This episode did not do it for me. Not discounting it at all, but it was only good for what it was at the time. I don't think it was awesome, adding more to the series like some episodes have. But it did add a lot to Season 2 at this point in time. And the way it was done was brilliant. But it didn't add anything to my experience to the show as a whole.
There is always another group that comes along to mix it up with the main characters - this is the Tail Section, the Others, the Frighter, the Temple people. They eventually (mostly) die off. But from these groups we get Bernard, Libby, Juliet, Ben, Alpert, Faraday, Charlotte, Miles, etc. Lost is a rare kind of show that can do something like that. I think they did an awesome job bringing these groups in. It worked.
The big mysteries of this episode have pretty much been solved. We know who the Others are. We know who sent Goodwin and why. We know that Dharma had stations all over the island. The only thing to me that was kind of a mystery is kind of why they had to take the people? Why couldn't they say, "Hey - you guys crashed here, come with me," or something? These people were advocates of Jacob. Jacob loved choices. Why aren't the tail section survivors given a choice? I asked this on the podcast and again, my lovely co-host, Dara said it was all Ben Linus. This makes sense. Ben really can't do anything in a civilized way. He has to go about things very sinisterly. It's just who he is.
We don't really actually know where these taken people go and what happens to them really. We see Cindy, Zack and Emma all the way into Season 6 and I'm assuming that more were taken that we were unfamiliar with. But were they brainwashed in Room 23 or something and made to believe they were Others? We know there were a lot of Others off island so maybe some that were taken were already Others. Another thing we never fully got an answer to, but we can just assume they decide to live life as an Other at the Temple or Dharmaville or something.
Again - as far as the whole arc of the series goes, this episode just does not fill anything in for me. But it is always good to watch these episodes for the nostalgia. And also just to see how much they did really answer.
