The US double-bill premiere starts off with a bit of a cop-out: it’s not two new episodes, but a 45 minute recap bolted on to the first new one – but unless you’ve had your head buried in the sand or sensibly given up on a show with no flipping answers, you’ll know the score. Most of series three saw the group wandering over to the Others to exchange prisoners, whilst Locke became more and more unhinged, until a woman with a bad Lancashire accent fell out of the sky. But was she the sign of hope they all hoped her to be? Ben didn’t think so, but he doesn’t exactly have a good track record of honesty. It’s not much of a spoiler to reveal that this news splits the group in two. Jack quite understandably still doesn’t trust Locke and his knife throwing ways, and is holding out for the people on the boat to be their saviours, while Locke, Desmond, Hurley, Ben, Sawyer and others are quite anxious to make like a tree and get the hell out of there. This series is set to be a lot different to the others as things get tribal, and I for one am very excited. But Abrams has at least some explaining to do. SPOILER SPECULATION PARAGRAPH THING DON’T READ ETC: It later turns out that Hurley’s flashback is in the future, and that it was Charlie’s ghost that made him flee. The revelation this episode is that Hurley is one of the “Oceanic Six” – as presumably Jack, Kate and possibly Sawyer are also – which doesn’t bode well for the scores trying to get off the island this series. But there’s a dark secret about the rest which Hurley and Jack share, and Daniels from The Wire turns up as a mystery agent trying to find out what happened to the rest of the original survivors in a thoroughly spooky turn. It’s implied that they were either left behind or are dead, and for some reason Hurley regrets going with Locke when the group split in two. The climax of the episode sees yet another bloody person fall out of a helicopter, and Jack and Kate go to meet him – but what his intentions are remains unknown.
title: “Lost Season 4 Episode 1 Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-07-31” author: “Andrew Arreola”
Season 4 opens in traditional Lost fashion – by yanking the rug out from under you. It begins with a blue sky framing a pile of fresh-looking lemons and limes, draped in tropical sunlight, while the sea roars peacefully in the background. The shot lingers for a few seconds, before it’s explosively disturbed by… a vintage Camero, which careens its way through the produce, Starsky & Hutch-style, while a trio of police cruisers bear down in pursuit. The shot cuts wider, and we realise that the fruit is stacked in boxes, the azure sky is on an advertising billboard, and the roar of the sea was in fact the roar of Los Angeles traffic. They’ve tricked us again, for the third season in a row, and already I’m hooked.
After the Season 3 finale featured the first ever flash-FORWARD, which revealed that Jack and Kate, at least, do make it off the island, expectations for this episode to deliver some revelations of equal size were high. While we’ve been promised a mixture of flashbacks and flash-forwards, Season 4 wisely begins with the latter, if only to avoid any sense of anti-climax – a lesson learnt from Season 3’s lacklustre beginning, perhaps. There’s nothing even approaching the tedium of Season 3’s opening arc in this episode, as the plot developments finally come as thick and fast as we always wished they would. The “rescuers” might not be who they say they are, and reacting to the message Charlie died to deliver, the group once again divides up into two camps under Locke and Jack – one intending to go with the rescuers, and one intending to hide from them and – if necessary – defend themselves. It’s tense stuff, but it’s not half as gripping as what’s going on in the future.
We witness Hurley’s fall from grace as he’s arrested and voluntarily returns to his old mental institution. Brilliantly, we can now slot in new some new pieces of the Lost puzzle. Add Hurley to the list of people who make it home. Add the “Oceanic Six” to the list of mysteries that need expansion. Try to figure out just what is making Hurley want to return to the island, and why Jack won’t hear of it. And then wonder why he’ll change his mind some time in the future. Lost has always been a show that rewards its viewers for their attentiveness, so if you’re not already doing this sort of thing, you probably gave up on it years ago. This episode is titled “The Beginning of the End” and if that’s half as sincere as it sounds, it looks like Season 4 – and beyond – will pay big dividends to those of us who stuck with things this far.
Still, that flaw is the same one that almost every episode has had since the show began, so it seems a little pointless to complain about it now. Not so much a running start as never missing a step, the fourth year of Lost promises to be yet another season of the same intricately-plotted, character-infused drama we’ve come to expect – and who could ask for more?
title: “Lost Season 4 Episode 1 Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-07-21” author: “Travis Konkel”
Ladies and gents, the best is back.
In pure Lost tradition, season four premiere “The Beginning of the End” delivered a brain-jolt of an opening in which Hurley led the LAPD into car chase in his 70s Camarro before crashing into a load of tat and getting ultimately arrested. With Jack watching on the TV back home, it was evident that we were once again in Flashforward City – albeit before the events of last season’s atrociously-bearded finale. It was what Hurley said as he was arrested that got the brain pulsating: “Don’t you know who I am? I’m one of the Oceanic Six!” The Oceanic Six? If Jack, Kate and Hurley are off the island, then who are the remaining three escapees? Are they even alive in the future? Is the rescue from the people on the freighter?
But first, the freighter. By episode’s end, we still knew very little about the people on the freighter and what their intentions were – annihilation or liberation? Still, there were some hints dropped throughout the episode to support Ben’s predictions that everyone sticking about for the freighter awaits certain doom. Communicating with Minkowski before she died, Naomi held the truth back about Locke’s knifing and said she was “sorry”. Was she siding with the survivors in the end? Was she apologising for letting the survivors know of the full-scale cover up of the crash?
Charlie’s Looking Glass demise even passed over to the flashforwards. In some of the hour’s most intriguing developments, two dead characters were glimpsed by Hurley: Mr. Pace at the San Rosa mental institute and in Jacob’s creaky old Deliverance shack, Christian Shephard a.k.a. Jack’s Drinky Doctor Dad. Is it possible that Hurley has been given a power a la Desmond’s precognitive abilities? Except instead of seeing the future, he can see the dead. I believe that Jacob’s bayou was revealed to Hurley for a purpose, and I believe that purpose is his knowledge of the Valenzetti Equation. For those who didn’t take part in the Lost Experience, the Valenzetti Equation is an equation that will determine when the world ends. And the most dominant numbers within it? 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42. It’s a theory I’m throwing out there – what do you guys think? Personally, I’m a bit on board with Hurley having powers, but with Desmond, Hurley and Walt between themselves, we better not turn this into a powerfest. I get enough of that from Heroes.
As for Charlie’s beyond-the-grave (?) premonitions, I sure wanted to know more. Who does Hurley need to save? Is it really Charlie if he’s calling Hurley the less colloquial “Hugo”? And were my ears playing games on me, or did he say that Hurley was “hiding from him”? Why has my head exploded?
Jack popped up in Hurley’s madhouse antics as well, saying he was signing autographs and – in a very wink-wink joke – considering growing a beard. This was obviously pre-drug-addiction Jack, who seems to be aligned with whatever Abbadon has planned. As we know, disillusionment will set in, but how far along the line for our Grand Hero?
There’s almost too much to talk about concerning the premiere that this next bit may seem shoehorned in, but did you guys check out how Lindelof and Cuse set out possible character arcs within little scenes? From what we’ve seen so far, here’s what I predict for our cast: judging by Sawyer’s rejection of Kate and alignment with Locke, he seems to be out purely for Number One; Kate will stay loyal to Jack, even though she seems hesitant about rescue (you think I’m wrong? Go back and look at her asking Jack if it’s for real); Juliet will push harder to integrate herself into the group; Danielle will take motherhood very, very seriously; Ben will continue to be terrified of Danielle. In short, we’ve got a lot to come in these next seven weeks.
So how was this episode for you? I thought it was an awesome return, what about you? Does Hurley have powers? Did you like the Ana-Lucia shoutout? Did you grin when Hurley cannonballed? Who was the episode short on? Was it cool to see the Fuselage be used in the show again? Who does Abbaddon work for? Is the man who parachuted Minkowski? And, most importantly, who are the final five Cylo—I mean, the remaining Oceanic Three?
