Lost - The Complete Third Season (2006)

Starring: Matthew Fox, Evangeline Lilly



Review:
Begins with a blast and ends with a whimper...that you'll never forget, August 15, 2007
By Rottenberg's rotten book review (nyc)
Another masterful season of "Lost" has come to a crashing, and enigmatic end. For fans (like me) drawn to the show's thrills and riddles, Season 3 didn't disappoint. Like Season 2, you can't just get into the show, but "Lost" more than rewards those who can start from the beginning.

ARE YOU LOST: "Lost" follows the trauma-filled lives and back-stories of the survivors of Oceanic Ft. 815, which crashed on a mysterious island enroute from Sydney to LA. As time passed, and hopes for an immediate rescue dimmed, the survivors realized that they would have to come to terms with their new home, even as (we see in flashbacks) none have proved capable of coming to terms with their flawed lives. We met jack Shepard, a doctor obsessed with fixing whatever's broken, except for his own family. We also met Sawyer, the conman and heroic anti-hero. Kate is the woman between the two of them, a criminal on the run for murder. Locke (Terry O'Quinn) is a man with a long and complicated past - one that crippled him physically as well as emotionally, until he came to the Island, and found himself mysteriously bonded to it.

Then there are The Others. Hinted at until the end of the 1st season, we find by the end of Season 2 that the others inhabit an organized commune on the island. Their purpose and the bizarre strains of their society are slowly pealed away like an onion. At the climax, the Others blackmailed Michael into helping them kidnap Jack, Kate, Sawyer and Hurley. (Hurley was released with orders to warn the rest of the survivors to keep away from their half of the island.) Who are the others, and what is their connection to the shadowy "Dharma Initiative"? And what about "Fake Henry Gale"? Revealing himself as Ben Linus doesn't quite begin to explain his knotty soul - Ben proves to be as trustworthy, a politician of sorts adept at using fear and hatred to manipulate others. (For politically minded viewers, the opening scene of Season 3 will raise disturbing parallels with 9/11, and its principal players.) But in the end, the Others are perfectly drawn because, like the Island, they have a perfectly maintained air of mystery.

In Season 3, Jack must confront the others, find out why he was singled out, and maneuver between them to get Sawyer and Kate to safety. New characters get the Lost treatment, with flashback episodes for Ben, Desmond (the crazy guy found by Locke in The Hatch) and Juliet, a doctor among the others used by Ben to manipulate Jack. We see Locke struggle through a crisis of faith over the island, while Hurley attempts to defeat "the numbers curse" (another great Hurley episode). Returned to the good graces of Claire, Charlie learns that he is marked for a grim fate. These and many other character plot twists abound in Season 3, as "Lost" shows that it's lost none of its momentum. The inertia continues right up to the end of the season finale, which has all the thrills and mystery of the rest of the season and something that the other shows don't - a flash-forward.