Lost Recap: "Happily Ever After"

Well damn.

I was so sure about my sweet prediction that The Sideways World was simply what the Candidates lives would have been had Jacob never interfered and touched them. A part of me knew, this wouldn't be it. That, the great masters of storytelling that are Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof (executive producers, writers, show runners of Lost) would make it all fit into this narrative somehow; parallel universe, afterlife etc. But all those answer seemed cheap to me. Underwhelming and kind of unnecessary.





And though my answer is a little cheap too, I really liked it. Many of the Sideways story-lines so far gave our characters the much needed redemption we've been wanting for them for six years. Jack got over his daddy issues and became a good father! Locke got over his bitterness and is finally a happy man with the woman of his dreams! Sayid, though still violent, doesn't let people manipulate him to that violence anymore. It was a defense, not an attack. Sawyer (James Ford), though still hell bent on finding Sawyer (Anthony Cooper), now channels it into being a good cop. And by the end of the episode he has shared his Dark Secret with his partner Miles. Ben, always the manipulator and power hungry self server, sacrificed his potential power for the future of someone else.

Leave it to Desmond, the quantum leaping, time hopping, large amounts of energy absorbing Scotsman to ruin all my theorizing of completely separate worlds. It seems these two lifetimes are indeed connected and either happening simultaneously or the Sideways slightly after the Island. Somehow they are going to converge. We don't know why or how yet, but I doubt I'm far off in saying that it will have a large significance in the end game that Lost is so quickly hurling towards.

Another great thing that happened in this episode; the aforementioned End Game is really started to take shape. We get the sense that things are winding down and huge things are going to happen in a very short amount of time. What are those things? We just may have to wait to see. I've given up guessing. It will be great though, I'm still expecting.

Lost has a lost a lot of faith with fans this season and it's totally understandable. Where the chicken faggot are our answer we were promised?! Everything they actually do answer opens up like seven more questions! I'd be lying if I, myself, the most devoted of fans, haven't gotten a little frustrated. But it all comes down to whether you trust Darlton or not. I do. I hope, in The End* my faith will not have been in vain.

Next weeks episode is called Everybody Loves Hugo. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that it Hurley episode. For a lot of this season the Flash Sideways episodes have nearly directly mirrored the Flash Back episode order from Season 1. Hurley was the last cast member to receive his Flash Back conspicuously late in the season. That, I believe, was because Hurley's episode introduced one of the shows most notorious and lasting mysteries; The Numbers! Now in Season Six, Hurley gets a conspicuously late Flash Sideways. Why? Remains to be seen. But I'm sure there's a reason.

Until then though, that reason will remain a mystery.

Soupy Twist.

*The End is the official title of the last ever Lost episode. Double entendre!