LA X: The Season Premiere of Lost

“Well this is going to be awesome…”

It certainly was Hurley.  There was so much going on in that first episode, I’m not sure where to start.  We now know the answers to some of the questions, but are faced with three times as many questions to take their place!

Let’s start off with the biggest revelation:  Based on the events of last night, we see that Juliet setting off the bomb has created two separate time lines.  The first one we see supposes that the plane never crashed in 2004 because Juliet detonated the bomb that counteracted the electromagnetic energy of the Island resulting in the Swan Hatch never being built (which caused the crash in the first place).  I’m assuming the whole Island exploded (or sunk, I guess b/c it’s underwater) when the bomb went off.  So our beloved characters are now on a plane that actually lands at LA-X, and I’ll get to that in a minute.  The question is what happened to everyone on the Island at the time of the explosion (Dharma people, the Others, etc)?  Do they all die?  And do Jacob and the Man in Black know about this alternate timeline?

Our second timeline follows the explosion of the bomb.  Here’s where I’m more confused.  I don’t understand why none of the characters died.  Why did they jump to 2007? Did everyone else go with them? What happened to the bomb?  Did it disappear? 

Anyway, the writers have a lot more explaining to do.  However let’s get to what we have noticed. On the plane first:

While we’ve moved back to 2004, right before the plane crashed, things aren’t the same as they were before.  Jack’s conversation with the flight attendant is a little different as is his conversation with Rose.  Hurley now thinks he’s the “luckiest guy alive” while he clearly wasn’t thinking that before.  Sun still seems to know English (maybe), but Charlie is worse off than before wanting to kill himself.  Boone never brought Shannon back with him.  Locke doesn’t seem as upset about his injury.  And the biggest difference of all—Desmond is on the plane and then kind of disappears.

However while there are lots of differences, we also start to see some of the same things that happened on the Island happen in this alternate time-line.  Jin telling Sun to button her shirt, Boone telling Locke, “If this thing goes down, I’m sticking with you,” the Marshall being hit on the head by Kate in the same place the suitcase hit him on the head the first time, Jack looking for pens to save someone’s life.  I’m sure there are more things I didn’t pick up on.  So what are our writers telling us here?  That while the past can be changed, the course of some events will always play out…sounds a bit like fate/destiny.

Side note:  How much fun was it to see some of the minor characters from the past?  Doc Arzt, Frogurt and Bernard and Rose ( I love them!).

I think the most important scene we saw from that timeline was the last encounter between Jack and Locke (who I really loved getting to see as the same Season 1 Locke again).  First there’s the fact that the coffin and the knives disappeared.  Is that because they both have some kind of connection to John Locke?  Are they kind of like a connection between both times?  Something like a constant?  Then there’s the exchange about John’s paralysis and Jack remarking that, “Nothing is irreversible.”  What’s interesting is that Jack always had that viewpoint, he doesn’t give up on trying to save people even when it seems like they’re dead, but that also implies a lot about choice and human capability.  We can alter our destinies.

I really liked this timeline and I’m looking forward to seeing how it’s going to interact with the other timeline that’s going on.  So onto the Island and our 2007 timeline:

First let me say, Juliet was still alive!  I swear the writers originally intended for her to die last season and because fan reaction to her and Sawyer’s relationship was so strong, they gave us that last scene with them together.  :)  Thanks guys.  The big question Juliet’s scenes do raise is how did she know, “It worked.”?  It seemed like at first she didn’t think it did, but in her last moments she received some kind of premonition about the other timeline?

The whole Jacob vs. MIB thing:  I’m sticking to the theory I previously came up with and adding a little more to it.  Jacob picked our 8 characters Jack, Kate, Sayid, Hurley, Sawyer, Sun, Jin and Locke specifically. He has a special purpose and mission for each of them.  I wonder if he knew when he picked Locke that Locke would be the one instrumental in his death, but picked him anyway because he knew it had to happen.  It had to erupt into this final war.  (Kind of like Jesus picking Judas as one of his disciples.  He knew Judas was going to betray him, but He picked him anyway because He knew that was the way things had to happen.)  I think the MIB/ Smoke Monster’s objective is definitely to get everyone off the Island, but I’m still not sure what exactly Jacob’s motives are. Yes he wants to prove that people can use their free will for good, but what does this have to do with the temple and the Island?

I am actually feeling more and more sorry for Ben.  The series recap that aired before made me remember how evil he has been in the past, but then to see his face and his confusion when the fake-Locke/Man in Black was revealed to be the smoke monster was pitiful.  Poor Ben.  He has always been the manipulative one, and now he realizes he has been the one being manipulated all along. 

Small but significant point: the book Hurley picked up in the temple cave was by Kierkegaard a philosopher who was all about personal choice and is credited with inventing the idea of a “leap of a faith” or believing something without complete tangible proof.  Interesting…

And on the topic of philosophers, a lot of people have been saying the MIB’s name is Esau b/c he was Jacob’s twin brother and rival in the Bible.  And while that does make sense, I’m going to propose another name for him: Leviathan.  The Leviathan was a demonic monster from the Bible which fits very nicely with MIB (although I think in the Bible, it’s more sea serpent than smoke monster).  It’s also the title of the book the philosopher, Thomas Hobbes, wrote which states that human lives are naturally “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” which it seems like MIB’s point of view.

Some more questions:

• Jacob’s bodyguards—they came to this Island to protect him?  Why?  How did they contact him?  How did he recruit them?  How does he have his influence over these people not from the Island?
• The MIB tells Ben, “I want to go home.”  Where is his home?  The temple?  Has he been exiled from there?
• What does the water in the temple do and why did it turn murky?
• The MIB tells Richard, “It’s good to see you out of those chains.”  Does this mean that Richard was one of the slaves on The Black Rock and somehow Jacob freed him and gave him the power of agelessness?
• Why did Cindy and the kids get to join the temple people?
• And I guess the big cliffhanger for next week is what’s going on with Sayid?  Is he Sayid or is something else now Sayid?