The season three finale of Lost was aired on Irish TV on Sunday night. Fantastic. Really, really excellent. The first half of the third season was weak – still good compared to most prime time TV, but just nowhere near as accomplished as the previous two series of Lost. However, the second half of the series has just been fantastic.
***** spoiler alert*****
If you haven’t seen this yet and consider yourself a Lost fan, probably best to not read on. Anyway, they killed the hobbit. Charlie is dead. Sorry to see him go, but his character’s reason for being there had been resolved as he kicked his heroin habit, and so there wasn’t much left for him. Desmond’s premonitions have turned out to be accurate and the story has taken a fundamental shift with the introduction of ‘flashforwards’.
Flash backs have been part of the show for the last three series, filling in the back story of all the major characters on the island. But now we’ve been shown Jack and Kate three years AFTER they get off the island. Jack is a drugged up mess and Kate is shacked up with Him, whoever Him is –we don’t get to fid out yet. It’s not Jack at any rate.
And who’s funeral did nobody turn up to? Interesting, but the most intriguing question was raised when Jack ranted at his new boss at the hospital. He’s accused of being drunk, and Jack shouts back “Get my dad down here and if I’m drunker than him, you can fire me!”
From previous flashbacks, we know Jack’s dad was also an alcoholic and used to be Jack’s boss – but he died. In fact, the reason Jack was on that fateful oceanic flight to Australia was because he was going to collect the body. So is he dead or isn’t he? Or is Jack just so messed up he doesn’t know? Quality television. 72 hours of broadcast TV and I’m not even vaguely bored yet. Whoo hoo!
EDIT – I’ve just received an irate phone call from a friend, complaining that I’d broken some kind of unwritten blogger’s code, by revealing that Charlie bites the big one. Come on? What serious Lost fan in the US or Europe hasn’t seen the Series Three finale? This episode was shown in Ireland on Sunday and in the US last week. I feel no shame and am unrepentant! (Besides, I’m not entirely sure Jon wasn’t just bored in work and felt like making a crank call.)
EDIT – I’ve talked it over with Jon, and he’s got a point. I can see how this could annoy Lost fans who haven’t seen the show yet, so I’ve changed the headline and added a spoiler notice.
alexmeehan.com 
Totally agree with you. i had reservations about where Lost was going, and it most certainly had it’s weak & incoherant moments, but the finale to season three was nerve-wrecking stuff – fantastically written and wonderfully played out, but, the writers still have so many lose ends to tie up that it may be slightly credulous to lavish so much acclaim on the show just yet.
The point is that for people who are not fans of Lost but who are enjoying the hype and think they may one day watch it, this was a spoiler that usually requires (SPOILER AHEAD!) warnings.
Got this via mail this morning:
“My flatmate John is an outrageously huge fan of Lost and did not get to watch the finale at the weekend so I have found someone who loves it as much as you and whom it is very likely I would have directed top your blog for various reasons (as I have directed him there twice before). Had he been a regular reader, you would have ruined it for him. Are you now going to argue that there needs to be a certain amount of people affected before such a cock up becomes wrong or will your ego allow you to admit you, a trained professional journalist, made a faux pas?
The common way to do it is to say
***** SPOILER WARNING *********
before making such statements. You should check it out on Internet message boards – it genuinely is the done thing. Of course if your article headline reads “I cannot believe they killed data” even though it is a review of Star Trek 10 this argument will probably fall on deaf ears.
I imagine you will continue to justify your blog so I have no intention of trying to change your mind. Please consider this in the future.”
Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. Happy now?