'Lost' Recap: Taking Charge

''Follow The Leader,'' the episode instructed, but what are you supposed to do if your leaders are off-their-Jacob-rockers crazy? Here's Jack Shephard, wild-eyed destiny zealot, determined to detonate an H-bomb hidden in the ancient tunnels of the Island in order to produce a paradox that will rewrite history. Crazy. And Kate let him know it, revolting and vowing to work against him, though he gained an ally in ''My Life Sucks'' Sayid. Here's John Locke, glowing with a supreme, even ethereal self-confidence that felt downright disconcerting, driving his tribe of wilderness-wandering Others toward a face-to-face meeting with their mercurial and never-seen god, Jacob. Crazy. And Richard Alpert and Benjamin Linus were freaked out about it — but Sun was willing to roll behind Locke if he could lead her back to Jin. (But will he? Does he even want to? Who is this creepy man-thing dressed up in John Locke's skin?) I loved the beat before the final BONG!, when Ben threw Alpert under the bus and pretended to pledge allegiance to Locke — classic Ben, trying to gain control by sowing seeds of doubt and chaos — only to have Locke blow up his scheming by dropping the J-bomb on him. I'm gonna go kill Jacob. Ben's bug eyes practically popped out of his skull. On one hand, it was thrilling to see Jack and John large and in charge. They acted like heroes...but we were left with the unsettling possibility that their respective endeavors will make them out to be horrible, misery-producing villains by season's end. And there remains the haunting prospect that both are actually being played by puppet masters hiding in the shadows...or even walking among them in plain sight.

''Follow The Leader'' deftly mobilized bunches of characters and established at least three juicy conflicts — Jughead, Jacob, and the jealousy-drizzled submarine sandwich that is Sawyer, Juliet, and Kate — that should make for many fireworks in next week's two-hour finale. At the same time, the episode kept things so cryptic, I really have zero clues where the heck this season is going to land — and boy, do I like not knowing. (Attention Lostfan108: Stay the frak away from me, or I swear by Jacob's Flickering Beard, I shall hunt you down and beat you to death with Montand's stiff, severed arm.) Moreover, the episode was steeped in veiled references to yet another fabled fantasy about young heroes stumbling into an enchanted otherworld — presuming, of course, that ''Follow The Leader'' is indeed a direct nod to J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan. The game of the same name is central to the story line of the author's play and book; a song of the same name is part of Walt Disney's beloved 1953 animated musical adaptation. These various versions intersect with Lost in any number of ways: magical islands inhabited by peculiar tribes of people working at cross-purposes, death and resurrection, ticking bombs, lost boys, never-aging enchanted beings, and more. Peter Pan gives us ''The Peter Pan Complex,'' describing maturity-challenged adults who can't deal with reality and so try to change it (see: Jack), not to mention ''The Tinker Bell Effect,'' which according to Wikipedia ''describes those things that exist only because people believe in them'' — things like ''a rule of law'' (see: Horace Goodspeed, ''We have a rule of law!'') and ''deities'' (See: Jacob).

Lost loves citing fantasy literature like this at the end of the season (see: Season 3, Alice in Wonderland; Season 4, The Wizard of Oz), so it's not too farfetched to consider the prospect that Peter Pan might hold a clue about the tenor and texture of how Season 5 will end. I would say you'd find such a clue, appropriately, in Chapter 5, entitled ''The Island Come True,'' in which Tinker Bell plays 'follow the leader' with Wendy, and guides her to a relatively safe part of Neverland following an attack by Captain Hook...where she betrays Wendy horribly by setting her up to be killed by the Lost Boys. (Tink, you see, was intensely jealous of the hold Wendy had on Peter's heart.)

And so, of the great many things that ''Follow The Leader'' put into motion for next week's finale, consider the possibility that a brutal and bloody betrayal might be one of them. Will it be Eloise Hawking (1970s wet hottie edition) double-crossing Jack? Will it be Ben screwing over Locke? Or might the fiend be Lost's only certifiable enchanted being, the Island's own Tinker Bell, and the one character who played leader to both Jack and Locke in last night's episode? Yes, Richard Alpert, I'm calling you out. Don't let those gorgeous eyeliner eyes and that beleaguered countenance fool you, my friends. He's playing a game. I know he is. But what the hell is it?

NEXT: Kate walks away from Jack

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