316

    Well, I was right, for the most part at least. The Oceanic Six, except for Aaron, are back on the island and all is right with the world... Except now the island seems to be stuck in the seventies, and Jin is working for Dharma. Or, at least he's driving a van for Dharma and they've trusted him enough to give him a gun and send him out to investigate the appearance of Jack, Kate and Hurley. But maybe we're getting ahead of ourselves, much like this episode. Let's take a step back and look at the events that lead up to 316, shall we?

The Lamp-Post

    We pick up right where the last episode left us with the Oceanic Six talking to Ms. Hawking in Los Angeles. Hawking takes Jack, Sun, Ben and Desmond down to the pendulum room under the church to explain how they're going to return. It turns out the room below the church is actually an off-island Dharma station called the Lamp-Post. The purpose of this station is to find the location of where/when the island will be. Hawking explains that this is done through the use of an equation devised by "a very smart man." Desmond speaks up, realizing that they are all planning to go back to the island, he says that Hawking took four years of his life for no reason. Hawking says the island isn't done with Desmond but he isn't willing to join the Oceanic Six and leaves the station after telling Jack not to go through with returning to the island. Hawking continues by laying out the plan. She says that windows occasionally provide a path back to the island but it doesn't seem to be 100% reliable. She's compiled a folder for Jack which includes flight information for routes which will pass through one of these windows in the next 36 hours.

   Hawking takes Jack into her office where she gives Jack Locke's suicide note. Jack was surprised Locke committed suicide and refuses to read the note. Hawking says there is one more thing Jack needs to do to ensure this works. Jack must try and recreate the conditions of flight 815 or there may be consequences. Locke's body will serve as a proxy for Christian Shephard but he'll need to have something that belonged to Jack's dad. Later, we see Jack meet with his Grandpa who has a pair of Christian's dress shoes. Jack takes these shoes and puts them on Locke just before he picks up the coffin and heads to the airport.

    My one problem with this episode is that we aren't told how Sayid came to be in custody in the airport or how Hurley got out of Jail. We know Ben's lawyer said he could get Hurley out, but with absolutely no further mention of his situation it seems like a loose thread. It seems like there is a lot that happened between the time at the dock when Kate and Sayid stormed off after Sun showed up. Sayid looked clean shaven and Kate has dumped Aaron somewhere where we assume he'll be safe. Did Kate leave Aaron with Cassidy or Claire's mom? Did she reconcile with her own mother and leave Aaron with her? I'm sure we'll find out what happened to Aaron, it seems like too important of a story not to tell. Perhaps we'll start getting flashbacks of what Sayid, Hurley and Kate did off-island before returning. What if there is an episode coming up where Kate is confronted by Claire now that they're both on the island again, this would be a good opportunity to inter-cut flashbacks of Kate and Aaron's story off-island. I don't know what to make of Sayid because he was in custody on the flight. This would make it seem like he is being transferred to another facility, or being extradited. Neither situation makes a whole lot sense right now though. It's very unlike Lost to leave this many non-central plot threads open (they are just important enough that it bothers you but not easily dismissible), hopefully they are revisited.

We're not going to Guam, are we?

    Frank Lapidus gets the best line of the show when it turns out he's the pilot of flight 316. Lapidus, who is creepily clean shaven, is now a pilot for Ajira Air and just happens to be on duty when the Oceanic Six need to get back to the island. Last season we learned that Lapidus was supposed to be the pilot of Oceanic 815 but was replaced by Seth Norris. If they're trying to recreate the circumstances of 815 then there would no one better to be the pilot than Frank Lapidus. When Frank is talking to Jack and realizes the all of the Oceanic Six are on the plane he says, "We're not going to Guam, are we?" Well put Frank, well put.

    Flight 316 hits turbulence at some point over the Pacific and there is a flash similar to the temporal flash Sawyer, Juliet and the other Losties were experiencing before Locke left the island. After the flash we see Jack, Hurley and Kate on the island in pretty good shape. None of them can remember a crash and there doesn't seem to be any wreckage around. I think it's entirely possible that flight 316 passed through on of Hawking's windows and flashed to the island in a manner different than flight 815. Perhaps even the flash was 'localized' to only those people who had been on the island before, similar to the other flashes we've seen this season. Take Jin for example. He was flashing in and out of Danielle's story but she stayed put because she was on her own course and not part of the events involving the turning of the wheel and the Oceanic Six leaving the island. Those rules would seemingly apply to the other people on flight 316... could the Oceanic Six have simply flashed off of the plane and on to the island while the rest of the passengers went on there merry way to Guam? Possibly... there was turbulence right before the flash, which would imply a crash like 815, but there we didn't see the plane actually break up. Also, there was no flash that we know of when 815 crashed. We won't know for sure until the writers tell us and we start seeing the other people from 316 walking around the island. I'm betting we haven't seen the last of Cesar yet.

Whoever moves the island cannot come back

    Judging by the events of 316, I'm guessing this was a load of bull. Both Locke and Ben are on the plane when the flash occurs so is it safe to assume they made it to the island? Or, did they keep on truckin' with the rest of the passengers when the flash snatched up the Oceanic Six? I'm sure we'll see more of Locke and Ben both, they are two of the most popular characters on the show and there is no way they'd be permanently exiled from the island.

    Ben's condition at the time of the flight is interesting... it seems that he was beaten up the day before the flight, when he called Jack and asked him to pick up Locke's body. The only explanation that comes to mind would be that Widmore's people finally found Ben in LA and there was some scuffle that ensued. Literally NOTHING was said about this during the episode, which was pretty odd. There were A LOT of loose ends in this episode. I read that 316 was supposed to air after next week's episode, The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham, which may explain things a little. Since most of these events would have been bookended in the span of 316, it seems a little weird that we'd get the answers in and episode that was supposed have aired before 316. Sounds like a lot of jumping around, even for Lost. I'm confident that they'll resolve everything satisfactorily though.

Party Like it's 1979

    We know that at least Jack, Kate and Hurley made it back to the island safely and judging by Jin's get up and his sweet ride I'd have to conclude that the island is stuck firmly in the Dharma days of the mid to late seventies. My guess is that when Locke put the wheel back on it's axis, the island made one last skip and settled back on it's course. We know when Locke shows back up in the current timeline it's roughly 2007-2008, a good two and half or three years after the crash of 815. When Ben moved the island and knocked the wheel off its axis, he ended up about 8 to 10 months in the future. So WHEN exactly is the island now and WHEN did Jin, Sawyer and the others flash to when Locke left?

    I think Sawyer, Juliet, Jin and Miles ended up in the mid seventies, a few years prior to the crash/flash of Ajira 316. We see that Jin is out running around in his own late model Dharma van with a rifle, on his own. This tells me that he's probably been around long enough to become fluent in English and earn the trust of the Dharma folks. I'm betting he's integrated, along with Sawyer and the others, into the Dharma society. How will Jin react to Jack and the others returning to the island? He'll probably help them integrate into Dharma, but it's unlikely that they'll live happily ever after. We know that there is a purge coming for Dharma, at which time all of the non-hostiles will be killed and Ben will join the Others. Can the past be changed after all? It seems pointless to put the Losties back in the time of Dharma and lock the island into this timeline just to have them get killed/purged all over again. Destiny is a big theme and if it's Dharma's destiny to be gassed by Ben then it'll probably happen - so what, then, becomes of the Losties? It's too early for me to formulate any theories on that...