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We start this episode in another flash forward. That's right, kids -- it wasn't just a gimmick for the finale. This one involves Hurley freaking out, leading the police in a high-speed chase through L.A., murdering a helpless pile of papayas and begging the police to throw him in back in the nuthouse (while also telling them, and us, that he's one of the "Oceanic Six"). A creepy dude visits him in the nuthouse, pretending to be a lawyer for Oceanic, but actually trying to find out if "they" are still alive. And a while later, Charlie visits him, or Charlie's ghost, or Charlie's surprisingly well-preserved zombie, and tries to get him to acknowledge that "they" need him. Another creepy dude then visits him, except this time it's just Jack. He's apparently there to see if Hurley is going to tell...someone about something. Hurley thinks that "it" wants them back, but Jack thinks they'll never go back.
Back on the island, so much shit happens, I can't even tell you. But here's a small sample: at the radio tower, Naomi's corpse has disappeared, and Jack (with Rousseau and Ben in tow) tries to track her down. Kate steals the satellite phone and takes off on what she's sure is the real trail. She's right, of course, and finds Naomi, who promptly holds a knife to her throat. But Naomi relents, and fixes the phone so the ship can track them down.
On the beach, our victorious warriors celebrate their victory -- at least until Desmond shows up and passes on Charlie's dying message about the boat. They decide to meet up with the rest of the Lostaways and pass on the warning. On the way, Hurley gets lost and finds Jacob's cabin. He appropriately freaks out and runs away, only to run into Locke, who convinces him that they really don't want to be rescued by the people on the boat. Everyone comes together, and after Jack tries to kill Locke (unsuccessfully, alas), the Lostaways end up splitting into two groups, with a bunch going off to the Barracks with Locke. (This group includes Claire, Hurley, Ben, and Sawyer, among others). At the very end, a helicopter drops off a parachutist, who asks Jack if he's...Jack. The answer to which is apparently enough to be a cliffhanger. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Previously on Lost, Charlie died after warning Desmond that the boat approaching the island was not Penny's boat, Jack led Naomi and a group of Lostaways (including prisoner Ben) to the transmitter so they could get a signal through to that boat, and Sayid led a successful defense against an attack by the Others. Oh, and Locke went even more batshit crazy, throwing a knife into Naomi's back before she could signal the boat, but then he didn't have the stones to shoot Jack when he signaled the boat. And the flashback was actually a flash-forward, showing us a time after at least Jack and Kate have returned to L.A.
We open on a beautiful pile of papayas, beyond which we can see a cloud-flecked sky and a beautiful blue ocean. We hear gulls, and I suddenly develop an incredible craving for a Corona. And then the papayas explode, as a vintage sportscar plows through them. It turns out they were piled on a box in a parking lot, and the ocean and sky we saw were actually painted onto the side of a produce delivery truck. Needless to say, a bunch of cops are chasing down the sportscar -- Californians take their organic produce very seriously.
As the chase continues, a clean-shaven Jack watches it on his television and mixes himself a screwdriver. Jack hears the newscaster describe the sportscar as a vintage, early '70s Camaro, and he mutters, "Damn it."
Back on the streets of L.A., the police finally force the Camaro off the road, and it crashes into a car parked in a lot. The police surround the car with guns drawn, and Hurley slowly emerges from the driver's seat. They shoot it so it's supposed to be a mystery as to who was driving, but the fat hands that emerge from the window give a pretty strong clue as to who we're looking at. Hurley looks at the cops in a daze, and then makes a run for it. This chase does not last nearly as long as the car chase. As Hurley is led away in cuffs, he starts yelling, "Don't you know who I am? I'm one of the Oceanic Six!" Credits.
Hurley's in an interrogation room, where a hard-boiled cop is giving the exposition on how the police chase started. Except this exposition comes with visuals, as we see a convenience store videotape of Hurley purchasing some snacks, only to see something and freak out, running away and (presumably) taking off at high speed in his Camaro. The cop tells Hurley that he doesn't care that he's a celebrity, and then tells us that, by shocking coincidence, his former partner Ana-Lucia was a passenger on Hurley's plane. Sometimes I think that this entire show is just an extended remix of The Bald Soprano, and at the end we're going to discover that Jack and Kate were married all along. Hurley denies having ever known Ana-Lucia.
The cop leaves Hurley alone to think while he goes to get a donut. After he leaves, Hurley hears a pounding sound on the other side of the one-way mirror, and when he looks at it again, it's turned into a window looking out into the watery depths. A small, hobbitty figure wearing a hoodie swims up to the window and presses his hand against it. Hats off to the eagle-eyed forum posters for noticing that on the hand is written the message, "They need you." (Some of those folks are crazy obsessive, and that's why I love them.) And then the window cracks open and the ocean starts to flood the room. Hurley freaks out and starts screaming for help, but when the cop runs back in, the water vanishes. The cop asks Hurley if he's trying to get "tossed into the nuthouse," and Hurley asks him if he could really make that happen. And then Hurley gives him a grateful, sweaty hug.
Back on the island, Hurley (whose mad driving skills helped Sayid's crew win the battle of the beach) is radioing Jack to see if they ever made it to the radio tower. As we know, they did, and Jack spoke with the boat people, who are allegedly coming to rescue them. Hurley starts whooping and hollering.
At the tower, Jack asks Kate if she's found any sign of Locke. (They don't use his name, but the ominous glance he throws at the corpse of Naomi, still with a knife in her back, gives us a good idea of who he's talking about.) Kate has had no luck, and she wonders why Locke would kill Naomi. Jack's expert diagnosis is that Locke is crazy, and he tells Kate that he plans to kill Locke the time he sees him.
A few feet away, Sun and Claire are watching a gurgling Turniphead. There's some happy, hopeful, playful banter, and then Rose comes along and makes a salacious comment about how Claire better go out of her way to thank Charlie when she sees him . The whole point is to show how very happy everyone is, just to make us feel worse when everything inevitably goes to hell.
Ben is watching all this frivolity from the tree to which he is tied. Rousseau is guarding him. He asks her to do him a favor by taking Alex as far away from the Lostaways as possible, since he's certain that as soon as the people from the boat arrive, "everyone who stays here is going to die." As he's pleading for Rousseau to take Alex away from the coming slaughter, he makes the mistake of calling her his daughter, and he gets a mouthful of Rousseau's fist for his trouble. She pointedly reminds him that Alex is not his daughter. As Rousseau walks away, we get a shot of Naomi's beknifed back -- you can see that her eyes are open, kind of like a dead person's would be.
Back on the beach, Juliet digs a grave for one of the dead Others (Tom, I think). And Hurley and Bernard contemplate the ocean. Hurley tells Bernard about having won the lottery, and then expresses some relief that by the time they get back to civilization, his vast riches are likely to have already been divided up by his family. And then Hurley tells Bernard that he wants to do a cannonball. Having received Bernard's permission, he makes a slow motion run to the ocean and jumps in. I kind of expected him to run into Charlie's corpse in the ocean, but instead he just turns around to see that Desmond and his boat have arrived back at the beach.
On the beach, Desmond is telling Sayid, Sawyer, Juliet, Jin, and Bernard that they can't let Jack contact the boat. He freaks out when Sawyer tells him that the call has already been placed. Hurley walks into the argument, and keeps asking where Charlie is until Desmond finally notices him and tells him that Charlie is dead.
Back at the tower, the satellite phone rings. It's Ed McMahon, calling to let Hurley know that he won some more money. No, not really. It's the guys on the boat -- they're having trouble locking in on the signal, and they need someone to "rejigger" some of the settings on the phone. (That's a technical term.) The boat guy asks for Naomi, and Jack lies and says she went to get some firewood. And then Kate notices that Naomi's corpse is gone. Jack hangs up on his rescuer. Rude. He walks up to Ben, who must have seen what happened to Naomi's body, and asks where she is. Ben gives one of his patented smart-ass non-answers. Commercials.
Back at the beach, Hurley is stunned over news of Charlie's death, while everyone else argues over whether they should radio Jack to warn him about the boat not being Penny's. Sayid makes the very logical point that radioing Jack would likely also tip off the people on the boat that they know what's up, since they can no doubt pick up the transmission. Sawyer announces that since he has the radio, he'll make the call. So Hurley grabs the radio and tosses it into the ocean. That settles that.
At the tower, Rousseau tells Jack that she found a trail of Naomi's blood, and that she must have crawled away. Gee, it's too bad they don't have a trained medical professional who might have examined Naomi to figure out whether she was dead or whether her wounds could be treated. Rousseau thinks Naomi couldn't have more than a ten-minute head start, so they should go after her right away. Jack agrees, but announces that they are going to take Ben with them, because he doesn't want that silver-tongued deceiver left alone with any other Lostaways. Apparently, only Jack is smart enough not to be manipulated by Ben. HA! Sorry, I just couldn't keep that one in. Jack then tells the other Lostaways to head back to the beach so the boat guys can find them more easily. As everyone else wanders off, Kate runs up to him and tells him that she found Naomi's trail. Jack tells her that Rousseau already found the trail, and Kate wonders if it's the right one, pointing out that Naomi might have created a dummy trail for them to follow; Kate thinks they should follow both trails. I'm not sure why she leapt to the conclusion that there are two trails, rather than assuming that she and Rousseau found the same one, but whatever. Jack dismisses her concerns in a rather patronizing way, and sends her back to the beach with everyone else. She gives him a big hug, and Ben looks like he just saw something very interesting. He must not be used to the sight of human affection.
On the beach, Sawyer is arguing with Hurley, claiming that they should just wait on the beach for everyone else to return. Hurley thinks that not passing on a warning pretty much defeats the purpose of a warning, and everyone picks up their big guns in preparation for the trek through the jungle.
Flash-forward to Hurley, back in the nuthouse. He's kicking some guy's ass at Connect Four when a nurse approaches with his meds and the message that he has a visitor. Hurley looks over at the visitor -- it's Lance Reddick, from The Wire, looking kind of creepy. Hurley walks over to him, and he introduces himself as Matthew Abaddon, an attorney for Oceanic. Abaddon tells Hurley that Oceanic feels just awful about the difficulties he's having, and they'd like to help him out by picking up the tab for him to stay at a much fancier nuthouse. Hurley's been stepped on enough by The Man to know that this sounds like bullshit, so he asks for a business card. Abaddon seems to have forgotten all of his, wouldn't you know. Hurley starts to talk away, and Abaddon asks him, "Are they still alive?" The question, along the change in background music, cue Hurley to start yelling for a nurse. As orderlies come to subdue him, he sees Abaddon sneak out of the room.
Sayid's band of happy warriors is trekking through the jungle. It's night, but they planned ahead and brought torches with them. Hurley is falling behind a bit, and Sawyer drops back to ask him if he's okay. It turns out that Sawyer's offering to talk to Hurley about the death of his closest friend on the island, but Hurley would rather not. His uncharacteristic empathy rejected, Sawyer rejoins the others at the front of the pack. And then Hurley stops for a second and completely loses sight of everyone. He starts hollering for the others, but nobody responds. A wind picks up, and we get lots of confusing cuts that are intended to tell us that Hurley is well and truly lost. And then he sees a cabin in a clearing ahead of him. Although the "Welcome to Jacob's Cabin" sign seems to have gone missing, you can tell that's what it is from the ominous whispering and the creepy glow coming from the window. Commercials.
In the jungle, Rousseau tells Jack (who has Ben trailing behind him on a leash) that Naomi's trail of blood has ended. Jack thinks this might mean Naomi just stopped bleeding. Since she apparently recovered from death and walked away with a knife in her back, that's not such a bad suggestion. But what it really means is that this was a false trail all along, just like Kate suggested. Ben: "Better call the boat and tell them she's getting a really big bundle of firewood." His continuing ability to be a bitch in the face of adversity is awe-inspiring. Jack reaches for the phone and discovers that he doesn't actually have it. He pretty quickly realizes that Ben knows something; what he knows is that Kate palmed the phone when she hugged Jack. Ben: "But look on the bright side. At least somebody around here knows what the hell they're doing." He shuts up before Rousseau clocks him again.
And now we cut to Kate, tracking Naomi's blood splatters. And then the phone rings. The call is coming from inside your pants! She answers the phone, but when the person on the other end asks where Naomi is, she hangs up too. Three months on this island and everybody has forgotten their phone etiquette. I hate to think what their emails are going to look like when they get back to civilization. And then some blood drips on Kate. She realizes that Naomi must be in the tree above her, just as Naomi decides this would be a good time to drop in on Kate. She holds a knife to Kate's throat and demands the phone. At least Locke left Naomi with a weapon she could use; she'd better not say he never did anything for her. Kate tries to explain that the person who threw the knife in Naomi's back was a total lunatic who they all hate, and then the phone rings again. Kate gives her the phone, and she answers it. And then she proceeds to cover for the Lostaways, claiming that she was injured in the original parachute jump onto the island and that the Lostaways were just lying about her whereabouts until she had a chance to explain her injuries herself. And she fixes the phone so the boat people can get a fix on their location. Kate notices that the massive wound on Naomi's back is still bleeding. Naomi asks George (the boat man on the phone) to tell her sister that she loved her. Who's her sister, I wonder? And then she drops the phone. And drops dead, I think.
Hurley's back at the cabin. He calls out and approaches the building, instead of wisely fleeing into the jungle. And then he looks through the broken window. What does he see, you ask? A table, a lamp, an empty chair, a painting of a dog playing poker (or maybe just being a dog), and a guy sitting in a rocking chair. Now, the EEFPs swear that the guy is Jack's dad, based at least in part on his white shoes. But based on the same evidence, I'm holding out for Peewee Herman -- mostly because I'd love to see Miss Yvonne or Jambi on the island. And then a scary brown eye looks out at Hurley from the other side of the window. I scream, you scream, we all scream from sheer terror, because that was scary. Hurley is just as scared, and he runs off into the woods. After a bit he stops and looks back to see if the scary brown eye or its owner are chasing him. They aren't, but when he turns back around, he finds that the cabin is now in front of him. As the cabin door slowly creaks open, Hurley closes his eyes and tells himself that there's nothing there. And when he opens his eyes, the cabin is gone. He falls over backwards in the grass, and screams again when he opens his eyes and sees Locke standing over him. (Locke's eyes are blue, by the way, so he was not the owner of the scary brown eye. And once again, my hat is off to the EEFPs.) Commercials.
Hurley and Locke are having a little powwow in the woods. The exact words aren't so important; all you need to know is that Hurley told Locke about Charlie's dying message, and they both agreed that Jack should never have called the people on the boat. And they decide to try to convince everyone else that the boat people are not actually there to rescue them.
Hurley finds Sayid et al. standing by that part of the fuselage that fell in the middle of the jungle. (I kind of forgot about that part of the plane until this episode). Locke walks into the clearing behind Hurley, and Sayid asks him what he's doing there. Locke: "I came here for the same reason you did, to warn Jack about the people on that boat. I already gave it a shot, but I figured I might have better luck with some support." Or a bigger knife. Sayid starts to give Locke the third degree about why he blew up the sub (which, knowing Sayid, is more likely to turn into the fifth or sixth degree), when we hear whispering. The Lostaways cock their guns, but lower them when they see that it's just the rest of their tribe returning from the radio tower. There are lots of joyful reunions, and Claire looks around expectantly. Desmond starts to approach Claire, but Hurley cuts him off. Hurley lumbers up to Claire and, with a choked voice, tells her, "He's dead. Charlie's dead." They hug as everyone looks on quietly.
And we cut to the flash-forward. Hurley is enjoying some outdoor time at the nuthouse. He's painting an Eskimo and an igloo (which I only mention in case it turns out to be some crucial clue in the fifth season), when one of his fellow inmates approaches and warns him that some guy is staring at him. I guess there are chubby chasers even in the nuthouse. Hurley asks what guy; the other inmate points, and when Hurley turns to look, he sees Charlie. A very clean and well-groomed Charlie, looking kind of hot.
Charlie calmly approaches and asks Hurley not to run away. Charlie: "Don't do what you did in the store. There's no need to freak out." Hurley does freak out, telling Charlie that however crazy he might be, he knows Charlie's dead and he's not going to have an imaginary conversation. Charlie: "I am dead. But I'm also here." Hurley: "Okay, prove it." So Charlie slaps him. That is apparently enough to convince Hurley to stick around and chat. Hurley asks Charlie if he knew he was going to die when he went with Desmond, and when Charlie nods that he did, asks why Charlie didn't tell him. Charlie: "Because you would have tried to stop me, and since I was going to do it anyway, I thought I would spare you all the drama." How come nobody ever tries to spare us the drama? Charlie tells Hurley that he needs Hurley to do something for him. Hurley doesn't want to hear it, and closes his eyes so he can count to five and make Charlie disappear. He closes his eyes and counts while Charlie tells him that he knows that "they" need him. But when Hurley gets to five and opens his eyes, Charlie is gone.
Back on the island, Hurley and Claire are just breaking their hug. She asks for more details, but Hurley's explanation is cut off when Rousseau, Ben, and Jack arrive. The tension is broken when Jack punches Locke in the jaw and knocks him to the ground. Locke reaches for his gun, but Jack gets it first, points it at Locke's head, and cocks it. Locke: "You're not gonna shoot me Jack, any more than I was gonna shoot --" BANG! Er, I mean, "CLICK!" Because Jack pulls the trigger, but the gun doesn't go off. Locke: "It's not loaded." Commercials.
We return to Jack kicking the crap out of Locke while Sawyer and Sayid try to hold him back. There's some screaming about whether Sayid knows what Locke did, and Locke rises to his own defense, telling everyone, "All I did...all I have ever done, has been in the best interest of all of us." Jack (and at least half the audience): "Are you insane?!" He tells them all that he never did anything to hurt any of them (except for clocking Sayid in the head, and getting Boone killed). Jack points out that he blew lots of shit up and killed Naomi. Ben: "Well, technically, he didn't kill her. Yet." Kate enters and tells us that he did indeed kill Naomi, because she just died. But not before fixing the phone and covering for Locke. Locke tells them that the boat people are going to kill them, and that anyone who wants to can go to the Barracks with him. Jack doesn't think anyone is going with Crazy Locke, but Hurley speaks up and tells them all that Locke is not crazy. He tells everyone the story of how Charlie changed his mind and gave his life to warn them about the boat, and the producers kindly show us all of that in flashback. Hurley, to Jack: "So I'm not listening to you! I'm listening to my friend. I'm listening to Charlie." Hurley walks over and stands to Locke.
Locke asks if anyone else is coming, and there's some tension until Claire steps forward with Turniphead. But more importantly, the internets go crazy as two men standing behind Claire appear to hold hands. Ben asks for permission to go with Locke, and Jack gives it to him. Alex and Carl decide to go with Rousseau (or Ben, who can tell), and some other Lostaways move to Locke's side of the clearing. Bernard and Rose make the definite decision not to go with Locke, mostly because Rose thinks he's a crazy fucker. And then Sawyer goes with Locke. Kate asks him what he's doing, and he tells her, "Same thing I've always done, Kate. Surviving." Or making sure there are enough named characters in each group to provide multiple story lines. One or the other. And then it starts pouring. Locke tells them that they know where to find them if they change their minds, and then he and his group leave. Just for the record, I'm pretty sure that Jack, Juliet, Kate, Sayid, Desmond, Bernard, Rose, Jin, and Sun stayed in the group that's meeting the boat people, and Locke, Claire, Hurley, and Sawyer went to the barracks, along with unnamed redshirts in each group. (I'm going to have to find nicknames for these two groups if this split goes on for long.)
Flash-forward to the nuthouse, where Hurley is shooting hoops. Jack walks into the gym. Hurley seems kind of, but not too, glad to see Jack. Jack feeds him a bullshit story about just stopping by for a visit since he was in the neighborhood. Jack proposes a game of Horse to Hurley, who accepts the challenge. As they play (with Jack absolutely stinking up the joint), Hurley asks some nice expository questions, establishing that Jack is practicing medicine again and that they were all famous enough to be hounded by reporters and autograph seekers. Jack also tells Hurley that he's thinking of growing a beard. Noooooooooo! We've already seen how that turns out -- please tell me the future is not written in stone. And then Hurley asks Jack why he's really there. Jack claims at first that he was just worried about Hurley, but it becomes clear that he was really just worried that Hurley would reveal some big secret. Hurley doesn't answer the question as to whether he would reveal said secret, and Jack leaves. But not before Hurley tells him that he's sorry that he went with Locke. He continues: "I don't think we did the right thing, Jack. I think it wants us to come back." Jack: "We're never going back." Hurley: "Never say never, dude."
Back on the island, Jack and Kate are standing at the edge of the fuselage, looking over the wreckage inside. Kate thinks she hears thunder, but it's really a helicopter. Which drops off a parachutist. I would think the point of a rescue would be to take people off the island, not keep dropping more people onto it. Kate and Jack run through the jungle to where the parachutist landed. A bearded dude takes off his helmet and asks, "Are you Jack?" We'll have to wait until week to hear the answer to that one.