The final season of LOST premieres tomorrow, so it helps that I am now completely LOST!

Challenge #1: Watch all of LOST seasons 1-5 before the final season premieres on February 2nd, 2010.

Progress: COMPLETE!

I mentioned in my last post that I had made significant progress; clearly very significant. I am all done. The truth is I finished most of season 4 and 5 last weekend and the 2 hour finale episode of season 5 this past Saturday morning. What a pair of seasons they were!

Season 4 brought some serious changes to the direction of the show. When the “Freighties” (people from the freighter ship) start showing up on a mission to capture Ben Linus, all hell breaks loose on the island. Lines are drawn in the sand with Jack and Locke taking opposing stances on what everyone should do, splitting the camp in half. The season really flips how LOST has worked so far by using the “Flash Forward”, something that was introduced in the final episode of season 3. Instead of telling what happened in the character’s pasts, it instead tells about what happens in their future. Specifically this focuses a lot on the “Oceanic 6″, the group that gets off the island. It still uses flashbacks as well, and some other odd story telling tactics.

We are introduced to many more mysterious concepts, like the odd time dilation that occurs around the island, time travel of a person’s consciousness and the importance of having a “constant”. Additionally, startling questions are raised like who spent the time and resources to sink a plane full of corpses into the ocean to trick the world into believing they found Oceanic Flight 815.

Overall, great season and a very welcome and interesting addition to the mythology that came before it. It was great watching this one again, and the lessened number of episodes meant that each one was much more action packed and info-filled than in previous seasons. It introduced a bunch of new characters that were all interesting and you either loved or hated, like the quirky Daniel Faraday or the detestable Martin Keamy.

Season 5 was also fantastic. At the end of season 4, Ben sacrifices his life on the island to literally move the island. While he succeeds, he accidentally leaves everyone left on the island in a terrible mess. The survivors are flashing throughout time and soon realize that if this trend keeps up they may all die from the trauma it is inflicting to their minds. Locke and crew set out to make things right while just barely running into past versions of themselves, catching glimpses of whats to come, and weaving a tangled web throughout time especially during frequent run-ins with Richard Alpert and the others. They finally succeed in stopping time from shifting, only to end up as part of the Dharma Initiative back in the 70′s.

Meanwhile, the people who got off the island are dealing with their own issues. We see a lot of the back story of what exactly has happened to them in the three years since they got back home. They all soon realize that they might actually have been better off staying on the island. Jack and Ben lead the charge to get everyone together to go back to the island. This even includes a dead John Locke; who was killed by Ben, after he fixed time on the island, was teleported to the Tunisian desert, and was helped by Charles Widmore and Matthew Abaddon to go try and collect everyone to go back to the island under the name Jeremy Bentham. Yikes what a mess!

Finally everyone gets back to the island, including a seemingly resurrected Locke and even a new shadowy faction who knows about the island arrives as well. However, while some land in the present, others end up back in Dharma time where they find the survivors have been living amongst the D.I. for the past 3 years. And everything comes to a shocking conclusion when the people in the past are charged with setting off a hydrogen bomb at the site of the Swan station, adverting or possibly causing the famous “incident”, while Locke leads Ben, Richard and the others on a quest to find Jacob, only to kill him.

Speaking of which, a huge reveal in the finale of season 5 is we finally meet the man behind the curtain. Jacob has seemingly been pulling the strings of what goes on on not only on the island, but in people’s lives off the island, for centuries. We also meet his counterpart, a man in black, whom we’ve not particularly heard of before. During a conversation between the two at the beginning of the episode they argue the semantics of bringing people to the island. Then this mysterious other being mentions how badly he wants to kill Jacob and that one day he’ll find the “loophole” needed to do so. What can all this mean!? And what is the source of these beings seemingly deity-like powers? We’ll soon see I guess.

A lot of people I talk to either loved this season or hated it with a passion. Many people claimed it was really confusing and didn’t make sense because of the time travel element and other odd things that happen during its course. I personally never had an issue with any of it. Of course, I guess it’s because I pay a lot of attention to each episode, whereas maybe your average ‘sometimes’ viewer could easily get in over their head if they miss any episodes.

I loved this season. It really changed the game yet again, and delved even deeper into mysteries that have plagued the island’s inhabitants for longer than anyone can imagine. It was a ton of fun keeping up with the characters and the events surrounding them. The season surely wasn’t without its twists and turns, some of which were very strange, that no one could have seen coming. And of course, you had the added challenge of figuring out what time they were in, in addition to place. Though I do think it felt like the natural culmination of everything thats been building up since season one.

The “incident”, for example,  is what supposedly led to having to build the Swan and the computer therein, which had a button that needed to be pressed every 108 minutes to disperse the islands immensely powerful electromagnetic energy. When Desmond failed to press it 30 years in the future, it brought down Oceanic Flight 815 setting all these events into action over again, creating something of a time loop.

This is perfect LOST story telling. Everything on LOST comes full circle. Characters pay for their past mistakes only to repeat them again and so on. Even Jacob and the man in black, who many fans speculate is Esau of the biblical Jacob and Esau, argue about the pointlessness of bringing people to the island because they just repeat the same mistakes over again. Here’s an except:

Esau: I don’t have to ask. You brought them here. Still trying to prove me wrong, aren’t you?
Jacob: You are wrong.
Esau: Am I? They come. They fight. They destroy. They corrupt. It always ends the same.
Jacob: It only ends once. Anything that happens before that is just progress.

It seems to me that Jacob is insisting that it only takes one time or action to make the outcome different. Could the actions of our heroes have finally altered time and changed what was supposed to happen? In Jacob’s death, did he prove his counterpart wrong?

We will see. And best of all, we will see tomorrow! Tuesday February 2nd, 2010 marks the return of LOST for its final season. I feel great because my challenge is complete and it will totally be payed off when so many of the questions that have plagued me evening after evening, week after week for the last five seasons will finally be answered. I really cannot wait. I am hopelessly excited. LOST has definitely been the greatest show I’ve ever had the pleasure of watching and I have nothing but high hopes for its final act.

To end this post, here is a glimpse at things to come. This is the newest and greatest promo from ABC for the final season. Check it out, and tell me what you think is going to happen in the comments section. Even though my challenge is over, I’ll be back talking about LOST after the premiere. Enjoy!

Tags: 2010 Challenge, LOST, review

This entry was posted on Monday, February 1st, 2010 at 11:24 am by Pete Labrozzi and is filed under 2010 Challenges, LOST, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.