Lost Season 2 Finale Recap

For those of you who are new to Lost or might just need a reminder as to where we left off, our new GMMR LOST recapper Michelle has kindly given us a great refresher. So before you sit down tonight to watch S3, check out where The Losties and The Others were when we last saw them.

The Lost Season 2 Finale Recap

The castaways, gathered on the beach, spot – can it be? – a boat on the horizon! A few of them swim out to meet it, only to discover that it’s Desmond, the former hatch-dweller and eager escapee who has returned to the island like a reluctant boomerang. Desmond deals with his new-but-old status as castaway by drinking copious quantities of Dharma wine – honestly, I’d do the same thing, and I love that the Dharma people thought to include wine in the emergency food stash – and prattling on about his journey. He tells Jack that the outside world is apparently gone and they are doomed to remain on the island for eternity. I’ve always taken Desmond to be a wine-glass-half-full kind of guy, but I guess floating aimlessly in a boat for 2 ½ weeks would make pessimists of the best of us. Plus, now he’s drinking straight from the bottle, so maybe the metaphor is moot.

FLASHBACK: A clean-shaven Desmond is apparently leaving prison after serving a sentence, for what we’re not sure. He collects his possessions, among them a photograph of himself and a happy-looking blond woman, as well as a copy of Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens; he tells the guard it will be the last thing he ever reads before he dies (cue imaginary foreshadowing music). He is picked up by a distinguished-looking guy in a nice car, who delivers to him…a box of undelivered letters. It’s revealed that Desmond has loved this guy’s daughter; but said guy didn’t want them together, and none of Desmond’s letters from prison ever reached her. Sonofabitch. The guy offers to pay off Desmond to never talk to his daughter, Penny, again.

Back on the island, Sayid reiterates to Jack that he believes Michael has been “compromised” by The Others; he has a plan involving Desmond’s boat and a sneak-attack on The Others. Jack thinks they should share the information with Kate, Sawyer and Hurley, who are making the journey to The Others with them, per Michael’s request. Sayid argues against it, telling Jack that the only thing they have going for them is the element of surprise. Given that Sayid used to fight in the Iraqui army, I’d go with his gut instincts, not Jack’s. Sayid enlists Sun’s help in sailing around the island to find the others, while Jack and crew will meet them there when Sayid sends the smoke signal. In the hatch, newly-cynical Locke tries to convince Mr. Eko to not push the button that resets the numbers. Mr. Eko – bigger, stronger, badder, and with two good legs – locks Locke out of the computer room in the hatch so he can continue with his button-pushing fun. Sawyer, Jack, Kate, Michael and Hurley set out to find The Others after Michael convinces them that they can overtake them because The Others are just a bunch of primitive rednecks. I’ve known rednecks, some of them pretty fierce and scary, so this assessment from Michael wouldn’t make me feel better, but they do need to keep the plan moving, so the Fab Four (plus Michael) set out down their yellow brick road in search of The Others.

FLASHBACK: At the airport, Desmond encounters…Elizabeth, aka Libby, Hurley’s late island gal pal (and, unbeknownst to anyone, apparently a fellow patient at Hurley’s mental institution). Over lattes at the Starbucks, Libby reveals that she’s a widow, and inexplicably offers her late husband’s boat to Desmond so that he can sail around the world and win back his true love. I’m a sucker for true love stories, and this exchange, sappy and unrealistic as it was, made me feel good. Go, Desmond!

Quick and dirty (the way Sawyer likes it): The Fab Four (plus Michael) are hiking toward The Others. Desmond meets Claire and her baby, Aaron; when he discovers that Aaron’s father is not in the picture and tells Claire that maybe the guy thought he was doing what was best for Aaron, Claire angrily responds that the father was doing what was best for him. I believe Claire, but the story parallels one in Desmond’s own life, and we are led to another…

FLASHBACK: Desmond is confronted by his True Love, Penny, in the parking lot of a stadium where he’s in physical training for his boat race around the world. She wants to know why he didn’t write to her and why he’s leaving her again. Desmond takes the high road and doesn’t say much about Penny’s dad, he just promises her that he will return after he’s won her father’s money. I will admit that I am loving this part of the story. I don’t even care if Desmond utters the cheesy line, “I have to get my honor back.” I love his accent, so he could read stock quotes all day and I’d be enthralled. Plus, I’m thinking that the Desmond and Penny storyline is crucial to the overall plot in some way, and I’m happy to be along for the ride.

Back in our own corner of the Bermuda triangle, Locke tells a now-blotto Desmond about the new orientation film in the hatch, and the two of them set off to view it (and Locke promises popcorn…this, combined with the promise of a real shower for the rough-looking Desmond, should be enough to get the reluctant return castaway to watch the film, but maybe he’s wary of stepping foot in that place again, given that he spent so much time down there previously). Jin, Sun and Sayid take the boat to the other side of the island to meet up with the Fab Four for the surprise attack on The Others. On the way, they spot part of a statue…a massive stone shin with a four-toed foot attached (I’d think that Creed from “The Office” was somehow a part of the “Lost” story, but I think that would be a stretch. Still, you never know…).

Mr. Eko, now locked out of the hatch by Locke (catch that irony), enlists Charlie’s help in getting to Locke and Desmond in the hatch. Mr. Eko is adamant that they need to keep pushing the button. I often feel like I have the weight of the world on my shoulders, too, but I think Mr. Eko fancies himself a modern-day Messiah who literally needs to save the world. Like everyone else on the island, he has issues that run deeper than we probably know.

FLASHBACK: Desmond crashes onto the island on his boat during a storm on his race around the world. He’s rescued from the beach by a guy in a yellow safe suit and is brought into the hatch. Kelvin tells Desmond that there was no boat nearby and that he himself needs to wear a protective suit (which is apparently a big banana-colored body condom) when he ventures outside so that he doesn’t become “infected.” He also tells Desmond to shoot up with a mystery serum every nine days so he won’t get sick. I’m beginning to see the roots of Desmond’s alcoholic tendencies here.

The Fab Four (plus Michael) continue their trek through the woods until Jack loses his patience and makes Michael reveal his secret to the rest of the group. Michael has no choice but to admit he’s working from a list given to him by The Others, that he let Henry Gale out of the hatch, and that he shot Ana Lucia (yay!) and Libby (boo!), all as part of the bigger plan to save Walt from The Others. They continue walking (being held on their path by a gun-toting Michael) come across a huge pile of plastic tubes (think bank drive-thru), apparently full of the observation notes made by the hatch-dwellers who thought it was their job to take notes on the residents of the other hatch (yep, there are several on the island). Standing in the middle of an open field, they see Sayid’s smoke signal coming from miles away from where they thought he would be, and they realize that Michael is really leading them into a trap (call me cynical, but you’d think the fact that Michael is carrying around a big machine gun and pointing it at them would make them not trust him…but that’s just me). All hell is about to break loose and that big vein on Jack’s temple starts throbbing the way it does when he gets really angry, but before he can explode, Sawyer is hit by some sort of tranquilizer dart; before you can say “Oh, s***,” down goes Kate and then Jack (but not before he valiantly tries to save Kate – chivalry is not dead, even on this creepy island).

FLASHBACK: Desmond knows how to trigger the emergency door in the hatch so that Kelvin can paint his cryptic (and invisible to the naked eye) map of the island. Kelvin tells Desmond that his former hatch-dwelling friend killed himself in the hatch (like we needed another reason to not want to be in the creepy hatch – as if the nauseating magnetic-field noise wasn’t enough). One day, a finally-curious Desmond, after living in the hatch for over three years, follows Kelvin on one of Kelvin’s trips out of the hatch. He sees his hatchmate trying to escape on Desmond’s supposedly long-gone boat; the two struggle, Kelvin dies, and apparently Desmond returns to the hatch alone. Turn out e has missed pushing the button, too. What will happen now? (as it so happens, and as he reveals later to Locke, this was the exact day Oceanic Flight 815 crashed onto the island. Coincidence? Probably not). After Desmond fixes the problem, he finds a previously-undiscovered note from Penny in his copy of Our Mutual Friend. She wrote it before he went to prison, hoping he’d find it in the book while he was locked up, and in it she confesses her undying love to him. Of course, this makes Desmond feel even worse since he’s now stranded on that island, but just then he hears Locke and Boone banging on the hatch door, so he doesn’t have time to dwell on the fact that he gave up true love to die alone in an underground bunker on a mystical island.

In a nutshell, we wrap up the season: thanks to Locke, the button is not pushed, and a blinding-white light and piercing siren sound envelop the island. Metal objects fly around and the hatch seems to slowly implode as metal crumples (oh, hell, it looks like it really did regulate some sort of electromagnetic charge). Desmond descends lower into the hatch and turns an emergency key, apparently a back-up measure in case the countdown clock reaches zero, and the chaos comes to an abrupt halt. In the meantime, Jack, Sawyer, Hurley and Kate are delivered to The Others by Michael, who is reunited with Walt, and father and son take off (to where? who knows) on a motorboat as a guilt-ridden (as he should be) Michael looks back and his friends on the dock. Hurley is released by Henry Gale (yes, he really is an Other) to go back to the camp and tell the castaways what has happened, apparently as a warning to them. When we last see Jack, Sawyer and Kate, they are having burlap sacks lowered over their heads – but not before Jack and Kate exchange looks of “I love you,” and “I know, and I love you, too.” Sigh. I love it when attraction can hurdle mystery, near death and lack of hygiene. Then you know it’s real.

Oh, yeah, I almost forgot: two dudes, apparently on some sort of Arctic vessel, pick up on an electromagnetic anomaly. They pick up the phone to report their findings, and who should pick up the other end…but Penny, Desmond’s girl. True love, I’m tellin’ you…

Big Questions Raised:

Does Penny really know that Desmond is still alive? If so, why does she suspect this? Will she be able to rescue him?

Why do The Others want Jack, Kate and Sawyer?

Will Kate hook up with Jack? With Sawyer? Either way, their babies will be beautiful…

What happened to Desmond and Locke down in the hatch?

Is Ana Lucia really dead? Let’s hope so.

I leave you with the one question to which I do know the answer (I think):
What did one snowman say to the other snowman?
Smells like carrots.