Lost Summer: Episode 23-25.
"Exodus."
The final chapter of Lost Summer is upon us. We have much to discuss. Thanks for hanging out.
Seriously, thanks for hanging out. It was a Dr. Arzt-sized blast to be able to put this all together as we approach Lost’s 20th anniversary. What initially started as a trek to resurrect stuff I wrote from 2005-10 eventually turned into a 5-week, 13-essay, 35,000-word blitz of content that gave me an excuse to settle back in with one of my favorite TV shows of all-time. This was a fun way to end my Summer; I hope it was fun for you, too.
This also brings Season 2 of LATCHKEYKID to a close. If you’re looking for something to read this fall, I’d recommend subscribing and checking out Season 1 in the archives if you haven’t already. I promise it won’t take another three years for Season 3 to arrive. (Note to future readers: In 2020 there was a global pandemic that killed 7,000,000 people and our leader told us to drink bleach and microwave our mail if we wanted to survive. We were preoccupied.)
There won’t be any updates this autumn, but I will be writing. All’s I can say right now is that I’m working on something I’ve never worked on before, and if you say “Oh, a collegiate writing course?” I’m gonna swat you. We’ll see how it all shakes out (the project, not the swatting), smart ass.
Let’s talk about Lost.
In rewatching the first season at such a rapid clip, I was both taken by surprise and comforted with familiar feelings about the show as a whole. There are episodes in Season 1 that flounder, a show clearly existing in a 2004 network model that films 25 episodes a year regardless of plot. Minutes later, I would be awestruck by the shot-out-of-a-cannon pace of, say, the three episode finale of Season 1. When the show was good, it was as good as it gets, but I honestly forgot how good.
The greatest pilot episode of all-time deserves one of the greatest season finales of all time as well (and Lost had a few), and we got one with “Exodus.” In an era before streaming, binge watching and even the regularity of TV shows on DVD, I cannot imagine anyone who saw that hatch blow open and didn’t want to immediately see the next episode. It was the summer cliffhanger to end everything: “What’s in the hatch?” officially took its place next to “Who shot JR?” and “Who killed Laura Palmer?” in the Pantheon of TV mysteries.
In the many ways that many people have analyzed Lost as the last great network drama and the start of a new Golden Age of Television, it’s brought up time and time again how a show like this “couldn’t happen anymore.” This is usually an argument on how the streaming and binge-watching eras of the 2010’s wouldn’t allow such an online groundswell to take place. Perhaps if Lost premiered on Netflix in 2014, it would have been cancelled at the end of Season 2 for costing too much money or for not answering enough questions in a short period of time.
The deal Lost made with ABC in the middle of Season 3 was absolutely unprecedented in TV at the time. The Lost crew wanted a definitive ending date for the series so they could begin to lay out the remainder of the story at the pace they wanted and quit with the filler episodes. ABC offered them nine seasons. The Lost crew refused and went with six. Again, this was still at a time when TV shows didn’t really air finales; they just made episodes until they were unprofitable and canceled. The popularity of the show had the Lost crew in rarified air, and the idea that they wanted to quit sorta early was still something broadcast networks weren’t used to.
Once this deal was done, not even a 2009 Writers Strike could slow down the show. Not even Obama could stand in Lost’s way: A possible-but-not-quite proven anecdote states that the 2010 State of the Union speech was moved to February 3 as to not preempt the Groundhog Day premiere of Season 6. This is the kind of sway that less than a handful of shows in history ever had. As the kids say, Lost was built different.
In true non-linear fashion, let’s switch things up a bit and BREAK IT DOWN first with a look back to 2010.
Here’s what I originally wrote in anticipation of the Series Finale on 5/21/10:
“We’re not going to get every question answered. Probably not even a quarter of them. Furthermore, a lot of ‘questions’ have already been answered in some sort of roundabout way, and that’s as good as it’s going to get. I’ve accepted this. After 120 episodes of whispers and mysteries, expecting the writers to break their time-tested storytelling formula to merely put the fans at ease is akin to a cop out. The feeling of confusion is the state that we’re supposed to be in when we watch Lost.
I’ve never, not once, watched an episode and walked away feeling as if I totally understood. And in this day and age of freeze-framing, online discussion and merciless fanboy dissection, that is a nearly impossible feat to achieve. What’s more, they took all of that confusion, all of that mystery and frustration, and somehow turned it into the most fun, worthwhile and philosophically deep series we’ve ever seen.
The secret to Lost isn’t the writers and producers. It’s not the beautiful Island location, music and cinematography. The money spent on the most expensive (and greatest) pilot episode in Television history. It’s not the twisted, theme-driven plotline of redemption, faith and free will. It’s not the humor, violence, double-crossing, sex or explosions. Much like what Jacob has always known, the secret to the Island (and the show) is the cast of characters that have been invited. The cast of characters we’ve watched for so long now. A cast unlike any other; a deep, rich, diverse crew of established and unknown actors and actresses, forming a seamless, interwoven bond between anything and everything thrown at them.
The writers did such a good job with character development that each and every person on Lost could have gotten their own personal TV series and it would have been interesting and watchable. And we’re talking dozens of characters, here. However, none of that would have meant anything had we not cared about these people to begin with. What would Lost have been like had Josh Holloway not played Sawyer? Michael Emerson as Ben? Terry O’Quinn as Locke? It’s a house of cards. Every piece matters.
Lost can be watched and enjoyed on multiple levels. It can be dissected on a base, character level. A mythological level. Even a morality, theme-based level. You can watch it because it brings to light a number of religious and spiritual theories that no other television show had the intelligence to make interesting. You can watch it just because you think that Yunjin Kim is adorable. Anything you could possibly want is there for the taking in some way.
As Jacob said, everyone is flawed. The heroes are anti-heroes. The villains force you to feel sympathetic for them. Benjamin Linus may go down in TV history as the most evil, manipulative psychopath of all-time, yet I’m still rooting for him to have a happy ending as I find myself pitying him and his circumstances every other week. That’s beautiful. That’s just like real life.
On Sunday night, we’re going to sit in front of our televisions and watch a massive Lost retrospective. There, they will go over all of the talking points I mentioned, along with all the reasons why the show has changed the very landscape of modern entertainment (their mobisodes and alternate-reality games made the Internet explode and allowed for constant theorization and interaction, a platform that will probably become the norm within the next decade). Then we’re going to watch the feature film-length series finale. Not one, not two, but two-and-a-half hours of Lost, culminating with the final curtain as the cast and crew show up on Jimmy Kimmel Live* to bask in their job well done.
As we watch, we may feel a certain sense of pride. A sense that maybe, we as fans had a little something to do with its success. A sense that we’ve all been in this together from Day 1, and now we’re all finally getting to experience what we’ve been waiting for as a single unit.”
(*If you’ve already seen the Series Finale, do yourself a favor and watch at least the first minute of this special as the live audience reacts to the ending. It is absolutely incredible.)
14 years later, and I feel exactly the same. Now let’s get THICK & MEATY one last time!
EPISODE 23: “EXODUS, PART 1”
Flashbacks
Several of our Flight 815 homies are shown in the final hours before their flight. Walt and Michael aren’t getting along. Jack drinks in the lounge with Ana Lucia, a woman who’s about to make several future episodes very annoying. Sawyer’s being deported. Kate’s in cuffs. Shannon’s making Boone get her a first-class upgrade, and her casual racism nearly gets Sayid (her future smoochmate) arrested. Jin and Sun are eating in a cafe, and Sun has to pretend that she can’t understand what the jerks around them are saying about her.
They do a good job of establishing how miserable everyone is. Much like the Island, airports are a liminal Third Space where nothing matters and the rules of Earth do not apply. Wanna get trashed on Long Island Iced Teas at a Chili’s Too at six in the morning? Go for it! Nobody cares.
On The Island
Rousseau stumbles onto the beach with the grace and inconspicuousness of a horse falling into a swimming pool. She says that the Others are coming, their arrival heralded by a cloud of black smoke (I used to drive a 1986 Buick Somerset, so a cloud of black smoke was how you could tell I was on the way, too). The Others kidnapped Rousseau’s baby 16 years ago, whom she has not seen since. The survivors tell Rousseau about the hatch, and Rousseau offers to take them to the “Black Rock” to obtain dynamite to blow it open.
Jack and Sawyer share an awkward goodbye before the raft shoves off, as Sawyer tells Jack of a man he met in Sydney. Sawyer tells Jack what Christian said about his son, mostly how Christian wanted to apologize and tell Jack how much he respected him. Jack starts bawling. I bite my lip, turn away from the TV and proclaim I need to run to the kitchen for some reason.
As Jack, Locke, Hurley, Kate and Arzt head toward the Black Rock, Arzt is chased by the Smoke Monster, which Rousseau says is a “security system” protecting the island. I personally use Ring as my security system, although it’s been accidentally triggered a dozen times and not once due to a potential robbery. Its only purpose, it seems, is to annoy me.
The raft launches. Walt leaves Vincent for Shannon. Sun and Jin reconcile. Bananas are presumably eaten.
EPISODE 24-25: “EXODUS, PART 2-3”
Flashbacks
We pick up where we left off at the airport, as the Flight 815 passengers prepare to board. Jin runs into a man who works for Sun’s father and knows they were attempting to run away together. Michael is looking to pawn Walt off onto his mother. Charlie’s on drugs. Hurley seemingly defeats Fate in an attempt to keep him off of the doomed plane. Locke is carried to his seat by two flight attendants, much like me when I take my Ambien too early. Everyone is about to have a very bad day.
On The Island
The Black Rock is, get this, a slave ship that’s been marooned miles inland. Rousseau bolts as the rest of the crew scavenges for dynamite. Arzt has a delightfully prickish monologue before accidentally blowing himself to pieces with a stick of unstable dynamite. If you haven’t watched any further than this episode, Dr. Arzt shows up in no less than nine episodes of Lost. That’s how deep this rabbit hole goes; even the background guy that got detonated for comic relief has a fully-formed backstory.
On their way back with the dynamite, the Smoke Monster shows up and attempts to drag Locke into a hole in the jungle where a tree was uprooted. While initially accepting of his fate, he realizes that this Monster wasn’t the one he “looked into the eye of” back in the beginning of the season and freaks out. They save Locke by setting off an explosion in the hole, scaring the Smoke Monster off for the time being. Jack and Locke discuss the situation, and Locke says that Jack is a man of science, but that Locke is a man of faith. Locke believes everything that has occurred, including the death of Boone, was predestined, leading them all to the opening of the hatch. Jack pretends to get a phone call to get out of the conversation.
During an argument with Kate, Jack says “Everyone wants me to be a leader until I make a decision they don’t like.” I have said these words verbatim at least a hundred times to my wife and friends over the course of countless vacations. Don’t put me in charge then! You can’t just critique without offering a suitable alternative, Sherry!
After creating a ruse that leaves Claire unprotected, Rousseau steals her baby and runs off into the jungle, but not before Claire has a brief kidnapping flashback to running into Rousseau previously. Sayid surmises that Rousseau intends to attempt an exchange of Claire's baby for her own child with the Others. A baby barter, perhaps? A kid pro quo?
When Sayid and Charlie track down the source of the black smoke, there are no Others, just Rousseau and the baby nearby. Rousseau tearfully tells them that she overheard the Others saying that they were going to go after “the boy,” and she thought that if she brought him (Aaron) to them, they would return her own child (Alex). She returns the baby to Charlie, fussy and wholly un-bartered.
Meanwhile, Jack, Kate, Locke and Hurley arrive at the hatch. They manage to set the dynamite up on the hinge of the hatch and are about to set it off when Hurley notices the Numbers on the side. He yells at them not to light the fuse, but Locke does so anyway.
At night, the raft crew's radar sweep turns up a boat in the distance. They fire their super special single solitary signal flare and the boat approaches them. It turns out to be a group of strangers who demand that they hand over Walt. Sawyer is shot by one of the boat crewmen and falls into the water. Jin jumps into the water to try and save Sawyer. The strangers overpower Michael, throwing him in the water and kidnapping Walt. As they sail off, the strangers throw an explosive on to the raft, destroying it. This makes it clear that when Rousseau heard the Others say they were “coming for the boy,” they were actually coming for Walt and not Aaron as Rousseau misinterpreted. Why the Others waited until Walt was a very inconvenient 15 miles from the Island to kidnap him is anyone’s guess. The Others work in mysterious ways.
The episode ends with Jack and Locke looking down into the hatch, which the explosion successfully blew off the cover of. The camera descends down the tunnel of the hatch, revealing a long ladder.
Smash cut, one of the greatest seasons in the history of Television over. Unreal. The image of Jack and Locke looking into the hatch is permanently seared into my hippocampus (I looked it up, that’s the memory part of the brainball).
Not ready to leave the Island just yet? No problem, let’s spotlight FIVE AWESOME THINGS!
1. Like I gushed about in 2010, I wanted to talk about the supreme character work at place here. All of the mysteries in the world don’t matter if you don’t care what happens to the people discovering them, I will continue to contend that’s the single most important part of the entire series.
Having Sawyer encounter Christian Shephard in Sydney and converse about Jack, therefore giving Sawyer this valuable currency to share with Jack, is phenomenal. By this point, we’ve firmly established that Jack hates Sawyer more than anyone else on the Island, so the fact that it’s Sawyer who delivers such important, personal information to him is set to maximum power. The daddy issues between the two men, the tension, the complicated emotions have all built up over the season to create this singular moment. In the past, Sawyer has lied to everyone about everything, withholding information to get what he wanted. Here, with a possible final interaction between Sawyer and Jack, Sawyer throws him a bone, showing a shred of evolution and respect. The writers didn’t cheat or cut corners for this payoff; they did it the long, hard way, and it worked.
2. I would say that Sayid is the Season 1 MVP in retrospect. He’s logical, intelligent, strong, brave, open-minded, always seems to make the right decisions but at the same time is vulnerable. Leads by example. I had forgotten how sharp the dude was. When Rousseau takes Claire’s baby in an attempt to trade it with the Others for Alex, Sayid immediately knows exactly what’s going on. Again, not because it’s lazy writing or a shortcut, but because Sayid merely listens when people talk. Also when Charlie pops him in the nose and blames him for the kidnapping, Sayid just grabs Charlie’s arm and says “Do not hit me again.”
In what feels like a hot take, I think Rousseau may come in at a close second in the MVP race. Think about it: Every single thing that Rousseau claimed or predicted was correct, with the exception of thinking the Others wanted Aaron instead of Walt. Tom the Other’s quote of “We’re gonna have to take the boy” is still a heart-sinking moment even when you know it’s coming.
3. Dr. Leslie Arzt is such an overacting, cartoonish buffoon, even more so than I had remembered. When he comes slipping out of the jungle like Kramer after the Smoke Monster chases him, he’s just chewing scenery left and right. They really made him as unlikable as they could in the shortest possible amount of time. That being said, he played the part perfectly. You couldn’t ask any more of the man.
Arzt also has a meta side to him. Getting blown to pieces after complaining that he and the rest of the unnamed survivors are unappreciated seems like a double-barrel middle finger to the early nerdlingers who seemed to think they could have done a better job keeping about 50 different plates spinning at once. “Why is Hurley still fat?” “Why do the same five people go on all the excursions?” “Why doesn’t Jin give anyone else any of his fish?” Arzt is the voice of the pedantic fan.
4. The Lost crew must have known immediately that fans would have never accepted Hurley getting killed under any circumstances. Either that or it was quite serendipitous that his character had literal plot armor from the jump by having “good luck” after using the numbers and winning the lottery.
Most fans understood that everyone on Lost was fair game except for Hurley (and maybe Vincent), and with Hurley he himself even knew that nothing bad would happen to him. His conflict was that he thought it was his fault when anything bad happened to anyone else. Again, perfect character, perfect casting, perfect backstory.
5. The “Man of Science, Man of Faith” divide between Locke and Jack is set in stone at the beginning of Episode 25, although you could also say it was set in stone between Locke and Walt at the very beginning of the series. Maybe more than the Locke/Walt conversation in the pilot, this Locke/Jack conversation is more about the writers preparing the respective fan camps for war:
“Look, kids. It’s only going to get weirder from here on out, and you can choose what side you wish to be on concerning how you’d like the show to go. You want logic or mythology? You want answers or mystery? Whose side are you on?”
There’s also a great little scene with Jack and Kate on top of the hatch, where Jack basically tells Kate that Locke has gone fully nuts and everything from here on out is going to be an uphill battle with this dude to stay safe. And boy is Jack right about that.
We’re almost out of time, but we’re not leaving without a final deep dive into the finale, courtesy of THE NUMBERS!
4 - The story of how the Black Rock got into the jungle isn’t explained in full until “Ab Aeterno” in Season 6, Episode 9. That’s about 89 episodes later and only 8 episodes from the Series Finale. There’s slow burn television, then there’s whatever the hell this is.
8 - All of the 14 original main Lost characters are featured to an extent in flashbacks in the season finale. By the end of the series, Lost boasted a cast of 34 main characters and another 59 recurring. If something I write has more than three people with speaking parts, I proclaim it as too complicated and start consolidating, as I am an idiot and it’s IMPOSSIBLE TO WRITE ANYTHING THAT HAS 93 CHARACTERS WITH SPEAKING PARTS THAT ISN’T THE INSANE RAMBLINGS OF A MADMAN. Gravity’s Friggin’ Rainbow doesn’t have that many goddamn characters.
15 - The Season 1 finale is one of three season finales to take place on the Island. The S2 finale ends somewhere (just…somewhere) in the Arctic, and Seasons 2 and 3 end with flash-forwards. If you have not watched later seasons of Lost and don’t understand any of what I just said, I cannot stress how envious I am of the ride you are in for.
16 - Here’s a Professor Frink-esque one. In Michael's airport flashback, Walt is seen playing a Game Boy Advance SP. Later, Walt approaches Michael and says he “needs new batteries.” However the model of Game Boy he is playing runs off of an internal, rechargeable battery. I know this because I still have the same Game Boy Advance. Hoyvin mayvin.
23 - The orchestral theme played as the final flashback shows everyone getting onto the plane is really beautiful. It’s simply called “Oceanic 815” and was composed by Michael Giacchino, who did most of the music for Lost. Giacchino has won an Oscar and Golden Globe for Best Original Score (Up), an Emmy for Music Composition (Lost) and three various Grammys, which means homie’s just one Tony away from the EGOT. The musical score is an unsung hero of Lost, firmly separating it from anything else on TV at the time.
42 - Holy shit. In Episode 23, I completely forgot that after the raft is launched, Vincent jumps into the water and tries to swim out to Walt only to be turned back. That was when the emotional weight of what was happening hit me, and I’m not afraid to admit it wrecked me, friends.
Imagine this face waving out to you and tell me you wouldn’t jump straight off of that raft.
Well, I don’t know how to tell you this, but we’re done here. Lost Summer has come to a close, and I have officially reviewed every single episode of Lost over the course of what amounts to 19 years. Sunday, September 22 is the official 20th anniversary of the show; it’s also the premiere of Getting Lost, a documentary about the Lost phenomenon (that I was somehow not interviewed for). It’s also the last day of summer.
I hope you had a great summer. I know I did. Have a great fall, and I’ll see you in Season 3.