Lost (Season 5)

Oh, I am excited to review this season. Season 5 of Lost isn't just the best season of the show, it's one of my personal favorite seasons of any show and one of the all-time greatest time travel stories, period. It's nonstop, high-octane, plot twisty fun and ends with the greatest season finale ever created, bar none. I can't even begin to express just how much I love this season.

Season 5 of Lost is pretty much split into two halves, the first half being Episodes 1-7 and the second half being Episodes 8-17. The first half of Season 5 is split between the island shenanigans and the non-island shenanigans. On the island, Ben's decision to move the island has started to cause the characters to randomly hop back and forth across time ala The Constant, which ends up putting them all into a whole slew of dangerous situations. I really like this storyline because not only does it give this season an incredibly brisk pace, but it lets us and the islanders learn more about the history of the island first-hand in episodes such as Jughead. Meanwhile, I also really like the storyline that takes place outside the island, as the Oceanic Six slowly realizes that they do in fact need to go back and try to figure out how to return to the island. This whole storyline was a hook set up all the way back in the Season 3 finale, and it definitely lived up to the hype.

But where Season 5 really starts to get good is in its second half, where the cast starts to settle in with the DHARMA Initiative in 1977. Everything I said about the island's lore in the first half is almost doubled here, as the DHARMA Initiative being responsible for much of the series' events means that we get so many answers throughout this part of the season. It's fun to see the cast have to adapt to an unfamiliar situation at an unfamiliar time, particular Miles whose father works at the Initiative. And then there's the moment where the characters starts to wonder, if they're in 1977, what if they could find a way to prevent themselves from landing on the island in the first place. This storyline could very much go in the realm of time travel paradoxes, but Faraday establishes pretty early on that "whatever happened, happened". The characters can't change fate, which makes for a surprisingly airtight season and leads to a lot of drama as much of the cast tries to prove Faraday wrong. It all leads to a stunning season finale that actually brings the whole series full circle, as we learn that the main cast caused the Incident that caused them to crash into the island in the first place. Oh yeah, and I didn't even bring up the subplot where Locke and Ben try to finally meet the mysterious Jacob for the first time. Seriously, this season is so damn good.

Highlights:

Jughead: As far as the time jumping adventures in the first half of the season go, Jughead was the most memorable of the bunch. The whole hydrogen bomb conflict with Faraday's team is incredibly tense and exciting, but it also sets the stage for the final stretch of the season. In addition, Desmond gets his first focal episode since The Constant, we meet a young Widmore, and the ending cliffhanger is one of the most painful in the whole series. All around a really great episode.

316: 316 is about the Oceanic Six trying to get back to the island, and it almost plays out like a heist in some aspects. The whole episode involves the Oceanic Six making their plan to recreate the crash and executing the plan, and it's all just a ton of fun.

Namaste: After such a long stretch of time, the Oceanic Six and much of the other islanders finally reunite at the DHARMA station, and it just makes for a really satisfying episode. The previous episode LaFleur really just went over how Sawyer's team settled into the station, but Namaste starts to kick the plot into second gear as Sun learns where Jin is, Jack spots Sayid and has to hide him from DHARMA, and young Ben Linus shows up.

The Variable: Befitting the 100th episode, The Variable is a pretty massive turning point in the season, involving Daniel arriving to warn the group about "The Incident" and instructing them to detonate the hydrogen bomb and destroy the island, only to die at his (young) mother's hands. It's a sad farewell to the character that introduces the final conflict of Season 5 and parallels the excellent The Constant in many ways.

The Incident: This is my favorite season finale of all time, it's just non-stop action, excitement, and twists, and I actually think it could have been a fantastic series finale as well. As mentioned earlier on, the cast trying to blow up the island only to cause the Incident is a great twist, and the Incident itself absolutely lives up to its catastrophic description, with no one (especially not Juliet) making it unscathed. Meanwhile, we meet Jacob and learn just how much he's impacted the cast outside the island, Locke is revealed to still be dead with his replacement being Jacob's rival, and Jacob himself is killed by Ben. And then there's the fact that the finale ends with Juliet detonating the nuclear bomb potentially destroying the entire premise of the show. While I have my gripes with how Season 6 follows up on these plot threads (a bit of a common theme here), The Incident itself is a phenomenal episode of television. It's tense, exciting, and brings the series full circle in so many ways. Even with its many cliffhangers, this finale is so inherently satisfying that I would be perfectly fine if the series ended with the bomb being detonated, leaving all of the viewers wondering if it would have actually worked.

As much as I like Lost, even I'll admit it's a pretty messy series. But Season 5? Season 5 of Lost is damn near perfect. It's perfectly paced, constantly exciting, incredibly creative, plot twisty as hell, and boasts one of my favorite depictions of time travel that's surprisingly lacking in paradoxes. 

5/5 Stars