Episodic Classics: Lost, "The Economist" & "Eggtown" | Season 4, Episodes 3 & 4
Another new member of the Oceanic Six—or is it Six 1/2?—is revealed
“Through the Looking Glass” pulled one over on the audience with its reveal that what we’d been conditioned to see as a flashback was, in fact, a flashforward. It’s a trick that Lost’s writers could pull out again without much issue: when we don’t know who half of the Oceanic 6 were, every new flash could technically be taking place in the past or the future, no matter who the character in question is.
“The Economist” technically uses this strategy, but only for a brief moment. When we first find Sayid golfing, there’s nothing to help us locate this moment in time, and the episode certainly had the option to leave us in suspense for a while longer. But as the stranger in the Seychelles wonders how Sayid could be doing “nothing” for his career, there’s no hesitation: he was in a plane crash, he’s one of the Oceanic Six, and we are once again getting a glimpse of our characters’ future.
The Flash structure is something that we’ll be confronting from multiple angles as these final seasons progress, and there’s no question that the flashforward is a shift in terms of how this part of the show’s structure can serve its storytelling. However, I would contend that the flashforwards aren’t as game-changing to the week-to-week pacing of the show as they might seem on the surface. The inversion from “past informing who character is” to “future raising questions about who character becomes” is compelling, but there’s still a shared purpose of breaking up the on-island storyline with a glimpse of an often simpler story unburdened by the mystery of it all. In both these episodes, there’s technically more “plot” to be found in the flashforwards, but there’s never a point where you could argue that the flashforwards are serving as full-bodied narratives in their own right even if they provide both episodes with their respective climaxes.