The Cost of Living (Lost)

Some time later, after Eko has become established in his new role as priest, he is confronted by militiamen, who Amina reveals that had a deal with Yemi to get most of the clinic's vaccines.

Joined by Charlie, Sayid Jarrah (Naveen Andrews), Nikki and Paulo (Kiele Sanchez and Rodrigo Santoro), the group finds Eko on their way to the Pearl.

Upon arrival, Eko does not find Yemi's body on the airplane atop the entrance, and decides to remain outside while Locke and the others enter the hatch.

Then one of the screens gets a live video feed of what appears to be another hatch, revealing a man with an eyepatch (Andrew Divoff) who then turns off the camera.

At The Hydra, Jack is invited by Ben Linus (Michael Emerson) to attend a memorial service being held for Colleen.

[4] A stunt double was dragged through cables, and along with the digital monster and wire removal, fast editing made the scene akin to "a magician's trick", in Blank's opinion.

[2] Juliet's message to Jack is an homage to Bob Dylan's video for "Subterranean Homesick Blues", where the musician flips cue cards while looking at the camera.

[2] This episode attracted 16.07 million American viewers in its original broadcast on November 1, 2006, standing as the tenth most watched program of the week.

[6] In the United Kingdom, the episode had 1.247 million viewers, ranking third in multichannel shows after Ford Super Sunday and The Simpsons.

Writing for Zap2it, Rick Porter said that while "The Cost of Living" was the best episode of season 3 thus far with "an illuminating flashback, some heavy island juju and a nice mix of the campers and the Others", the death of Eko removed from Lost "one of its most compelling characters and best actors, which just flat-out sucks.

[10] Christine Fenno of Entertainment Weekly stated that she would miss Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, and found Juliet's message to be the best part of the episode, that like the rest of season three "answered a few questions (whose tumor?

"[13] On the other hand, a similar list by the Los Angeles Times ranked it 96th, considering that despite being "actually a pretty good piece of TV", the episode was "just marred by the fact that the show was forced into killing Mr. Eko, a character whose story was far from over.