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'Lost' recap: Uncorked
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Ricardo was put in prison and sentenced to die. He spent his remaining days teaching himself English and reading the Bible. He had become converted, or so he believed. We saw him reading Luke chapter 4. In this chapter: Christ's temptation in the wilderness by Satan; Christ beginning his public ministry; Christ citing the proverb ''Physician, heal thyself!''; the story of Christ healing the sick and casting out demons. Yay for born again Ricardo, right? Wrong. He made his final confession to a priest — another man in black. But the priest coldly rejected Ricardo's petition with a brutal ''No.'' It made me wonder if the priest declined the confession because he saw that it wasn't genuine. Ricardo didn't really consider himself guilty of a crime. He called it accidental. He called it killing instead of murder. He didn't view himself as a sinner who needed God. Rather, God was a means to an end — a last gasp hope to be reconciled with Isabella in the heaven of her faith. Still, I think Father Black's further explanation will be one for the theologians amongst us to debate. True repentance requires penance, Father Black said. ''You don't have time... because tomorrow they're going to hang you. I'm afraid the devil awaits you in hell.'' This makes sense. It's kind of galling to think that rapists and serials killers and genocidal maniacs would get a Go Directly To Heaven! card with a simple if sincere spiritual conversion minutes before their execution. But if the monsters invalidate the principal, what about everyone else? Whither the multifold of lesser evil lifelong unbelievers — misunderstood villains, semi-harmless jerks, nice guy agnostics, message board slaggers — who on their deathbeds suddenly get the eternity jitters and bet their spiritual house on Pascal's Wager? Should St. Peter rubberstamp them DENIED and trapdoor drop them into Hades just because they didn't have time to complete the full redemption program?

Regardless, as I listened to Father's Black's pitiless theology, I found myself thinking this theory-thought: If only there was some second-chance place somewhere in the land of the setting sun, where you and other last-chance souls can band together and fight smoke monsters and prove yourself to cryptic gods and successfully score a seat on a flight or sub to Heaven. Could that be a viable theory of The Island?

Ricardo thought he found a different kind of reprieve: slavery. He had told Father Black that he and Isabella had dreamed of leaving their Island and finding new life as new creations in the New World. Father Black tipped off a fellow named Mr. Jonas Whitfield, an officer in the employ of Magnus Hanso, a shipping merchant and slave owner, that Ricardo was basically the kind of guy who'd do anything to stay alive — even suffer dehumanization. Ricardo got a new lease on life by accepting a leash, and he soon found himself in manacles and anklets in the bowels of Hanso's ship: The Black Rock. According an apocryphal quasi-canon texts of Lost, Magnus Hanso was an ancestor of Alvar Hanso, the financier behind The Dharma Initiative. I encourage you to peruse his deets at Lostpedia at your leisure on another occasion.

NEXT: Holy shipwreck