Lost season 3

Lost Season 3
Season 3
File:LostS3Promo.jpg Find Yourself... Lost
No. of episodes	22
Release
Original network	ABC
Original release	October 4, 2006 – May 23, 2007
Season chronology

For more details on this topic, see List of Season 3 Episodes

The third season of the American serial drama television series Lost commenced on October 4, 2006 and concluded on May 23, 2007. It continues the stories of a group of over 40 people who have been stranded on a remote island in the south Pacific, after their airplane crashed 68 days prior to the beginning of the season, while they are antagonized by a group of mysterious island inhabitants they call "The Others."

The season is produced by Touchstone Television (now ABC Television Studio), Bad Robot Productions and Grass Skirt Productions and is aired on the ABC Network in the U.S. Its incidental music is composed by Michael Giacchino. The executive producers are Damon Lindelof, Carlton Cuse, Jack Bender, Bryan Burk, Jeff Pinkner and J.J. Abrams. The staff writers are Damon Lindelof, Carlton Cuse, Jeff Pinkner, Drew Goddard, Christina M. Kim, Elizabeth Sarnoff, Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz. Celebrated comicbook writer Brian K Vaughan also joined the writing staff midway through the season. The regular directors are Jack Bender, Stephen Williams, Paul Edwards and Eric Laneuville. In the U.S. the third season has so far averaged 15.28 million viewers per episode.

Broadcast history

Production of the season began on August 4, 2006. Twenty-two episodes will be produced in total, the season finale of which will be twice the length of a normal episode. To limit the number of reruns in the United States and Canada, the first six episodes, that started October 4, 2006 and ended on November 8, were followed by twelve weeks with no episodes at all, and are continuing consecutively with the next sixteen episodes, which premiered on February 7, 2007. 30-second teaser clips from the second segment of the season, entitled "Lost Moments" was aired on television and online from November 15, 2006 until February 1, 2007. Extended versions of the episodes will be run following the completion of the season. Three clip-shows were also aired, "Lost: A Tale of Survival" on September 27, 2006, the "Lost Survivor Guide" on February 7, 2007, and "Lost: The Answers" on May 17, 2007.

Cast

Starring

File:Seasonthree2.jpg

From left to right: Ben, Kate, Sawyer, Claire, Charlie, Jack, Sayid, Locke, Sun, Desmond, Hurley, Jin & Juliet.

• Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as Mr. Eko
• Naveen Andrews as Sayid
• Henry Ian Cusick as Desmond
• Emilie de Ravin as Claire
• Michael Emerson as Ben
• Matthew Fox as Jack
• Jorge Garcia as Hurley
• Josh Holloway as Sawyer
• Daniel Dae Kim as Jin
• Yunjin Kim as Sun
• Evangeline Lilly as Kate
• Elizabeth Mitchell as Juliet
• Dominic Monaghan as Charlie
• Terry O'Quinn as Locke
• Kiele Sanchez as Nikki
• Rodrigo Santoro as Paulo

Recurring

• Sam Anderson as Bernard
• Blake Bashoff as Karl
• Michael Bowen as Pickett
• L. Scott Caldwell as Rose
• Nestor Carbonell as Richard
• Andrew Divoff as Mikhail
• Mira Furlan as Rousseau
• M. C. Gainey as Tom
• Kimberley Joseph as Cindy
• William Mapother as Ethan
• Tania Raymonde as Alex
• Marsha Thomason as Naomi
• Sonya Walger as Penny

Special Guest Stars

• Maggie Grace as Shannon
• Malcolm David Kelley as Walt
• Ian Somerhalder as Boone

Plot

Background

The third season continues 68 days after the crash of Oceanic Flight 815, set on September 22, 2004. At the end of the second season, three of the crash survivors - Jack, Kate and Sawyer - were captured by the mysterious island inhabitants known as "The Others". The Others' apparent leader is a man who was captured in the middle of the second season and used the alias "Henry Gale." Meanwhile, near the survivors' camp on the beach, Locke, Mr. Eko, Charlie and Desmond argued over whether to continue entering the numbers into a computer in a workstation that was previously operated by a group of scientists known as the DHARMA Initiative. Locke became frustrated and destroyed the computer, which caused the station to implode and a purple light shone over the sky, which was accompanied by a harsh ringing sound.

Island summary

The activities of the Others immediately prior to the crash of Oceanic Flight 815 are revealed, as they are shown to have been living in modern suburban houses in a previously unseen section of the island. Their leader appears to be Benjamin Linus, known as Henry Gale among the survivors.

Jack, Kate and Sawyer are imprisoned on a separate island offshore from the survivors' island and kept under surveillance by Ben's cameras. Kate and Sawyer are kept in outdoor cages, apparently designed for polar bears, and are let out to do hard labor. Jack is kept inside the "Hydra", an underwater DHARMA Initiative station. He is interrogated by an Other named Juliet, who does not show the same reverence to Ben as do the rest of the Others. Jack finds out that Ben has a spinal tumor, and the operation Ben needs is the main reason for Jack’s captivity. During Ben’s surgery, Jack incises Ben's kidney sac, which he uses as bargaining power to help Kate and Sawyer escape. They do, and Jack is moved from the Hydra island to the Others' home and develops a friendship with Juliet.

The "smoke monster" lures Mr. Eko into the jungle by taking the form of his deceased brother Yemi, and then beats Eko to death. After the implosion of the hatch Desmond gained the ability to foresee future events, most notably Charlie's approaching death, which he has predicted and saved him from in various episodes. Nikki and Paulo are buried alive after being mistaken for dead, when in fact they had been bitten by venomous spiders, causing an eight-hour paralysis.

Kate, Locke and Sayid trek to save Jack from the Others, with Rousseau joining them with the hope of regaining her daughter Alex, who had been captured 16 years prior. They find the final DHARMA station, "The Flame," and two occupants - a Russian communications expert named Mikhail and a female partner who Mikhail kills after the two are captured by Kate, Locke, and Sayid. The rescue team finds Jack, apparently living happily with the Others. Locke destroys the Others' submarine, and discovers that they have his father in captivity. The Others abandon their homes soon after, taking Locke with them, but leaving behind Jack, Kate, Sayid and Juliet. Juliet sets up camp on the beach to live with the survivors and helps save Claire while she is sick. It is revealed that all pregnant women on the island die—which Juliet tells some of the islanders—and that Juliet is spying on the islanders for Ben and the Others.

Later, Desmond has a vision including a flashing red light falling from the sky, a parachutist, and a photo of him and his former fiancee, Penny. He thinks his vision means that Penny has come to rescue him. Instead, the parachutist turns out to be a woman named Naomi, part of a search and rescue team contracted by Penny to investigate Desmond's disappearance. She is gravely injured in the fall, at which point an Other, Mikhail, helps them save her in exchange for his freedom; this is the same Russian man from "The Flame," who actually survived the sonic barrier as it was not set to a lethal level. As she comes to, Naomi tells Desmond, Charlie and Hugo that the wreckage of Flight 815, including the corpses of all aboard, had been located 4 miles below the ocean's surface.

Meanwhile, Sun is examined by Juliet who reveals that the father of Sun's baby is Jin. The baby was conceived on the island, which means that Sun has about 2 months left to live. When Locke left with the Others he found that they had been holding his father Anthony Cooper hostage in their cells. Ben Linus told Locke that he should kill his father in order to let go of the tortured image of the pathetic man in the wheelchair he has carried around with him in his head since he was pushed out of the 8th floor window. But Locke doesn't have the heart to kill his dad, so another Other, Richard, gives Locke a folder containing Sawyer's history. It is clear to Locke that Cooper is the man that stole money from Sawyer's parents which led to Sawyer's parents' death. Locke convinces Sawyer to accompany him to where he has chained his father up by luring him with the idea that Ben is there, thus providing him a chance to avenge the shame he causes. He tricks Sawyer into going into the room, and locks the door. When Sawyer begins to talk to the man in front of him, he finds out that this is the man whom he has dreamed of killing since he was a boy and whom he had borrowed his taken name from. He strangles the man with a chain.

Locke goes back to the Others to get answers about the Others' past on the island from Ben, but not before giving Sawyer a tape recorder with proof on it that Juliet is a mole, and there is soon going to be a raid on the camp for all the pregnant women. After being led to a deserted cabin by Ben in search of "Jacob" Locke witnesses Ben talking to an empty chair as though talking to "Jacob". There is a shaking of the cabin with things being thrown about - seemingly the invisible "Jacob" acting out. Locke voices vehement doubt as to the existence of Jacob. After Ben reveals that he helped a different group of islanders kill the rest of the DHARMA Initiative community, he shoots Locke in the chest and leaves him to die in the open mass grave of the DHARMA agents.

The finale begins with a bearded, drunk Jack on an Oceanic flight, alone. He finds a newspaper article that upsets him, and tears it out, putting it in his pocket. The stewardess refuses to give him anything more to drink.

ON the island, the survivors are leaving the beach to trek to Rousseau's communications tower. Staying behind are Sayid, Bernard and Jin, armed and ready to shoot the dynamite-rigged tents when the Others' team arrives to kidnap the pregnant women; three tents have been marked by Juliet. The Others arrive, and when they approach the tents, Bernard and Sayid shoot and hit the dynamite, causing explosions and killing some of the Others. Jin, armed only with a handgun, shoots, but misses the dynamite. A shoot-out ensues but only the two blasts occur, and Jin, Sayid and Bernard are captured.

We see Locke's eye opening - he is not dead after all - but he is in the pit, and seems to be paralyzed again. He gets a gun off of one of the corpses and is about to shoot himself, when Walt appears - perhaps a hallucination - to tell him that he has work to do and cannot kill himself.

Meanwhile, led by Jack, the 40+ survivors are making their way up to the tower, worried that something has gone wrong in the plan, because they only heard two blasts. Sawyer and Juliet return to try to help the shooters, and Hurley tries to join them but Sawyer says no. Jack's group is intercepted by Ben and Alex. Ben asks to speak to Jack. Ben informs Jack that Naomi is not who she says she is, and that if he is successful in making contact with her boat, it will be disastrous for everyone on the island, including the crash survivors. Ben tells Jack to get Naomi's phone, or Tom and his crew back at the beach will shoot Jin, Sawyer, and Sayyid in one minute if Ben does not order them off via his walkie-talkie. Jack does not comply, and three gunshots are heard. Jack is distraught and beats Ben severely. He takes him back to the other survivors. At one moment, Ben tells Alex that Rousseau is her mother, and they meet for the first time.

In the Looking Glass station, Mikhail emerges and tells the two women staffing the station to back off of Desmond and Charlie, whom they are holding captive. The two women are the only ones who know the code to disable the jamming signal. Because they refuse to comply, Mikhail shoots one of the women, killing her, and shoots the other in the stomach, as ordered by Ben. As he is about to finish her off, Desmond emerges, shooting a spear gun at Mikhail. Disabled, Charlie is able to convince the woman Other to give him the code, before she seems to die. The code is the numeric tone equivalent of the Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations" on a computer keypad. Charlie enters the code, disabling the jammer. Desmond goes to get scuba gear. Charlie then sees a video transmission of Penelope, whom he is able to speak with. Penelope says that she is not on the boat that Naomi claims to be from, and does not know who Naomi is. As Desmond returns to where Charlie is, he notices that Mikhail is missing, hence he has escaped. At that moment, Charlie notices Mikhail out the window, with a grenade. Charlie airlocks himself in the computer room, to save Desmond and the station. The grenade explodes, shattering the window, and flooding the room. Charlie writes on his hand "Not Penelope's Boat" and shows it to Desmond. Charlie is now drowning, he does a trinity on his chest, then presumably dies.

Back at the beach, Tom reveals that the shots were fired into the sand, and none of the three survivors were killed, but they are tied up. Unarmed, Sawyer and Juliet are watching from the trees. Suddenly, Hurley plows towards the beach in the VW van, running over one of the Others. Sawyer is able to get his gun, and distract another Other while Sayyid disables and kills him. Finally, Sawyer shoots Tom - saying it was for taking the boy [Walt] off the raft - leaving all four of the Others on the beach dead, and our people safe. Hurley is the hero.

At the tower, Jack makes contact with Hurley on the beach via Ben's walkie talkie. Hurley confirms that all survivors are still alive. Rousseau disables her distress message in the comm tower. Naomi gets a signal for her phone. At that moment, she falls over, and it is shown that John Locke has emerged, throwing a knife at her back and killing her. Locke tells Jack to back off the phone, or he will kill him. Jack invites him to do so, but Locke is unable to. Locke simply tells him that he shouldn't make the call, and walks away. Jack communicates with the people on the boat who say they will be right over to rescue the survivors.

The parallel story in this episode centers around Jack. He has a beard, is addicted to Oxycodone, and drinks heavily. We see him on an Oceanic flight, finding a newspaper clipping that upsets him. We see him about to commit suicide by jumping from a bridge, after reading the clipping again, when an accident happens on the highway beneath him. He jumps down and rushes to the burning car. It is later revealed that the accident occurred because the driver was distracted by seeing him on the ledge. Jack immediately was on hand to help the accident survivor. Despite this, it is clear that Jack is a mess in his life. At many points, strangers notice him, exclaiming they saw him on the news in some heroic act. His hospital supervisor challenges his behavior. He talks about his father as if he is still alive. The newspaper clipping turns out to be a death notice - he goes to the funeral home in a ghetto area of the city he's in, and he is the only one there. We do not see who the dead person is, but Jack is clearly overwhelmed with sadness or guilt about the death. His apartment is a mess, with dozens of maps of what appears to be the Pacific Ocean, and many items that are marked "Oceanic". He tries to reach someone on the phone to meet him - and it is revealed to be Kate, who meets him and talks to him, telling him he looks terrible. He says to Kate 'we have to go back' and Kate refuses. Apparently what looked like a Lost flashback, in fact was a flashforward - this is a view of the future, unclear how far into the future, and Jack is consumed with guilt about something that happened. Kate, still refusing to return to the island, gets back into her car and drives away, ending the season.

Impact

Ratings

The third season premiere was watched by 18.82 million viewers in the United States, a drop from the second season premiere, which was viewed by 23.47 million. The six autumn episodes averaged 17.84 million viewers. The second set of episodes switched timeslots from 9:00 to 10:00, so as not to again lose viewers to American Idol; however, Lost saw a huge drop in the ratings, despite consistently winning its timeslot in the key 18-49 demographic, and the producers later admitted that the timeslot change had been a mistake for ABC. Lost also met new series lows with the eighth episode, which was watched by 12.84 million viewers, the tenth episode, watched by 12.78 million viewers, the eleventh episode with 12.45 million viewers, the thirteenth episode watched by 12.22 million and the fourteenth episode with 11.52 million viewers.

Reception

The third season, while still extremely popular, endured more criticism than the show had in its previous years. The first segment of episodes has been criticized as not bearing the same quality of the prior seasons. Show runner Damon Lindelof responded that when the second season was aired, it was criticized as not being as enjoyable as the first season. The main complaint is that new mysteries are being introduced at a faster rate than old mysteries being solved, and numerous articles on this criticism were written for newspapers and online journals. A recurring complaint of the first half of the third season was that the storyline concentrated too much on the captivity storyline, resulting in limited screen-time for the rest of the cast on the beach. Some fans also complained that the advertisements were misleading and the episodes did not live up to the hype. The fall finale was advertised by ABC as the best Lost episode of 2006. Over the course of the extended hiatus about a third of the way through the season, the producers likely took note of the negative publicity and re-evaluated their course of action, as the narrative for the third season began to become more focused, the answers to the show's mysteries began coming at a more frequent rate, and general critical reaction of the show improved significantly, with many fans and members of the public proclaiming it had regained its strength. In recent news, the second half of LOST's third season has been called the best episodes since the finale of season 1.

Awards

The episodes, writers, producers and actors of the third season have won Image and Golden Reel awards and have been nominated for Golden Globe, Saturn, C.A.S., Golden Reel, Episodic Television Producer of the Year and Writers Guild of America awards.

External links

• Official ABC streaming video website - full-length Lost season 3 episodes available (within USA only)
• Official ABC Lost website
• Official Sky One UK Lost website