Season Six has, up til now, had a very deliberate group-by-group, character-by-character progression for the story’s setup.  Well, now the pieces are all finally in place, and it’s time to set everything going full-speed.

I’ve really been very pleased (as I’ve said in earlier reviews) with Season Six’s episodic focus on very narrow segments of a sprawling and complex story.  It made arc development a bit slow, but I think the trade-off was certainly worth it (especially if it meant not confusing the hell out of everyone who was watching).  With the painstaking setup done, it’s now time to tip something and let the whole row of dominoes fall.

There are actually quite a lot of long-term payoffs that come in this episode, some of which have been building for the course of the whole series.  We get confirmation that the Man in Black was, in fact, the one masquerading as Christian Shephard.  Jack and Claire have an awkward family reunion.  Jin and Sun finally reunite after three years (even if Lapidus’ little comment kind of ruins the moment; seriously, who let that past editing?).  For many of these characters, it’s clear that they’re not going to get another break between now and the end of the show’s run.

Flash-sideways Desmond continues to be delightfully creepy.  His scene with Claire bordered on terrifying, even though it turned out, in the end, that he was being legit.  I want to know what his plan is, how much he knows, and what he hopes to do with his knowledge.  I mean, sure, I know of plenty of people who would cheerfully run over John Locke while wearing a smile on their face, but there’s something up there.

Ilana appears for the first time in the flash-sideways timeline, right on the heels of her death in the other timeline.  I noticed that Zuleikha Robinson is still part of the main cast, so presumably the show isn’t just “done with her” like the previous episode might have made it seem.  Her buildup has always seemed way too deliberate to me, and I can’t imagine that they’d get this far without something planned for her, so I’m expecting the show to still answer the unknowns about her. Heck, even the fact that she speaks with a different accent in the new timeline is kind of telling, just by virtue of being weird.

The portions of this episode surrounding Jake, Kate, and Sawyer planning in secret against “Locke” felt a lot like “classic” LOST, and in a good way.  We had multiple opportunities for Kate do to that thing where she somehow ruins everything, but she didn’t, and that was nice (same can be said for Claire, really).  Of course, the tension in the ranks finally does break when it comes to Jack vs. Sawyer, again, but at least Sawyer’s able to keep Kate from throwing a hissy-fit about it.  And now Jack is stuck with the Man in Black, which I’m sure won’t lead to anything dire and terrible.

I’m waiting to see what else in the way of epic badassery Zoe can pull off before she dies.  It’s only a matter of time, now, before someone kills her, but she’s got that cool, kick-assedness to her that makes her fun to watch, and I hope we get to see her do a few more cool things before her fuse runs out.

The flash-sideways timeline itself feels like it’s reaching some ultimate purpose and culmination, as well.  When Sun freaked out upon seeing Locke while on the stretcher, I initially thought that perhaps the two Suns had had their consciousnesses switched, but then I remembered that the Sun in the original timeline is still very clearly “that” Sun, so that busted that theory.  The “walls” between the two realities are definitely breaking down, though, and it’s still mostly a one-way deal.  And really, as much as stuff kind of sucks in the flash-sideways timeline, in a lot of ways, it sort of feels like the best of all possible worlds.

Also, I’m still totally waiting for the reveal that Juliet is David Shephard’s mother.