LOST - 316

It turns out that 316 is not only a biblical reference as George pointed out, but also the flight number of Ajira Airlines that Mrs. Hawking calculated would return the Oceanic Six to the island. Or as pilot Frank Lapidus put it, "We're not going to Guam are we?"

No, Frank--we're not. Nice little tie-in with Lapidus reappearing for this episode. He cleans up pretty well without that bushy beard, huh? And thanks to Hurley's multi-millions which gave him the ability to buy 78 seats on the doomed airliner, just a handful of people other than the O6 and Locke and Ben will end up on the island.

Jack asks Ben, "And the other people on this plane--what's gonna happen to them?" "Who cares?" shrugs Ben.

Wrap your mind around this: the Ajira Airline wreckage that the Juliet, Sawyer and company found during one of the flashes was the remains of the Ajira 316. Whoa--trippy! Why the flashes kept happening after the Oceanic Six returned is another question altogether...

No flashbacks between those trapped on the island and the O6 in this episode. It was pretty much a Jack-centric episode beginning with a close-up of an eye opening. Is anyone keeping count of how many times the whole "eye opening" motif has been used on this show? The eye in question belonged to Jack and it was pretty obvious that he was back on the island.

Next we heard Hurley's voice shouting in the distance and Jack rushes to rescue him splashing about in the lagoon. Kate's washed up on some rocks and there's no sign of Sayid, Sun or Ben.

Aaron wasn't along for the ride. Kate told Jack he could never ask about Aaron. My guess is that Kate obeyed ghost Claire's command to not bring him back and gave him to his biological grandmother.

46 hours earlier, Mrs. Hawking takes the group to a chamber underneath the church which is called the Lamp Post station. The Dharma initiative used it to find the island in the first place. "Did you know abou this place?" Jack asks Ben. "No, I didn't," Ben replies. "Is he telling the truth?" Jack asks Eloise. "Probably not," Mrs. Hawking answers.

And that, people, sums Benjamin Linus up in a nutshell. Nothing that comes out of his mouth can be trusted.

Mrs. Hawking explains that in order to find the island they needed to stop looking for where the island was supposed to be and start looking for where the island was going to be as the island is always moving. This is why the Oceanic Six were never rescued--no-one could find it. According to the calculations there's only a brief window of time where one can return to the island. "Yours closes in 36 hours," she informs the group.

She also tells Desmond that the island isn't done with him yet. "Well, I'm done with the island!" Desmond insists as he storms out.

Mrs. Hawking tells Jack that they need to recreate the circumstances that brought them to the island in the first place--otherwise the results could be "unpredictable." She hands him an envelope with his name on it. It's Locke's suicide note. "Why would he kill himself?" Jacks asks her. "He is going to help you get back," Mrs. Hawking tells him.

Apparently Locke is a proxy for Christian Shepherd who Jack was bringing back in a coffin from Sydney when Oceanic 815 crashed. Hawking tells Jack he needs to give Locke something of Christian's. When Jack objects, she tells him that it's a leap of faith.

Aha--so this is what it's about: Jack must become a man of faith instead of a man of science.

This point is reiterated with Ben relating the story of Thomas the Apostle to Jack and how he doubted the resurrection until he saw the wounds. "Was he convinced?" Jack asked. "We're all convinced sooner or later, Jack," Ben replies. This ties in with Locke's "suicide" note which simply says: "Jack, I wish you had believed me. JL" Of course if you watched the previews for next week's show, you know that Locke was indeed resurrected after Ajira 316 crashes on the island.

Ben excuses himself and says he'll meet Jack at the airport in the morning. "I made a promise to an old friend of mine. Just a loose end that needs tying up."

Ouch. That sounds suspiciously like the "promise" Ben made to Widmore--that he would kill his daughter. When a bloodied Ben calls Jack the following morning telling him that he needs to pick Locke up on the way to the airport, it certainly doesn't look good for our favorite LOST couple. But given that Ben had an arm in a sling, we can only hope that Desmond kicked the @#$% out of him and prevented any harm coming to Penny.

At Jill's butcher shop, Jack replaces the black boots Locke is wearing with a pair of Christian's wing tips. "Wherever you are John, you must be laughing your ass off!" Jack tells him. At the airport when the agent asks Jack's relationship to "Jeremy Bentham," Jack replies "Friend" in marked contrast to his answer at the funeral parlor which between friend or relative he said, "Neither."

On the flight when Jack asks him how he can read (James Joyce's Ulysses, which is a retelling of the Homer's The Odyssey about a man's long journey home) and Ben replies, "Because my mother taught me." Hmm...Ben's mother died giving birth to him. Maybe her weird ghost on the island taught him to read. Or it's yet another example of how you can tell he's lying because his lips are moving...

There's a buzzing and humming noise and a flash of light and Jack, Kate and Hurley are back on the island--and none of them can remember crashing. A Dharma van pulls up and a man gets out and points a rifle at the trio.

It's Jin!

Wondering: Will we get more of Charlotte's backstory about when she lived on the island? Is Aaron's absence from the return to the island going to cause "unpredictable results"? Where the heck are Rose, Bernard and Vincent?

For more LOST madness, check out the recap at Lostpedia, the screencaps at Dark UFO and Jen Chaney and Liz Kelly's Dueling Analyses at washingtonpost.com.