‘Lost’ Watch: Sun Without Jin

This post contains spoilers.

So now we know — or we think we do: the secret package locked up in Charles Widmore’s submarine was, in fact, Desmond Hume. “The Package,” Tuesday night’s episode of “Lost,” waited until its final moments to reveal what many of us had been hoping for, even if Desmond did look a little the worse for wear as he was frog-marched from the sub. Still to come: the explanation for why he’s crucial to Widmore’s plans.

Otherwise this was the Sun-and-Jin episode. Their single-minded fervor to reunite and escape the island together has always struck me as the most admirable response of any of the castaways to their situation — as the most believable adult response, in fact. (Please tell me why I’m wrong in your comments.) This episode strongly hinted that Sun’s determination to save her husband rather than “save the damn world” could stand in the way of stopping Fake Locke/Man in Black from escaping the island (if that, in fact, is the right thing to do). I still suspect that when it comes down to it, the show is going to have to end with Sun and Jin and little Ji-yeon together and happy. Even though they’re not the most central characters, there’s no other emotional arc on the show — not Jack and Kate, not Kate and Sawyer, not Sawyer and Hurley — that we’re as invested in. (Except maybe Desmond and Penny.)

In the Los Angeles timeline, we discovered that the alternate S&J were not married but were carrying on what they thought was a clandestine affair. Checking into their separate hotel rooms, Sun registered as Ms. Paik and Jin as Mr. Kwon. (Might this have been a clue to which one is the “Kwon” on the list of candidates back on the island?) One other big difference: Sun didn’t appear to speak English.

Jin had emerged from Customs minus the $25,000 in cash he was supposed to deliver, along with the watch, to an unnamed person in Los Angeles. After S&J had some steamy clandestine sex, that person turned out to be Keamy, and Keamy turned out to have been hired by Sun’s father — who knew all about the affair — to kill Jin. So the confiscation of the currency saved Jin’s life: Keamy kept him hostage while Sun, with the help of the hastily recruited translator Mikhail — last seen detonating the grenade that drowned Charlie on the island — tried to raise the money, not realizing that it was Keamy’s payment for killing her lover. Here the plot synched up with “Sundown” (this season’s Episode 6): the multitasking Keamy had Sayid brought in at the same time he was dealing with Jin; Sayid shot everybody and discovered Jin, leaving him with a boxcutter in his hands to free himself. When Sun and the now eyepatch-free Mikhail arrived, Jin killed Mikhail (shooting him in the eye) but Sun was hit by a bullet, apparently in the abdomen. As Jin carried her away, she told him she was pregnant. Can the baby be saved? Will they happen to go to Dr. Jack’s hospital?

Back on the island, the married Sun and Jin remained separated, Jin at the MIB camp in the jungle and Sun on the beach with the Jack-Richard crew. When MIB left (to try to lure Sun to his side) Jin prepared to leave too, but Widmore’s people ambushed the camp, knocking everyone out with tranquilizer darts and kidnapping Jin.

At the Hydra station, Jin woke up in the room where, long ago, we saw Karl being subjected to a “Clockwork Orange”-style sensory barrage. (And why was Karl in trouble? Because of his love for a woman whose father didn’t approve of him.) Zoe wants him to help her read maps showing pockets of electromagnetic radiation that he worked on back in his time-traveling Dharma days, but he’ll only talk to Widmore. When he does, Widmore hands him Jin’s camera, recovered from the Aljira luggage. For the first time, Jin sees his daughter, Ji-yeon. (Admit it, you teared up.) Widmore tells him they will all cease to exist if MIB leaves the island. How will you stop him, Jin asks. It’s time to see the package, Widmore replies.

Just before this, Locke-MIB has come to the Hydra island with Sayid, ostensibly to retrieve Jin. The pylons on the beach appear to stop him; through the invisible barrier, he talks to Widmore, who says he knows that MIB isn’t Locke but that everything else about him is “myths, ghost stories, jungle noises in the night.” MIB, in return, quotes Widmore: a wise man once said war was coming to the island, and “I think it just got here.” Amid all the palaver, there’s no sign of Sayid. That’s because he’s sneaked over to the submarine, where, in semi-submerged “Apocalypse Now”/’Deer Hunter” fashion, he watches as Desmond is led away, their eyes meeting for a second.

Meanwhile, back at the beach, Sun has been in a permanent snit because she feels they’re wasting time waiting for Richard’s return. She doesn’t care about names on lists; she just wants off the island. When Locke-MIB appears and says he can take her to Jin, she decides not to trust him and runs. There’s a strong sense that MIB can’t force her, that she has to agree to come along. She runs into a tree and passes out, waking up when Ben finds her — and couldn’t MIB have just carried her back if he wanted to?

Then comes the plot twist that stretched credibility a wee bit, even for “Lost”: Sun wakes up unable to speak English, though she can still understand it. Did MIB do this to her? Jack ascribes it to temporary aphasia; a critic might as explain it as a parallel to her English-less state in the alt timeline. At this point Richard and Hurley reappear and Richard, with renewed purpose, says it’s time to go stop Locke-MIB. To do this, he plans to destroy the Ajira plane, which sets off Sun — if there’s no plane, she can’t escape with Jin. She knows she’s important, and she’s not going anywhere if that’s the plan.

Jack goes to Sun, who’s sitting before a fire on the beach under huge black clouds — a gorgeous shot — and presents her with one beautiful, highly symbolic red tomato that he found in the otherwise gone-to-seed garden that earth-mother Sun planted back in the early days. He finds a way for her to communicate — she can still write in English, it turns out — and asks, “Do you trust me?” She nods. He promises that if she comes with him, he’ll find Jin and get them on the plane. It was a heart-tugging moment in the great “Lost” tradition (recently few and far between), followed by the sort of contrasting cut the show used to do so well, to Kate’s troubled face. She and Sawyer are both glum; he feels like “it’s almost over.” He thinks that Widmore’s people may have killed MIB and Sayid, but if they haven’t, we’re … in trouble. At which point Locke-MIB walks up.

The promo for next week’s episode, “Happily Ever After,” seemed to be promising that the cast would be thinned out. Who do you think will go? One thing I’m pretty sure of: when Jack makes a promise like he did to Sun, it wouldn’t be smart if the show didn’t let him keep it, even if he has to sacrifice himself in the process.