Season 1, Episode 24: Exodus Part 2

The season finale continues with The Others on the way, a small group off to the Dark Territory with Rousseau in search of dynamite and another foursome at sea on the raft.

MAJOR PLOT POINTS

As promised, Rousseau gets Locke, Jack, Kate, Hurley and Arzt to the Black Rock only to disappear immediately after arriving at the ship. Arzt spectacularly blows himself up when preaching about how old dynamite sweats nitroglycerin and how unstable it is. Hurley, of course, believes Arzt's demise is because he came along.

Rousseau, meanwhile, had sinister intentions for leaving the survivors. She returned to the beach and sought out Claire, conking her on the head and kidnapping Aaron. During the encounter, Claire also realizes she's had a run-in with Rousseau before and scratched her arm. Though, the details remain fuzzy, because it was when she had been kidnapped. Sayid suspects that Rousseau took Aaron hoping to exchange him for her own daughter, who had been taken 16 years earlier, so he sets off toward the black pillar of smoke with Charlie. During a brief rest at the Boone-killing Beechcraft, Charlie scores a Virgin Mary filled with smack to take back to the caves.

Kate and Locke, meanwhile, are bringing back the dynamite — or at least think they are — but Jack has switched packs with Kate trying to protect her, which only rankles Killer Katie.

During the flashbacks, which continue to cycle through the main characters rather than focus on one in particular, we see Paik threaten Jin through an intermediary, telling him that he is not free and never will be. We also see Michael making a phone call to his mom from the Sydney airport in an attempt to pawn off Walt onto her, though, the two finally begin connecting and communicating on the raft.

Fueling speculation about the show's greater meaning, assuming there is one, Sun openly questions whether "all this" is punishment from fate, a notion that Claire vehemently disagrees with because she doesn't believe in fate.

QUOTABLE

"Hope. I think hope's inside." — Locke when Hurley asks what he thinks is inside the hatch