Well, Lost does season finales very well, and I’ve always enjoyed that the finales seem to change the entire premise of the series. That’s certainly the case with this finale too. So let’s deal with those major events first.

JULIET NUKED THE ISLAND

I’ve always enjoyed Juliet — and Elizabeth Mitchell’s performance — so it saddened me to see her do something so hopeless and sorrowful. As disappointed as I was to see her plummet down the chasm, it was even more heartbreaking to see her wake up at the bottom. At first I thought, “Oh, good. She survived.” But … well, you know the rest. Jughead meet rock. Ka-boom.

So, sadness aside, we’re left to ponder what this means for the future of the series and our beloved heroes. We know that the DHARMA Initiative remains on the island — as do the Others — after the incident, so the radiological impact may have been contained to the area around the Swan station. That would seem to spell doom for Jack, Sawyer, and the rest, and jibes with Richard Alpert’s claim that he saw them all die. That would certainly be a game-changer as far as the sixth season is concerned.

And yet, we know there are otherworldly forces at work on the Losties. They survived a plane crash, got sucked out of a another plane, and traveled back in time thirty years. So I’m willing to accept the possibility that maybe, just maybe, they’re not dead. Call me crazy, I know. But there have to be consequences, right? It’s not fair to use the nuke to, say, jettison our heroes back to 2007. There has to be more to it than that.

Juliet’s — well, I think it’s fair to surmise that she is dead — her death removes the lame Sawyer-Kate-Juliet triangle and reintroduces the also lame but tried-and-true Jack-Kate-Sawyer triangle. I did think it was interesting that Juliet’s flashback didn’t include Jacob. I suppose that should have been a sign that she was doomed in some way.

(We’ll get to Jacob momentarily).

Earlier, Miles finally offers up some voice-of-reason wisdom when he suggests that the detonation of the warhead might be the fabled incident, rather than the electromagnetic core breach. It appears that he was right, since other than grabbing everything metal within a hundred foot radius, the release of the magnetic energy didn’t really seem all that destructive. Yeah, I’m sure I’d have a different take on it if my DHARMA Initiative Volkswagen bus was parked too close to the drill, but it’s hard to see how the rest of the island would have been all that affected. So maybe our heroes failed miserably in their quest to change the course of time.

But we won’t know the answer to that until next winter.

LOCKE ISN’T REALLY LOCKE

I considered this possibility when we first saw a resurrected Locke sitting on the beach this season. And to his credit, I don’t think Jason Kramer ever believed Locke was really himself after arriving back on the island. But I wanted to believe it. I adore Locke. But it’s interesting to find out the number of ways he’s been manipulated (along with everyone else) for a long, long time.

But let’s back up. The episode begins — brilliantly, I thought — by showing us Jacob preparing a fish breakfast for himself while watching a ship (presumably the Black Rock) slowly sailing toward the island. Another unnamed man wearing black questions Jacob about why he brings people to the island when it always ends the same way. Jacob retorts that there’s only one end; everything before that is progress. This is the kind of fun philosophical wordplay you can imagine God and Satan having back in the day. Which I suppose is the point.

The Man in Black tells Jacob that he will kill him someday, once he finds a loophole. And eventually, after taking the forms of dead people like Christian Shepherd and John Locke, he finds that loophole in Ben. Unless I’m missing something, the Man in Black isn’t allowed to kill Jacob himself. But it’s okay for someone else to do it.

So it’s easy to assume that every time we’ve seen an apparition of some kind on the island — or maybe even off — it’s been this figure. Christian, Locke, Alex, maybe even Claire — it’s been this sinister island force. Locke’s whole connection to the island and the Others has been a sham! But that does beg the question — is Jacob actually a force for good? He keeps Kate from getting caught shoplifting, encourages Sawyer to write the note to the con man whose fake name he’d adopt, and helps Jack get a candy bar, which will be terrible for his teeth and skin. Maybe it’s all a game, and Jacob is just as bad for our heroes as the other guy. Or maybe the other guy is actually good.

Note that all the personal property Hurley received back when let out of jail were essentially the very things Jacob gave to the other people.

Naturally I rooted for Ben to not stab him. His entreaties to Hurley and Ben that they have free will make it easier to side with him than a spectral entity that takes on the forms of dead people. And his dismissive response to Ben’s pleading — “What about you?” — not only plants him firmly in the camp of martyrs, it also makes it clear that Jacob fully expects to die. Whatever happened, happened. What’s destined to be is destined to be.

This doesn’t bode well for the future of Richard Alpert, who we learned is kept young by the intervention of Jacob.

So we’ve got the Others blindly following what appears to be an evil spirit masquerading as a prophet, a deposed leader striking down the figure he’s blindly followed most of his life, and a small group of “good guys” with cold hard facts (Locke’s corpse) trying to make everyone less blind. Oh, and the 1977 group is dealing with their own issues of predestination. Religious ideas abound.

In any case, it now seems that the Man in Black — whatever he actually is — will be free to run rampant over the island and bend it to his will. Assuming the nuclear detonation hasn’t actually changed time, I’m excited to see what changes in the final act. If the balance between good and evil has been destroyed, what will an all-evil island look like?

The season of Lost has been really uneven, but “The Incident” was eminently satisfying. And it left me just as off balance as every previous finale. I don’t know much about Egyptian mythology, so I can’t comment about the statue or the images in the temple. But I’m just as hooked on the series as I’ve ever been.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Rose and Bernard! And Vincent! I’m so glad to see you guys. Though I’m afraid we may now know whose skeletons those are in the cave.

Before we reach the end of the series next year, I hope we get some explanation for why the Others don’t want other people on the island. Why are they “hostile”? Why are they on the island in the first place? Other than the technological differences (VW buses versus horses), they don’t seem all that different from the Dharma Initiative. They both crave information from each other, yet tend to greet interlopers with violence and demands rather than questions. We know the Others ultimately wipe out the DI — so there’s no hope of any kind of peaceful coexistence there — but what will be the fate of the Others in 2007 and beyond?

It appears that will be determined by Mr. John Locke.

As you might expect, “Follow the Leader” was about leadership, specifically how one acquires a leadership role and what he or she does with that power once in possession of it. As demonstrated in this and previous episodes, authority rarely goes unchallenged on Mystery Island. While Eloise Hawking is killing her future son Daniel, Charles Widmore discovers Jack and Kate lurking in the woods. Once they are dragged into camp, Eloise picks their brains about Daniel, whom she realizes is from the future. Jacks tells her about Daniel’s plan to detonate the nuclear warhead and, you know, put everything back the way it’s supposed to be or something. Kate abhors this plan — people will probably die and worse, she and Jack will never meet — but Eloise agrees to take them to Jughead, despite Widmore’s protestations.

Jack has been the leader of the Losties since the beginning, and though he seemed relieved to not have that responsibility in the Dharma village, there are just some parts of our nature that cannot be changed. Jack makes decisions. He’s not a follower. And Jack decides he wants to blow up the nuke even though it’s buried underneath the village. Kate follows for awhile, but can’t tolerate it when Jack talks about changing the course of the future as his “destiny”. The word carries too many shades of Locke, and so Kate bolts (but not before Sayid appears out of the jungle and shoots one of the Others).

Sayid has no qualms about changing the future. He believes he’s already done it, in fact, because as far as he knows, Benjamin Linus is now dead. Kate breaks the news that she rescued Ben, and Sayid makes a mental note to strangle her as soon as it becomes convenient. In the meantime, Sayid joins Jack, Eloise, and Richard Alpert on their journey toward the bomb.

And I know I mentioned this last week, but it still bugs the hell out of me: if whatever change they’re able to make actually stops their plane from crashing, then it also means they won’t have ever journeyed back to 1977. And if they never travel to 1977, then they won’t be there to blow up the bomb! Surely someone will figure this out before long, won’t they?

Back at the village, Radzinsky has basically staged a coup, and is torturing Sawyer and Juliet. He wants to know the location of the Others’ camp. Sawyer — selling out his former friends in order to save himself and Juliet — finally agrees to give up the location in exchange for their safe passage on the submarine. Dr. Chang has finally been convinced that Daniel was telling the truth about the electromagnetic discharge, but with Radzinsky calling the shots, the best he can arrange is to get the women and children off the island. This provides the completely predictable explanation for why he abandoned his wife and baby Miles. Of course we don’t know for certain that the map drawn by Sawyer is accurate, but he seemed too defeated in that moment to not tell the truth. Where just a few weeks ago he was enjoying his comfortable DI life, now he’s sick of it. “Good riddance” he says to the island as he slumps down into the sub.

Radzinsky’s tenure as leader of the DI will be a disaster, of course, and he’ll spend his last days living in the Swan station pushing the button and drawing maps on the blast doors. Just like Idi Amin.

The third leadership situation this week puts us back in 2007 with Locke and his merry band of post-Dharma Initiative Others. Locke walks into the Others’ camp carrying a dead boar, proclaiming, “I brought dinner.” After brushing off Richard’s questions about, you know, where the hell he’s been for the last three years — and after pulling off the neat trick of sending Richard to provide first aid for a time traveling Locke recently shot in the leg by Ethan — Locke demands to be taken to see Jacob. And not only that, he asks everyone else to come along too (much to Richard’s chagrin). When Ben asks Locke what he plans to do, Locke drops this bombshell: he’s going to kill Jacob.

I have speculated previously that I thought Jacob was actually Jack, trapped in some kind of interdimensional vortex or something metaphysical like that. That still may be the case, and I’d like to think it is. But when Locke says he wants to kill Jacob, I don’t think he means it literally. During his speech to the Others, he asks if any of them has seen Jacob. I believe he means to “kill” Jacob by demonstrating that he doesn’t exist. Kill the myth of Jacob. And yet if he does that, it will probably be the least Locke-like thing he’s ever done. Maybe he really is different now.

The island is still speaking to him though. So at least he’s not giving up all his faith. I do hope, though, that he’s wrong about Jacob (or that I am), because I’ll be disappointed if that’s all just a big hoax. But it was interesting to me how eager the Others were to follow Locke. Who has been leading them over the past three years? Richard? Probably not, since … well, that’s never been his job. If Locke’s quest to destroy Jacob (whatever that means) doesn’t go the way he hopes, what will that say about his destiny? Will the Others still follow him? I don’t know, but maybe being dead for a week causes you to lose some of those incidental worries.

By the way, if I’ve never said it before, I want to mention how much I enjoy Nestor Carbonell as Richard. What a wonderfully underplayed performance week after week. I’ve come to really enjoy that character, and I’ve never been more intrigued about his true identity.

I thought this was the most solid episode of Lost since “316″. It gave us three strong, thematically connected storylines, and left me anxious to see the resolutions to all three. I don’t have much interest in the Sawyer-Kate-Juliet triangle. I do kind of want to know what the hell happened to Rose and Bernard. It’s been three years! Where are they?!

I feel properly prepared for next week’s season finale. I don’t know if they’re going to give us another game-changing plot twist in the form of an altered crash-free timeline, but though it doesn’t seem reasonably possible, I’m curious to see how it plays out.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Best exchange of the night: Chang quizzing Hurley on his age in an effort to prove he’s a time traveler.

CHANG: “So you fought in the Korean War?”
HURLEY: “…There’s no such thing?”

So much of Lost is about destiny: the impact our decisions have on our lives, the lives of those around us, and the lives of people we’ve never met. And we’ve known from her past interactions with Desmond that Eloise has some kind of connection with the little incidents of fate. So the revelation that she drove her son Daniel hard his entire life toward the studies and events that lead him to the island isn’t really surprising. What’s surprising is that the discovery that Eloise shot Daniel through the gut in 1977.

Yes, that is surprising. It wasn’t really surprising in the moment, mind you. Daniel is quickly established as a weapons naif, so when he’s standing in the Others’ camp pointing a gun at Richard — and surrounded by a bunch of people holding rifles — as a viewer you know it’s only a matter of time before someone realizes he’s taken his eyes off every other dangerous person in the camp and puts a bullet in him. But on a larger level, it’s surprising.

And yet … so what? I mean, I don’t get it. Eloise lives with the knowledge for thirty years that her son will die (in the past) by her own hand, and does everything she can to ensure it happens that way. Why? What purpose does Daniel’s death serve (assuming he’s actually dead — if the island can save Ben and resurrect Locke, maybe Daniel’s not food for worms just yet)? We know he planned to blow up the nuke, but surely he could have been stopped from doing that without killing him. I don’t see yet why Daniel matters. Up until now, he’s been an expository vehicle for the writers to transmit necessary time travel information to the audience. But I can’t figure out any larger rationale for his presence on the island — certainly not a reason for Eloise to send him in a crazy haze onto Charles Widmore’s freighter.

Oh, yeah. Widmore is Daniel’s father. Big whoop.

I was digging this episode, because it felt like we were going to get something really meaty out of it. Alas, that didn’t happen at all! It was a tease. And worst of all, Daniel’s plan to change history by blowing up the nuke doesn’t even make sense. Not to get too hung up on science fiction nonsense, but if Daniel successfully stopped all of the previous events of the series from happening, then he never would have been in a position to be transported back in time. And if that never happens, then he’s not around in 1977 to blow up the nuke. Hello, Dan, anyone home? You’re the guy that’s supposed to understand this stuff!

In other news, Radzinsky and his band of goons get into a shootout with Jack, Kate, and Daniel, and then discover Jimmy Barrett tied up in Sawyer’s house. The best Sawyer can muster is to suggest that the noise of a person yelling for help in the closet is actually coming from outside. Sawyer’s an idiot. And Juliet’s an idiot for letting Sawyer be an idiot.

Desmond’s going to survive, it appears. Then again, Henry Ian Cusick just got hit with a sexual harassment lawsuit, so … we’ll see how that goes. I have enjoyed the additions of both Desmond and Juliet, and I hope they continue to advance those characters. But I suspect at least one of them is doomed.

The episode did introduce a “ticking clock” in the form of the energy that’s going to be released and lead to the Swan station to become “the hatch”. One has to assume that people are going to die when that happens, and that it will cause infant Miles and child Charlotte to leave the island. Hmm… I wonder if that’s the source of Miles’ ability to talk to the dead. And maybe Dr. Chang will do something heroic in the process. But the apparent death of Daniel makes me feel a little like we’re on a snipe hunt. Something meaningful better happen next week or I’m going to be pissed.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

This was a fairly solid episode until the end. Ultimately, though, all bark and no bite.

Comment away, but please no spoilers for future episodes.

Before I get into dissecting this week’s offering, I want to take a moment to explain a theory I’ve been developing about the nature of the island and its many inhabitants (and would-be inhabitants). In particular, I’ve been wondering about the significance of all the Egyptian imagery and considering the possibility that the island exists within the realm of Egyptian mythology. But the more I think about it, the less I’m able to discount all the allusions to other religions and philosophies. Christian Shepherd. The DHARMA Initiative. Rousseau. Locke. Locke dying and being resurrected three days later. Jacob. Benjamin. The Virgin Mary statues. Locke sending Boone on a vision quest (and then taking one himself). And when you get right down to it, the central conflict between Jack and Locke: science vs. faith.

Miles speaks with the dead.

I’ve begun to wonder if — at least on an allegorical level — the show is about opposing spiritual ideas fighting over ownership of paradise. Who has claim over the Truth? Christianity, Buddhism, science, New Age mysticism? Man, that’s sure an eternal struggle (and like the island, a constantly moving target). And the island both saves people and kills people. It separates them into different groups. Some try to harness its power. Others defend it against…the impure? And lastly, some unfortunate souls have been cast out entirely.

 I toyed with the idea early in the series that the island was actually the Garden of Eden. And though I’m not prepared to rule that out completely, I’m now more attracted to the idea that the island is religion incarnate. Maybe those are the same thing.

I also came to the conclusion a couple of weeks ago that Jacob — mysterious man in the cabin with an unexplained relationship to Christian and Claire — is actually our own Jack Shepherd! I don’t know how Jack (which is usually a nickname for John, but I suppose could also be one for Jacob) becomes the apparent ruler of Mystery Island, or what brings him to go back in time again and enter that strange, alternate plane of existence Jacob seems to be on. But I’m going to spend the rest of the series looking for clues that back up my theory. And as Jason Kramer pointed out to me when we discussed this, it would be wonderfully ironic if prototypical “man of faith” John Locke had actually been putting his faith in Jack all along.

As for this week — I wasn’t really waiting with baited breath for a Miles episode. I suppose it’s necessary sooner or later to explain what the hell he’s doing on the show, and I found the episode entertaining enough. I suppose there are two noteworthy revelations I should mention:

1. Pierre Chang (aka Marvin Candle) is Miles’ father. Duh. We figured that out months ago. But I think we can also infer at this point that Miles will have some role in separating his father from his mother (and infant self). Whether he does this to protect them or for some other reason, I don’t know. If nothing else, we know now that being in the same vicinity as your past self does not cause the space-time continuum to rip apart.

2. The guy who was with Ilana when she clocked Lapidus in the face tried to stop Miles from going to the island aboard the freighter. This guy is decidedly anti-Widmore, but it’s hard to believe he’s working for Ben. So how many sides are there to this thing?

I think we’re about to start barreling toward the season finale. Roger is going to want to know where his son is, and someone is going to discover that Phil — and by the way, I can’t get past the fact that Jimmy Barrett has apparently quit doing comedy to work for the DHARMA Initiative — is missing, along with one of the security tapes. As Juliet said, “Here we go.” Things are about to fall apart quickly for our Losties.

And the return of Daniel means…? If nothing else, he’s probably the only person who will be able to get our beloved castaways back to their own time. Or at least get everyone back in the same year.

There were some tense moments this week — I was impressed by Matthew Fox’s subtly growing menace in his scene with Roger Linus — but all in all, this seemed to be about setting up the end of the season. Not a whole lot to talk about, except, “Oh my God, what do you think is going to happen when they find out about … ?” My favorite moment by far, however — and probably the funniest of the season — was Hurley writing The Empire Strikes Back. You know, to make it easier for George Lucas.

Did you know that Empire is all about how parents and children should talk rather than fight with each other? See, with Lost you get action, suspense, laughs, and insightful critical analysis of beloved motion pictures.

Comment away, but please no spoilers for future episodes.