Lost recap, episode 4×07: ‘Ji Yeon’ - What happened to Jin?
Well, after a slow-paced show last week, Lost picked up right where it left off with a great little episode called Ji Yeon, with twists and turns that you don’t see coming until the very end, and some tearful moments, along with a huge revelation.
“Huge” depending on who you are…we’ll get to that.
Before we get started, Ji Yeon means “Heavenly Patience.” Now here we go:
Lost episode 4×07, “Ji Yeon” or “What Happened to Jin?”
I’m starting off with the freighter story, because I last week was a bit easier with separating the two stories, and besides, the Jin and Sun storyline held the biggest twist in my mind.
So on the boat, we see Regina keeping watch on the prisoners door, reading a book called the The Survivor of the Chancellor upside down. So what is this book?
The Survivor of the Chancellor. This is a pretty interesting little tidbit here because the book was written by Jules Verne in 1875 and is about a British sailing vessel. (click on the thumbnail to the right to see a blown-up shot of the cover)
Making its last voyage. Hmmmmmm….
At the start of the Chancellor’s voyage, 28 people were on the ship, and by the end, only 11 survive. It sounds like a pretty interesting story, and I may try to read it sometime. Anyways, click the link above for more info on it.
We see a curious moment where Frank is told not to be late for something, and later he’s gone, the helicopter with him. It was brief, which in the Lost universe means it’s usually important.
The kitchen on the freighter has either been sabotaged or has no food, because all Sayid and Desmond get to eat is lima beans. Blech.
As they sit there, a note is passed through the door that reads “Don’t trust the captain.” So of course they get taken to the captain right away by the doctor.
On their way, psychopath Regina walks out onto the deck wrapped in heavy chains and jumps overboard. Desmond and Sayid scream for help, but none comes as the Captain bursts out of the bridge, telling everyone to get back to their posts.
Goodbye Regina, we hardly knew ya!
The captain identifies himself as Gault, and is “surprisingly forthcoming” as Sayid notes later. He tells them that the boat is owned by Charles Widmore and shows them a black box that come from Flight 815, except as we know, it wasn’t really from that flight.
He goes into detail about how the fake crash was set up, and how much power it would take to accomplish something like this.
And THAT’S why they want to find Benjamin Linus.
We already know that he’s filthy rich apparently since Miles wants $3.2 million from him, which he must obviously have somehow. So is Ben the guy behind the faked crash at the bottom of the ocean with 324 dead bodies?
Some of Gault’s crew is apparently sick though, suffering from extreme “cabin fever.” Why? Who knows. Maybe they are all time jumping like Minkowski was. Perhaps that’s why Regina was reading her book upside down. Maybe she wasn’t there for awhile, and then jumps overboard to end the whole thing.
The time with the captain is short, but apparently they are now trusted enough to get their own bunk. The problem appears to be that their room is crawling with roaches, and someone’s blood from an obvious gunshot to the head is all over the far wall.
Welcome back, Michael, err…Kevin Johnson
As they look into their room, some guy mopping is yelled at by the doctor to come clean the blood off the wall. The man doesn’t want to, but is forced to walk over. He’s called Kevin Johnson by the doctor, but we know him as Michael.
I wish this had been a bigger shock, and maybe it would have been if not for the spoilers about Michael returning midseason, and the big deal about the spy. I think we all saw it coming after awhile.
So why is he on the boat? Ben obviously has forced him to do it, so where is Walt?
The Jin and Sun story
The second story in Ji Yeon, was about Jin and Sun’s relationship with a surprise ending. I’m doing to keep it short and sweet, because it felt incredibly complicated.
Jin and Sun talk about baby names, but it’s bad luck to do that, so they leave it alone. But Jin thinks it’s going to be a girl, Sun says it’s a boy. We’ll find out later.
Sun talked to Daniel Faraday and pretty much finds out that rescuing the survivors of Flight 815 isn’t their priority. It’s basically not Daniel’s call if they do or not. Sun is freaked out and tells Jin that they are going to find Locke’s camp, because she doesn’t trust these people from the boat.
But Juliet tries to stop her in anyway she can, and with nothing else working, she tells Jin about the affair Sun had before the crash. This brings everything to a halt, they stay at camp, Jin goes fishing with Bernard, and wont let Sun explain.
Bernard and Jin have a nice little moment out on the water, being the only two married guys left on the island. This speaks to Jin, who returns to camp and makes Sun dinner. He tells her that he knows WHY she cheated on him, doesn’t blame her and promises to never leave her or the baby.
The last thing he says is that he’ll do whatever he can to protect them. They stay at the beach, Juliet’s warning finally heeded.
Flash-Forward
So we flash forward to Sun in a hotel room it looks like, suddenly in pain from the pregnancy. She’s worried about the child and calls an ambulance.
Where is Jin? Apparently he’s trying to purchased a huge panda teddy bear for some reason, as a gift to the newborn. He has a few issues in buying it, loses it once, and then has to go back.
In the meantime, Sun is in the hospital having the child. They say she needs to have a C-section, but she says to wait for Jin to get there. They can’t though, and suddenly (and a little unbelievably I might add) the baby is crowning, no longer needing a C-section. Out pops the baby, it’s a girl, and Sun cries when she sees her.
Jin meanwhile rushes to the hospital and asks for the room of…an ambassador that just became a grandfather. He delivers the Panda, and leaves, with the nurse surprised he was so quick, saying he’ll be a father soon, and he replies: “…I’ve only been married two months.”
WHAT THE…..HECK?
OMG, we got HOODWINKED, damn you Lost! We were watching a Flash-Forward AND a Flash-BACK!
Awesome…they got me big time on that.
But it wasn’t over.
Hurley shows up at Sun’s hotel in the future, asking if anyone else has shown up. She says no. He says good. Hmmm?
So what happened to Jin? They tricked us earlier, but why isn’t he here in the future?
Hurley picks up the little baby, and says “let’s go see him.” Ahh…then it hit me. He’s dead.
They go to a cemetery and walk up to a gravestone, and it’s Jin’s. He’s dead. Or is he?
Sun talks to him like he’s dead, tells him she named the baby Ji Yeon, the name he wanted for a girl. And she misses him very, very much.
But if you were a GOOD Lost fan, you paused your DVR and checked out the engraving on the gravestone.
Born 11/27/1974. Died….9/22/2004.
Died on the same date as the crash of 815. So he didn’t die after getting off the island. Maybe he didn’t die at all. Maybe he’s back there on the island still?
And if he is…then he’s NOT part of the Oceanic 6 like we were led to believe. In fact, the spoilers I talked about a week ago that ruined things for me SAID that Sun and Jin were the last two of the Oceanic 6, and one of them was going to die.
Well, whoever spread that may not have watched the entire closely.
Lost Questions
So this episode really didn’t give us much in the way of answers, other than confirming Widmore owns the boat (but can we trust the Captain and everything he said?), Sun gets off the island and both her and the baby live.
Yet of course, because it’s Lost, we have more new questions than anything else.
- Who’s blood was splattered on the wall in the boat?
- What was that banging on the pipe?
- What happened to Jin?
- Where did Frank go? What was his errand?
- Why was Hurley glad no one was coming to see the baby? He sounded funny when he said it.
- Why did Regina kill herself?
- Where is Walt?
One last thing I want to leave you with, and this is thanks to Frank C. from OpTempo. He left a link a few weeks ago and I read it, but didn’t make a note of using it until it seemed like it was true.
The doctor in tonight’s episode made an interesting comment many might have missed. As he’s taking Desmond and Sayid to their bunks, he says this is the quiet part of the ship. Desmond says, “But the ship isn’t moving.”
The doctor responds: “Well…if you say so.“
I’ll discuss this more in another post later tonight or early tomorrow, because I think it may deserve to be separate from the recap.
So what did you think of tonight’s episode? Good, bad? What happened to Jin for the love of Pete?












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I was under the impression that the previews had said that this episode would reveal the last of the Oceanic 6. If that’s so, then we can be certain that Aaron is the 6th.
Jack
Kate
Hurley
Sun
Sayid
AARON
Should be interesting next week, which I believe is the last of the previously shot episodes. So get ready for a long hiatus!
When Ben first said he had a guy on the boat, I called Michael–so I pat myself on the back for that 5 week old prediction.
A lot of people called Michael, I didn’t want to believe it
I still don’t think Aaron is the final of the Oceanic 6, but if that’s who they meant it to be, so be it. Just doesn’t feel right to me.
I wonder if Michael can run the break since he changed his name
Great episode. Whether Jin died or not, I found the end to be very emotional and it ranks up there with when Charlie died. I have come to really like Jin’s character and I love the fact that he didn’t freak out and revert to his old self when he learned that Sun had an affair.
So, is Jin alive or dead? If he is dead, the date on the gravestone could make sense. Per Jack’s testimony at Kate’s trial, the lie the Oceanic 6 have been telling is that most of the survivors died with the plane. I can’t remember though, did he say there were 8 people that initially survived and two later died?
Then again, maybe Jin was forced to stay on the island so that Sun could leave and avoid the mysterious illness that pregnant women suffer from on the island.
I think the ship has been out there for a LONG time. I don’t think anyone sabotaged the kitchen, I think they may have just run out of food. Wouldn’t lima beans be the last thing most people would eat?
I also think there may be someone else sympathetic to Sayid and Desmond on the ship. Michael is out for himself and Walt and I wouldn’t be surprised if he isn’t the one who has been “helping” them. I thought the banging of the pipes may have been Morse code.
Steven’s last blog post..That’s What She Said . . . II
I don’t think Aaron is either. Otherwise, why would they have tricked us into thinking Jin was. I hope Aaron is not the 6th. Also, I wish they would just stop from this point forward introducing characters to the story. I don’t want this to turn into another 24, where they just keep creating seasons without answers until people stop watching because the season 6 cast only has 3 originals in it and 38 new cast members. So far we’ve met atleast 10 new cast members, and we still don’t know their story. Also, bY in troducing all of these new cast memebers we hardly get to see Hurley, Sawyer, Jack, or Locke. I would like to see more of the main characters and less of these newbies.
Zach, interesting points, but I mean there are more than 6 originals left, aren’t there? Locke, Jack, Kate, Hurley, Sawyer, Jin, Sun, Claire, Sayid, now Michael is back, Rose, Rousseau….
We’ve lost a few yes, but I still like the new characters personally, and the people we’re meeting on the boat, I don’t think they are going to be regulars or anything, but are necessary for the story.
@ Steven - Interesting about the kitchen, i guess that does make sense…lima beans are the last thing I’D want to eat for sure. And perhaps being out there so long explains why some people are going crazy.
It was a fun episode with the flashforward/flashback.
What’s been interesting to me was that I wrote a little news recap article about Daniel Dae Kim getting arrested back in October and that article’s page has gotten over 100 hits since last night’s episode. Search engine fun.
Yes, they did say that 2 people survived the crash but died later. I’d guess that Jin is one of these two.
Based on the preview, Ben has Walt and is still using that to control Micheal.
Frank C’s last blog post..Link Building Tips for Niche Blogs
I’m glad that although I read the same spoiler info as you did, they may have not got it right about Jin dying. Either he was left behind on the island or he might still die at some point down the road on the island, but we can’t say for sure yet. I’m also wondering if that banging was morse code. Hope somebody checks into that.
@ Frank - Same here, I wrote the same blog about him being arrested, and how it might mean they’d kill him off in true Lost fashion, aka Ana Lucia, and so I’ve been getting those hits as well. Gotta love it
An interesting tidbit I read over on EW’s recap:
Why did Regina kill herself? Because she was inconsolable over the death of her lover â€â€? the late, Locke-knifed Brit Naomi. Remember the inscription on her bracelet? ”N, I’ll always be with you, R.G.” Yep: I’m thinking Regina is ”R.G.”
I have to go with Aaron being the 6th for the same reason I mentioned before. The media would include him in any discussions of or references to the survivors of the flight even if he was born on the island. They would never say the Oceanic 6 if there were actually seven people. It doesn’t make sense.
I could be wrong, but I think Sayid and Desmond both should have recognized Morse Code if that’s what the banging had been.
The ratings news for this week kind of sucked:
ABC’s “Lost” (12.1 million, 4.9/13) continued its episode-by-episode ratings erosion. The drama, whose current season is getting strong reviews, hit a series low, down 11 percent from last week, though it still won its 9 p.m. Thursday time period, for the seventh consecutive week.
So amazing…how can it be losing ratings and be so good and popular?
Simple answer — More people watch it on DVR and most ratings don’t capture this kind of viewing.
Frank C’s last blog post..eBay To Dump Commission Junction
Aaron isnt one of the Oceanic six. Is just like Ben. He get off the island, but he wasnt a realpasanger of the plane. Thereis other who left the island. Maybe Jin is the other.
Francois, I dunno though, I think people have stated that he quite possible IS the 6th person…I read an Entertainment Weekly recap where they said that.
I dunno…
what about the jin that was giving the panda to the car company owner?? is he jin or not?
That was a flashBACK ding, not a flashforward…so that was Jin, just in the past.
Mar 14th, 2008 at 12:15 am
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Mar 14th, 2008 at 7:39 am
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