Review: Lost 4.14: There's No Place Like Home (Part Three)

Ben pushes the Frozen Donkey Wheel

Season Four ends with the same poignancy of every Lost finale, the perfect culmination of the series' emotional development. At the moment that focus on character over logic isn't a problem, as it will become in later series. The last 45 minutes provide a lot of great closure for the series' themes while setting up a lot of detail for the two seasons to come.
     In the present, we built up to the flashforward events of Part One, and of The Shape of Things to Come. The copter lands on the Freighter, despite Desmond's pleas. The Helicopter is fixed up as fast as Lapidus can manage, and all of the Oceanic Six end up on the Copter as it leaves the now exploding Freighter; Sun is distraught at Jin's apparent death. They won't reunite until Season Six, in the same episode in which they both die for real. Locke is sent off to lead the Others, while Ben ignores Keamy's corpse and travels through a hole in the Orchid to a cold, underground cavern. There he finds a large Donkey-wheel, which he turns with visible anguish. Soon after, he disappears and the island does also.
      With nowhere to land, the Helicopter crew are forced to make a crash landing. They float in a lifeboat until they see a ship. This time it is Penny's Boat. I still get all gooey at this scene, because despite my lack of exposure to it, Penny and Desmond's romance is one of the most powerful and believable on the show. Jack formulates their cover story, and after a week they set off towards the mainland in a paddle-raft. This neatly connects back to Part One, and we finally achieve the series' goal of escaping the island.

Jeremy Betham is John Locke.

      However, in the Flashforwards things are afoot. Sayid takes Hurley into a safehouse, as both are being spied on by Widmore. Sun meets Widmore in London to organise terms. And a drug-addled, beardy Jack breaks into a funeral parlour to look at the body of the elusive Jeremy Bentham. Ben corners him, and tells him that Jeremy was right - they all have to go back to the island. Everyone - including the corpse, who it is revealed is that of John Locke.
     Part Three wasn't as tense or exciting as the first two parts and it came as more of an extended denoument. As an addage to Part Two, the episode ends the season on the same notes that it began - a poignant acceptance of a new reality and the tragedies that occurred to make it possible. It's been an easier series to watch than to review, but I've thoroughly enjoyed doing it.

Thanks.

P.S. Happy Birthday to Doctor Who, which is 48 today!