by Megan Bailey, Staff Writer

This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the show being covered here wouldn't exist.

A good portion of this season is focused on how and why the Oceanic Six—Kate (Evangeline Lilly), Aaron, Sun (Yunjin Kim), Hurley (Jorge Garcia), Sayid (Naveen Andrews), and Jack (Matthew Fox)—return to the island. Locke (Terry O’Quinn) leaves the island to find them and convince them to come back and Ben (Michael Emerson) kills him, using his death in order to convince the six to return.

Those still on the island experience flashes as the island skips through time. Daniel Faraday (Jeremy Davies) is able to explain what’s happening, but not how to stop it. And once the group is settled in the 1970s, we get to see their life on the island three years later—they’ve enmeshed themselves in the Dharma Initiative. Sawyer (Josh Holloway) is functionally the leader of the group now, working as head of security for Dharma. During the time jump, Sawyer and Juliet (Elizabeth Mitchell) start a relationship, and I love them dearly.

Once five of the Oceanic Six come back, including Jack, Kate, Sun, Hurley and Sayid, only four of them are flung into the past. Sun, mysteriously, is left in present day with Ben… and Locke, who is up and walking around, even though his dead body was on the plane. Unfortunately, Jin (Daniel Dae Kim), who survived the freighter explosion (don’t question it!), has been left in the ‘70s as well, and Sun has to find a way to him. The other folks on the plane are seemingly on their own journey here, though it’s a little hazy as to what exactly they’re doing. And at the end of the season, we realize that the Man in Black is pretending to be Locke in order to kill Jacob (Mark Pellegrino).

In between all of this, we also see Ben’s struggle against Charles Widmore (Alan Dale). Ben takes power in Dharma and Widmore is exiled from the island, and then we see Ben talking to Widmore, and threatening Penny, as he tries to reunite the Oceanic Six. To be honest, I think the show is at its least interesting when it’s Ben versus Widmore—there are just many other things I’m more invested in here.

Likewise, I think the whole love triangle bit between Sawyer, Kate, and Jack has gotten stale at this point. When Kate comes back and Sawyer has big cow eyes for her, it’s just not all that interesting. More than either of the two men, Kate is trapped in this love triangle. I wish she had more development outside of it, especially this far into the show.

However, the tension between Sawyer, who’s assumed leadership, and Jack, who no longer wants to lead anyway, is very intriguing. When Jack first shows up to talk to Sawyer about plans and then goes along with it, we see a new side of him. And when Jack refuses to do surgery on child-Ben—refuses to be the hero—we’re really noticing that he’s different from the last time he’d been on the island.

Time travel and how you can, or can’t, affect events are a big theme this season. Faraday explains that you can’t change the past, which we’ve already seen Sayid face when he tried to shoot and kill child-Ben in the ‘70s, only for us to realize that this event is at least part of what makes Ben the way that he is. When Richard agrees to heal him, he tells Kate that Ben will never be the same—he’ll have lost his innocence.

But then Faraday considers that the group being in the past may very well be able to change things, since they’re in their own present. His plan, to blow up the hydrogen bomb at the site of the hatch in order to prevent both the hatch from being built and the electromagnetic event from ever happening in the first place, means that Oceanic 815 might never crash on the island.

After Faraday is shot by his own mother (more on that soon), Jack takes up this plan to be his destiny. He wants to change things, which is upsetting to Kate, though this is definitely a peek back at Jack returning to his heroic instincts. In order to save all the people they’ve lost since the plane crash, he’ll have to never meet Kate. The dichotomy between Jack and Kate, who bristles at the thought of changing anything, is much meatier than the love triangle nonsense.

The tragedies of Charlotte (Rebecca Mader), who’d grown up on the island and then died during the time skips, and Faraday, whose mother insisted he go back, knowing that she’s the one who kills him, is so interesting. They’re both doomed in their own ways. In the ‘70s, Faraday tries to warn Charlotte as a child, but we know it doesn’t work. And in the present day, Faraday’s mother could, but doesn’t, warn him not to go. Off the island, he’s not well. His time travel experiments killed his girlfriend and impaired his mind. His mother knows that going to the island will heal him for a time, but he’ll also die there at her own hand. I mean, does it get more tragic than that?

I’ve always kind of loved time paradoxes and the question of if people can change the past. I think, when it’s given proper weight and time (ha), it’s such an interesting sandbox to play in. There are a lot of ways for time travel stories to get it wrong: getting bogged down in the logistics or not explaining them enough, becoming too cheesy in the storytelling, and so on. But I think this show has such an interesting approach to it.

As the resident Bad Dad Writer, I can’t help but mention some Bad Dad Developments. The big one of this season is Ben’s abusive dad, Roger, who has a change of heart after Ben is shot. This seems a little silly, especially since his motivation is, well, sort of cheap as well. Ben’s mother died in childbirth, leading Roger to hold that against Ben his entire childhood. Seems like a good dude, for sure.

But there’s also Miles (Ken Leung), whose father is revealed to be Dr. Chang (François Chau) from the Dharma training videos. Miles grew up without knowing him at all because Dr. Chang abandoned his family not long after Miles was born. In the age-old Bad Dad redemption twist, we find out why Miles and his mother left the island, and Miles now understands that his dad wasn’t a piece of garbage. Thank goodness!

In the wake of Burn It Down, it’s impossible to ignore just how this show got made. I want to point out that Melinda Hsu-Taylor, credited with several episodes this season (including “Some Like It Hoth,” listed below), went on the record with Maureen Ryan about working on the show. She is one of two women with writing credits on this season; all other credited writers are men. That pretty much speaks for itself, I’d say.

Notably, LOST hit 100 episodes this season, which used to happen a lot more and be a bigger deal. That sweet, sweet syndication money! Now, due to the popularity of streaming and the AMPTP’s greed, actors and writers make far, far less when shows are only available on streaming—sometimes nothing at all. Solidarity with the WGA and SAG-AFTRA!

Notable episodes:

“Some Like It Hoth” — Hurley attempting to write the Star Wars script from memory plus the reveal of Miles’s dad is just delightful television.
“The Variable” — I’m a sucker for Daniel Faraday.
“The Incident, Parts 1 and 2” — I love the reveal of how Jacob has made some impact on everyone’s lives, and Juliet saving the day is an all-star moment.