Season Premiere: Lost – “The Beginning of the End”

“The Beginning of the End”

January 31st, 2008

It’s the event we’ve been waiting for since last May, when Lost ended its third season with a rattlesnake in the mailbox in the form of a new flash forward format. It was the episode that convinced many that Lost was back on track, and was a return to the buzz which met the show’s series premiere. But it raised a question for everyone: could the 48 episodes which will follow manage to live up to its potential?

“The Beginning of the End” can be taken literally, the first episode of the show’s final forty-eight. More importantly, it is the moment where the fate of our castaways is changed forever. With a glimpse to the future for one of the Oceanic Six, one wrought with psychological and personal trauma, Lost returns with an episode of what it does best: intriguing character studies and a plot that keeps you moving.

And if it all ends in just seven weeks, this beginning will be all the more sweet.

If there was one thing I took away from this finale, it’s that tragic dramatic irony is perhaps the show’s strongest quality. If there was anything about this episode that distinguishes it from other episodes, it is that no one can ever be happy for too long. When the people are celebrating their impending rescue, we know that this is not a rescue at all; when Rose suggests Claire provide Charlie sexual favors, we know that unless she’s into necrophilia it isn’t going to happen. It’s a constant blow to the head, a reminder that the series is not quite upbeat.

For Hurley, whose flash forward shows his slow descent into madness and his interactions with a dangerous new threat and a ghost from his past, that tragedy seems even greater. Hurley ended the third season a hero, and decides to finally cannonball into the ocean knowing that when he gets home he will be free of his lottery curse. When he emerges from the water, everything has changed: Charlie is dead, he feels responsible, and his whole world is falling apart.

Turning to Hurley is in the best interest of the series, a character who become a bit of a punchline at the end of last season. In the present, he is a broken man fighting for his friend’s memory and seeing a strange cabin which continues to rearrange in the woods. In the future, he is a broken man after seeing Charlie’s ghost, a spectral reminder that his true place might well be on the Island he escaped from. It’s hard not to become emotionally involved when Hurley delivers an impassioned speech to convince a number of the castaways to run from the arriving individuals.

It is in this moment where a division is drawn, the division we felt would take place from the time of the first season. Divided between Jack’s group of believers (Including Kate, Juliet, Sayid), willing to wait and see what the freighter will bring, and those who choose to follow Locke to the Barracks to defend against their arrival (Including Hurley, Claire, Ben, Sawyer). We don’t know who’s right, at this stage, but we get a glimpse when Hurley apologizes to Jack off-island for going with Locke.

It is fitting that the episode ends with a scene straight out of the pilot, as Kate and Jack stand by the fuselage where they joined with Charlie in the Pilot. It’s raining cats and dogs with the helicopter arrives, and we meet George for the first time after he parachutes onto the island. What the future will bring, however, remains an important question: we have met only one of the freighters so far, and there are certainly more to meet.

The premiere was an important step for the series, picking up its momentum with an episode that reminds us of what the show does best: developing characters and placing them in stories where we actually want to see what happens to them. The episode didn’t create any ludicrously complicated new mysteries, but rather expanded on and emphasized what is important. Who are the other three members of the Oceanic Six? Are all of them haunted by the island in their own way? What is the fate of our two groups? They’re questions we could have presumed eight months ago, but I don’t care: I’m more intrigued now than I was then.

Cultural Observations

• Love the subtle way we place the flash forward in the general relative timeline: Jack’s desire to grow a beard means this predates the flash forward from Through the Looking Glass.
• I don’t know about anyone else, but I definitely think that was Christian, Jack’s father, in the cabin Hurley saw. As for whose eye that was, I’m not sure: but it was a damn intriguing development.
• It was great to see Dominic Monaghan back for at least one cameo, and perhaps we’ll be seeing more of him in the future considering his omnipresence in Hurley’s life.
• The scene by the fuselage was the first time in forever that the entire cast was all in the same location. And by the looks of it, I’m doubting that we’ll see it again for quite some time considering the Great Schism.