A cleaner portrait of selfless heroism was provided by Charlie during his Herculean assignment in the Island's aquatic underworld. I loved the wisecracks while the lovely ladies of the Looking Glass were playing good-cop/bad-cop on him. And after some bloody speargun violence involving the lovely ladies, Patchy, and Desmond, Charlie succeeded in shutting down the station's signal jammer by inputting a harmonic code, one loaded with tons of theory-spawning potential — the Beach Boys' ''Good Vibrations'' (a song, by the way, that inspired the Beatles to record ''A Day in the Life'' — coincidence?). And when the light stopped blinking, a transmission came in — it was Penelope, Desmond's lady love, confirming for certain that nope, Naomi wasn't working for her, and nope, she doesn't have a ship waiting offshore. Then Charlie died. Now, I know a lot of people are going to question the logic of this scene, as it seemed Charlie had many options to save himself. But remember why Charlie swam down to the Looking Glass in the first place: to fulfill the requirements of Desmond's prophecy of rescue for Claire, baby Aaron, and hopefully the rest of the castaways. For that to happen, Charlie needed to die, per the rules established about Desmond's precognition. The image of him pushing away from the window and crossing himself is as close as we get to visual poetry in the chat-driven medium of TV, and it got to me. Rest in peace, Charlie Pace. You earned it.

The drama of season 3 came to a climax in the shadow of the old Dharma radio tower, a legendary locale that's been begging for a visit since season 1. With the jamming device disabled and Rousseau's distress call turned off, the mysterious Naomi phoned the freighter — then sputtered blood thanks to a knife in the back. The cause of her fatal (presumably) misfortune? Locke, who was beckoned out of the Dharma ditch by a vision (?) of Walt, like Christ summoning Lazarus back to life, and who seemed to share Ben's seemingly mystical conviction that the castaways were not meant to leave these Twilight Zone tropics. At least not yet. Jack was furious. He grabbed the phone. Locke pulled his gun. A standoff ensued, and Locke was the one who blinked. Distraught, the born-yet-again true believer disappeared into the jungle as Jack made the call to Naomi's freighter. Ben begged him not to. ''Making that call will be the beginning of the end!'' he said. ''Jack, please — you don't know what you're doing!'' Jack: ''I know exactly what I'm doing.'' The castaways cheered their fearless-leader hero as a friendly voice on the other end named Minkowski told him that rescue was on the way. (''Minkowski,'' no doubt, is a nod to Hermann Minkowski's theory of four-dimensional space-time, which has inspired many Lost theories.) Ben shook his head in defeat — or was that a bloody smile on his Clay Aiken-after-a-bar-brawl face? Did Jack just save his friends or doom them all? Take your time answering the questions: We have seven months to debate and theorize.

And we also have seven months to debate the climactic, show-changing twist. In the final scene — the big reveal that the whole flashback was actually a flash-forward — we saw Jack meeting a cleaned-up Kate near the airport. He asked her why she didn't go to the funeral for the mystery person — a dude or dudette so dislikable that nobody except Jack bothered to pay his respects. (Who could this be? Locke? Ben? Who?) Their dialogue was full of other cryptic bits that raised many other questions. Jack: ''I'm sick of lying. We made a mistake!'' (About what? Have the surviving castaways been sworn to secrecy about their Island ordeal?) Kate: ''He's going to be wondering where I am.'' (Who's ''he''? Sawyer? Maybe her husband, the cop played by Nathan Fillion?) As the third season of Lost passed into history, Jack called out to the woman he said he loved: ''We have to go back, Kate. We have to go back!'' But Kate just drove away, leaving Jack the Hero all alone, and hopelessly...lost.

Clearly, there's more to be said — and if you come back to ew.com on Friday, we'll analyze some more in the last official Doc Jensen Lost column of the year. (Feel free to e-mail me your finale reactions directly at JeffJensenEW@aol.com.) But I want to you to get talking in the message board below. The big question: Flash-forwards. You digging this idea as much as I am — or do you think this has Big Mistake written all over it? Debate. Discuss. Fill in the blanks of what space and time have prevented me from addressing. Then, come back Friday for some theories, some final statements about season 3, some goodbyes, and even some tasty parting gifts!

PS: I know you're going to talk about it, so my quick take: No, I do not think Jack's references to his father meant that time has been changed and that Christian never died. I chalk it up to plain old drunk-guy/sad-dude crazy talk.

PPS: Hoffs/Drawlar = ''flash-forward.'' If you know what I mean, then...you know what I mean.

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