This episode focuses in flashbacks of Ana-Lucia’s life, as a police officer who is currently off work because of something that happened. The “old habits” part of the title is immediately seen as Ana holds everyone at gunpoint, after she shoots Shannon and then Sayid charges her with a gun. She has Sayid tied up. Eventually, when the other tailies ask her what her plan is, Sayid says she has no plan – she only has her guilt, and her gun. Ana asks for ammunition and clothing, planning to go off and live alone. Eventually everyone else refuses to be part of what she is doing, leaving to find the camp.
In the hatch, Locke is doing a crossword puzzle, filling in Gilgamesh as the answer to the clue “Enkidu’s friend.” Soon after, he meets Mr. Eko.
Michael comes back to camp and finds Jack. He prepares to go out with guns. Mr. Eko asks Jack what he wants – peace, revenge, justice? When Eko tells Jack that Ana-Lucia made a mistake, Jack remembers her, and so they leave the guns behind.
Sayid remembers that 40 days ago on the island he tied a man to a tree, the same way he is now tied. So he suggests that maybe Ana was meant to kill him.
Ana tells Sayid the story of how she and her partner responded to a burglary, and a man came out the door saying he was a student. She let him reach for his ID, and he shot her. When Sayid asks her ehat happened to the guy who shot her. Then she has a flashback to her hunting the guy down and shooting him, informing him that she had been pregnant when he shot her. But she lies and tells Sayid that they never found the guy.
She cuts him loose and drops the gun at his feet, asking Sayid to pick it up, saying she deserves it. But he quotes her own words back at her, asking what good it would be to kill her, if they are both already dead.
At the end of the episode, Rose and Bernard, and Sun and Jin, are reunited.
The episode is classic LOST – exploring how the baggage we carry from the past shapes our responses to the present.
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