“…Fiiiiive hit and ruuuuuns!”

As we get back to Team Jacob, Richard is still urging everyone to blow up the Ajira Plane. Ilana arrives with some dynamite, and finally prepares to assume a prominent leadership role in

Oh my God, that was hilarious!

So one woman is dead and the other one is rendered speechless. To avoid unfortunate implications, the Losties decide it’s time to go and visit Team MiB so they can pool the female characters together. But before that can happen, Hurley blows up the Black Rock, a harbinger of how the series is about to start burning bridges all over the place. Miles, Ben, and Richard opt to go off to destroy the Ajira Plane by themselves, an expendable grouping in a final season if ever I saw one.

And before all THAT happens, Ben darkly predicts that after what happened to Ilana, the island has similar plans for everyone else once they outlive their usefulness. It’s a disturbing idea, because it brings up these questions of predestination and free will again. Was Ilana marked for death like Charlie? Did the island/universe force her to mishandle dynamite? Maybe the island just stopped protecting her after she told the others about the Candidates and left her free to make her own choices and mistakes… which in this case involved mishandling dynamite.

Michael also drops in to tell Hurley what the Whispers are… they’re the dead people on the island who can’t move on. Hmm… so they’re essentially excitable dead people who get agitated in anticipation of some kind of confrontation. It fits with everything that came before. The answer doesn’t leave any new questions of its own. It ties into a major theme of the season, especially the finale. Wow, a direct, relevant, non ambiguous answer to a long term mythological question that’s free of contradictions. I think I like this.

Jack, Hurley, and Sun reunite with Team MiB in the closing moments, where Flocke has spent the episode leading Desmond into the jungle. Love love LOVE their scenes together. Desmond has now seen that there’s a life after this one, and since it seems to be a happy place, there’s nothing Flocke can do to frighten him. This seems to be the first time that this entity seems thrown, and it’s great to see. I love the range of expressions that pass over Flocke’s face just before he throws Desmond down the well.

The flash-sideways give us our Hurley fix, with an unexpected side order of Desmond Hume, Cosmic Matchmaker. Of all the characters, Hurley is the one most obviously in a better spot than his counterpart was in 2004, so thankfully little time is wasted on some kind of personal problem. Instead, it’s all about seeing Libby again and reconnecting with her despite her being in a mental institution, and as a result, he seems to have the same epiphany that Desmond did in Happily Ever After. It’s interesting how upbeat the Afterlife is tonally compared to the island. The Lost writers seem to be experimenting with a story arc that actually builds to something really positive, and it’s working.

Well, until Desmond runs Locke the **** over in the last scene. So much for Locke getting to live happily in one universe, since that looked pretty fatal… but we’ll see…

Overall, Everybody Loves Hugo starts moving towards the climax in earnest, and I couldn’t be happier about that.

Rating: 9/10
Ranked 3rd out of 11 episodes.
Average: 8.45/10