So Crazy I Dreamed About It

Posted by Maggie May 25th, 2007 at 10:48am In Lost

So I watched the Lost finale a day late, and it is invading my head. I actually had anxiety dreams about it last night.

More spoilery discussion after the jump. I rant like a madwoman. Fun!

From the very first flashback, this episode played with what we always assume to be true on Lost. After three seasons of fitting flashbacks into the puzzle of our characters’ previous lives, using clues from the environment, the character’s hairstyle, the people they’re talking to, their state of mind, we’ve unconsciously developed a habit of recognizing symbols and placing them in time. When we see Jack for the first time, the symbols don’t make sense: he has a beard, which we’ve never seen before (my question to Kyle: “Why is Jack wearing a beard?”). He’s on an Oceanic flight — but not the one to pick up his dead dad in Australia, because we’re told the plane is heading to LA, and not the one coming home with his dead dad’s bones, because that’s the one that crashed. He’s drunk and sad and looks a little crazy, which reminds us of the time that he stalked his ex-wife, but doesn’t give us any other specific clues. There were a couple of subtle things we had to wade through in that scene, too, like the Asian couple sitting behind Jack — was that Sun and Jin? It wasn’t, but we looked for them automatically.

Up until we see Jack in his filthy apartment, surrounded by maps, we’re still playing the unconscious puzzle-piece game. Jack says throughout the “flashbacks” that his father works in the hospital. Though we figure later that’s either the ranting of a delusional man (or maybe the island brings people brings people back to life), it’s one of the strongest pieces of evidence we have that this must be a traditional flashback. Even smaller bits are placed to make us question the time, too: When Jack drives to the funeral parlor, he’s playing Nirvana. Is that supposed to suggest we’re in the early 90s? It isn’t (Jack’s super-small cell phone skuttled that idea), but it made me wonder.

We never feel comfortable placing this series of “flashbacks” in Jack’s personal timeline, but two larger questions distract us from the timeline issue: Why is Jack so upset, and what’s in that article he’s so torn up about? (Personally it seems to me that Ben must’ve died, and that Kate’s living with Sawyer now. Though these things are so nuts it’s hard to convince yourself of anything.)

The only real clue we get that this isn’t a flashback, before the maps and the appearance of Kate at the end, is when someone says to Jack “You’re a hero twice over.” That line jumped out at me at the time, but Kyle offered the explanation that they meant Jack saved both the woman and her son from the car accident, which seemed plausible to me — up until I realized they meant that his other act of heroism was getting the survivors of Oceanic 815 off the island.

So what’s going to happen next season, not in terms of the plot, but just in terms of how these stories get told? Will everyone jump forward with Jack, placing the main narrative back in the real world, and will the flashbacks explain how they got themselves in this sad state? Or will we remain with them on the island, and continue to have flash-forwards? Or was this episode an anomaly, and will we return to life on the island with traditional flashbacks?

Also: Poor Charlie! Yay Hurley! Mikhail’s invincible? Sawyer’s turned a murderous corner? Locke totally weird?

It should come as no surprise to Lost viewers that there are now more questions than ever before, but the way that they introduce these questions is amazingly entertaining. I could (and probably will) talk about this all day. And for the next several months.