Season 5 Overview

So how are we to classify Season 5 of Lost? Now the Island has stopped hopping in time and the nosebleeds have ceased and the Oceanic 6 are back on the Island, in whatever timeframe, how are we to view this fifth outing? Was it the season of time travel? Was it the season of Dharma? Was it the season of Ajira? Was it the season of family connections? Was it the season of Jacob?

Well, it was all of these things, and more besides, which is what makes classifying it difficult, but I think the defining trait of Lost’s fifth season is to consider it the season of liberation. Now heading into the home straight, and guaranteed finance for finishing with its sixth and final series, the creators had been liberated to take the show exactly where they wanted, when they wanted and how they wanted. This meant it was a season where the longterm Lost fans were well-catered for, and any Johnny-come-latelys were left out in the cold.

Marginal characters were given greater prominence, from multiple encounters with Ms. Hawking. . .

. . . who turned out to be closely linked with this phantom menace of the Lost universe. . .

. . . who was the father of this woman. . .

. . . who was now shacked up with this time-averse, button-pusher. . .

Not to mention the revelation that Eloise and Charles were the parents of this guy. . .

. . . who was in love with this Freighter-arrival. . .

. . . who had been on the Island as a little girl. . .

. . . along with this sixth-senser. . .

. . . whose father turned out to be none other than Pierre Chang. . .

. . .who we had, since Season 2, only ever seen in old Dharma films. . .

The amazing thing about all this mass entanglement is that none of these characters were even in the show during Season 1, and scarcely, if at all, in Seasons 2 and 3. By the time of Season 5 we were neck-deep in their lives and happenings and forced to weave them into the Lost world we had settled in. Not only that, but we had to keep up with all of this whilst the Island jumped around in time zones with giddy abandonment.

Season 5 was, for the first third especially, a time travel show – but from the first episode to the very end of the finale it concerned itself with one question: Can history be changed to create an alternate future?

This paradoxical matter was the driving debate of the whole series and has yet to receive a resolution, given we have yet to learn whether Jack and his ‘Bomb The Swan’ plan merely facilitated ‘the incident’ we had already heard about, or fundamentally changed a key factor in what caused the crash of Oceanic 815 and so averted the course of the whole show thus far. (The smart money would gamble on the former.) Whilst this matter may have initially felt like a major leap into sci-fi, it fundamentally concerned the notion of fate versus coincidence, a theme prevalent on Lost way back from when Jack and Locke used to butt heads over whether it was their destiny to have crashed on the Island or just an unfortunate accident.

Season 5’s new-found liberation also saw it pretty much dispense entirely with the narrative device of flashbacks / flashforwards (instead episodes tended to flip between what was happening in 2007 against occurrences “thirty years earlier”) and didn’t particularly concern itself with ‘character-centric’ episodes of old (after some episodes you may have struggled to remember who had been the main focus). If Season 5 episodes felt different from previous Lost episodes I would argue that this was the key reason for it.

There were some definite winners this year – Season 5 could arguably be deigned as the Season of Sawyer. Quite staggeringly, Sawyer had never had an episode devoted to his character since Season 3, Episode 4. That was over thirty episodes out of the spotlight! Season 5 saw him boosted right back to the fore.

He got an episode named after his new persona (La Fleur), became a leader for those left behind on the Island before forging a new life, and major respect, as head of security for Dharma. Sawyer invariably found himself at the epicentre of all on-Island happenings, from time-jumping to the birth of Aaron, coming face-to-face with young Widmore, marshalling Jack and co into the Dharma Initiative and resurrecting his love triangle with Kate, this time with Juliet drawing the shortest of short straws. Sawyer was thrust back into the fold as one of the chief characters, a position the likes of Jack and Kate hold by default but weren’t really given as much presence to justify.

Longterm fans of Lost were also well-served by Season 5 and its new liberation. In symbolic terms, we were once given this. . .

. . . whereas in Season 5 we were given this. . .

Not to mention the long-awaited fulfilling of Rousseau and the story of her science-team, major Black Smoke action, some serious face time with the illusive Richard Alpert and even, for the purists, a ‘never thought it would really happen’ introduction to the near-mythical figure known as Radzinsky. That the man who created this. . .

. . . would turn out to be this uptight imbecile. . .

. . . is something you’ll either consider a terrible disappointment or a gleefully sour punchline.

Season 5 probably holds up better in retrospect than it did during week-on-week viewing. Every episode fairly rattled along, throwing out sense-defying zingers right between your eyes (Faraday inserts a new memory in Desmond’s head that only pop up years later!), barmy plot gambits (replicate Oceanic 815 to crash back on the Island!) and that ever-present Lost trait of generating more questions when, really, surely, they ought to be doling out answers to the mysteries already in existence (why why why enter 4 8 15 16 23 42 into a computer every 108 minutes to reset a timer!?). Every episode we saw the show doing figure 8s on thin-ice and entertainingly managing to keep on moving. I don’t think the show has ever been as consistently entertaining and packed since the final third of Season 2 (every episode in Season 2 from episode 14 to the finale, barring S.O.S., was a cast iron knockout in my opinion). It may not have always been enjoyably entertaining but, man, you gotta admire the show’s guts to just really go for it.

The ultimate function of Season 5 was, naturally, to lead Lost to a place where it could unfurl its grand finale swansong series and we were fundamentally given two major elements that will take up the baton for Season 6. The first was Ajira 316. . .

Amidst all the time travelling and multiple plot threads, the hints towards a forthcoming ‘war’ perhaps felt like too little to take seriously and too big to ignore – as such it didn’t function to create any drama nor did it work subtly enough as foreshadowing. To compare: in the last episode of Season One there was a flashback with Jack at the airport that introduced us to the character of Ana Lucia.

It was a brief scene, and an innocuous meeting, but it served to give us our first glimpse of a character that would be a major player in the next season. In short, it worked incredibly well. The introduction of Ajira, and Ilana and Bram (and, even more regrettably badly, Cesar) felt like a more protracted stretching of the same conceit that so successfully worked with the Ana Lucia scene. It was unavoidable, of course, since Ajira was needed to get our main characters back on the Island, but the newcomer’s introduction to the show was clumsier than Frank’s emergency landing on that runway The Others were building back in Season 3 (another point that flew right over the head of the casual Lost viewer). Better implemented, and potentially set to be Lost’s biggest and best game-changing revelation, were these two:

In just one scene, with these two apparent immortals hinting at some eternal struggle in their beliefs being played out on the Island, Lost shifted the boundaries about what the whole show has been about since the beginning. That it was utterly surprising was key to its success, but that it felt right was the real winner. With its new liberation, Lost and its creators may have casually shown us the scale of the stage this show has been playing on and now everything is set for the final act.

My own personal feelings towards Season 5 are that it was my feelings that were left unengaged. Logic was confounded, plot threads were ravelled and unravelled and then tied up in a bow, theoretical paradox debate was stimulated and fanboy-pleasing show mythology was burrowed into like a fervent white rabbit down a hole. Season 5 was a banquet for the brain and it’s been a hell of an enjoyable feast, but I hope the last season serves up something to satisfy my heart.

Damon Lindelof: “Season 6 will feel a lot like Season 1. The focus comes back to the characters with whom we began. . . We’re getting down to the end now.”

Sounds good to me. Namaste!