Christian Shephard's coffin arrives at LAX

As the series finale opens, we see Christian Shephard's coffin arrive at LAX and gets removed from a plane and placed in a van.

While this happens, we see Jack in his office looking at Locke's x-ray. Ben is making himself a cup of coffee, his arm still in the sling. Locke is being wheeled off to surgery on a gurney and looks at his empty wheelchair. Sawyer prepares for another day at work and looks at himself in the broken mirror he punched in "Recon."

This sets up our characters as we enter the finale. I'll include the island shots from this montage in the next post.

Locke reveals the accident to Jack, recognizes Jin + Jack triggers Locke's island memories

At St. Sebastian Hospital, Locke is being pushed down the hall in a wheelchair by an orderly. As Locke is telling him that his fiance Helen is picking him up, Jin walks down the hall with flowers. Locke is distracted as he looks at Jin as if he recognizes him. Locke then tells the orderly he can take it from there and continues on his own.

At that moment Jack walks up the hall to meet Locke. Jack says that he wants to say goodbye and they shake hands. Then Jack's demeanor changes as he tells Locke that he went to see Anthony Cooper with the hope of understanding why Locke didn't want the surgery.

Locke is clearly upset, but proceeds to tell Jack that he was in a plane crash. He had his private pilot's license for a week and begged Anthony to be his passenger on his first flight, even though he was afraid of flying. He says that they were barely off the ground and he doesn't remember what went wrong, but it was his fault that the man he loved more than anything would never walk or talk again.

Jack recalls the moment they met at LAX when Locke told Jack his father was gone. Jack tells Locke that his father is gone too. Locke objects, saying that he's not gone, but Jack tells him that he can punish himself as long as he wants, but it's never going to bring him back. Jack adds "What happened, happened, and, you can let it go." Certainly a familiar phrase coined by Daniel Faraday.

Locke asks what makes him think letting go is so easy and Jack says it's not and he has difficulty doing it too. He says that he was hoping that Locke could go first with a slight smile. Locke pauses then laughs and then tells Jack goodbye and starts down the hall.

Before Locke turns the corner, Jack says "I can help you, John. I wish you believed me." That's same statement was the sole line of Locke's suicide note and Locke said it earlier in the episode when he was asleep. Locke is stopped by the line and it clearly struck a nerve with him, but after a moment he leaves without saying anything else.

This was one of the deepest conversations between Jack and Locke we've seen. The question is, why does Locke clearly seem to recognize things from the original timeline, but chooses to ignore them? Or is he ignoring them? Has he had a flash like Desmond or Hurley and seen something that he didn't want to see?

Locke meets Abbadon in rehabilitation

While John Locke is in rehabilitation after Anthony Cooper pushes him out of the window, he meets a shockingly philosophical orderly, but he's more than just an orderly. Matthew Abbadon is revealed to be pushing John in his wheelchair. Abbadon tells him that surviving an 8-story fall is a miracle and he should go on a walkabout to learn who he truly is. Abbadon tells Locke that when they meet again that he'll "owe him one."

What miracle happened to Matthew Abbadon? What exactly are his ties to the island, because they seem stronger than ever? What did he find out he was after his walkabout?