“Lost” Season 3 Finale Recap

OK…

…when we pick up the action, we are in a flashback off the island apparently and Jack is bearded and drunk, on an Oceanic plane again. He wants another drink but the stewardess sees he’s already pretty well sauced and so instead offers him a newspaper, which he immediately flips over only to find a small blurb article that immediately grabs his attention and so he tears it out. He lands in Los Angeles, apparenly his home now, he’s driving around, feeling suicidal, and so he pulls over on what looks like the 7th St. bridge over the LA river, climbs onto the rail and is about to jump to his death when a car accident happens right there in front of him, interrupting his jump. Meanwhile back on the island, Jack is leading a group of the Losties away from their beach camp across the island towards the radio tower, where they will switch off the distress signal that Danielle (the French woman who has been living on the island for 16 years) has been broadcasting because it is interfering with the transmission of the hi-tech satellite phone that Naomi, the young Mancunian who recently parachutted onto the island, bearing a picture of Desmond and Penelope, supposedly from a helicopter, from a freighter boat just off the island, and, at the same time as this, the remaining 3 Losties, Sayid, Bernard and Jin remain behind at the camp to shoot the Others when they come for the women who are pregnant, but Juliette has really turned to the Losties side, so the tents that she is supposedly marking to indicate pregnant women really contain dynamite, which Sayid, Bernard and Jin will ignite by shooting at them from a distance. While all this is going on, Charlie has swam down to this underwater station to switch off another frequency jamming device that blocks radio transmissions to and from the island, so they can use Naomi’s phone, but when Charlie surfaced in the station, he was met by two female Others with guns who promptly tied him up and beat him, but Charlie knows it is his destiny to switch off that jamming device because Desmond has foreseen in flashes of the future, that Charlie will switch off but will also die. Ben has found out that Juliette has double crossed him and so he cuts off Jack and the Losties to tell him they are making a big mistake by trying to contact the outside world and that everyone will die and wants Naomi’s phone and, in order to get Naomi’s phone, radios Tom and the Others who have in fact taken Sayid, Bernard and Jin hostage, and orders them to kill Sayid, Bernard and Jin unless he tells them no to, all of this is depending on Jack giving Ben the satellite phone, which Jack refuses to do, and so we hear three gunshots and Jack is psychologically tortured because he believes that his refusal to acquiesce to Ben has resulted in the deaths of those three Losties. So back in flashback Jack is still a drunk and addicted to Oxycodone and he goes to a funeral for someone and nobody else shows up. Apparently the funeral was for the person whose death he read about in the newspaper article that he tore out. Jack wants to operate on the person who he saved on the 7th St. bridge, but the doctors caring for her of course won’t let him and because he’s a drunk and she’s not his patient after all. Then this weird thing happens where Jack speaks about his father in the present tense, like he’s still alive, which is contrary to all we’ve known so far, that his father (and Claire’s father) is dead. So that’s weird. Also weird is that Jack is talking on a Motorola cell phone that is a newer model, which he could not have if this is a flashback from the island timeline (it is 2004 on the island of course). So there is some weird stuff in this flashback… or is it a flashfoward? We will get to that. Back on the island, Jack beats up Ben and takes him hostage and Charlie succeeds in switching off the jamming signal from the underwater station (and he even gets a brief communique with Penelope on the monitor, which is key because she says she does not know this Naomi!) and they switch off the Danielle’s signal, so now everything is set for Naomi’s satellite phone to work but BAM! Locke returns and kills Naomi with a flying knife, just as she was dialing the phone! Jack takes the phone and defies Locke’s death threats and so Locke scampers off into the jungle and someone answers the phone and Jack says “Can you get a read on where we are?” and the guy on the phone is all like “You bet your ass I can” and the Losties hug and cheer and it looks like they are getting off the island but little do they know that whoever was on the other end of that phone was not the expected rescue party. Oh, just before this, Hurley drives an old Dharma VW bus into the Others who were holding Sayid, Bernard and Jin, who didn’t really get shot after all. And Sawyer kills Tom. So everything on the island is looking pretty good. But here’s where the kicker comes: Back in the flashback, Jack is has hit ground bottom, a drunken pill popper, a broken shell of the man he used to be, so he places a call to someone. They meet at the airport. And who should emerge from the darkness but Kate! And they know each other and speak of the island in past tense! So this has been a FLASHFORWARD all along! MINDBLOWING! In some version of a future reality, they will get off the island and remember the island experience. But Jack is a broken man as a result of leaving the island. He flys and flys and hopes he will crash again so he can get back to the island. Jack asked why she didn’t go to the funeral but doens’t say whose funeral it was. And Kate says she has to get back to “him” and drives off in her Volvo station wagon. Jack is left alone at the airport gates, regretting everything, how he left the island, the death of some mysetious person, and ultimately that he is not with Kate in her Volvo station wagon.