First off, this was probably the best episode of the show in its 3 seasons. Season 3 turned out to be excellent (despite 2 or 3 flat episodes), as it provided more cliffhanger endings and twists than the prior seasons, and managed to give us more concrete answers.
NAOMI AND HER BOAT: Since we know Penny didn't send the boat and doesn't know Naomi, it is likely that Naomi is connected with the original founders or financiers of the Dharma Initiative. They have been trying to get back to the island since the massacre of the original Dharma team, but Ben jammed the outbound communications signals making the island almost invisible. These folks will make it to the island some time in Season 4, and that will change everything.
Will Naomi’s folks befriend the 815ers and help them leave the island safely? Or, will they use them for various experiments and keep dangling the hope of rescue as bait/leverage? How will Naomi’s folks react to the fact that she is likely dead of a stab wound from Locke? Will they blame the 815ers? Will they blame the Others? Do they know who Ben is and what he did to take power on the island? Will they be able to tell the difference between the Others and the 815ers, or like Bush’s absurd decision to attack Iraq following 9-11, will they simply shoot at any inhabitant because ‘they all look the same’?
DESMOND: How will Charlie’s death, which he foresaw, affect Desmond? Will he have a crisis of conscience? Will he question these visions and retreat into cowardice and guilt? Or, will he be inspired and focused by Charlie’s bravery and also by the fact that he can surmise that Charlie communicated with Penny. Will he become Claire’s protector?
On reflection, there were some possible future events that Desmond did change, and others which he could not. Ultimately, Charlie and Desmond together chose 1 of many possible outcomes. Though the end result for Charlie did not change, the impact of their collective decisions profoundly altered the prospects for rescue. Had Desmond allowed Charlie to die the day they found Naomi, they might not have found rescue. Charlie also acted out of his own volition, and could have done many things to avoid death (he could’ve refused to go to the Looking Glass; he could’ve allowed Desmond to take his place; he could have tried to step out of the communications room and attempted to close the door from the outside, while Desmond rushed to get the scuba gear together to make a daring escape (but that would’ve risked Desmond’s life). If Desmond’s power is to be described, it is that he has the ability to see possible future outcomes and choose among them. He has the power of karma itself. Desmond learned to choose which outcomes would create the most benefit and cause the least harm. He had an instinct for which possible outcome would yield the most benefit to the 815ers, and directed Charlie to the one outcome that would be worth dying for: the possibility of rescue for the 815ers.
And what about Penny? Now that she knows Desmond is alive, she will be sending in her own team at some point, so there will be two foreign groups coming to the island. However, I don’t think we’ll hear much about Penny until the final season. She is ultimately the ticket off the island for everyone.
DESMOND, THE HATCH AND BEN: How did Ben allow Desmond, Kelvin and Radzinski to survive in the Hatch while the latter pushed the button all those years? Clearly Ben knew they were there. He was able to spy on them. It doesn’t appear that Ben really understood why they were pushing the button, and was as surprised as anyone that the Hatch exploded and that the ‘sky turned purple’. There is a story here to be told. It is probably connected with the Smoke Monster/Jacob. What is the connection between Jacob, the smoke monster and the Hatch explosion? Since the Hatch is gone and the smoke monster roams free, will that wreak havoc on the island that will cause different parties to band together to try to reign it in? Will the smoke monster/Jacob eventually destroy the island itself if left unchecked? What about the island’s mythology (the statue)?
JACK’S FLASH FORWARD: The person in the coffin is somehow connected to the island. Screen shots suggest it is a male, but the Losties have edited stuff out post facto before (remember when Ana Lucia referred to Jack’s father as ‘Dad’ in Season 2 in one of her flashbacks? It wasn’t in the DVD version because they decided to kill her off the show and not bring her back).
Jack also feels that he needs to get back to the island and that he wasn’t supposed to leave when and in the manner that he did. That’s the first time he has used karmic type language usually associated with Locke. Is Jack simply suffering from the challenge of reintegrating into society similar to the challenges often faced by returning combat soldiers? Or, did Jack leave ‘too early’ and leave something behind that he is racked with guilt about? Like a bunch of fellow Flight 815 survivors? A love-child perhaps? If Kate also left the island, who is the baby mama? Juliet? Did Jack and Kate make a deal with Naomi’s people on the side, and leave out the other fellow survivors? Btw why does Kate look so well-dressed, made up, and have such a nice ride? When did her murder/arson charges get dropped? What rich dude did she hook up with? Hurley perhaps? Penny’s father? Someone we haven’t met yet? Gold digging seems to suit her character.
It seems that in the flash forward, the real story of what happened to Flight 815 has been publicly revealed, and the myth that the wreckage was found and that there were no survivors has been dispelled. Otherwise, why would Oceanic Airlines give Jack and other crash survivors (Jack refers to ‘us’) a global pass to fly the airline whenever and wherever they want? Did Naomi’s people engineer this in order to get folks off the island so that they could have the place to themselves?
LOCKE, JACOB AND THE OTHERS: It seems clear that Locke is the ‘chosen one’ who seems to be able to communicate with the island and has powers of regeneration. It also seems clear that Locke is acting on instinct, and that someone or some force is telling him what to do and what people are meant to do on the island. Does Locke expose Ben for the fraud that he is and form a new tribe of island inhabitants who seek to renew the exploration of the island’s spiritual mysteries from an intellectually honest light? Does Richard Alpert lead some of the Others to join Locke and break Ben’s hold on power? Do Ben and Locke form an uneasy alliance to fight the threat posed by the arrival of Naomi’s people and the 815ers who are so determined to find rescue that they are willing to sacrifice their own lives to give hope to others? Do people like Rousseau, Alex and Karl, who have no real reason to leave the island, join Locke?
BEN: He had a real bad day on the finale of Season 3. He is in the captivity of the 815ers, and I’m not sure Richard Alpert and company are that sad to see him go. Do the Others even have the strength to mount another armed raid on the beach after losing 10 people + Ben? Will Locke free him because he needs Ben to respond to the threat posed by Naomi’s people? Talk about politics making strange bedfellows! Or, will Ben do the counterintuitive thing and form an alliance with Naomi’s people, and act as their representative on the island as a way to reestablish his power and take revenge on the 815ers, Locke and the Others who betrayed him? He was a fraud to begin with any way, so why wouldn’t he switch sides if it suited his interests?
MIKHAIL: We don’t know if he is dead or alive, but to make sure, when Desmond gets back to the beach in the first few episodes and Mikhail is trying to make his escape, Sayid should take Mikhail down and finish him. I will admit to not liking Charlie very much, but his death was so heroic and sad, that Mikhail must go.
SUN AND JIN: Will Sun die as she progresses through her pregnancy? Will Jin learn what everyone on the beach knows, that he was impotent, that Sun cheated on him, and that the island gave him potency?
THE LOVE QUADRANGLE: The Jack-Juliet-Sawyer-Kate love quadrangle is going to get more complicated, but the flash forward tells us that Kate and Jack make it off the island and Juliet is not currently in that picture. Does she die on the island? Is that what Jack left behind?
SAWYER: Sawyer got his revenge, but by killing Tom who had surrendered, did he create bad karma for himself and the fellow 815ers? The 815ers have now killed many more of the Others than they have of the crash survivors (a point Desmond made to Charlie when he let Mikhail go, only to have Mikhail be the one who ended up causing Charlie’s death). Will the Others be motivated to take revenge and kill some of the 815ers? Will the story of how he screwed over Cassidy (Joanie Stubbs to all you Deadwood fans) be revealed to Kate? Will Kate make a break with Sawyer as a result?
CLAIRE: We know from Desmond that she lives to find rescue. What will she do now that Charlie is dead (sad)? Hopefully, her character will step out more and be more active on the show, because Charlie’s overprotective and suffocating tendencies sort of kept Claire in a box. Will Claire want to learn more of the mysteries of the island because it may impact her son Aaron? Will Claire and Jack have more idle conversations which lead to the truth that they are related?
HURLEY: Does Hurley now elevate himself to Jack’s inner circle after saving Jin, Sayid and Bernard? We should hope so. Though Hurley isn’t that bright, he is a good person and has the right instincts to act on behalf of the group. He is not swayed by the illusions or mysteries of the island, nor does he let petty jealousies or emotions get in the way of his genuine care and concern for his fellow 815ers.
CHARLIE: A memorial to Charlie will have to be erected on the island at some point. He single-handedly gave everyone hope. Amazing that such an unlikable character became a selfless, heroic savior.
BERNARD AND ROSE: I’m glad Cuse and Lindelof brought them back in the last 2 episodes. They are great characters who have a compelling story. It was a mistake to sideline them and try to develop the Paolo-Nikki angle. Fortunately the producers of the show realized how much the fans hated Paolo and Nikki and erased that mistake with an episode as hauntingly gripping as any from HBO’s classic ‘Tales from the Crypt’. There is a significant role for Bernard and Rose to play in this story. Rose and Locke are of like interests in that both suffer from health conditions which are cured on the island. She can’t leave the island, and neither will Bernard.