I Am DB

It was a long wait from when Juliet smashed that hydrogen bomb last May to the season premiere that began showing us what happened as a result, but I’d say it was well worth the wait. (And we got to see Juliet sucked down that chasm about four more times, just in case it wasn’t harsh enough last spring.) There’s a lot to cover from this two-hour premiere, and I had to skip Super Bowl parties and a chance to see Gone With the Wind on the big screen in order to deliver the goods today. (I’ve never seen it, despite being a film geek fantastique, and I refuse to see it anywhere but in a theater.) These are the sacrifices I make for you.

Shall we?

UP IN THE AIR
The white flash of the hydrogen bomb finally exploding dissolves into clouds, and we pull back through a window, into a plane, where we find Jack. Welcome back to Oceanic 815, where things are familiar but not quite the same as we remember them. When we first see Jack, he looks a little out of sorts, like he’s not sure how he got there or he forgot where he was. Cindy the stewardess offers him some extra vodka for his drink, just like last time…except not just like last time. Last time, she gave him two bottles. This time, she gives him one. When the plane hits turbulence, Rose – sitting across the aisle – calms him down (the first time around, it was Jack offering comforting words to her). He has a look on his face when the turbulence hits as if he is expecting it, and when it passes he looks relieved. But his relief isn’t that of a nervous flyer who’s happy the shaking has stopped. Jack’s relief seems deeper, as if somewhere inside himself he knows that a corner has been turned. Take a look at how the scene played out originally, side by side with this new course of events.

It seems that flashes forward and back have been replaced by flashes sideways, and our initial introduction to this alternate reality for Flight 815 offers plenty to puzzle over. On the flight we’re already familiar with, Sawyer was fresh from killing an innocent man whom he believed to be the true Sawyer he’d been hunting all his life. On that flight he was brooding and troubled, but here we see his more playful side as he makes eyes at Kate and listens to Hurley’s conversation with Dr. Arzt. He suggests that Hurley be more careful when it comes to what he just told Arzt about having won the lottery. He says people might try to take advantage of him. Hurley laughs off the warning. “Nothing bad ever happens to me,” he says. “I’m the luckiest guy alive.”

This exchange, as well as some other things that we’ll get to, reminds us that although we as viewers are entering this alternate reality at this particular moment, it has existed for much longer; the new timeline was created back on the island in 1977. If the hydrogen bomb truly negated the electromagnetic energy at the Swan construction site, as Faraday predicted, then that’s the moment that time split into two parallel courses. And in this new timeline, which is now 27 years old (Flight 815 took place in 2004), Hurley is no longer plagued by bad luck. Sawyer may not have killed the wrong man – or any man (this is purely my own inference, based on his lighter mood). Boone is not flying with Shannon. Boone, chatting with Locke on the plane (note for the obsessive: Boone was not sitting in Locke’s row on the original Flight 815), asks why Locke was in Australia. Locke tells him about the walkabout, but since we soon learn that even in this timeline he’s in a wheelchair, should we assume he’s lying? Or was he able to go on the walkabout despite his handicap?

I also wonder if he’s in a wheelchair for the same reason. Talking briefly with reader Denise B. last week, we returned to a conversation we had near the end of last season which I actually included in one of these write-ups. Then and now, she questioned whether in an alternate timeline people would just do essentially the same things over again vs. doing things differently. So in regards to Locke, I wonder if he wound up in the wheelchair because he once again became obsessed with his father and paid the price, or was he simply fated to be paralyzed and this time got there through a different set of circumstances? Locke’s inability to walk away from his father cost him his relationship with Helen the first time around. We know that Helen is going to appear this season, so I wonder if she is at home waiting for him right now? Time will tell…

Elsewhere on the plane, Jin is still carrying the watch for Sun’s father, and seems to once again be the impatient and condescending dick we had forgotten all about (as reader Shirley L. said to me, “Nobody likes you, Old Jin!”). Kate is still a fugitive traveling with U.S. Marshal Edward Mars; Sayid is still pining over a picture of Nadia. But did he still learn of her Los Angeles whereabouts by infiltrating his old friend’s terrorist cell for the CIA, or was he in Sydney for a different reason? What about Hurley’s reasons for being in Sydney? He had originally gone down there seeking information about the meaning of the cursed numbers. If he is no longer cursed, why was he in Australia?

While in the bathroom, Jack notices a cut on his neck. Is this a remnant from the Incident? That possibility raises my eyebrows, since again this new timeline must have existed for years prior to this moment. (If my logic here is flawed, set me straight.) When Jack returns to his seat, Desmond (!) is sitting in his row, having fled a snoring neighbor at his assigned seat. Jack has a nagging feeling that they know each other, but Desmond doesn’t appear to recognize him. Now it hadn’t occurred to me that Desmond might not really be there and was just a figment of Jack’s imagination, yet a few of you have suggested that possibility. I assumed (and still do) that his presence was legitimate, meaning he never met Jack at a stadium while training for a race around the world. He never went on that race, never crashed on the island, never pushed the button – because if we believe Faraday’s scenario, there was no button to push. So why does Jack think he knows Desmond? And why is Jack the only one who seems to be experiencing this sense of déjà vu? There is no indication that Kate, Sawyer, Hurley, Sun, Jin or Locke are confused about their circumstances.

When Cindy asks if there is a doctor onboard, Jack answers the call. She explains that a passenger is locked in the bathroom, failing to respond. Sayid appears and offers to help…which he does by kicking in the door. Inside is Charlie, not breathing. Jack pulls him out and with Sayid’s assistance, starts to perform CPR. He removes an obstruction from Charlie’s airway: a bag of heroin. Charlie gasps for air, looks around. “Am I alive?” he asks, then with a tone of disappointment answers, “Terrific.” As he is put into handcuffs and led away, he tells Jack, “You should have let that happen, man. I was supposed to die.”

He was supposed to die? Why would he say that? Is it because even in this timeline, he is fated to die, a fact that will catch up with him one way or the other? And if so, how does he know that? Who has told him that he’s going to die, and whoever it was, how did they know? When Jack returns to his seat, Desmond – who had the honor of informing Charlie about his fate on the island – is gone. Coincidence? Is anything? (Actually, this is just a coincidence according to Damon and Carlton, who appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live the night of the premiere. In this fun interview, they address some of the things I’ve mentioned.)

This scene makes me wonder if we’ll see Charlie again in this timeline. We didn’t need to see Charlie, Boone, and Dr. Arzt on the plane, did we? We didn’t see Eko or Michael or Ana Lucia and so on, but we assume that they’re there (or at least, I do). So was showing us these old friends just a little dose of nostalgia, or will they somehow factor more significantly into this new timeline?

TOUCHDOWN
Flight 815 lands safely in Los Angeles, and after Mars and Kate pass through customs, she requests a bathroom detour. I don’t know why this guy keeps falling for her ploys, but he allows her into a stall and then stupidly turns away and washes his face instead of diligently watching the door and listening for anything suspicious. Using a pen that she swiped off Jack when they bumped into each other on the plane, Kate tries to undo her handcuffs. Mars is onto her before she can get them off, but she manages to knock him out and run off. She encounters Sawyer in an elevator and he sees the cuffs despite her effort to conceal them with a jacket folded over her hands. Sawyer allows her to step off the elevator ahead of two airport cops, facilitating her escape. When she gets to the taxi line, Mars sees her. She jumps into a cab and pulls out his gun, yelling at the driver to go…and oblivious to the fact that there is already a passenger in the cab. Nice to see you again, Claire. “What are you doing?” she asks with alarm.
Meanwhile, Jin waits impatiently while customs agents go through his bag, asking him questions in English that he can’t understand. Sun observes carefully the whole time and is surprised when one of the officers discovers an envelope full of money that has not been declared. Jin is led away to answer questions and the other officer asks Sun if she understands English. Sun indicates she doesn’t, and although it looks to me like she does understand, I like that the scene plays out ambiguously. In this timeline, was she planning to leave Jin and start a new life in America? Has she indeed learned English?

Jack is also running into problems on the ground. He is paged to the Oceanic customer service desk and told by a rep that his father’s coffin is not there. “It appears it was never put on the plane,” the man says with embarrassment.  “We’re not exactly sure where it is.” It appears that the coffin was never put on the plane. It sounds like they haven’t actually confirmed that, but are just assuming it to be true since it isn’t on the plane now. But could it have been on the plane and somehow disappeared during the flight? Perhaps when passing over the island? I’m not sure how that would make sense since the island is underwater.

Oh, have we not talked about that yet? Huh. Well, it will have to wait.

Sitting in an Oceanic waiting area, an upset Jack meets Locke, who it turns out is missing a suitcase full of knives. He asks Jack what they lost of his. Jack explains that his father died in Sydney.

J: The coffin was supposed to go on the plane in Sydney, but it didn’t. Apparently he’s somewhere in transit. Which is their way of saying they have no idea where the hell he is.
L: Well how could they know?
J:  They’re the ones who checked him in! I mean, they’ve got to have some kind of tracking…
L: No, I’m not talking about the coffin. I mean, how could they know where he is? They didn’t lose your father. They just lost his body.

“In transit” is probably a perfectly accurate description of where Christian Shephard is, at least as we’ve seen over these last few seasons of the show. Anyway, Locke’s words actually seem to provide Jack with (if I might poach a movie title) a quantum of solace. As Locke wishes him luck and starts to leave, Jack inquires about his condition, explaining that he’s a spinal surgeon. “Surgery isn’t going to do anything to help me,” Locke says. “My condition is irreversible.” Jack, still the fixer, replies, “Nothing’s irreversible.” He offers Locke his business card and tells him to call him if he ever wants a consult. “On the house,” he smiles before opening the door for Locke to roll away.

For what it’s worth – which is probably nothing – the business card which we saw in very deliberate close-up was also faintly pictured in the Verizon print ad I linked to in one of my pre-season messages. Take a look again and you’ll see it overlapping Jack’s reflection in this not-so-good scan. Maybe this is one of those moments where I read too much into things, but why did we need to see the card close-up? He could have handed John the card in a wide shot and we would have known what it was.

Another random observation is that this scene marks the first time in quite a long time that we’ve seen Jack and Locke hold a friendly conversation. In fact, I think the last time they talked at length without any issues between them was in Season One’s early episode White Rabbit, which featured Jack chasing a vision of his father. The scene Jack and Locke shared was excellent, and if you haven’t seen it in a while, check it out (it begins at the 1:40 mark).

And by the way, what did happen to Locke’s knives?

THE DYING SWAN
While the detonation of Jughead appears to have successfully created a new timeline, it doesn’t appear that way to Jack and company, who find themselves back at the remains of the Swan hatch…having apparently jumped through time once again. We don’t initially know exactly when they are, other than that it’s late 2004 at the earliest (seeing as they aren’t at the ruined Swan construction site but rather the actual hatch, as blown up by Desmond). Where it was daytime when they dropped the bomb, it is now nighttime. Sawyer is prepared to kill Jack for having led them astray and costing Juliet her life, but then they hear her calling for help from below a twisted mass of metal wreckage.

While they attempt to dig her out, Hurley and Jin are back at the van with a dying Sayid. Jin runs off to get Jack’s help, and that’s when Hurley receives a visit from Jacob, whom he only knows as the guy he met in a taxi outside prison and who told him how to get back to the island. Hurley wants to know who he is, but he’s too preoccupied kneeling over Sayid and looking troubled to answer. After telling Hurley that he died an hour earlier, Jacob gives him a task. “I need you to save Sayid, Hugo. You need to take Sayid to The Temple. That’s the only chance he’s got. And the rest of them will be safe there.” He says that Jin will know where to go. (I loved Hurley’s underplayed reaction to learning this is Jacob). The conversation also clarifies that they are now back in 2007; good news for Sun and Jin.

Once a path is clear, Sawyer makes his way down to Juliet, who looks around her and says, “It didn’t work. We’re still on the island.” As he holds her, she seems to slip out of the moment, randomly saying, “We could get coffee sometime. We can go dutch.” I initially took this non sequitur to be the ramblings of a dying woman with brain injuries, but then another thought occurred to me. What if Juliet’s coffee remark was actually some kind of crossover from the alternate timeline? I don’t know how the logic would play out yet, but perhaps in that moment she somehow accessed another version of herself, wires got crossed through space and time…I don’t have a theory (of course), but when she snaps back to the present situation, she asks James to kiss her and after that says, “I have to tell you something. It’s really, really important.” She dies before she can say any more.

Remember Charlotte’s dying moments, and how she was also drifting in and out of the present?  Her mind would slip away, and when she returned from one of those slips she told Daniel that she remembered him from her childhood, warning her that she had to leave the island and never come back. Of course that hadn’t happened yet because Daniel had not yet existed in her childhood. Did Juliet experience something similar? After he buries her with help from Miles, Sawyer asks him to use his ability to find out what she wanted to tell him. Miles reluctantly obliges and gets an answer: “It worked.”

So Juliet went from saying that the plan didn’t work, to making some random comment about going out for coffee to recognizing Sawyer back in the moment and then trying to tell him that it did work (though he doesn’t seem to know what she means). What exactly transpires in that brief encounter to change her mind, and if it does involve a connection between Juliet on the island and Juliet somewhere off the island, how does that work? And if Juliet is off the island in the alternate reality, does that mean she never came to the island? Could it be that there was never an issue with pregnant women dying there? Maybe the release of electromagnetic energy at the Swan explosion is what caused that epidemic, which would mean it didn’t happen in the alternate timeline. Or is that even a moot point because the island has been underwater – a fact that in and of itself probably would have killed pregnant women. And non-pregnant women. And men, children, dogs, cats and so forth.

Have we still not talked about that yet? Later…

Jack admits there’s nothing he can do to help Sayid, so Hurley takes charge on Jacob’s instructions. Leaving Sawyer and Miles behind to bury Juliet, Jin leads Jack, Kate and Hurley, with Sayid being carried, to the wall around The Temple. Inside the tunnels, they hear whispering and are quickly captured and brought out the other side, where we see what looks like a large Buddhist monastery. This is The Temple.

THE OTHER OTHERS
They’re brought to the entrance, where a tough looking Japanese man, accompanied by a white translator, asks who they are. The question is answered by Cindy, the 815 flight attendant we saw in the opening scene and who disappeared while the Tailies were crossing the island with Sawyer, Jin and Michael. She was last seen in Season Three, briefly talking to Jack while he was in one of the polar bear cages on Hydra Island. He yelled at her, asking what she was doing there with the Others, but she just walked away.

“I know who they are,” she says now. “They were on the first plane, Oceanic 815, along with me.” What does she mean by the first plane? Is the second plane Ajira 316? At first I wondered how they would know about that plane, but I guess Jacob could have told them. Still, there’s something about that line…

The Japanese guy, who I’m gonna call Mr. Miyagi until we learn his real name, orders Jack and the others to be shot. Why this quick decision to dispose of them? Hurley shouts that Jacob sent them there to help their wounded friend. When asked for proof, Hurley points to the guitar case. Mr. Miyagi opens it and finds a large ankh, which at first I assumed was one of the two held by the statue. But it’s probably not large enough, and it also looks different than the statue’s. What do you think?

Miyagi breaks open the ankh and finds a piece of paper inside. Continuing to speak through his translator, who I’ll call Daniel-san for now, he asks for their names, silently acknowledging as he hears them that they’re on the list. Daniel-san instructs his people to bring Sayid to “the spring.” As Miyagi heads inside, Hurley yells out. “Hey! I carried that case across the ocean and like, through time! So I wanna know what that paper says.” Daniel-san replies, “That paper said that if you’re friend there dies, we’re all in a lot of trouble.”

Typical vague Others answer. Thanks for nothing, Daniel-san. I hope you get your ass kicked by Cobra Kai.

In trying to briefly consider why Jacob and now Miyagi and Daniel-san are so concerned about Sayid’s survival, and what the significance of this list is, I wondered if it had something to do with a grand battle for souls. Not that exactly, but the idea that there is this struggle going on between Jacob and the Man in Black, and like in a game of chess, each player is trying to collect pieces. If Sayid dies, it’s a victory for the Man in Black. If he survives, or if he dies under perhaps different circumstances, it’s a victory for Jacob. Again, this consideration was brief because it doesn’t make much sense and I don’t have the time or the brain power to make the pieces fit. It was just a fragmented idea that crossed my mind, especially when I thought about that Spanish Season Six commercial I linked to in an earlier message, which portrayed the characters as players on a chess board. Anyway…

When they arrive at the spring, the water is dirty and brown, which alarms Miyagi and Daniel-san. “The water isn’t clear,” says the latter. “What happened?” So this pool of water has healing powers. Obviously this is where Richard took Young Ben to save his life. Ironic that Young Ben’s would-be killer must now be saved in the same waters.

Miyagi slices his hand and dips it into the spring, but it doesn’t heal. Then they ask Jack who did this to Sayid. Jack says that although he didn’t shoot him, it was his fault. Why does this matter? Why do they want to know who is responsible before trying to save him? Would they perhaps not have tried the spring depending on how or at whose hands the wound occurred?

“If we do this, there are risks,” Daniel-san says. “Do you understand?”  Jack answers, “Do what you have to do,” which raises eyebrows from Jin and Kate. I might have asked, “Gee, what risks? Tell me more.” But not Jack. As Miyagi’s men carry Sayid into the spring, he unveils a large hourglass. As Sayid is lowered in, Miyagi flips it and the sand begins to fall. Jack, Kate, Hurley and Jin watch with worry as Sayid starts moving around, slowly at first, then thrashing. They say he’s okay and that he can be let up now, but they continue to hold him underwater while Miyagi watches the sand fall. Hurley yells “You’re not saving him, you’re drowning him!” but Miyagi still waits for the sand to run out. By the time it does, Sayid’s movements have slowed and stopped. They bring him out and lay him down on a rug.

“Your friend is dead,” Daniel-san says. He and Miyagi exit the chamber with their men, leaving Jack and the rest alone. Jack starts trying to perform CPR on Sayid, but Kate makes him stop. I couldn’t help but think of Jack and Kate finding Charlie hanging from a tree, and Jack’s refusal to give up his attempt to revive him even while Kate begged him to stop. Jack’s efforts with Charlie worked. This time, he listens to Kate and stops trying.

Cindy brings them some food, helped by Zack and Emma, the two kids from the tail section who were being protected by Ana Lucia and Eko until they were taken. A moment later, Sawyer and Miles are brought in, having been captured in the jungle. (I wonder – is Miles’ name on that list from the ankh?)

Daniel-san brings Hurley into Mr. Miyagi’s Bonsai Emporium, where they ask what Jacob told him. Hurley answers he was told to bring Sayid here so they could save him. “He was beyond saving,” Daniel-san says with a tone that suggests Jacob would have known that. After Hurley asks why Daniel-san isn’t translating back to Miyagi and Miyagi says that he doesn’t like the way English tastes on his tongue, he asks through Daniel-san when Jacob is due to arrive.

H: What do you mean?
D:  Is he coming to the Temple?
H:  I really don’t think that’s gonna happen, man. [Miyagi looks up at this point]
D: Why not?
H: You know…cause he’s dead. What, you guys didn’t know?

Miyagi turns to Hurley, his face mixed with sadness and fear, and suddenly all the Temple folk are jumping to defensive positions at his orders. Outside, people are pouring ash all around the perimeter while others launch a large flare that emits bursts of red high in the sky.

When Hurley, watching the commotion, comments that it looks like they aren’t leaving, Daniel-san says, “This isn’t to keep you in. It’s to keep him out.”

SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT
Off that cue, let’s return to the statue, where we last left Ben and the Man in Locke in 2007 immediately after killing Jacob. Ben is still in shock that Locke is apparently not Locke anymore, and almost as disturbed that he’s just killed Jacob and that the man did nothing to defend himself. The Man in Locke asks him to go and send in Richard, who we find outside arguing with Ilana and Bram after they’ve shown him the real Locke’s body. Bram wants to go inside the statue, and Richard isn’t keen to let that happen just because they show up asking what lies in the shadow of the statue. When Ben arrives, he says that both Locke and Jacob are fine and that they want Richard to go in. Richard throws Ben down on the ground in front of the real Locke, freaking Ben out even more.

Ben re-enters the chamber to tell Man in Locke that Richard wouldn’t come. But behind him is Bram and his team, save for Ilana. Why did she remain outside? She’s maintaining a fairly calm and reasonable demeanor, while Bram is more hot-headed. When Bram and his men shoot at Man in Locke, he runs behind a wall or column and disappears. Bram finds a flattened bullet on the ground, and moments later the Smoke Monster comes tearing through the room, thrashing them all around. Bram pulls out a sack of ash and makes a circle around himself which Smokey can’t cross. He/it uses falling debris to knock Bram outside the ash, then swoops in for the kill; Bram winds up impaled on a piece of broken wood. Smokey retreats, leaving Ben alone in the chamber with the bodies. A moment later, he turns around terrified. Man in Locke is back. “I’m sorry you had to see me like that.”

So that was…big. After last season’s finale, there was a fair amount of speculation out there that the Man in Black and Smokey might be one and the same. I’m sure some of you called it. I didn’t, but I was familiar with the theory. But knowing what we do now doesn’t scratch our “What is the Smoke Monster?” question off the list. Like all of Lost‘s mysteries, every question answered raises more. First of all, it seems that Smokey is relatively free to move around the island. He couldn’t get past the Dharma pylons and he can’t cross that ash for some reason (more on that later), but otherwise he gets around. But what is his modus operandi? Think about his past appearances. Sometimes he kills indiscriminately (Flight 815’s pilot Seth Norris, Nadine from Rousseau’s team), sometimes he seems to kill with purpose (Mr. Eko) and sometimes he doesn’t kill at all. Sometimes he takes on other forms (Eko’s brother Yemi, Ben’s daughter Alex). Why did he leave Locke alone the first time they came upon each other? Why didn’t he kill Mr. Eko the first time they met, when Charlie was there too? Why didn’t he kill all of Keamy’s mercenary team?

In fact, how is it that Ben was able to summon him for that attack on Keamy’s crew? Does he always have to come if called? And what are we to make of last season’s episode Dead is Dead, in which Locke led Ben to the tunnels around The Temple because that’s where he said the Monster would be? Once in the tunnel, the ground crumbled beneath Ben and he fell into a lower chamber (the hole he fell through is the same opening that Jack, Kate, Hurley and Jin had to carefully edge around with Sayid in this episode). Locke disappeared to get some rope, but then Ben found those openings on the ground from which the Smoke rose. But why did Man in Locke lead Ben there? Why not change into Smokey back at the Others’ barracks, or on Hydra Island? And if Miyagi and Daniel-san are so worried about the Man in Black getting into The Temple, wouldn’t that suggest that he must want to get to there? If he was so close that night with Ben, why not try then? Are those holes in the ground always where he comes from? If so, do the folks at The Temple know how close to them Smokey “lives?”

More to come on all of this, I expect.

Back in the statue chamber, Man in Locke offers Ben some insight into the man whose form he has taken, and the scene is both sad and chilling (it’s great to see Terry O’Quinn playing this new character, and doing so just as compellingly as he ever did with the real Locke).

Ben actually looks sad and remorseful as he listens to Locke talk about…Locke.

Outside, Richard sees the flares from The Temple go off. We can assume, based on his fearful reaction to this sight and the understanding that dawns on him, that these flares would only be used under these specific and dangerous circumstances. His realization is complete once he sees Locke emerge with Ben from the chamber and walk toward him.

Where is he going? Why is he disappointed in them? What chains is he referring to? That remark further frightened Richard. Could Richard have been among the prisoners on the Black Rock?

DELAYED REACTION
At The Temple, everyone sits around in a somber state. Hurley says a quiet goodbye to Sayid, and notices Miles has a quizzical look on his face as if something strange is going on. I liked that little bit of foreshadowing.

Daniel-san appears, looking for Jack.

D: You’re Shephard?
J:  Yeah.
D: We need to speak to you privately.
J:   If you got something to say to me then say it. Otherwise just leave me alone.
D:  I don’t think you’re understanding me here. I’m asking politely. You either get up and come with us on your own or I’ll have you dragged out. Because we are going to have this conversation and it’s not going to be here.

A few of the Others grab for Jack, who puts up a fight, but both Hurley and Daniel-san become distracted by something that prompts the former to yell Jack’s name in alarm. Everyone stops and turns. “Oh my god!” says Daniel-san.

Sayid is sitting up. He looks around him, a bit confused, as if he’s just caught his breath.

“What happened?” he asks.

I think he speaks for all of us.

LOOSE ENDS/FOOD FOR THOUGHT
-After telling Hurley that he should keep the lottery win to himself, Sawyer steals a few more furtive glances at the big guy, including one as they both deplane. Did anyone else get the feeling that the con man has just zeroed in on a new target?

-Seeing Claire in the cab that Kate jumps into is a nice set-up. I’m looking forward to seeing where that goes, and I casually wonder: with Claire now in Los Angeles to give her baby up for adoption (assuming that in this timeline, she’s still pregnant and adoption is still her plan), will we meet the adoptive parents that were arranged by the psychic Richard Malkin, and the real question, will they be people that we’ve met before?

-Probably meaningless, but just as Boone was not in Locke’s row on the original Flight 815, neither was the passenger in between them, who you might remember as Neil (aka Frogurt), an 815 survivor who was violently felled by three flaming arrows on the beach last season. He’s the guy who yells at Kate when she first tries to grab a taxi.

-It appears that Ilana is now the only member of her team that is left. She came over from Hydra Island with Bram and three other men (not including Lapidus). They were all killed by Smokey.

-We learned a little more about the ash that surrounded Jacob’s cabin. If the Smoke Monster can not cross the ash, and if he has been trying to kill Jacob for all this time, then Jacob must have been safe as long as he was in the cabin. But how does Christian Shephard’s occupation of the cabin relate to that? Remember that when Ilana and her team visited the cabin in last season’s finale, the circle of ash had been broken. This worried her, and after going inside and finding nothing but a cloth with a drawing of the statue pinned to the wall by a knife, she returned and said, “He isn’t there. Hasn’t been for a long time. Someone else has been using it.”

How long has Jacob not been there? We first visited the cabin in Season Three’s episode The Man Behind the Curtain. Ben has since admitted that he was only pretending to talk to Jacob at the time, but then things started flying around the room and Locke heard a voice say, “Help me.” We also saw that creepy, super-close-up eye. So what if the cabin’s purpose more recently has not been to protect Jacob, but to imprison the Man in Black, with the circle of ash preventing him from getting out? It would be sort of like the end of Superman II – General Zod forces Superman to enter a chamber in the Fortress of Solitude which will strip him of his powers, but in fact Superman somehow reverses it so that he is safely enclosed in the chamber while Zod, Ursula and Non lose their powers.

The problem with that theory is that Smoke Monster, as I mentioned earlier, seems to have roamed the island freely. But maybe there are different rules governing where he can go and what he can do when he is in Smoke form vs. when he’s in human form. Maybe he can’t harm Jacob in his smoke form. But if the cabin was his prison, as opposed to Jacob’s shelter, and if he’s been stuck there for a long time, it would have been him who said, “Help me” when Locke and Ben visited. It might be his eye that we saw that night and again the next time we saw the cabin, which was in the Season Four premiere The Beginning of the End. In that episode, Hurley found the cabin – in a different location than the one Locke and Ben visited – and that was when we first saw Christian Shephard inside. So this theory is shaky, but I could see the idea panning out somehow.

-Maybe it was just me, but when Sayid sat up and spoke, it did not sound like his voice to me. Granted, he only said two words, it was quick and he was just sort of coming back to life, so his voice might have needed a minute or two to recover. But did anyone else get the sense that he didn’t sound like himself?

-I don’t think I mentioned this in my write-up of the Season Five finale, but as a point of interest, the island statue was revealed to be the Egyptian goddess Taweret, representing birth, rebirth, fertility and the northern sky.

-Oh yeah, speaking of the statue, why is it – and the rest of the island – underwater? The revelation of that image at the end of the pre-credits sequence was a pretty major WTF moment. But as we never come back to it, and so much happens in the episode, I had forgotten all about it by the end. I don’t even have the smallest kernel of a half-baked theory to explain this one; I only have a question. Did we see the island in its final resting place, leaving us to wait and see how it comes to be there, or will it rise from the water before all is said and done? (In a cool nod to the show’s past, the shark that swims by just before we see the statue’s foot is branded with a Dharma logo, just like the one that circled Sawyer and Michael on the remains of the raft in Season Two’s episode Adrift.)

-If you don’t watch the Jimmy Kimmel link I included earlier, then you’ll miss the announcement that the final episode of Lost will air on May 23, which is a Sunday. Maybe they thought they could get more people to watch in real time rather than with On Demand, DVR or online if they did it on a Sunday instead of a Tuesday. Knowing that there are 18 hours of show this year and that both the season premiere and finale are two hours, it looks like we’ll only have one week during the season that doesn’t include a new episode. Which is one week too many.

-The premiere wasn’t as confusing as Matthew Fox and Emile de Ravin’s comments made it out to be. It’s unfolding was straightforward enough, and the flash-sideways concept was clear early on. The question now becomes, “How will these two timelines reconcile?” I’ve said this before, but Damon and Carlton have always rejected the idea of the show relying on the “alternate reality” hook because it removes the dramatic stakes for all the characters and therefore the audience. So I’ve been thinking more about the sideways device and my earlier question about whether or not we’ll see Boone and Charlie again. What occurred to me, which I hadn’t thought about initially, is that this other timeline isn’t just a gimmick offering the fun of a “what if?” scenario. I guess my thinking had been that the events we’ve observed over the past five seasons are what really happened, and now we have this other timeline that will be fun to follow but which will eventually go away, leaving us with the timeline we’ve invested in – where Charlie, Boone and many others are dead, where Desmond pushed the button, where pregnant women die on the island, etc. etc. But we wouldn’t be exploring this other timeline if there weren’t an excellent reason for doing so. We’re too far along, with too much to cover, to just have a nostalgic detour. Whatever happens in Los Angeles 2004 must have seismic ramifications on the island. Yes, this timeline still has to go away in the end (doesn’t it?), but before it does it will likely set the stage for the endgame of Lost, and I’m practically shivering with anticipation to see how that happens. Perhaps Juliet’s coffee remark and Jack’s reaction to Desmond offer our first clues.

The show really has an exciting challenge ahead of it, which is to resolve this meta-story of the island’s history and the conflict between Jacob and the Man in Black which has defined it, while also bringing each character’s personal journey to a conclusion that is meaningful both in and of itself and on that larger canvas. It would be impossible to do that and answer every question that has come up along the way, but if they can accomplish those two feats with a high degree of satisfaction, we will have been along for the unfolding of a truly brilliant work of popular art.

Can they do it? Like John Locke, I’m a man of faith.

I hope that doesn’t mean someone I know is going to choke me to death.

LINE OF THE NIGHT
“I’m seein’ it, but I’m still not believin’ it.” – Frank, as the Man in Locke walks across the beach toward Richard. The line is nothing special, but Jeff Fahey’s delivery? Classic.

Tonight’s Episode: What Kate Does