10 moments that kept us ‘Lost’

5) Eko's flashback: The tale of the priest-not-priest was undoubtedly the best backstory of them all — a jarring human drama that would have made Eko a compelling character, worthy of his own series, even if you took away the island and all the metaphysical mumbo-jumbo.

4) The first orientation film: The official start of the Dharma mythology, a (notably flawed) explanation for the Swan station's contents and the launch for most of the season's Big Mysteries. We all hung on Dr. Marvin Candle's every word — even if the rather less dramatic, but still compelling, second orientation film in the Pearl station — made us think that everything in the first film was a hoax, and that Marvin Candle was actually someone else.

3) Taking the pulse: Sometimes you can't beat a healthy dose of CGI, and the final moments as Desmond turned the DharmaKey and activated the hatch's “system termination” switch was the most riveting action sequence the show has yet produced. (Yes, even better than the first moments on the beach, passenger-chewing jet engines and all.) The metal swirling about the Swan station as an electromagnetic charge built up, the number counter crumpling and the eerie violet pulse that filled the sky (even if that last bit looked like Roger Corman experimenting with color correction) were the payoff we've been awaiting all season, and probably even longer. It was an affirmation of all the bad juju we assumed the hatch contained, and yet it left a juicy number of cliffhangers: Did Locke and Eko survive? Did Desmond switch control to another system that could prevent further “incidents”? Can the electromagnetic force be controlled? Did this would-be incident down another plane?  The coup de grace was the hatch door flying out of the sky, complete with “quarantine” warning, barely missing Claire.

2) Michael, get your gun: Back from his long disappearance, Michael came back with not one bang but three. Ana Lucia and Libby were in the crosshairs, as was Michael himself. As shocking as the deaths were, far more interesting was the prospect that, as Sayid put it, Michael may have “been compromised.” Boy, did the erstwhile dad's erratic behavior lend credence to that theory, as did the flashback where we saw the Others give him a list of would-be victims to bring. As out-of-the-blue shockers go, this was a stunner. And oddly, it had more emotional impact than Michael's eventual reunion with Walt, which answered nothing and felt a bit hollow after such Michael's impassioned entreaties to save his son.

Mario Perez / ABC The yellow phone is for dialing Desmond's girlfriend only.

1) Snowbound: After blowing the hatch (see No. 3 above), the final few moments of the finale seemed placid by comparison, with two researchers in a remote station reporting an “electromagnetic anomaly” to Desmond's long-lost love.  It took a while to dawn on us, but here's why this scene was the most important of all: It's the first since the crash of flight 815 to take place off the island in what we'll call, for lack of better terms, the present day. Not a flashback, and not a dream.  Never was there better evidence that Lost Island isn't purgatory and it isn't symbolic. What happens on the Island doesn't stay on the island, and at least one person out there wants to find it. That prospect just made “Lost” twice as interesting.

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