The Empire Strikes Back is the best Star Wars movie for a pretty obvious reason: as the second act of the story, the bad guys are winning. As Dante learned writing the Divine Comedy, it is always more fun to hang out with bad guys than good guys. This far into season 6 of Lost we are clearly in the second act of the final season, and, right on schedule, the bad guys are in glorious form. I can only assume that while I am writing this a series of Youtube clips are being thrown together, scoring the final moment of “Sundown” — The Man in Black’s bad-ass slow-motion walk away from the temple with his crew — to any number of songs, including “Damn it Feels Good to be A Gangster” and “Little Green Bag” from Reservoir Dogs.

Another good rule of film making: no one likes third act characters. You have to introduce all your characters in the first quarter of your story. After that, audiences will reject “new people” for the folks they have spent the most time with. There is a big screenwriters’ conversation to have about this, as a lot of folks are rejecting Lost’s big third act characters, Jacob and the Man in Black. Everyone has to decide for themselves if there being personifications of the Smoke Monster and Destiny (both introduced very early on) counts or not. I think it does count, but I also have sympathy for people who feel like the primary conflict of Lost was introduced out of nowhere and far too late. What I have no sympathy for is Sol from Deadwood and Dogen — these guys are the very definition of third act characters, and as much as I kind of like the actor who played Sol from Deadwood, I was very pleased to see them slaughtered by Sayid. We knew just enough about them to sort of care when they died, but their deaths were totally worth it to see Sayid’s new evil side revealed, and Michael Emerson’s Ben Linus do the best bug-eyed-slowly-back-away ever.

Best thing about Sayid’s transformation though? The way it stemmed from events, from his treatment by Dogen and by the persuasive speech of The Man in Black. It is an infection, but nothing so prosaic as brainwashing. Nicely done, Lost. The Man in Black’s silver tongue is here, as is Dogen calling him “Evil Incarnate” — more evidence this is Milton’s Satan, who embraces freedom from God’s oppressive order at any cost.

I should be summarizing so here is the summary. On the island Claire arrives at the temple, and Sayid goes out, told by Dogen to kill the Man in Black. He puts a dagger in The Man in Black’s chest, but it does nothing, and The Man in Black tells him this is just another way Dogen tried to have someone else kill Sayid. He asks Sayid to deliver a message after implying he could bring back Sayid’s true love. Sayid tells everyone at the Temple Jacob is dead, and that they should go meet The Man in Black at sundown outside the Temple and be free. Many do; Sayid kills Dogen and Sol from Deadwood as the Smoke Monster kills everyone. Kate meets with Claire briefly and tells her about Aaron. Fahey, Linus and company arrive and hide.The bad guys walk away awesome. In the Alternate Universe Sayid deals with the mobsters his brother — his true love’s husband — borrowed money from. Keamey is the head mob guy and Sayid kills him and his men and finds Jin.

The Others continue to be spectacularly unpersuasive: “Look: we tried to kill you because you are evil, but if there is still good in you, you can prove it by killing someone you know without allowing them to speak first.” The only good thing you can say about this, is that it did not lead to a wacky misunderstanding where Sayid killed the wrong person. And you have to laugh that their whole mission is to protect the candidates, and they can barely keep track of where any of them even are.

In the Alternate Universe The Dry Cleaning Wars Lost has been promising to investigate since season 1 started out dull, but I do love the actor who plays Keamey: he has a disturbing combination of violent frat-boy and little kid with baby fat that gets me every time.

And Jack continues to be in the center of everything in the Alt U: he is at the hospital where Sayid’s brother is recovering from what the mob guys did to him, and in the end Sayid finds Jin. Claire is his sister and she knows Kate. Locke has his number and Locke knows Hurley and Rose and Ben Linus. Jack saved Charlie on the plane and Jack met Desmond. Jack met Dogen, and Jack is married to SOMEONE, who has to turn out to be SOMEONE because in the Alt U everyone is someone (except the one person you thought would be someone, the people who wanted to adopt Claire’s baby, turned out to be no one).

And is Miles ever going to do anything? His ability to speak to the dead seemed really important on an island full of ghosts: I feel like his moment is coming. I did enjoy the hell out of his saying in passing that crazy Claire is “still hot” to Kate. And while on the subject of the dead, death seems to hardly slow anyone down on this show — I do hope Sayid killing those guys in the fountain of youth or whatever does not mean they will be back.

And I like how the thing about the Man in Black is he is going to kill everyone on the island, because that is exactly what Ben Linus said about the Freighter people, and Keamey in particular, Keamey who shows up in this episode. Lost is all about conflicts being raised into larger ones. Jack v Locke, becomes Ben v Widmore, which becomes Jacob v Man in Black — which looks like is going to be incarnated in the original Jack v Locke, since Jack works for Jacob and the Man in Black is in Locke’s body.

10 episodes till the final 2 hour broadcast.

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In Geoff Klock, Lost, recaps