"The Incident" is the season finale of the fifth season of ABC's Lost, consisting of its sixteenth and seventeenth episodes.^[1] Both parts of "The Incident", the show's 102nd and 103rd episodes overall, aired on May 13, 2009 on ABC in the United States. The episode was written by executive producers/showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse and directed by Jack Bender.^[1] It has been voted as the best Season Finale by fans, pushing Season 3 finale to a close second best.^[2]

Plot

Flashbacks

The episode opens as Jacob (Mark Pellegrino) sits on the beach of the island near the large statue of a four-toed figure, where he is visited by another man (Titus Welliver). The man comments on a boat on the horizon, suggesting that Jacob has brought it to the island. The man states that no matter who comes to the island the same thing happens over and over and that the man will find a loophole so he can kill Jacob.

Throughout the episode, several of the characters have flashbacks in which they meet Jacob. As a little girl, Kate is visited by Jacob when she shoplifts a lunchbox. At age eight, Sawyer is visited shortly after the funeral for his parents. Sun and Jin are visited on their wedding day. Locke is visited immediately after being pushed out of a window by his father. Jack is visited after performing his first solo surgery on a young girl (a story he recounts to Kate in "Pilot, Part 1"). Sayid is visited at the same time that his wife Nadia (Andrea Garbriel) is killed. Hurley is visited after he is released from prison, between the events of "The Little Prince" and "316". Jacob tells him that he is not cursed or crazy, but blessed, and that his ability to see dead people is a gift. He tells Hurley to board Flight 316 and leaves a guitar case in his possession. Ilana is visited while she is recovering in a hospital and Jacob asks her to go to the island. In an unrelated flashback not featuring Jacob, Juliet's parents tell her that they are getting divorced, greatly upsetting her; they claim that though they love each, they were not meant to be together.

1977

Following the events of the previous episode, "Follow the Leader", Kate Austen (Evangeline Lilly), Juliet Burke (Elizabeth Mitchell) and James "Sawyer" Ford (Josh Holloway) are on a submarine leaving the island. Kate convinces Juliet and Sawyer that they need to stop Jack from detonating a hydrogen bomb on the island. They force the captain to surface so that they may leave, instructing the captain to continue on course away from the island. They arrive on the island, where they are greeted by Vincent the dog, who has been in the care of Rose (L. Scott Caldwell) and Bernard Nadler (Sam Anderson) for the past three years. Rose explains to the trio that she and Bernard are now retired and live a quiet life near the beach, scavenging food and avoiding detection by the Dharma Initiative. Rose points them in the right direction and they leave.

Meanwhile, Jack Shephard (Matthew Fox) and Sayid Jarrah (Naveen Andrews) dismantle the hydrogen bomb in the tunnels under the Dharma Initiative's barracks, in order to remove its core. Richard Alpert (Nestor Carbonell) and Eloise Hawking (Alice Evans) assist Jack and Sayid in entering the barracks via the basement of one of the houses. Richard knocks out Eloise to prevent her traveling with them to detonate the bomb because she is pregnant. Sayid dons a Dharma jumpsuit in order to fit in at the barracks; they almost escape when Roger Linus (Jon Gries) recognizes him and shoots him. Jack and Sayid escape in a van driven by Hugo "Hurley" Reyes (Jorge Garcia), along with Jin-Soo Kwon (Daniel Dae Kim) and Miles Straume (Ken Leung). Hurley drives to the construction site of the Swan station, while Jack treats Sayid's wounds; however, they are stopped by Juliet, Sawyer and Kate.

Jack and Sawyer discuss the situation away from the other survivors, with Sawyer expressing his opinion that "what's done is done" and that they shouldn't try to change the past. Jack claims that it is his destiny to change the past and that John Locke (Terry O'Quinn) has always been right about the island. Jack and Sawyer get into a fist fight, which is broken up by Juliet, who now agrees with Jack that they must detonate the bomb. Juliet then breaks up with Sawyer, claiming that although they love each other, they are not meant to be together (echoing her parents), and that if they never meet then she will never have to lose him. With everyone now on the same page, Jack enters the construction site of the Swan station at the same time that security officer Phil (Patrick Fischler) arrives with a team of armed men. On the orders of Radzinsky (Eric Lange), Dr. Pierre Chang (François Chau) continues drilling into the energy source beneath the construction site. A massive gunfight ensues, wherein the survivors gain the upper hand, allowing Jack to drop the bomb into the pit at the same time that the drill hits the energy source. It fails to go off, and all metal items are suddenly pulled into the pit. Phil is stabbed by a rebar, Dr. Chang's arm is injured by part of the drill mounting, and Juliet is dragged into the chasm by a metal chain. She survives the fall, albeit severely injured, and hits the hydrogen bomb with a rock repeatedly until it detonates.

2007

Locke, Benjamin Linus (Michael Emerson), Sun-Hwa Kwon (Yunjin Kim) and the Others travel to the remains of the four-toed statue, where Jacob resides. Locke assigns Ben the task of killing Jacob, and provides motivation by reminding Ben of the all the bad things that have happened to him. At the same time, a group of survivors from Ajira Flight 316, including Ilana (Zuleikha Robinson) and Bram (Brad William Henke) travel towards Jacob's cabin, with Frank Lapidus (Jeff Fahey) and a giant metal crate from the cargo of the plane. They find the cabin deserted. They set it on fire after realizing that they must travel to the statue. Their group arrives shortly after Ben and Locke enter a chamber in the base of statue. Ilana asks Richard the question, "what lies in the shadow of the statue", and Richard replies in Latin, "Ille qui nos omnes servabit" (Latin for, "He who will watch over us all."). Ilana reveals the contents of the crate: John Locke's dead body. Inside the chamber, Jacob deduces that Locke is really the other man from the opening flashback and that he has tricked Ben into killing Jacob. After Jacob brushes Ben off as unimportant, Ben stabs Jacob repeatedly and the man pushes Jacob into a fire. Jacob's final words are a warning to the man: "They're coming."

References