Ho-lee crap.

That finale was one insane two hours of television, three if you count the recap special before it. As an aside, the most interesting thing in that special was the explanation that the reason some of the Losties were sent to 1977 was because they didn’t replicate Flight 815 exactly. Which is weird – I thought they did a pretty good job, considering. I mean,a lot of the people on that flight are now dead, so there’s only so much they could have done…

But OK, so there’s Jacob and his nemesis. Jacob touches a bunch of our characters at important moments in their lives. But to what end? Kate doesn’t listen to him – she still steals. Jin and Sun don’t listen to him – they take each other for granted. Hurley does listen to him – he gets on Flight 316. Jack, well Jack just takes the candy bar from Jacob, cuz you know, who doesn’t love candy bars?

So the bigger question is now, how much of the lives of our characters has been fated or given slight pushes from Jacob or his Nemesis? Did Jacob visit the other folks on 815? Michael and Walt, Boone and Shannon, Charlie, Claire, Libby, Eko, Ana Lucia etc? Did Nemesis? And what exactly is their agenda?

I definitely buy into the theory that everything that’s happening on Lost is part of a game between Jacob and Nemesis – that the “Easter egg” hint about the nature of the series in the pilot is Locke playing backgammon. But it is not entirely clear who is good and who is evil – certainly all indications are that Jacob is good: he’s nice, he wears white, and he didn’t put up much of a fight as he got stabbed in the heart. And Nemesis certainly seems evil: he wears black, he openly admits to wanting to kill Jacob, and he apparently can assume the form of other people. But this is Lost, so nothing is a given.

A friend of mine pointed something out that I hadn’t realized – if it was Nemesis posing as Locke, then he helped cause Locke’s death by telling Richard to tell time-jumping Locke that he’d have to die. (Follow that?) So does that mean Nemesis can only assume the form of dead people? Does that mean he has been walking around as Christian and all the other “ghosts” we’ve seen? How does he get the person’s memories? And was Ben really shocked that Locke was alive, or did he know that “dead is dead” and who he was really dealing with? And how cool is it that this show can deliver a twist with someone NOT coming back from the dead??

Oh, and the rest of the show was pretty sweet too, even if the ending shot was painful. I think Jack and company did hit a giant cosmic reset button, with the biggest piece of evidence being the LOST logo being on white instead of the normal black; there’s no way that was an accident. But I loved all the great moments with Jack/Kate/Sawyer/Juliet, and I really hope Sayid and Juliet pull through, assuming the whole island isn’t nuked. You don’t suppose the bomb destroyed the statue? Does that work timeline-wise?

Oh, and Rose and Bernard are totally Adam and Eve. And as great it was to see them again, I was more stoked to see Vincent, personally.