Lost: Season 6, Episode 16 Review: What They Died For

What They Died For

Original Airdate: May 18, 2010

Writer: Edward Kistis & Adam Horowitz and Elizabeth Sarnoff
Director: Paul Edwards

Probably the hardest part of amateur TV criticism is falling behind on reviews because not getting paid means it has to take a backseat to real life.  By the time you write them, answers have been given and the space given to speculation is moot.  My policy in my reviews is not to spoil future episodes of a series, even when said series is long over.  So these reviews are tough to write, made even harder because I know how the series ends.  If things are a little more disjointed than usual, that’s the reason.

The final four, who it’s been pointed out in Lostpedia among many sources were the same four Michael had to assemble at the end of season two, aren’t in as bad a shape as originally thought (if I ever get shot in the arm, I hope it’s on a TV show or in a movie), but Sawyer feels guilty that not trusting Jack lead to the deaths on the sub.  Sawyer can’t be blamed for what he did despite his feelings and we’ll never know for sure if Jack was correct, but Jack consoles Sawyer by telling them that only Johnny is responsible and he must be killed for that.

En route to finding Desmond, Hurley encounters what we now know is the young Jacob, who leads them to the intense, final tribal council.  I joke, but this felt a lot like Survivor.  Jacob even acts a bit like Jeff Probst.  However, instead of a million dollars, it’s about passing on the role of island protector.  To no one’s surprise, Jack unhesitatingly takes the job.  This has been a long time coming, heavily choreographed since the flash forward storyline.  It’s the obvious choice, but sometimes an obvious choice can still be dramatically satisfying.

After this episode, a lot of people reevaluated their feelings towards the controversial “Across the Sea”, cutting it some slack because that episode informs Jacob’s decisions at the tribal council: how he wished he had a choice in becoming protector and how he took choice away from his brother and made him the monster.  It’s why Jacob lets them choose who wants the title.  Even Kate, who crossed out because she became a mother, had the option of taking it.  Now Jacob’s actions leading to this have been subject of a lot of debate.  Jacob didn’t give them the choice to come to the island initially.  While there is a lot more to it than those sentences, ultimately I think Jacob is aware of his shortcomings as leader, which explains why his process of finding a successor was different from Mother’s.

Picking up where three episodes ago left off, Richard, Ben and Miles arrive at Dharmaville followed by Widmore and Zoe (this season has been filled with characters who went nowhere huh?) and Johnny not far behind.  Before they get company, they remind us of the conflict between Ben and Widmore when Miles stumbles upon Alex’s spiritual essence and Richard answers that burning question of what happened to Alex’s body after the mercenary attack in season four (he buried her).  Giving Hurley the ability to speak to the dead took a lot of the wind out of Miles, who the writers seem to have given up on figuring out what to do with him, so it’s nice to revisit this to help the narrative.

The payoff of the Widmore/Ben feud is another disappointment resulting in the ever decreasing runway of the series.  Before Johnny showed up, Widmore was well set to be the Big Bad of the series, especially in the fourth season.  Then Ben swore revenge and almost went through with it.  Adding Widmore’s arrival this season seemed to set the stage for the inevitable showdown, but it fizzled.  Not to mention there was no moment with Desmond besides Desmond attacking him in “Happily Ever After”, and for a rivalry that was building up for even longer than Ben and Widmore, I expected a more explosive ending.

Ben’s revenge challenges the redemptive measures he’s been taking for the past season and a half and a sudden reversion right before the end is a little jarring, but ultimately Ben is Ben, and Widmore is responsible for murdering the only person Ben ever loved.  This isn’t too different than Sawyer murdering Anthony Cooper.  It also helps get him in Johnny’s good graces, who as we saw hurl Richard into the jungle like a toy, wasn’t in the mood for diplomacy.

While 815 Ben turns one corner, so does LA X Ben, awoken after confronting Desmond in the parking lot.  They could’ve used Alex as his revelatory catalyst, but if Alex isn’t his constant, getting punched in the face repeatedly works as well because of 815 Ben’s frequent beatings.  Apart from that, he also gets to bond with Alex after he’s released from the hospital, and gets a home cooked meal from Rousseau, who cleans up really well.  One of the few spoilers I came across was a report that Mira Furlan declined any request to return to the show, so that turning out to be false was a welcome surprise.  It makes sense to pair them up in the LA X world because of their bond to their daughter in the 815 world.

Elsewhere the flash sideways in this episode are all about setting up the end.  Desmond’s planues to be more and more elaborate.  Hitting Locke turned into not only to be about helping Locke “let go”, but it helped him break out Kate & Sayid from jail, thanks to crooked cop Ana-Lucia.  This plan makes the Prison Break plan look simple.  The explanation for the flash sideways explains a lot of these leaps in logic and maybe Desmond being awoken to what the world is allows him to be this precise, but man everything needed to happen the way it did for Desmond’s elaborate plan to work.

This was a really solid penultimate chapter.  With enjoyable cameos from old regulars and the pieces coming together, the added intensity of the show’s imminent end is felt throughout, especially with that final scene.  Knowing where it ends changes my initial reaction, but it doesn’t alter it too significantly because the assembling of pieces in the puzzle is really compelling, especially with the final picture about to be seen.

Overall Score: 8/10