“Whatever happened, happened.”  Last year, Daniel Faraday gave us that quote which doubled as his theory on time-travel.  If you found yourself in the past, say 1977 instead of 2007, you had technically already been here even though you might not know it.  If it already happened, it already happened, and there was nothing you could do about it.  This theory, essentially proven correct tonight, lies at the heart of one of Lost’s major themes: fate vs. free will.

            What stuck with me tonight wasn’t necessarily that theme in a general sense, but how it has played out in a tremendously unique and satisfying way.  Jack, the Man of Science, is the direct cause of what appears to be the fate of everyone on the island.  By attempting to change their destiny, he created it.  All the while, the Man of Faith, John Locke, through his firm and unwavering beliefs, was completely and totally duped.  Both men had their beliefs or rationales and both men had them come back and burn them.

There’s lots of Lost left, and things could (and probably will) change from here on out as to the fate vs. free will theme, but I wish it could stop here.  Over the course of the series we’ve seen the smaller pros and cons of each side, and tonight we got a glimpse of the bigger picture of each.  There is no answer.  Try are you might as a man of science, and you just might prove fate.  Take a single belief and believe it entirely without questioning it and you could find yourself becoming the next John Locke – not but a pawn in someone else’s game.

With that opening out of the way, let’s dive into tonight’s episode: “LA X.”  Sci-Fi shows have a reputation (and almost an expectation) to provide great finales.  There’s a history behind the expectation though.  Of all the television shows I’ve ever followed, only two have consistently produced tremendous season finales: Battlestar Galactica and Lost.  What no other show does like Lost is the opening scenes of their premieres.  Each one takes you totally out of your element and puts you in a new situation, struggling to find out where you are.  In season 1 we followed Jack, alone in the jungle as he ran to the scene of the plane crash.  Season 2 we watched a man wake up, go about his morning routine, quickly to discover he was in the hatch we were so interested about.  Season 3 we got a peak in on a book club meeting.  When all of a sudden a plane crashed and we saw Ethan and Ben, we realized we were amongst “the others.”  Season 4, the only one not a total surprise, at least alerted us that Hurley was alive and well off the island, one of the “Oceanic Six.”  And season 5 we saw Dr. Pierre Chang (previously several different names in several different Orientation films) along with Daniel Faraday – a match that didn’t make sense.

Season 6 similarly took us out of our element.  There we were back with Jack and Rose on Oceanic Flight 815.  It was a conversation we had seen several times before, always from a different perspective.  This time, however, they weren’t interrupted by Charlie racing to the bathroom to consume drugs.  There was no plane crash.  Bernard returned to his seat.  Things had changed.  It wasn’t a “what if,” though.  It was an alternate reality of some sort.  As we saw before the first cut to “LOST” of the season, the island was completely under water.  Right off the bat, we got a scene that made us ask dozens of questions.

As far as the castaways being “zapped” to 2007, I wasn’t surprised.  This was something I assumed had to happen.  There were essentially two results at the end of Season 5: (1) Everything really resets, of (2) the castaways in 1977 end up in 2007.  The result clearly had to be (2) since that’s where all the action was, and could you really believe a show “resetting” on you? 

The alternate reality gave us a look at a lot of old faces.  Dr. Arzt.  Charlie.  Boone.  Even Desmond was on the plane for some reason (in addition, I swear there was a passenger who looked like Quentin Tarantino, and I could have sworn “The Man in Black” a.k.a. Locke 2.0 a.k.a. The Smoke Monster was holding the door while everyone got off the plane).  Hurley was the luckiest man in the world, which was awesome, and John Locke’s fate remained the same, which was terribly depressing.  As a whole, if you think about John Locke’s story, it is horribly sad.  He bounces around foster homes as a child, only to live a lonely, average life, only to be conned by his mother and his father into donating a kidney to his father, only to be thrown out of a window resulting in his paralysis, only to end up on an island where he thinks he is living out his destiny when really he is being conned again by one of the island’s two “spirits” or whatever we should call them.  As a John Locke fan, I hope there is some form of redemption coming, but I don’t think it will.  Locke is a very, very sad character arc.  On the plus side, we got Greg Grunberg, or Matt Parkman on Heroes, to return as Oceanic 815’s pilot.

There were a lot of great moments in “LA X,” but my favorite was finally watching everyone actually get off the plane.  To be fair, this might be because my favorite Lost scene of all-time is the scene in the final episode of season 1, “Exodus,” when we see everyone board the plane.  That scene is masterfully simplistic.  With the score of Michael Giacchino, we just see every castaway board the plane.  Nothing else.  But knowing where they’ve come from, as well as what is to come for them, the scene holds a special meaning, and has stood up as my favorite scene even after all these years.  I don’t think it will ever lose that spot.

The Michael Giacchino music used in that scene is what I refer to as the “sad Lost music.”  It gets me every time, and it got me again tonight when Juliet died.   This is Lost, however.  I suspect we will see Juliet again.