After six years, over a hundred episodes, and countless snide remarks about the plot made by people who never even watched the show, Lost has come to an end. To cap the whole series off is an epic, two and a half hour finale that’s sure to be divisive, even among the series’ staunchest fans. How does it all measure up?

The penultimate episode of Lost sets the stage for what promises to be a pretty damn epic finale. After a season of bringing two storylines to a head, the switches are ready to be thrown to send both plots (and both worlds) full steam ahead to their respective culminations, which may very well be one in the same.

With the Series Finale just two episodes away, we make the deepest withdrawal from the Department of Backstory that we ever have, and get some intriguing answers about the show’s central mythology, along with some new questions.

As the final season of Lost builds rapidly to a climax, the show nevertheless takes the time to give us a secondary pre-climax climax—in the form of a nice, swift kick between the legs.

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.

Yeah, when you saw that this week’s episode was going to be a Hurley-centric one, you thought it was going to be a heartwarming romp through lightheartedness and comic relief. But you were so, so wrong.

For whatever reason, Desmond has always been the harbinger of big paradigm shifts in the show. First, it was the introduction of the Hatch. Then, it was the acknowledgment that something more-than-natural was happening with the Island. Then it was having one’s consciousness travel through time. Now, Desmond takes what might be the show’s final step in shattering the remaining paradigm: the alternate universe that came into existence at the beginning of Season Six.

I could probably put together some elaborate, extended metaphor about “barriers” here: language barriers and cultural barriers and sonic barriers and dimensional barriers, but that would be played out, so instead I’ll just start by saying that this was a really good episode.

At long last, after many years of mystery, wondering, and deliberate obfuscation, we get a glimpse into the strange past of the enigmatic Richard Alpert. And, as it turns out, he’s gotten more of the shaft than Miles O’Brien after he transferred over to Deep Space Nine.

The seemingly unrelated storylines of the main timeline and the alternate timeline are rapidly coming to a head. In fact, it looks like all the pieces in both stories are nearly in place for a triggering incident that will set the fires that burn and rage for the rest of the season. And our very own James “Sawyer” Ford is posed to sit and watch it all burn, with that smarmy smile on his face all the while.