This week LOST focuses on Sayid and how his troubled and violent past catches up with him. Meanwhile, Smokey sends a deadly message and finds new company.

Robert

I came into this episode not expecting a whole lot and I should’ve known better. Sayid has always been a bit of a puzzle for me throughout the run of the series. I’ve always seen him as one of the characters with the most heart, but time after time he shows us that he can also be the most ruthless and cold-blooded Lostie of them all. Add to that his rather non-ambulatory state for the first four episodes of this season (and the now-dismissed theory that he was somehow a reincarnated Jacob) and I’d pretty much under-estimated what importance if any he had for the show.

This week that all changed. Not only was he back on the move and trying to figure out what had happened to him, but he’s also on a mission now, which leads to it’s own set of questions. Didn’t Smokey’s question of “what if you could have anything you want?” sound a lot like Ben’s rap to Locke about the “magic box” from “The Man from Tallahassee” way back in Season 3? Think about that for a second. Plus, thinking back to last season, remember when Sayid said he finally realized why he had to come back to the island in “He’s Our You” when he managed to escape from the DHARMA folks and pop a cap in young Benjamin Linus? That’s right. I think Ben still has his coming.

And can I say I really liked the head-fake with Sayid’s flash sideways? The idea that Sayid could lead a content life without Nadia seemed possible but not truthful to his character. Something to keep in mind is that Darlton have already said our final glimpses of these characters (not the timelines) is the most important to them and we may not like what we see. So watching Sayid regress into the killer he’s always been was pretty spectacular but also another sign that these flash sideways are the ultimate resolutions for these characters as we know them. I’ve been saying it ALL THIS TIME.

Also, in a way, I was sad to see Dogen and Lennon go so suddenly, but only because they seemed to be important to how this final season would play out. I guess not. It’s now all shaping up to be about Smokey and his posse (hey, what happened to Sawyer?) versus…somebody.

Armando

I’ll just go ahead and say it, tonight’s LOST was bad-ass! They just took it to a whole new level of Stephen King-edness. It’s getting clearer and clearer that this is somehow a battle between Good and Evil, but what is also become clearer is that just because some calls themselves Good or another Evil may not exactly mean Good and Evil the way we see it.

The more I watch of this season, the more I see how much Carlton and Damon must love comics. In comics, incarnations/personifications of concepts like Good and Evil and situations like the one the Losties are in happen quite often. And as a reader, to enjoy it you just have to accept that in this “reality” things like that can and do happen. When you mix in “real” characters to these not-so-realistic situations, you get the type of science fiction drama LOST is rocking our worlds with right now.

And again, I still don’t know what the flash sideways is but I loved it. I realized tonight that maybe, just maybe, Sayid could take out Jack Bauer. How awesome was that ending? Flocke and his crew ready for battle! I am loving LOST right now to the Nth degree. What other show has ever given us this much discussion?

Do I know how it’s going to end? No clue. Do I understand every little thing going on? Not at all. Can I turn my eyes away? Never!

Chris

Great episode, definitely bad-ass (especially the last 20 minutes). One thing stood out for me though. They’ve been showing character redemptions for the past couple episodes—Jack, Kate and Locke—but this Sayid-centric episode was different. He had a pseudo-redemption when Nadia asked him just to go home but then he was once again forced into taking action. The scene with Keamy was excellent, yet I couldn’t help wondering why in this flash sideways Keamy was no longer military (or seemingly a gun-toting maniac). Now I guess we sort of know what happens to Jin in the sideways timeline but what does that mean for Sun? And is Jin with Smokey now? So many questions! They’ve answered nothing! Argh!

I am quite glad that the temple storyline appears to be over. Dogen and that other guy met their demise in a very cool way thanks to Sayid badassery, but I never really liked the whole temple thing. I’d just rather forget that part as it really didn’t seem to be all that important to the story at large. Seemed like a bit of an excuse for Darlton to get some of their favorite actors in the show before the curtain fell.

I’m left wondering what it means for our characters when Smokey/Jacob offer our characters something—Jacob’s deal with Dogen (save your loved one but never see them again) and Smokey’s deal with Sayid (what if you could see your loved one again?). Does that mean the sideways flashes are Smokey-wins scenarios? Have we already seen the ending of the series from the beginning? Oh god, my head’s starting to hurt. Too bad that in the Smokey-wins scenario it appears that Sayid doesn’t end up with Nadia. But I figure that’s just one of many non-happy-endings we’re going to see in LOST this season.

Scott

So how’s that for a final episode? “Sundown” is undoubtedly one of LOST’s darkest and most apocalyptic entries ever. I doubt I’ll get Sayid’s creepy smile and “not for meeee” line reading out of my head anytime soon, or the aftermath of Smokey’s ethnic cleansing of the Others set to a distorted recording of “Catch A Falling Star”. For those looking for things to wrap up, last night essentially brought the resolution of Sayid’s six year long character arc: he’s a guy who has chosen violence and intimidation at every turn despite significant reservations and—faced with a final decision of selfishness or selflessness—sealed his fate by murdering Dogen and Lennon, thereby freeing Smokey to lay waste to the Temple. Dogen warned Sayid that if Smokey/FLocke/UnLocke/DreadLocke spoke a single word to him it would be too late to kill him, and it seems he was right. If he’d plunged that dagger in his chest before that thrown-off pleasantry, would everything have turned out differently? It’s impossible to know now, but the silver-tongued promises of our villain(?) certainly won Mr. Jarrah over.

I am a bit disappointed that this season’s most confusing aspect to me—the re-animation of Sayid, Christian and Claire’s dead bodies vs. Smokey’s assuming the appearance of dead bodies—wasn’t explained at all. And why was the circle of ash that has reliably kept Smokey out of the temple before now not enough to keep him out once Dogen met his demise? It’s probably related to all this Candidate business, but I could definitely use some explanation of the increasingly arbitrary ”rules” that govern the island’s supernatural beings.

As someone more interested in the mythological/religious elements of LOST than whiny character concerns of who’s going steady with who, ”Sundown’s” most intriguing element to me was the choice of many of the Others to join the side of Satan incarnate to temporarily save their own asses rather than die on the side of the good guys. Like Hebrews of the Bible unwilling to abandon God to save their own hides, Dogen and Lennon are dead but probably doing OK in the afterlife right now. Cindy and the rest of the Others who turned their backs on Jacob? Not so much.

Did Sayid’s turn work for you? Were you expecting things to work out differently for our favorite tortured torturer?

Chris Johnston talks about video games old and new at Player One Podcast. Armando Reyes talks comics, music and life on the road on Twitter.