to be obsessed with the island the way Ben was. By the way, is it just me or does the drug-addicted and bearded Jack remind anyone else of Jim Morrison?

Best line of the show? Rose tells Jack, "If you say live together, die alone one more time, I'm going to punch you in the face." Classic!

As far as a lot of characters dying, I was a little surprised by the lack of major characters being killed off. By my count we lost Charlie, Tom and about nine Others. I was really worried about Bernard going into this episodes and then even more so about Sawyer and Hurley when they headed back to the beach to help out. But they kicked some major ass and saved the day. I loved how Hurley came to the rescue in the DHARMA bus! It was perfect! I was not too happy to see Tom killed though; not because of the way that Sawyer did it, but because we never got to see his backstory. I was really interested in him and curious about how he became involved with the Others. But the saddest of them all was Charlie. Desmond's vision proved to be accurate but not before Charlie was able to complete his mission and make contact with Penny Widmore! The big reveal of course was that Penny is not on the freighter and that Naomi was lying.

One person I did not expect to see in the finale was Locke, but we saw him struggle to move in the ditch while trying to get a revolver off of one of the dead DHARMA members. He was just about to kill himself when Walt stopped him! I was a little spoiled by his presence since I had seen Malcom David Kelly's name in the credits, but it was still the last person I expected to help Locke. Of course I don't think that it was Walt, but rather the Smoke Monster/Island telling Locke what to do. If this is the case and the Smoke Monster is a security system, than getting Locke to kill Naomi might be a legitimate defense against outside intruders.

I thought that this episode was top notch and am excited about where LOST will go next. I am not terribly excited about how lone we'll have to wait, but more LOST is better than no LOST. Now we must convene on the message boards and try to make sense of it all. Thanks for a great season and I'm looking forward to the fourth!