Anti-Locke: “I want you to know, Jack – you died for NOTHING.”

• Jack’s flying Hawaiian-punch is appropriately epic. Jack Bender’s work throughout this episode is fantastic stuff – shots like this one amp the energy up significantly. It’s telling, I think, that the episodes that have most underwhelmed me this season are the ones that are the most indifferently-shot.

• Yet another fun, potentially-intentional piece of subtext (mmmmm…subtext): Jack’s battle with Anti-Locke mirrors Jack’s struggle with Locke throughout the earlier seasons. In a sense, Jack is fighting his previous self – not the man of science, not the idea of rationality, but the stubborn nihilism. Matthew Fox played his Season 2 Swan stuff with Locke to a hysterical note, adding weirdly funny grins in the midst of his anger, a phenomenon associated with Jackface, one of the best and strangest sources of unintentional humor on Lost. That hysteria reflected not rationalism but mania.

• Jack’s wounding here can be seen as an explicit Christ-allusion (Jesus’ side was pierced by a Roman spear), and a few writers/critics/bloggers have taken this and other symbolism from the final hours of the show (like Jacob’s Cup O’ Communion) t mean that Lost becomes an explicit Christian allegory in its final hours, with Jack transparently embodying Christ.

That’s not particularly fair. First, Lost has always been an explicit Christian allegory – just as it’s always been an explicit Jewish allegory, an explicit Hindu allegory, an explicit Buddhist and Urdu and Flying Spaghetti Monster allegory. This isn’t new. Second, Lost has consistently favored a pan-religious/pan-mythic approach in its narrative, in its references and allusions. Granted, the writers have also consistently drawn from what appear to be their own religious leanings/interests, which means that much of the show’s overt symbolism (Charlie’s dream, the Dharma symbol and philosophy, Eko’s “Jesus Stick,” the Eastern Temple of the Others, episode titles like Exodus, etc. et al.) refers most readily to Catholicism/Christianity and Buddhism, but to infer from this that the show functions as an overall-Christian allegory is to miss the forest for the trees. Jack’s being stabbed and subsequently sacrificing himself to save the Island/the Castaways/ the state of pop music/the world is certainly a mirror of the Christ story, but it’s also a mirror that serves to reflect a host of other dying/wounded sacrificial gods/mythic figures.

• Anti-Locke’s knife enters Jack’s body in the area of the appendix, which Jack attempted to remove (by himself! via mirror! Jack is a badass/completely bugnuts!) back in Season 4. Recall that Jack’s Appendix scar appears in the off-Island Limbo, and that it seems to come to his attention and/or spring into existence when his past and “present” consciousness begin to literally and figuratively “bleed” together.

This wounding niftily echoes the wounding of John Locke by Ben Linus, back in Season 3. Both Jack and Locke are, respectively, stabbed or shot in a place where traumatic surgery has removed an organ that would ordinarily have ruptured instantly and killed them more-or-less immediately.

Instead, both Jack and Locke are able to keep going as a direct result of their missing appendix/kidney. Their ability to do this, in both instances, serves the purpose of protecting the Island. They quite literally “needed their pain to get to where they are today,” to quote Classic Locke from Season 5.

Maybe Kate’s Best Line In The Series: “I saved you a bullet.”

Locke: “You don’t have a son, Jack.”

• For me this confirms that David is a construct of Limbo, and not a “real” person – at least, not to the Jack we know. It’s also really, really jarring. Which is, I think, very much the point. Locke was always honest to the point of pain with Jack.

• I love Jin’s quiet amusement over Sawyer’s position in the LAPD.

Jack: Just find me some thread, and I can count to five.

• Another mirror – this time of the Pilot episode, and the scene of Kate helping to stitch Jack up after the plane crash. If I’m not mistaken, his wound then was similarly placed to his wound in The End.

• I haven’t cared about the Jack/Kate relationship in some time (and by “some time” what I mean to say is “like, forever”), but I’ll be damned if The End didn’t make me care. Call me a sucker for that. I’m more than capable of living with the designation.

• I don’t have anything to say about this – I just think its totally freakin’ cool.

Juliet: “It worked.”

• The End links us back to the beginning in a number of ways. Here, it’s a link between The End and the beginning of this season. The references to it working, and to them grabbing coffee and going dutch, reflect back to Juliet’s dying moments at the wreckage of the Swan, and they confirm that Juliet’s dying consciousness “connected” with her then-already-in-process afterlife (because remember, Jack was already there when Desmond visited, despite clearly being alive in the “present” on the Island).

Jack: It’s supposed to be you – It was only supposed to be me so I could do this. But if someone has to take care of the island, if someone has to protect it, then it should be you.

• My favorite dramatic moment of the episode, hands-down. A lot of us have loved Hurley from the beginning. Some of us have been talking for a while about the ways in which he represents/embodies/lives by the sorts of community-based, empathetic, honest ideals that all cultures hold dear. I’ve referred to Hurley before as an embodiment of the concept of “PU,” or the “uncarved block,” as well as the Golden Rule (“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”). And so it makes absolute perfect sense for Hurley to inherit guardianship of the Island. It’s an affirmation that Hurley’s way is, ultimately, a (not THE) “right” way. It’s a way that encourages communion, healing, humility, reflection. It’s a way that most every religious and philosophical tradition has claimed will lead a person to “enlightenment.”

• Remember back in Season 5, when Rousseau and her crew arrived on the Island and heard a weirdly-familiar voice reciting the Numbers? Remember a bunch of us wondering whether that was Hurley’s voice? Given the events of this episode and the time/space-hopping properties of the Island (and the way in which radio waves – a form of Electromagnetism – bend and boomerang around inside of the Island’s “sphere of influence. See: The Castaways picking up Big Band music in Season 1), it becomes possible that Hurley, in his position as Island protector, recorded a version of the Island’s Numbers broadcast which functioned to bring Rousseau to the Island. This would be the same transmission that Hurley’s Institutionalized buddy Leonard picked up back in the day – the same transmission that ends up setting off Hurley’s run of Good/Bad luck and his initial arrival on the Island.

*Mind Explodes.*

That prospect triple-underlines one of the show’s biggest themes, “We are the causes of our own suffering,” in such a sly, subtle way that it makes me giggle.

• Some folks have complained that not knowing what happens to Kate, Sawyer and the rest of the Ajira flight diminishes things for them. Not for me (big surprise at this point, I know). It’s more than enough to know that they’ve escaped and to know how they’ve changed, or been changed, before escaping.

Desmond: It was like a drain.

• Yes it was. It was a lot like the drain that we saw Ben use to “summon” the Smoke Monster, actually. Discuss!

• By saving the Island, Jack and the Castaways effectuate their own salvation – salvation via community having been perhaps THE dominant theme of the show since the beginning – essentially affirming what I’ve called the Existential “heart” of the show. Luke 4:23 has Christ proclaim “Physician, heal thyself” and this episode (indeed, the series) is one long, engaging illustration of that command. By giving himself for the Castaways, for the world, Jack achieves the salvation of their eternity. He rescues rebirth from the salivating jaws of Nihilism through the exercise of Existential Humanism. He affirms Meaning by choosing his own meaning. He refutes Anti-Locke so completely, not because of what he’s shown or what is proven to him. He refutes Anti-Locke because of what he chooses to believe. And that, for me, is what takes The End out of “great but aggravating” status for me, and elevates it to “profound” television for me.

Jack dies, not for some concrete, explicated Armageddon but out of the much more ambiguous expression of his faith – a faith that’s far more recognizable to me as being “real” – a faith that’s borne entirely from how he’s chosen to interpret this final conflict.

Those of you who are more science-minded may (and probably should, frankly) object to this. This faith is not recognizable, perhaps. Or it just bothers you. But I’d like to suggest that this kind of choosing is something we do every day, regardless of whether we’re religious or spiritual or whathaveyou. Our view of the material world is not innate. It is informed. It is the result of an accrual of our experiences. What we choose to believe, each and every day, about ourselves, about each other, about our country, about science, about religion…. On a simple level, it’s all about what we choose to have faith in.

That’s the level that Jack operates at in this episode, and in that sense it’s profound to me, precisely because the stakes aren’t clear except in the sense that we’ve had two feuding Island Hillbilly brothers telling the Castaways what they believe, in a veiled-yet-fascinating way. Jack chooses meaning over meaninglessness, despite having no objective means of “proving” he’s correct. That’s not “spiritual” – that’s just human. It’s the sound of Dostoevsky’s narrator choosing free will over determinism, despite the fact that free will might itself be illusory. It’s the sight of Sartre-ian ideal, of electing to create meaning despite the universe’s apparent “meaninglessness.” To invoke Joss Whedon once more, it’s the declaration that “If nothing that we do matters, then all that matters is what we do.”

Hurley: “Will you help me, Ben?”
Ben: “I’d be honored.”
Hurley: “Cool.”

• Ben’s arc of redemption reaches what is for me a satisfyingly-realistic conclusion. Ben wasn’t transformed into a saint by his confession to Ilana, he still harbored a rage over Alex’s death. But, in the same way that Sawyer “let go” after killing Anthony Cooper, Ben also seems to “let go” following the death of Widmore. The Limbo revelation that Ben and Hurley seemed to have died with sincere respect for one another and the jobs that they held is enormously tantalizing, and its also emotionally affecting (big surprise!). As mentioned earlier, a glimpse of Ben and Hurley’s time on the Island will apparently show up as a Special Feature in the upcoming Series box-set. According to an interview with Michael Emerson, there are between 12 and 14 minutes of footage from the finale that focus on this period, and I’m really, really excited to see it. I’m so excited about it that I’m reconsidering releasing Back to the Island: The Book until after I’ve had the chance to view it. I stopped buying the DVDs for the show after Season 3 and gave my copies of the first seasons to a friend, convinced that I’d want to own the entirety of the show once it concluded, and so I don’t have any problem with picking up the series when it comes out. That said, I think it’s legitimately insulting to long-time fans if meaty extras like this one are only available to those of us who choose to buy the whole enchilada. Those people who’ve been buying season-by-season deserve to get this kind of material without having to repurchase what they already own.

• Oh, and I don’t understand why they bothered to trap Ben under a tree either. It would have been just as effective to have him shove Hurley out of the way without pinning him under something that looks like it ought to have crushed his ribs, then fishing him out from under it with no explanation. ESPECIALLY when you have Sawyer saying that it’s too heavy to lift. Makes no sense to me.

• For those of you keeping track, the faiths represented in the window include: Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, Jainism, and Sikhism.

On a surface level, I like that the window suggests that all faiths lead to this place. I like the notion that all religions are “fingers on the hand of a loving God” and this symbology speaks to me for that reason. I also like that you can choose to view these symbols as literal, in that what we’re seeing is an objectively “religious” ending, or you can choose to take an agnostic/atheist viewpoint and view the symbols of these religions as attempts to express the inexpressible – a phenomenon with scientific properties and an inexplicability that defies rationality.

Yes, the symbolism here is heavily spiritual, but it’s also heavily influenced by all of the Wacky Superscience we learned about over the course of Seasons 4 and 5. A place where time is all one, past present and future indistinguishable? As mentioned, that’s Minkowsky space. You remember Minkowsky – the dude on the freighter and the guy who drove Desmond around in Limbo as his consciousness flipped back, then forth. Come to think of it, is that a sly joke? I think it is.

ALMOST THERE, FOLKS. THE END IS COMING – AFTER THE PAGE BREAK