Last Night's Lost (Spoiler Alert)

Seriously, if you're behind in watching Lost, this is like the ultimate spoiler alert. So stop reading. Step away from the browser...

Okay, are we all cool?

That was a pretty brilliant episode last night, and brilliant in a way that is unique to Lost, as a television show at least. What made that ending so shocking was not just the information revealed, but the incredibly clever way in which the information reversed two fundamental expectations about the basic rules of the genre. First, they confounded all our temporal expectations by revealing that it was a flashforward, not flashback, which was itself a subtle nod to all the controversy about the prominence of flashbacks in the show. (When the episode started, my wife said to me, "No, not another flashback...") And then of course choosing to answer the ultimate question that has driven the narrative from the beginning: will they get off the island?

This sets up a marvelous symmetry for the remaining three seasons. The first three  were built around a  basic structure where you had a present tense story on the island, with multiple events in the past slowly revealed to you, and part of the intrigue of the show came from slowly filling in the blank spots that connect those past events with the present storyline. Now, for the final three seasons, we're potentially going to have future events doled out to us as well -- or at least the one big future event that we saw last night -- and the intrigue will come from figuring out all the chains that connect past, present, and future.

I can't wait.

Comments

[Andrew Parker]

Kind of like the plot structure of Memento. Past, Present, and Future threads all converge in the middle, at which point (and only until that point) all the holes are filled. Amazing, talented writing.

[Christopher Fahey]

The "flashbacks" weren't just prominent in the first three seasons -- they are 50% of the structure of every episode. I can't understand why there would be "controversy" about that!

The next three seasons seems likely to be a complete inversion, structurally, of the first three. I don't think they will mix flashbacks and flashforwards, at least not in the way you seem to be imagining it -- rather, I think that all the off-island scenes will become the present, and all the on-island scenes will become the past: there will be no "flash forwards", and the scene in last night's film was not a "flash forward" either. It was a flash back, back to the island, triggered by Jack's regret of the day that he made that phone call to the ship.

Part of the reason why I characterize it this way, with the "flash forwards" as the present, is because "island time" has fallen behind our real-world time so greatly (I think they've only been on the island for a few months) that "a few years in the future" from last night's episode is actually "right now".

But mostly I predict that in the next three seasons the characters will interact with each other off-island and longer-arc plots will begin to emerge in the off-island world. The great mysteries of the characters' pasts which helped color the on-island dramatic milieu will, in the coming episodes, be transposed into the real-world off-island people "remembering" and peicing together (for us) the final hours/days/weeks on the island. This story will be told as flashbacks.

Ironically, the superficial structure of the show will not change from the formula: 50% on-island, 50% off-island.

Final prediction: The final episode of the final season will be the rescue itself.

[Franco Cumpeta]

I do suppose television shall yeld space and time to the new internet system called "poli"; many have to do that.

Did you ever wrote and read your metropolis?

Keep this, and use it:

http://www.turismo.fvg.it/poli/MapBroker.asp?javarel=1.4

Regards.

Franco

[haig]

I guessed that it was a flashforward almost immediately from the beginning, however, one piece of information during one of the 'flashforwards' threw me off. In one scene Jack is in the hospital being confronted by the other black doctor who suspects Jack is drunk. Jack then responds by saying he'll bring his dad from his office and see which one is more drunk....but wasn't his dad dead? That's when I second guessed it being a flash-back, but the ending of the episode confirmed the flash-forward...now we're left with that plot whole that confuses the heck out of me.

[aizheng]

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[Guess Who?]

I hope that all the questions concerning events in the character past will be answered in the next 2 seasons as well as all the questions about the island and, that at the end of the 5th series they will be rescued.I feel the final series should reveal each character's future.This is my hopes for the finale three seasons of such a great series. Are you all with me????!