"Hands-on-hat," just for you, Teobi. :) At only 1.5 seconds long, it still makes it into the list of Top 5 Cutest Moments of the series.
Just the Epilogue left and we're done.
Skinny Mulligan was never right about anything.
He thought the sun revolved around the Earth and that Caesar was the guy who invented salad.
But once in a while, he was right about something.
Gilligan was still pondering the miracle (miracles?) that afternoon as the castaways gathered around the radio. Friendly Henry was cheerfully updating them on the missile launch, interviewing some General about something that none of them except the Professor understood, but Gilligan wasn't paying attention.
He didn't want to die. He never really did, but he had been able to look on the weak bright side of the situation. Now, however, he kinda wanted to stay put.
He couldn't eloquently articulate how he felt, but he suddenly wasn't okay with being a ghost, no longer amused by the concept of scaring the living daylights out of Fatso Flanagan, willing to give up going to Skinny and Florence's wedding.
He realized that it doesn't hurt when ghosts step on each other's feet while dancing because ghosts don't feel. They cruise through walls and pass right through humans when they try to reach out to them, leaving the living confused and shivering in their wake.
He wanted more miracles.
He couldn't articulate it any further than "ow," which was what he said to the Skipper when the captain questioned the stupid look on his face when he and Mary Ann met him on the trail on their way back to camp.
But the Skipper didn't have time to listen to one of Gilligan's circular conversations. He had come looking for them. It was time. He ushered them back to the beach where the others were gathered around the radio and tried to fill them in on everything they'd missed, which wasn't much, but the Skipper felt like relaying the information kept him centered and in control.
The Skipper sat down in the sand as close to the radio as possible. He couldn't act resigned to the inevitable. He knew it was ridiculous, but he still felt like he had to keep up the façade. He felt Ginger take his arm as she crouched beside him and resolved to be the strong leader she and the others expected him to be.
Ginger listened to Friendly Henry babble away happily on the radio, utterly enthralled by the situation. He asked the Generals too many questions and they faintly veiled the annoyance in their voices as they tried to go about their business while still being cordial to the media. They weren't very good actors.
Ginger looked up at the Professor, who was scanning the sky calmly. He looked like he was waiting for an afternoon bus and she wished he would say something, some encouraging words or pearls of inspiration, but that wasn't his style. He couldn't talk to them about souls and the afterlife and he had pointedly ignored Gilligan's comment about wanting to be reincarnated as an alien-fighting astronaut cowboy. The Professor had given them the cold hard facts and deemed them fully prepared.
Mrs. Howell sat beside her husband on a rock behind the others, her arm linked through his. Mr. Howell was uncharacteristically quiet. The latest version of his will should be safely out to sea by now and he had painstakingly parceled out everything. He made sure that his nieces and nephews – the little ones who he knew didn't try to steal his assets as soon as he was lost as sea – were well taken care of. His wife's favorite charities would never want for anything again. Adopted or not, all of her orphans would live comfortably and go to college. Reassured that all of her babies were either well provided for or here with her, Mrs. Howell smiled peacefully and patted her husband's hand, more proud of him than she'd ever been.
Mr. Howell knew that he couldn't take it with him. Everything he had taken with him on the Minnow would be lost. Everything. Although if given the choice he'd much rather prefer to go it alone, to take nothing with him, to spare his beloved wife his same fate, at the moment he was very grateful that she was sitting beside him holding his arm.
Mary Ann sat in the sand close by Gilligan's side. She listened to Friendly Henry describe the mechanics of the missile on the radio and felt an eerie sense of calm overcome her. She was still terrified and she still didn't want to die, but she felt more complete somehow.
Her list was done. Gilligan had somehow managed to make her greatest dreams come true.
Friendly Henry suddenly stopped his narration. There was a second of silence that seemed to stretch on forever as he was given an update and the castaways held their breath.
"And the countdown has already begun on Operation Powder Keg!" he continued joyfully, startling the castaways after the tense silence. "Five."
Mrs. Howell tightened her arm around her husband's and he grabbed her hand.
"Four."
Ginger gripped the Skipper's arm, wide eyes transfixed on the radio.
"Three."
The Skipper stared blankly out over the beach and into the lagoon. He never felt so useless in his whole life.
"Two."
The Professor calmly surveyed the sky, waiting for the first glimpse.
"One!"
Friendly Henry was way too excited about this.
"Zero!"
Mary Ann dropped her head to Gilligan's knee. In the terrifying silence that followed, she suddenly felt the gentle pressure of his hands on her head – tender, comforting, protecting. It was a simple gesture, light as a feather, but she felt it as acutely as if his hands weighed twenty pounds and it nearly made her heart burst.
"It's a perfect shot!"
"It would be," Mr. Howell drawled sardonically.
Mary Ann squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her forehead into Gilligan's jeans. She pushed the thoughts of fire and destruction and the acrid stink of devastation out of her mind, trying to replace them with thoughts of her family, her friends, her new family and friends on the island, flying, camping, her miracle.
Earlier that day, alone under the banyan tree with all of the butterflies gone, Gilligan whispered "ow" and Mary Ann blushed furiously, lowering her eyes to stare at his shirt buttons.
They were both quiet for a long time. They were too embarrassed to keep standing there pressed up against each other, tingly and breathless, but they couldn't move either.
Mary Ann chanced a glance back up at Gilligan's face. He was still looking down at her like he'd never seen her before and it was unnerving. She slowly untangled her left hand from his collar. She didn't realize she'd been gripping it so hard and her fingers ached as she smoothed down the rumpled fabric. Mary Ann suddenly smirked, remembering Florence's reaction to Skinny's "ow" before she knew what it meant.
"Should I punch you in the gut?" she teased.
Gilligan's brow furrowed and his mouth tipped into an odd mixture of a grin and a wince. "I think you just did."
Skinny Mulligan was never right about anything.
But when Skinny Mulligan was right about something, boy was he right.