LOST – The Beginning of the End

The Beginning of the End is a fitting title to a great and emotional episode of LOST. The episode starts with a car chase and the person driving the vintage el camaro is revealed to be none other than post island Hurley yelling at the top of his voice “I’m one of the Oceanic Six!!”. Who are the Oceanic Six? My guess is the only six people that were able to escape from the island due to yet unknown reasons. Throughout the episode we learn that the “Oceanic Six” have been labeled as heroes and they are famous. So now we know that three of the fabled “Oceanic Six” are Jack, Kate and Hurley. The other three haven’t been revealed yet but I have some theories about who the other three are. We’ll get into that a bit later.

So in the Flash Forward we see that Hurley is having hallucinations of someone wearing a hood who is apparently under water chasing him. Care to guess who? He checks himself into a mental institution and gets surprising visits by three people. First being a creepy Oceanic Airlines attorney who asks Hurley whether “they” are still alive. Next being a well shaven Charlie wearing cool sun glasses who is apparently dead but still “here” telling Hurley that “they” needed him and he had to go back. Third being Jack making sure that Hurley didn’t spill the beans on whatever happened on the island. My guess is that the “Oceanic Six” left behind some of the other survivors or perhaps killed them to get off the island and the Oceanic Airlines has covered up the whole story making the “Oceanic Six” to be heroes thus them becoming famous. Jack looks to be ok; clean shaven and apparently doesn’t want to go back to the island, very much unlike the bearded Jack that drank and begged Kate to go back to the island. So this makes this Flash Forward apparently happening before the events of the season finale taking place. Which of course makes a lot of sense since the Flash Back’s never did follow a linear time line.

Onto the island; people were stricken with grief over Charlie’s death even Sawyer remaining glum faced and offering to talk to Hurley about Charlie’s death. It’s apparent how much the survivors loved Charlie when Hurley gave a big speech regarding him. That was one of the most heartwarming moments of the series. Charlie will be greatly missed. Hopefully he pops up once in awhile to give some advice to the survivors. After the speech the survivors split into two groups; team Jack and team Locke. Team Locke includes the people who does not want to be rescued after hearing about Charlie’s attempt to warn the survivors that it was “not Penny’s Boat”. Team Locke consists of Sawyer, Hurley, Claire, Aaron, Vincent, Danielle, Karl, Ben, Alex and some other survivors. Team Jack has Kate, Sun, Jin, Bernard, Rose, Desmond, Sayid, Juliet and some other survivors. I’m actually surprised by Desmond’s inclusion in team Jack. He was there with Charlie when he died and showed him the message but I think he’s going with his visions this time. This sets up the season fantastically as Locke’s group is going to the abandoned “Others” barracks to get off the radar of the people on the Freight.

Onto other weird matters such as Hurley getting lost in the jungle and seeing Jacob’s shack. Hurley encounters the shack and it followed him for awhile till he counted to five. Hurley actually saw someone on the rocking chair before he was frightened out of his wits by Locke’s eye. It was pretty creepy scene to say the least. Some people have blown up the picture of the person (above picture) on the rocking chair and it appears to be Christan (Jack’s father). Maybe he’s Jacob? He probably is. That’s a great reveal since we already know that Christan is not dead as Charlie is. More questions for later.

So going back to the Oceanic Six here’s my pick for the other three.

Ben (I think Ben takes the identity of one of the survivors and gets off the island later on and ends up in that coffin that Jack sees. That explains why no one visits him at the funeral.)

Sayid

Aaron (Kate is taking care of Aaron and he is the “He” she had to go back to in the season 3 finale.)

Weird choices I know but that’s my gut feeling. Who do you think are the Oceanic Six? Let me know your theories as well.

All in all a great episode setting it up nicely for the next seven episodes. Hopefully the strike ends by then and we get to see the other eight episodes. Cannot wait for next Thursday where we get to see the back story of the Freight people and apparently it’s a Flash Back.