The cliffhanger from the previous season finale, "Through the Looking Glass," is resolved by revealing John Locke (Terry O'Quinn) to be dead and in the coffin that Jack Shephard (Matthew Fox) visits in that episode.

In flashforwards to January 2005, the Oceanic Six—Jack Shephard, Kate Austen (Evangeline Lilly), Sayid Jarrah (Naveen Andrews), Sun-Hwa Kwon (Yunjin Kim), Hugo "Hurley" Reyes (Jorge Garcia) and Claire Littleton's (Emilie de Ravin) infant, Aaron—arrive in Honolulu, where Hurley and Sun are reunited with their parents; Jack with his mother; and Sayid with his girlfriend, Nadia Jaseem (Andrea Gabriel).

In Seoul, South Korea, Sun visits her father and informs him that she used the money from her settlement with Oceanic Airlines to buy a controlling interest in his company because she blames him for her husband's, Jin-Soo Kwon (Daniel Dae Kim), death.

Jack and Sawyer meet up with Lapidus at the helicopter, but decide to rescue Hurley, who is with Ben, the mercenaries' target, before leaving for the freighter.

After unsuccessfully attempting to convince his crush, Charlotte Lewis (Rebecca Mader),[2] to leave the island, Daniel Faraday (Jeremy Davies) starts ferrying people to the freighter.

Meanwhile, in their quest to move the island, Ben, Locke and Hurley arrive at the Dharma Initiative Orchid station, which is disguised as a greenhouse.

Ben sends Locke to the real part of the station and surrenders himself to Martin Keamy (Kevin Durand) and the other mercenaries from the Kahana, who had previously arrived.

[3][4] Jack, Kate, Sayid, Sawyer, Hurley, and Frank Lapidus leave the island on the helicopter, but discover a fuel leak on board.

The helicopter makes it to the Kahana in the nick of time; they refuel it, fix the leak, pick up Desmond Hume (Henry Ian Cusick), Sun, Aaron and Kate leave seconds before the C4 detonates.

In flashforwards to late 2007, following those in "Through the Looking Glass", Jack, Kate and Walt Lloyd (Malcolm David Kelley) all recount stories of being approached by Jeremy Bentham, the dead man in the coffin.

The episode features the last appearance of actor Harold Perrineau, whose character Michael dies in an explosion, as a main cast member.

[6][7][8] This episode also marks Malcolm David Kelley's first appearance on the show since the third season, excepting a computer effects shot of the actor in "Meet Kevin Johnson".

Kelley's character, Walt, was "benched" for the majority of the second and third seasons because the actor's growth was disproportionate to the amount of time that has passed on the island.

[4] Throughout season four, Jack and Locke have argued about the true nature of the island, whether it had supernatural powers and on how Oceanic Flight 815 crashing could be part of the survivors' destiny.

[4] The final scenes of the episode, particularly Ben turning the wheel, Penny and Desmond's reunion and the last shot of Locke in the coffin were kept secret, in order to prevent spoilers from leaking.

Only six people knew that Locke was in the coffin—actors Matthew Fox, Michael Emerson and Terry O'Quinn; writers Lindelof and Cuse and Jack Bender, the director.

Lindelof and Cuse found that they could not compress the second half of the season finale into one episode and actually wanted to expand it.

Subsequently, the show runners went into "advanced talks" with executives at ABC and convinced them to produce one of their episodes "in the bank", thereby extending "There's No Place Like Home: Part 2" to two hours.

Several actors and crew members stayed aboard the freighter while filming "There's No Place Like Home", as well as other episodes of the fourth season.

[21] Other scenes set on the helicopter were shot on a soundstage in front of a green screen, where actress Yunjin Kim lost her voice from screaming.

[36] Patrick Kevin Day of the Los Angeles Times praised Michael Giacchino's musical score,[37] writing that "I'm reminded of the heights of emotion this series can evoke.

"[38] Jarett Wieselman of the New York Post thought that the finale's split and two-week break was "not cool", but asked "how brilliant was Sun's smackdown on her bad daddy?".

He commended the music and called it "a good opening to what should be an exciting season finale"; however, the lack of suspense in favor of set-up was cited as the reason for the modest rating.

"[43] Dan Compora of SyFy Portal called "Part 1" "an excellent setup episode [with] fast pace, important revelations, and nearly a full utilization of the cast".

Compora decided that "certain characters work much better in very small doses … a little bit of [Hurley] goes a long way [and] it was nice to see Jack featured without completely dominating an episode.

"[46] Jay Glatfelter of The Huffington Post "really liked this episode" and concluded that it "definitely showcased the new breath of life the fourth season gave to the show.

"[47] Matthew Fox received much praise for his performance in the scene in which his character Jack reacts to the revelation that Claire is his half-sister.

"[48] Matthew Gilbert of The Boston Globe wrote that "the episode was dynamic and busy enough as it relied heavily on action-adventure… but the finale wasn't as mind-bending as [the third] season's farewell, during which we received the show's first flash-forward.

"[51] Dan Compora of SyFy Portal wrote that "Part 2" "was perhaps the most action-packed, meaningful episode of television I've watched all year.

"[52] The second part of "There's No Place Like Home" was nominated for Outstanding Single-Camera Picture Editing for a Drama Series for the 2008 Creative Arts Emmy Awards,[53] however it lost to the pilot episode of Breaking Bad.