Sorry if this is a long one, but Christ Almighty there was a lot going on …
9:01: Jack is back on the island! So is Hurley — and Kate! How did it happen?
9:03: Jump back 46 hours to Eloise’s church. “All right, let’s get started,” she announces and takes Jack, Ben, Sun and Desmond downstairs to the pendulum room, or “The Lamp Post.” It’s how the Dharma Initiative found the island. The numbers are there, too. Oh wait, I get why they call it The Lamp Post; it’s referencing The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, I bet. You know, when Lucy comes out of the wardrobe and finds the lamp post. It was their way of knowing they had found Narnia. Just a thought.
9:09: The gang looks around incredulously. Jack asks Ben if he has been here before, he says no. “Is he telling the truth?,” Jack asks Eloise. “Probably not,” she replies.
9:11: OK, now I might not be able to explain the whole next scenario completely, but in a nutshell Eloise explains that the Dharma peeps found a way to find the island through equations by predicting where it WILL be because, as we now know, the island is constantly moving through time. The giant pendulum helps find certain windows of time that they can get onto the island but those windows close. The current open window is going to close in 36 hours. Desmond wants no part of it and leaves, even though Eloise warns that the island is not through with him.
9:15: Then Eloise tells Jack that he and all the rest need to be on Flight 316 from L.A. to Guam in the next 36 hours. In fact, they have to try to recreate as much of the original Oceanic flight as they can, in order to go through the latest window and make it back to the island. If they are not all on the flight, then the results may be “unpredictable.” However, Eloise tells Jack there is something more he has to do — only him.
9:18: Locke apparently killed himself by hanging — and left a suicide note for Jack. Eloise says in order to make this whole thing work, Jack has to get something of his dead father’s and give it to Locke. Jack is like, WTF? Eloise tells him he has to take a leap of faith. Ah, the age old conflict between Locke and Jack springs up again.
9:20: Ben has to tie up one little loose end, however, before he gets on the plane, a promise he made to an old friend. He’s going to go try to kill Penny. He did promise Widmore he’d kill his daughter as retribution for killing his. And, of course, Desmond shows up, letting Ben know Penny is nearby.
9:25: Jack goes to see his grandfather in an old folks’ home, to say goodbye — and finds an old pair of Christian’s shoes. Aha! Those will go on Locke’s feet.
9:28: Jack finds Kate in his apartment, alone. Where’s Aaron, Jack asks? She says she’ll go back to the island with him but he can never, ever ask her what happened to Aaron. OK, but I can: WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO AARON?
9:35: The next day: D-day. A somewhat bloodied Ben calls Jack, says he can’t go pick up Locke, could he do it? Guess the Penny thing didn’t go as planned. Can’t wait to see how that all turned out.
9:38: Jack putting his dad’s shoes on Locke’s cold, dead feet: “Wherever you are John, you must be laughing your ass off. Because what I am doing is even crazier than you are.” Then Jack puts the unopened suicide note in the coffin. He doesn’t need to read it.
9:45: They all arrive at the airport — and I do mean ALL of them. Hurley is there, carrying a guitar case. Sayid is, too, in custody, being escorted by a cop (the chick from Rome). Hmmm, just like Kate on the original flight.
9:47: I bet Charlie is the one who tells Hurley to go on the plane. Hurley has bought most of the seats, to avoid having too many other people onboard. But there are a few onboard who are not part of the deal. “The other people on this plane, what is going to happen to them?,” Jack asks Ben. “Who cares?,” he replies. Oh Ben, so sensitive.
9:49: And get this, Frank is flying the plane! Helicopter pilot Frank from the freighter. Coincidence? I think not. Jack can’t believe it and asks the flight attendant to get him to come out. Frank does and can’t believe it either, especially when he sees all the rest of them. “We’re not going to Guam, are we?”
9:58: Well, the suicide note ends up back in Jack’s hands when the flight attendant hands it to him. The note says “I wish you had believed …” And then the plane goes through that familiar bright flash of light.
9:59: On the island, Jack, Hurley and Kate are dusting themselves off, wondering where everyone else is, when lo and behold, who drives up in a Dharma VW van? It’s Jin — and he is wearing a Dharma uniform. I KNEW when Locke fixed the wheel everyone was stuck in a Dharma time.
LAST WEEK’S RECAP: Ep. 5 “This Place Is Death”
