The Lost Rewatch: 1x23 "Exodus, Part 1"

We're closing in on season one. It's really flown by quickly, but we've learned quite a lot from looking back on the freshman season of our favorite show. We're now at the season one finale, so let's take a look at "Exodus, Part 1." As the raft prepares to launch, complications arise when Danielle arrives at the beach, warning the survivors that "the Others are coming," prompting them to look for ways to hide...which means that they'll have to open the hatch. Flashbacks tell the stories of several characters immediately before they left Australia on the fateful flight.

• Walt flings open some curtains to look out on Sydney. We'll see a similar shot again in "Not in Portland," when Juliet opens the windows to reveal that she's in Miami. While I'm not suggesting that there's any plot relevance at all, it's interesting to see that much of the same style that existed in season one still existed two seasons later.

• When Michael is dragging Walt back down the hallway to the room, a guy steps out of the room to make sure everything's all right. That's either Steve or Scott, as played by Christian Bowman (who played the member of the duo who was killed by Ethan).
  

• Danielle mentions that black smoke heralded the arrival of the Others, though we did not see that happen when Ben and Ethan stole Alex. Of course, Danielle is most likely fabricating this story in order give the survivors a tangible threat, because we know that the Others aren't actually coming for the on-Island survivors. It'll be two years before the Others actually come.

• Locke speculates that there might be another entrance to the hatch. He's right -- buried in the leaves just a few feet away is a door that would make it so much easier to enter the hatch.
  

• In Jack's flashback, we meet Ana-Lucia. While she seems harmless now, we all know that on the Island she became one of the least-liked characters of season two, which, as Damon and Carlton recently revealed, was why they killed her off.
  

• Ana-Lucia was in Australia because she had been a bodyguard to Christian Shephard. She asks Jack about his dad when she meets him, but remains perfectly oblivious to the fact that the person she knew as "Tom" was actually who she was talking about.

• Jack says he's not a drinker. Oh, how the Island will change him, with the help of a little visit from Jeremy Bentham. He'll soon be quite the drinker.

• Michael and Jin are very, very comparable to Han Solo and Chewbacca from Star Wars. Neither can understand the other, but the manage to communicate and work together really well, better than they could with anyone else. Star Wars has had a confirmed influence on Lost as well, especially in the episode "Some Like It Hoth," in which Hurley tried to rewrite The Empire Strikes Back before it was originally conceived.

• In one of the best moments of the series, Sawyer tells Jack that he met Christian in the bar, and that Christian had forgiven Jack. It's one of the rare moments on the show in which someone actually reveals the connections between two characters. After the survivors leave the Island, it becomes more common, but it's still a great moment in the first season.
  

• Walt gives Vincent to Shannon, telling him that he will protect her. However, it's actually Vincent and (an apparation of) Walt that lead Shannon to her death.

• Even though we've seen the Black Rock on the horizon during the conversation between Jacob and his nemesis in "The Incident," we still don't know how exactly the ship ended up so many miles inland.

• The raft launches, and we are once again reminded of the smoke on the horizon as a sign that the Others are coming, but the real Others will go for the raft, not the survivors on the Island.

And that does it for "Exodus, Part 1." Look for the blog for the next episode, "Exodus, Part 2," soon. You can discuss this episode in this forum thread, read others' posts about it at the rewatch hub, and edit the episode's article.