Lost Review: “The Last Recruit”

Mmm, I’m not really a fan of transition episodes, though I understand they’re necessary on occasion. But with so few episodes of Lost left, there’s no time to waste, and this episode, which just put everyone all in the same place in both the real and alterverses, was merely just a setup for presumably some big conflict to come and send us out with a figurative or literal bang.

The gang’s all together now, with Hurley, Jack, Frank and Sun joining Not-Locke’s brigade on the dubious suggestion of Hurley. Now Not-Locke has all the candidates assembled for his grand escape plan, but he’s interrupted when Widmore’s mousey #2 shows up and starts threatening him with mortar shells from the submarine. Not-Locke is unfazed, presumably because smoke and evil incarnate can’t be blown up by a mortar shell.

But the newcomers don’t trust Not-Locke, as they probably shouldn’t and neither does Sawyer, who has a plan to screw Not-Locke over and leave the island on Widmore’s submarine. He enlists Jack to rendezvous with him later, so they can steal Not-Locke’s boat out from under him and escape to Hydra Island leaving him high and dry on the mainland. Whose boat is this? Is it Desmond’s from way back when? If so, it’s in remarkably good shape after three years of unuse I have to say.

Meanwhile in the alterverse, all of the storylines are conveniently converging in a raging storm of destiny that’s an awful lot of coincidence for a world where the island doesn’t exist. Let’s see if I can keep track of all this.

Jin and Sun rush to the hospital after Sun’s been shot and revealed she’s pregnant. On the way in, they see Locke and Ben rushing in after his hit-and-run with Desmond, but Sun recognizes Locke and is terrified of him. I’m assuming she had some realverse flash as she was close to death and saw him being evil as the smoke monster. Desmond probably saw the same thing, which is why he wanted to turn him into sidewalk mush, though I still am wondering what killing Locke in this universe would do to help anything.

Across town, Sawyer his flirting with recently arrested Kate, Miles goes to investigate the shooting at the restaurant with Kimi, Mikhail and Sun, and heads to Sayid’s house as he was picked up by security cameras. With the help of a Sawyer sneak attack, the “jibroni” is apprehended, in what was definitely the funniest line of the night, as it reminded me of a certain pro wrestler from years past.

Desmond “accidentally” runs into Claire in an office building, and offers her free legal advice from his lawyer friend (naturally, Ilana) about her adoption. But what a surprise! Turns out they’ve been looking for Claire because they need to read Christian’s will. Soon Jack shows up with his now-doting son, and they bro and sis meet for the first time, but Jack is immediately called away to perform surgery on a screwed up Locke. Once again, the hand of destiny bitch slaps Jack when he realizes that he knows Locke from the airport.

Sawyer and his crew steal Locke’s boat, but he gets into a scuffle with Jack over whether or not they’re supposed to be leaving the island at all. For once, Jack is being logical when he wonders if the murderous Not-Locke wants them to leave, maybe the right thing to do is stay. Sawyer disagrees and orders Jack to jump ship, which he does. He’s met on the island by Not-Locke, as the others land on the shore. Jin and Sun are reunited after what, like two seasons? And true love makes Sun speak English again, thus ending the world’s stupidest mini-mystery in Lost history.

Widmore gives the order to apprehend Sawyer who was expecting a hero’s welcome, and he starts shelling the beach here Locke and Jack are with mortars, conveniently taking out a bunch of Other randoms and filling the show’s “must kill all background extras” quota. Flaming arrows anyone?

There really weren’t very many, if any answers in this episode, which is rather strange for being one of the last hours of the show. Locke admitted that he was indeed Jack’s vision of Christian in the jungle, but we really already knew that.

The alterverse didn’t really create any new mysteries either, again just setting up the characters for their next moves. I have to wonder how and why exactly Desmond thought it necessary to reunite Claire and Jack, as that doesn’t really have anything to do with alterverse flashes, but being “The Variable” means you work in mysterious ways I suppose. In the realverse, Desmond is currently stuck at the bottom of a well, and Sayid pretends to kill him and lies about it to Locke. This isn’t explicitly made clear, but it’s definitely exactly what happened.

So what happens now? I’m most curious to see how Locke plans on getting across the water. Any more boats up his sleeve? Is Jack really going to end up being the Jacob replacement? That almost seems too easy. And what of the little kids running around freaking Not-Locke out? And why was this episode called The Last Recruit? Who is the last recruit? I thought they were all present and accounted for.

We really didn’t get any answers this week, but everyone’s in a position for something explosive to happen next week, though no, I didn’t watch the preview as I never do. I’ve almost lost track of what questions I even am waiting to be answered at this point, outside of all the alterverse clusterf*ckery. Most of them are about Walt. Bring Walt back.