WRITERS: Carlton Cuse & Damon Lindelof DIRECTOR: Jack Bender
CAST: Matthew Fox (Jack), Dominic Monaghan (Charlie), Henry Ian Cusick (Desmond), Naveen Andrews (Sayid), Yunjin Kim (Sun), Michael Emerson (Ben), Josh Holloway (Sawyer), Jorge Garcia (Hurley), Evangeline Lilly (Kate), Emilie de Ravin (Claire), Elizabeth Mitchell (Juliet), Daniel Dae Kim (Jin), Sam Anderson (Bernard), Blake Bashoff (Karl), Marsha Thomason (Naomi), Mira Furlan (Rousseau), Lana Parrilla (Greta), Tracy Middendorf (Bonnie), Tania Raymonde (Alex), Nestor Carbonell (Richard Alpert), Malcolm David Kelley (Walt), Kate Connor (Doctor), Larry Clarke (Customer), Loreni Delgado (Pharmacist), Nigel Gibbs (Funeral Director), James LeSure (Dr Hamill), L. Scott Caldwell (Rose), Brian Goodman (Pryce), Ariston Greene (Jason), Andrew Divoff (Mikhail), M.C Gainey (Tom) & Julia Bowen (Sarah)
WARNING! SPOILERS! WARNING! SPOILERS! WARNING! SPOILERS!
An ambush for the Others is prepared, Ben is told of Charlie's presence in the underwater station and Jack leads the group to the radio tower...Lost has a massive reputation and chief amongst them is its mind-blowing finales. Season 3 wraps up with Through The Looking Glass, an incredibly exciting and enjoyable episode that answers some questions, poses a few more and entertains with such ease it's almost fiendish.
The storyline is split into four main strands: Jack leads to castaways on a trek across the island to the radio tower, to turn off Rousseau's 16-year-old transmission. Deep underwater, in DHARMA station The Looking Glass, Charlie's suicide mission to switch off its jamming signal hits a snag when he's captured by its two inhabitants.
At the beach, Sayid, Bernard and Jin have been left behind to detonate packs of dynamite when the Others ambush their camp to kidnap pregnant women. Finally, in flashbacks, we see Jack at a difficult period in his life; contemplating suicide before he becomes a local hero by rescuing a family from a traffic accident.
Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof ensure there's plenty going on, creating an epic scope through sheer bredth. It's a trick they have employed in previous finale's and it continues to work wonders for them. As always, the script is a masterful juggling of characters and plot, continually keeping you unbalanced and unsure what will happen, or who will survive events.
Matthew Fox gives a terrific performance here, particularly in the flashbacks where Jack's more fragile and depressed than we've ever seen him. Fox's role in season 3 hasn't been as integral as usual in the series, but Through The Looking Glass again reminds you why Fox is seen as the show's leading man. He's a great actor and does a fantastic job with the material.
Similarly, Dominic Monaghan does good work, making you wish Charlie had been given similar storylines in the past. Too often he was used as comic-relief or for snug romance subplots with Claire, but Monaghan clearly relishes the chance of some proper heroism. Marvellous.
Every character appears and has something of interest to do, or gets a a few nice lines at the least. Lost has a fantastic ensemble of actors and you can almost sense the character's bonds, making each group's adventure more engrossing than it would be otherwise. You yearn for Jack to lead the group to salvation, you urge Charlie to escape and you even love-to-hate creepy Ben.
Speaking of whom, Ben, played with quiet charm by Michael Emerson, has had his cloak of secrecy exposed in recent weeks, but he's benefited immensely from this. Now we have some understanding of his past, it only makes his current decisions and reactions more intriguing.
Overall, by the time part 1 reaches its climax with Locke, still languishing in the DHARMA mass grave, you'll be grinning from ear to ear as a face from the past puts in an appearance. This is masterful storytelling from a show that refuses to become boring. A fantastic set-up for the final hour...
