Episode Title: "Through The Looking Glass"

Flashback/forward?: Jack

Episode Number: Season 3, Episode 22
Air Date: 5/23/07

Synopsis:

"Jack and the castaways begin their efforts to make contact with Naomi's rescue ship, on the season finale of "Lost."

Guest starring are M.C. Gainey as Mr. Friendly/Tom, Tania Raymonde as Alex, Nestor Carbonell as Richard Alpert, Blake Bashoff as Karl, Andrew Divoff as Mikhail, Ariston Greene as Jason, Sonya Walger as Penny, Mira Furlan as Rousseau, Brian Goodman as Pryce, Marsha Thomason as Naomi, L. Scott Caldwell as Rose, Sam Anderson as Bernard, Lana Parilla as Greta, Tracy Middendorf as Bonnie, James Lesure as Dr. Hamill, Nigel Gibbs as funeral director, Loreni Delgado as pharmacist, Larry Clarke as customer and Kate Connor as doctor.

"Through the Looking Glass" was written by Carlton Cuse & Damon Lindelof and directed by Jack Bender. " (ABC Press Release, 05/07/07)

OMG Moments:

• Juliet and Jack kiss before she heads back to the beach with Sawyer to check on Sayid, Jin, and Bernard. Just after that, Jack tells Kate he loves her.
• While in the Looking Glass station, Charlie contacts Penny who reveals she's NOT on the boat nor does she know who Naomi is.
• Charlie appears to drown in the Looking Glass station. He chose to close himself in a small room just before Mikhail blew out a port hole with a hand grenade, because he was going on the assumption he must drown to fulfill Desmond's vision thus ensuring Claire and baby Aaron would indeed leave the island in a helicopter. Desmond was left on the other side trying to open the door to free Charlie. We don't know for sure that Charlie is dead/will remain dead.
• Jack finally got so upset that he violently attacked Ben when he thought Sayid, Jin, and Bernard were killed on Ben's orders.
• The van that Hurley, Charlie and Jin found earlier plays a surprising role that helps the Islanders in a shocking twist
• Sayid, Jin, and Bernard were not killed as Ben led Jack to believe
• Alex finally meets her mother after so many years.
• Sawyer kills Tom/Zeke/Mr. Friendly as payback for kidnapping Walt.
• Locke kills Naomi with a knife to the back right as she gets a signal from the outside.
• In an apparent Jack flashback, we learn someone has died and it upsets Jack so much he calls someone but can't even bring himself to leave a complete message, he begins crying, & is literally about to jump off a bridge...until a passerby crashes her car with her young son in tow, prompting Jack to forgo suicide to a hero...again.
  • Jack's flashbacks of drug addiction, suicidal tendencies, etc. aren't flash-backs at all. They are flash-forwards to a life off the island or an alternate/possible future (e.g. space-time theory or a Desmond flash).
• We see Jack and Kate meet outside an airport, he had been calling her. Jack tells Kate they did something bad, he's been flying a lot thanks to the Gold Passes "they" gave us, and that he keeps hoping the plane he's on will crash...because he wants to go back. He hoped Kate would be attending the funeral, to which she replies "why would I?" with an obvious disdain for the deceased. Then she tells Jack she has to go because "he will be wondering where I am."

New Clues:

• The boat Naomi claimed to have arrived from located 80 miles off shore is not Penny's boat, and is possibly an enemy's boat.
  
  Penelope Widmore has a direct video connection to the Looking Glass station owned by the DHARMA initiative. It seems like they are somehow involved with each other.

Newspaper Clipping:

• The deceased is a man apparently from New York. The location "Hoffs/Drawlar" (which is an anagram for flash forward) and the black funeral director leads us to think the deceased could be black. Michael or Walt?? But that wouldn't match the "antham" we see that appears to be the last name. Also, it looks like the clipping says "from a beam in the..." Do we assume whoever it was hung himself? When Jack read the clipping, he became clearly emotional even crying and was ready to jump of a bridge. So why did he tell the funeral director he was "neither" family or friend to the deceased? Is it because Jack feels "lost" off the island and he feels a connection to this dead person (assuming he also felt "lost" and thus hung himself)?

• The last scene with Kate And Jack talking about the funeral:
  Kate : "Why did you call me, Jack?"
  Jack: "I was hoping that you'd heard, that maybe you'd go to the funeral."
  Kate: "Why would I go to the funeral?"

Jack's Flash-Forward (or alternate reality):

The only problem with the flash forward is that Jack asks the new Chief of Surgery to bring down his dad to see if he is more drunk than Jack, when Jack's dad is dead, but people don't always stay dead, especially in LOST. The whole conversation with Kate about leaving the island and wanting to go back is somewhat problematic if it is taken as a flashback. This creating the theory that Jack's flash forward is an alternate future.

The newspaper clipping Jack holds appears to contain information about a man from New York, who died after 4 a.m. in "The Tower" on Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles. The man's first name appears to begin with a J, with his surname possibly ending in "antham." This makes Jacob another possibility as the one dead. A detailed explanation of this, here and above.

Questions:

• Why do some people get shot (or injured) and die, while others die and seem to come back from the brink like Locke, Naomi, and Mikhail?
• Sonya Walger is back as Penny - A possible Jack/Penny connection shown in Jack's flashback or has she finally arrived on the island?
  
  • Sorry, no such luck-we only see Penny in "real time" communicating with Charlie via video/phone when he's in the Looking Glass station.
• Whose funeral did Jack go to?
• How did John Locke make it out of the pit with that gunshot wound and hike all the way to the radio tower? Did the island/Jacob/??? heal him? If so, why?
  • I don't think it was anything magical, except maybe fate. It appeared that the only vital organ that would have been hit by the gun shot was a kidney (which Locke gave to his father.) AlexFSU6 9/20/07
• Will we see Walt in "real time" back on the island or will he continue to be a "vision" of hurt or dying people as with Shannon and Locke?
  
  • No, Walt is not back. That was merely Jacob or the black smoke causing one of the island's most common tricks in creating an illusion of someone who is not really there. Such as when Jack sees his dad, and Eko his brother.
  • I believe we really did see Walt in this episode because when he was a vision before for Shannon, he never spoke, did he? I think he might have talked. Well i at least know he said, "SHH" to Shanon. I think that that is more than any of the other illusion from the black smoke did.
  • Actually the illusion(s) (Black Smoke, Island) did speak to Hurley through his imaginary friend, Dave. Dave talked with Hurley on several accounts, in one occasion attempting to kill Hurley by making him jump a cliff into some rocks. mattGamer 7/9/07
  • Eko's brother also talked to him.
    
• Is what Ben said about Naomi's people on the boat being the real "bad guys" true?
• If Naomi's men are the real "bad guys" then does this mean that there is a common enemy for Jack's people and Ben's people to fight together as one?
• If the "flashbacks" in the episode are from the future, then why does Jack refer to his father as if he were alive?
  • Probably because Jack went a little crazy.
• Does the island have the ability to bring people back from the dead? Would this explain why Mikhail is still alive after he went past the sound barrier?
  
  • Mikhail survived passing through the sound barrier, he explained that the reason was because it wasn't at full power.
• How did Mikhail survive being shot in the chest with a harpoon?
  • Hegot lucky, so the harpoon didn't pierce his heart. Obviously he knew what to do with a pierced lung. EXODUZ
• Assuming this is a true Flash Forward, is Kate still on the run? It seems that if that were the case, Jack was able to reach her fairly easily.
  • She couldn't have been given an Oceanic Airlines Gold Pass if she would've been rescued as a convict. EXODUZ
  • Statute of Limitations maybe? Everyone was presumed dead mind you, she may have started another life off the island with ?Sawyer? or someone else?
    

Trivia:

• The funeral home Jack went to was "Hoffs/Drawlar" or to put it another way, an anagram of "flash forward."
• The show referenced the Grand Avenue Project, announced in 2007.
• The phone that Jack was using is a Motorola KRZR, released in the fourth quarter of 2006.
• The headline on the LA Times that Jack picks up is from April 5, 2007.
• If there are anymore, please add them.
• "Ted", "The Tower", and "beam" are all references to central characters or places in Stephen King's "The Dark Tower" series of books, and other books that allude to the Dark Tower, such as "Hearts in Atlantis"
• In the hospital, Jack takes:
  • Oxycodone -it is a central nervous system depressant. Oxycodone's action appears to work through stimulating the opioid receptors found in the central nervous system that activate responses ranging from analgesia to respiratory depression to euphoria. People who take the drug repeatedly can develop a tolerance or resistance to the drug's effects. Thus, a cancer patient can take a dose of oxycodone on a regular basis that would be fatal in a person never exposed to oxycodone or another opioid. Most individuals who abuse oxycodone seek to gain the euphoric effects, mitigate pain, and avoid withdrawal symptoms associated with oxycodone or heroin abstinence.EXODUZ

Theories:

#1: In the final Flash forward, when Jack is talking to Kate he says something about what they did, and it seemed like it was something bad. So I think that the calling the boat was the bad thing. So i think that Ben was telling the truth and the boat is owned by a group of people trying to find the island, and they eventually kill almost everyone on it. (TO DO: add real quotes to this for better support)

#2: Jack, Kate, and a third person could have been the only survivors. In being the only survivors, they could have not told anyone about the island to hide its secrets. Kate is also afraid of whoever she is with:

• Kate: "This is not gonna change."
• Jack: "No! I'm sick of lying. We made a mistake."
• Kate: "I have to go, he's gonna be wondering where I am."
• Jack: "We were not suppose to leave."
• Kate: "Yes we were. Goodbye, Jack."
• Jack: "We have to go back, Kate. We have to go back!"

Though this theory is shut down because Jack mentions that the Oceanic supplied them with "Gold Passes". But Jack and Kate are hiding something from the public. mattGamer 5/07

I like this theory, and don't really believe the fact that they received Gold Passes really shuts it down. Those passes are just to keep the three (following the theory) survivor's mouths shut, thus showing why no one in Jack's flash-forward mentions or even knows about the crash.

#3: The Surreal of "Through The Looking Glass":
Season finale bringing long running explorations to an end and planting the seeds of further fields to explore, continues; The exploration of the "Death as Metaphor" seems to leave the viewer with the challenges of a completely new future of LOST.

Lots of deaths throughout Through The Looking Glass. A little bit of, coming back from the dead, as well. The writers/ producers certainly escaped the parameters of Time and Space in this season finale. It was great seeing Kate all pretty like. Yet, this same "future" has her attached to a suspicious mate, so unlike our free will Kate. And Jack, yearning for the Good Ole Days of the Island, so much so, that reading an obituary of a "mystery man" brings him to his deepest despair, which makes him a hero, which he denies. Back and forth, back and forth he bounces between the polar opposites, knowing, yearning for the Island. Speaks Volumes to Carlton/Damon's direction to the whole island being a Metaphorical Magic Box.

Interesting it is that Danielle says it now her Home. Interesting it is that Locke remains so adamant on keeping everyone there. Interesting it is that Ben doesn't want the world to know about it.

Jack's futuristic Death Wish, complete waste of a Human Potential, is but one of infinite possible futures, just as unlikely and exaggerated as Kate being married to a husband who she has to lie to,, in order to meet with Jack. New Identity? Of course, the set up is a strengthening of the Jack/Kate relationship as Sawyer pursues his "animal instincts" and kills once again. Julie seemed shocked at Tom's death, but I suppose Sawyer could be trusted to get even with Zeke. On it goes, even the return of the Bus Running Over a Human Motif. Some dark humor there.

Other Motif's surfaced in Death's exploration: Jin still not quite able to kill. An Opening Eye, Ben's continued and quite blatant, "I'm a Liar, I'm a Liar!", the return of real time Penelope, opening whole new mysteries. " Answers" as metaphor for Death, " answers" Kill the Question; just how much of an Illusion is that? Jack's yearning for returning to the Island, is a subconscious realization that, the continued exploration of His Potential, the continued exploration of the Question, "Who Am I?", only meets its Death, only meets its despairing "answer," when one Leaves the Magic Box of Ones Imagination.

Is it a coincidence that it will be 9 months before the next new Lost episode?

Season Four Predictions (click here)