The realtime events show Michael and Sawyer, who have just had their raft destroyed, becoming hostile towards each other as they drift back to shore, while Kate Austen and John Locke enter the mysterious hatch and encounter Desmond Hume.

"Adrift" had 23.17 million American viewers and stands as the second largest audience on the series' run, but received negative reviews, which focused criticism on the flashbacks, the raft scenes, and the lack of plot advancement.

Although Michael initially resists, suing in order to keep his custody, he eventually relents as Susan persuades him to doubt his own motivations and whether he is pursuing his own desires or Walt's best interests.

Back at camp, after Kate Austen (Evangeline Lilly) disappears into the hatch, John Locke (Terry O'Quinn) descends as well, and finds her unconscious in the computer room.

Michael then joins Sawyer on the pontoon, and when the morning breaks, he cries, realizing that he should not have brought Walt with him on the raft, and blames himself for his son's kidnapping.

When they wash ashore, they meet Jin running toward them, hands tied behind his back, shouting the word "Others", and fleeing a group holding him captive.

[5] Director Stephen Williams described filming at the sea as challenging, since the waves caused cameras, lighting and the scenery where the actors were standing to be "moving out of sync with one another".

[2] 23.17 million American viewers tuned into "Adrift", making it the second most-watched episode in the show's history, behind the season opener.

Jensen, however, complimented the hatch scenes, considering that Terry O'Quinn's performance and his interaction with Henry Ian Cusick were "salvaging the first mediocre episode of the season".

[10] Ryan Mcgee of Zap2it thought that revealing the hatch events through different perspectives was a "fresh narrative approach", but complained about the lack of plot advancement, and considered the raft storyline "three times as long as needed, with a really fake shark attack to boot".

[8] A similar list by Los Angeles Times ranked the episode as the fourth worst of the series, describing it as "boring".