LOST Season 3 Review

If anyone ever wants to make the Alcatraz writers feel bad about themselves, just make them watch this.

In A Nutshell:

The Others have taken Jack, Kate, and Sawyer hostage. The Hatch has imploded. Locke, Desmond, and Eko are nowhere to be found, and everyone is kind of freaked out. The first six episodes or so are mainly about Jack and Co., over at the Others camp, and after that the season details the survivors continuing conflict with the Others, through which answers and new questions arrive that I can't discuss lest I violate my own no spoilers policy. 

The Good:

Answers finally arrive. Granted, not until later in the season, but we still finally learn, for instance, how Locke wound up in the chair, or why Jack's marriage went to hell. These were some welcomed resolutions. The new questions posed, such as Jacob, kept me hooked most of the time too, especially towards the end of the season. The last five or so episodes of the season were straight up amazing in every way. If I reviewed those individual episodes, I probably give them all 100% ratings. The two-part season finale stands out for me not only because of the cliffhanger they did, but also because they brought something new to the table: 

********SPOILER RIGHT HERE!*********

Flashforwards. Not flashbacks, flashforwards. It takes you awhile to catch on to the fact that what they're showing you hasn't happened yet, but when you do, its awesome.

*********END OF SPOILER!!!!!!!!!********

There was another episode, Flashes Before Your Eyes, that also reinvents the flashback aspect of the show in a very compelling way that just really got me. While we're on the topic "it really got me", you should be warned, the season yields multiple major character deaths. I know I've said in other reviews that I've seen so many characters I like die (dammit Whedon!) that I'm kind of numb to the whole thing at this point, but that was proven to be thoroughly not true when some of these folks get killed off, particularly spoiler and spoiler, whose deaths genuinely made me feel something.

The Bad:

The first six episodes, aka the prologue, pose an absurd amount of questions to the point where you may get a bit put off. And while some episodes had amazing and very relevant flashbacks, there were times where the flashbacks felt very tacked on, to the point where you can't help but feel like the writers are just trying to kill time. You've also got the introduction of new characters Nikki and Paulo, who are basically the Riley Finn and... Riley Finn's wife of LOST, i.e., everyone despises them. Another thing is, I actually don't think any character appears in every episode. I might be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that was the case. So basically, everyone was downgraded to recurring character. 

Final Rating: 97%