Lost episodes 1x23-25

Exodus, all three parts

The penultimate scene of “Exodus”, the first season finale of Lost, gives us everyone right before the crash happens. Right before their lives are transformed forever and the Island sucks them into its world. Right before everything changes.

The last scene of “Exodus” gives us Jack, Locke, Kate and Hurley right after they’ve blown open the hatch but before they’ve gone inside. Right before their lives are transformed forever and the hatch sucks them into its world. Right before everything changes.

If this episode has one big thematic statement, it’s that the chapter is coming to an end. The show is more or less done telling the story of how these survivors came to board Oceanic 815 and how they struggled to survive. They’ve changed the game forever by blowing open the hatch. They’re no longer passive observers but active participants in the story of whatever the hell is happening on this island. They’ve gone native. Season 2 is going to play by different rules.

The other big cliffhanger of the episode, The Others kidnapping Walt, plays into this as well. If you’ve ever watched TV in your life, you knew that the survivors weren’t getting rescued in season one. But having it fail like this, with an active threat, changes the game. It means there’s now good reason for the characters to stop attempting to get off the Island. They really are stuck here.

The third major story of “Exodus”, Charlie and Sayid rescuing Aaron, doesn’t quite have the same heft that the other two offer. Some of that’s unavoidable as it’s deliberately built as a red herring. But it still feels a little underwhelming when it wraps up. Charlie’s very whiny here, and though he has some reasons, his hotheadedness is never the most fun thing on Lost.

But let’s get back to the hatch. The threat of the Others has Jack galaxy brain himself into opening the thing in order to keep everyone safe. That there’s no good reason to think it really provides this safe shelter doesn’t matter to him because at least it’s a strategy. He needs to be doing things to protect the survivors, otherwise he’d get angsty. Locke obviously has very different reasons, but fate puts them on the same side this time. A thing this late stretch of episodes really emphasise is that Jack against Locke is now the central conflict in the show.

John sees it as a debate of science against faith, but I don’t think that’s really true. It’s much more fate against free will. Way back in “Outlaws”, We hear Jack talk about his dad way back in “Outlaws”, stating the following:

“‘That's why the Red Sox will never win the series’. It's just something my father used to say -- going through life knowing that people hated him. Instead of taking responsibility for it, he just put it on fate. Said he was made that way.”

Thank you, Jack, for summing up your own point of view better than I could manage. Jack doesn’t reject destiny because he’s purely a man of science. He’s not against believing in things. He even tells Michael they will see each other again for certain, because he wants to believe the raft will work. If anything, he’s a “God helps those who help themselves” kind of guy. He wants to take control of his own destiny and believe in he and his fellow survivors’ ability to achieve things. Locke believes in magic and mysticism and predetermined truth.

I don’t think there’s a character I’ve changed my mind on over the years more than John Locke. The first time I watched this season as a teenager, he seemed this incredible figure, kind of the ancient wizard type of the Island. You know, like Obi-Wan or Gandalf or whoever. But watching today, it’s really clear how much he’s just bullshitting his way through it all. He suggests staying still in sight of the smoke monster (side note: thank god I can finally call it that). How can he possibly know that? He can’t. He probably just saw that scene in Jurassic Park and he’s taking a punt that smoke monsters work like dinosaurs. He acts like this expert hunter when he’d never once done it before meeting his father, and that was with a shotgun. John is absolutely a man of faith, if we understand faith as the belief in something without evidence. He knows he’s on a journey, and he just doesn’t need any outside knowledge to guide him beyond the Island.

He’s totally wrong about the conflict being science against faith because it doesn’t explain the hatch divide. Jack wants to blow it open for practical reasons. Sayid is terrified of blowing it open for practical reasons. And then Hurley doesn’t want it open because he thinks the numbers are cursed. If Locke was correct, no one would be more strongly aligned with him than Hurley. This is someone who is a total believer in supernatural powers even before he crashed on the Island. And here he is, terrified to open the hatch. It might be a bit of a cheat for the show to have Hurley along for the ride just so he can see the numbers right before they set off the dynamite, but damn if it doesn’t work. I don’t know if it was the intention, but this really establishes Hurley as part of the so-called “A-Team” in a way that, say, Charlie just isn’t.

Then there’s Kate, who the show frustratingly can’t get a handle on at this point. She seems to join the hatch mission mostly because Sawyer is mad at her, so... she’s hanging out with Jack now? Ugh. Lost is interested in Kate as a tabula rasa test case, to compare two possible versions of who she could be. That’s all well and good, but it’s so frequently just defined by which boy she likes more. Of the four people at the hatch, she’s the one with by far the most opaque motivations for being there, and I don’t think that’s by design.

Over on the raft, the episode is in a bit of confusion about what to do until the big twist at the end. There’s a whole incident about a part breaking off into the ocean which seems mostly there to kill time. But it’s fine. The show has successfully built up Sawyer (James Ford!) as someone who would credibly want onboard where it would seem implausible earlier on. He doesn’t have things to go back to so much as unfinished business, and he’s convinced he can’t have his blank slate until he does the deed and kills the original Sawyer. If he didn’t, people on the Island would be calling him James.

Jin is... also on the raft? I get that it’s hard for the writers to find things for him to do. He’s finally ok with Sun and he seems to view getting rescued as the real fresh start. He can’t see that he has everything he needs to heal his marriage already. He’s definitely the member of the raft gang who has the least to gain from being rescued.

Michael and Walt certainly have the most. They’ve done it. They’ve taken the tabula rasa and rebuilt their relationship to be ready for the real world. Walt through whatever psychic powers he has is convinced the Island is no longer safe and they need to get the hell away. I mean, he’s not wrong, but maybe his powers could’ve told him what was coming. The kidnapping means that Michael is suddenly the character who wants to leave the Island least. He’s lost everything. All so the show wouldn’t have to worry about how quickly Malcolm David Kelley was growing up.

Both arcs are really emphasising a shift in the show. The table setting is done. Shit is going down with the hatch and with the Others. And possibly Michelle Rodriguez, but that would be saying too much.

See you all down the hatch.