Rewatching LOST: 5.06 “316″

Jack learns how to return to the island, but it involves exercising the one thing he’s never been good at: faith.

Written by Damon Lindelof & Carlton Cuse
Directed by Stephen Williams

Jack wakes up on the island very similarly to how he woke up after Oceanic 815 crashed. He follows the sound of Hurley’s voice to find his friend struggling to swim in the lagoon. After saving Hurley, the two of them locate Kate nearby as well. They realize they’re back on the island, but none of them quite understand how.
46 hours earlier, Ben, Jack, Sun, and Desmond have arrived at the church to meet with Eloise Hawking, to find out how to get back to the island. She takes them down through the church’s basement to the room with the huge swinging pendulum, explaining that this is a Dharma station called the Lamp Post. The Lamp Post was built over a pocket of electromagnetic energy — a pocket that’s connected to others like it all over the world, including the one beneath the island. Dharma used this pendulum — built by “a very clever fellow” — to find the island. Finding the island is difficult, says Eloise, because it’s always moving. Which explains why the Oceanic 815 survivors were never rescued. She’s used the Lamp Post to predict where the island is about to be, 24 hours from now, but the Oceanic 6′s window of opportunity will close in 36 hours. Desmond can’t believe that his friends are all going back to the island willingly. He delivers the message he came to give her, but Eloise shows an odd lack of concern for her son Daniel. Disgusted, Desmond storms out, but not before Eloise warns him that the island isn’t done with him yet. Eloise then tells Jack that getting back to the island is even harder than getting there the first time. The only way Jack and his friends can get back is by recreating the circumstances of their first arrival on the island (which is apparently why they have to return on an airplane, instead of some other method), as best they can. To that end, she sends them to Ajira Airways flight 316, which will be flying over the island at exactly the right time to get them back. But they have to take as many of the original passengers as possible. The results will be unpredictable if they don’t all go.
Eloise takes Jack aside to her office, where she gives him “John Locke’s suicide note.” She tells him that Locke hung himself, at least in part so that he could serve as a substitute on the plane for Jack’s dead father, who traveled similarly on Oceanic 815. She instructs him to find something that belonged to his father and give it to Locke. Jack struggles to accept this, but eventually decides to take a leap of faith and do it.
Jack leaves her and finds Ben alone in the sanctuary. Sun’s gone, and Ben leaves as well, to keep “a promise to an old friend,” so Jack is left alone. Jack gets an emergency phone call and goes to a retirement home to see his grandfather, who’s tried to escape from the place. While visiting him, Jack comes across some old shoes that belonged to his father, and realizes that he’s found what Eloise told him to give to Locke.
When Jack returns home, Kate is there waiting for him, deeply distraught. Jack realizes that something’s happened to Aaron, and he asks what, but she surprises him by saying that she’ll go back to the island if he promises never to ask her about Aaron ever again. She quickly seduces him for some comfort sex.
The next morning over breakfast, Kate notices the shoes he picked up from his grandfather, and Jack explains why his father was wearing tennis shoes when his body was traveling from Sydney to Los Angeles: Jack says that he couldn’t find any good shoes for his father and white tennis shoes were all he had available, and he didn’t think it mattered because no one would ever see his dad’s feet inside the coffin. Jack gets a call from Ben, who’s at the Long Beach Pier, wet and bloody. He says he got sidetracked and hasn’t been able to pick up Locke’s body from the butcher shop where he left it, so he asks Jack to do it for him.
Jack goes to the butcher shop and is met by Ben’s friend Jill, who gives him the body. Jack puts his father’s shoes on Locke’s feet, and mutters to Locke’s body about how he must be laughing at Jack now for finally putting his trust in faith over science.
At the airport, Jack is pleased to see that Kate has shown up as promised. While waiting to check in at security, he’s met by Sun, and he’s relieved she came as well. She says she’s going because she has to know if Jin really is still alive. She and Jack are both stunned to see Sayid being escorted through security, in handcuffs, in the custody of a female federal officer of some kind. At the gate, Jack finds Hurley boarding the flight as well, although Hurley won’t say why he changed his mind.
Once everyone’s onboard the plane, Ben shows up at the last second. Hurley freaks out and doesn’t want Ben to come, but Jack convinces him to deal with it. After the plane lifts off from LAX, Jack talks to Kate about how remarkable it is that everyone wound up on the same plane — even those that didn’t want to come. Kate doubts his newfound faith, but just then the captain comes over the intercom to welcome everyone onboard, and identifies himself as Frank Lapidus! Jack gets Frank to come out from the cockpit and see him, and Frank is happy to greet his old friend, noting that he’s been working for Ajira for the last eight months. But then Frank spots the rest of the Oceanic 6 on the flight, and realizes that the plane’s headed for a very different destination than he thought.
That night, while waiting for something to happen, Jack finally reads Locke’s suicide note. It says simply, “Jack, I wish you had believed me. -J.L.” Just as Jack is reeling in guilt, the plane hits violent turbulence and is enveloped in a bright white light.
As before, Jack wakes up back on the island, in the jungle, and rushes to save Hurley. When he’s reunited with Hurley and Kate, they wonder where Sayid, Sun, and Ben are, as well as Frank and all the other passengers on the plane. But before they can head out to search for their friends, a Dharma van pulls up with a jumpsuit-clad driver, who levels a shotgun at the three of them. But once their eyes meet, they and the Dharma man realize they know each other: it’s Jin.

The island is constantly drifting throughout the South Pacific.
Question: Where are the survivors of Oceanic 815? Where is this island located, exactly? 1.01
The island is unique in all the world, because it is always moving, making it very hard to locate. It also seems to be camouflaged from view somehow (perhaps due to the electromagnetic energy beneath the island?), including satellite imagery.
Question: Michael’s question is a good one: how is it that an island so big has never been discovered by the rest of the world? 1.24
Locke’s body is serving as a substitute on Ajira 316 for Jack’s father’s body on Oceanic 815. The circumstances of the original crash must be recreated in order for the Oceanic 6 to return to the island.
Question: Why must Locke die to convince the Oceanic 6 to return? 5.01 & Why is the safety of Locke’s body so important to Ben’s plan to get everyone back to the island? 5.02
Beneath the church is an off-island Dharma station called The Lamp Post. It was created and used by the Dharma Initiative as a means of finding the island. It works because the church sits atop a pocket of electromagnetic energy that’s connected to the pocket beneath the island.
Question: What kind of facility was in the church’s basement? 5.02
Ms. Hawking has determined that a window of opportunity for returning to the island will open for about 12 hours, after which it will close. It’s never made entirely clear why the Oceanic 6 can only return during this one particular window, but Ms. Hawking has insinuated that the results would be catastrophic if they miss it.
Question: How does Ms. Hawking know that Ben has only seventy hours to get the Oceanic 6 back to the island? 5.02
Jack had to have his father prepared in his coffin before he could put him on the Oceanic 815, and the only shoes he had available to dress him in were a pair of white tennis shoes. He figured it wouldn’t really matter since no one would see his father’s feet in the casket.
Question: Why was [Christian Shephard] wearing a suit, and white shoes? 1.04

Who is the “very clever fellow,” working for the Dharma Initiative, who figured out how to find the island?
Why wasn’t Eloise more concerned about her son Daniel when Desmond asked her to help him?
What did Eloise mean when she said the island “isn’t yet finished” with Desmond?
Ben’s “loose end” was him seemingly attempting to fulfill his promise to Widmore to kill Penny. Did he succeed in killing her?
What happened to Aaron? Why does Kate no longer have him?
Why did Kate change her mind and decide to go back to the island?
Why was Sayid in federal custody, and being escorted onto Ajira 316?
Who was the woman who captured Sayid?
Why did Hurley change his mind and decide to go back to the island?
Why was Hurley carrying a guitar case? Is there really a guitar inside?
What happened when Ajira 316 went through the bright light?
Where are Sun, Sayid, Ben, and Frank? Did they travel back in time as well?
What became of Ajira 316, and the rest of its passengers?
Why was Jin wearing a Dharma jumpsuit and driving a Dharma van? What’s happened to the survivors left behind on the island?

“316″ is the tenth Jack-centric episode of the series.
This is the 17th episode of the show to begin with a close-up on a single eye opening.

Need more depth and detail? Read my full recap of “316″.

Image credits: “Rewatching Lost” logo by Robin Parrish. Season 4 cast promotional image: American Broadcasting Company.