I’m getting this whole deja-vu feeling – I think perhaps much the same feeling I had when we’d watched the season one finale of Lost. Having watched the finale of season two, Beth’s first words were ‘I hate them!’, them of course being messieurs Lieber, Lindelof and Abrams who are leaving us dangling until next year.
It was all going so well. The yacht that turned up at the end of Three Minutes turned out to be a welcome return of the excellent Henry Ian Cusick playing Desmond. Essentially his character had spent the whole of the season trying to sail away from the island, but then the first land he comes to is the island where he started. Through the finale episode we get to see Desmond’s back story, including a brief appearance from Jim Robinson from Neighbours – actor Alan Dale trying out a posh English accent this time round – as the somewhat sleazy father of Penny, Desmond’s love interest – trying to pay off Desmond never to see his daughter again. Another curious coincidence is the appearance of Libby again proving significant in that she supplies Desmond with his boat.
In the present day we have two parallel plot lines, the first being Locke and Desmond finding out what happens if you don’t push the button, and falling out with Mr Eko in the process. In the other plot line you have Kate, Sawyer, Hurley and Jack heading into a trap laid by Michael in an effort to get back Walt. However what they don’t know is that Sayid, Jin and Sun are sailing around the island too.
All seems to be fairly straightforward, until it gets into the second part of the finale. Firstly, Sayid and Jin spot a giant stone foot on the shore, looking like the base of the Colossus of Rhodes – except it only has four toes. Then Sayid discovers that the Others village is just as fake as their beards. Then it transpires that the trap being sprung by Michael isn’t at the village at all, but at Pala Ferry, the place mentioned in the orientation film as the place where people were to report when their shift had finished. Kate, Sawyer, Hurley and Jack are taken there, but not before they discover all the reports from the station Locke and Mr Eko found under the drug runners plane, all piled in a clearing. At this point, in a not exactly surprising twist Henry Gale reappears and lets Michael and Walt leave the island, with the cryptic words ‘We’re the good guys…’
It’s then things get even more weird. Waiting for the timer to count down, Desmond realises that the last time he failed to enter the code in time coincided with the plane crash that began the series. However by this point Locke has smashed the computer and the code cannot be entered. As the time ticks past zero all hell breaks loose and metal objects start flying around. Remembering a fail-safe key Desmond uses it, but that produces a strange bright white light that affects everybody on the island. After the white light everything appears to return to normal, but there is no sign of Desmond, Locke or Mr Eko. Over at the ferry pier Henry Gale sends Hurley back with a message, and says that Kate, Sawyer and Jack are going with them.
If that wasn’t enough, just at the end we get a totally unexpected twist as suddenly we cut to two guys who appear to be in some sort of arctic monitoring station, where a screen is flashing about an electromagnetic disturbance – the white light perhaps? What gets even more strange is when they phone up to report the event, and who should answer, but Penny Desmond’s love interest answers the phone. “Miss Widmore, I think we’ve found it.â€? says the man on the phone, and then of course the credits roll…
Things are certainly looking intriguing for season 3. It has already been revealed that we will find out more about Henry Gale and the Others, who as we’ve found out know how to escape the island. It has also been confirmed that we’ll see more of Desmond as Henry Ian Cusick joins the regular cast. Apparently Libby is going to continue to appear in flashback too. Can’t wait – even if it is totally bemusing at times, it’s still great entertainment!