*Spoilers*

We’re finally into the last season of Lost, and a lot of fans are nervous about how credible the show will be at the very end. Will it answer all of those questions we’ve been wondering about? Some of the questions we were worried might never be answered already have been, especially concerning things like the Dharma Initiative. But what about the smoke monster, the “ghosts,” Richard’s ageless-ness, and most importantly, if they’ll go back on the idea that it isn’t possible to change the future in the past.

Somehow, the writers have found a way to have their cake and eat it to by having the atomic bomb from last season change the future AND not change the future. There are several scenes inersperced with the island scenes showing an alternate version of flight 815, and it seems to be a timeline in which the island doesn’t exist, or least, is underwater, as suggested by a CGI sequence showing the foot of the statue underwater. These scenes were really great because they were alternate versions of scenes we saw in the pilot and in several flashbacks throughout the series. Now we actually see Bernard on the plane, because he has a chance to come back from the bathroom since the plane doesn’t crash. Charley doesn’t flush his cocaine because people aren’t knocking on the door while the plane’s about to go down. And Hurley isn’t causing bad luck with his lottery winnings because the numbers aren’t associated with the island anymore.

This is all fascinating, but it raises a couple of obvious, new questions. 1. If the island isn’t bringing all these people together, something else is, because even after the plane lands in Los Angeles, a lot of people meet each other who seemed fated to the first time around. Locke and Jack, Kate and Sawyer, etc. What’s bringing them together this time if the bomb burried the island in the ocean? 2. Would Jacob have manipulated the lives of the members of 815 if there was no island? I still don’t fully know what his agenda is, but after the flashbacks last season of him meeting a lot of our main characters in ways that seemed to at least help them eventually get to the island, I assumed he wanted this to happen. But the same has to be true of this timeline– Jacob has to be doing things to eventually get everyone on that plane. The biggest proof of this is Locke– without Jacob, he would have died after being thrown out of that building by his father.

It looks like the smoke monster is finally going to be explained, and it also seems like it’s the most important thing on the island. Looks like it and Jacob have been at an enormous power struggle. I’ve had a lot of different ideas about the smoke monster. At one point during season four, I thought maybe it was something machanical, controlled by whoever was in charge of the Others. At the end of that season, Ben goes into a back room, and then the smoke monster appears, so I though maybe he was controlling it. Obviously, I was wrong about that. I later thought maybe all the “ghosts” we meet (Christian, Charlie, Anna Lucia, etc) were really the smoke monster. Maybe it could appear as dead people, kind of like the First in season seven of Buffy. Or maybe it was made up of everyone who died on the island, which would explain why they all had the same personalities, more or less, and why they had those memories. I now think that theory is closer, but it’s still not spot-on because we see some “ghosts” off-island, especially Christian, and we’re told in this episode that the smoke monster wants to leave.

I think it’s a combination of two things, now. There have been a few points in the series (and I need to go back and re-watch some things to find out exactly where), in which the smoke monster appears after a “ghost” does. I think sometimes the ghosts really are ghosts– don’t know what the explanation will be for that– but sometimes they’re the smoke monster. Somehow the smoke monster has the memories of whoever it appears as– maybe it can assimilate information out of someone’s brain after they die, considering it appears as Locke, yards away from Locke’s actual body, and seems to know everything Locke knows. I love the idea of the smoke monster appearing as John Locke by the way, but I don’t think this is the first time it’s taken human form.

Obviously, the two timelines are both happening simultaneously. Both seem to be valid. The bomb created the new one, but somehow left the old one intact. I don’t think they’ll stay that way, though. I think eventually they’ll converge somehow– either the new versions of our characters will wind up meeting the old ones, or more likely, some will trade places somehow. Jack 2 might switch places with Jack 1, etc. Sounds absurd, but then again, most of season 5 had Jack and company working in the Dharma Initiative. If this isn’t the direction they’re going, I don’t know what the point is of this new timeline. I also wonder if this isn’t the first time another timeline has been created. Daniel told us over and over again that the future can’t be changed in the past, but somehow this explosion created what looks like an alternate timeline. What’s to say that other times characters tried to change things didn’t also create new timelines?

The other reason I think these timelines have to converge somehow is because this new format is taking the place of flashbacks and flash-forwards. The flashbacks were always directly related to what was happening in the present, and the present eventually caught up to the flash-forwards. If we can consider this a pattern, then the two timelines have to directly connect somehow.

LLAP

-Cap’n Logan

*SPOILER WARNING* 

I was a little worried after the previous episode, when Ben only managed to wrangle together some of the Oceanic Six (Sayid, Hurley, and Aaron were still missing) that we were going to have to watch Jack and the others try to get everyone together the entire season. After all, it took them all of last season to get off the island, so it only stood to reason that it would take them all of this season to get back on. Boy, was I mistaken. And boy, was it good.

Despite the somewhat hokey plot device of a giant pendulum that Dharma apparently used to find the island in the first place, “316″ shot the series waaaay forward, in a very unpredictable twist of getting everyone (except Aaron… gee, anybody else think that’s important??) on a plane and back to the island. Turns out John was right about fate the whole time, as he says in his “suicide” note addressed to Jack, “I wish you had believed me.” There seem to be way too many coincidences here, showing us that the island is calling everyone back to it. Because there’s just no explaining Sayid and Frank being there (which I’m really excited about– I loved Frank last season!), and of course, the fact that the plane’s number is 316. Hurley seems to be less of a coincidence– someone, I think probably a ghost, must have told him they were all getting on this plane and that he had to be there. If I’m right, it could have been any number of ghosts, but my money’s on Libby. I also loved all the similarities between flight 815 and 316– Daniel’s mother may have told Jack to recreate the original flight as much as he could, but other things were similar without Jack’s help, especially the fact that Sayid was in custody, like Kate was the first time around.

I haven’t written on Lost in awhile, so I can’t help but pat myself on the back– last season, I called two major things that have already happened this year. 1. Jin’s alive, and 2. Locke tried to move the island.

I was also a little worried about all the time flashes for a while, that too many of them were contrived just to fill in more pieces of the puzzle… but I don’t really mind. The stuff with Roseau and Jin has been really interesting, the early Dharma stuff has been handled well… the island’s a really interesting place like this, and now I almost don’t want the time flashes to stop!

So now that some balance has supposedly been restored with getting everyone back, I wonder if the time flashes will stop soon, or just slow down. After all, don’t they need Aaron there too? And what time period were they in at the end of this last episode? Why’s Jin wearing a Dharma uniform and driving one of those vans? It’s hard to speculate about much right now, because I never dreamed they’d get back to the island so quickly. There’s another season and a half left and I have no idea what direction the plot’s going! I’m excited.

I’m sure we’ll still get a few flashbacks here and there– they’ll probably show Locke off-island, before he killed himself, and they’ll probably show us how he killed himself. Plus, Desmond and Aaron are still off-island, so there should be more off-island stuff in the present. Looking forward to Wednesday…

LLAP

-Cap’n Logan