Oh, man. It’s the beginning of the final season and Lost came out swinging. I’m going to have to take a cue from them and get right into things, since it’s very late and everything happened.

Remember back when we our cast spread over two different eras? Yeah, that was kid’s stuff. We apparently have two different realities now! This is something I suspected back last season, but we have verification now. As seen in Fantastic Four comics, the Back to the Future trilogy, and Sliding Doors, what happens when you change the past is that you create a separate timeline. See, if Flight 815 never crashes, then Jack and the rest never end up on the Island to detonate the bomb, which means the Swan Station is built, and then Flight 815 crashes. Which allows Jack to set off the bomb that prevents it from crashing. It’s a paradox, and it would seem that Lost takes the position that you can’t change your own past, but you create a split in the timeline.

Actually, that’s exactly what happened in JJ Abrams’ version of Star Trek. The original timeline still existed (as evidence by the appearance of original Spock), but it co-existed alongside a new, altered timeline. It looks like that’s what happened here, since we’re cutting between our original Lostaways, and a strange, altered version.

We open with the now familiar scene on the plane, with Jack hitting the bottle and chatting with Rose. However, we do see that there are some changes. (Besides the “not crashing” thing, I mean.) Shannon never got on the plane, for one. And Hurley is the beloved Mr. Cluck’s spokesman, who’s had nothing but good luck since he won the lottery. And now Desmond is on the plane. Of course, detonating the bomb would mean that Desmond never spent years on the Island, so his presence is at least a possibility. And Hurley learned his numbers from somebody who heard Rousseau’s transmission. If the Island is underwater, there’s no transmission, so Hurley somehow won the lottery anyway, only now the numbers aren’t cursed. Now, a recurring idea in Lost is that things that are supposed to happen will end up happening. When Charlie was supposed to die, Desmond could save him again and again, but that just prolonged the inevitable. If Hurley is supposed to win the lottery, he’s going to win it.

By the way, on the flight, Desmond has a book by Salman Rushdie – presumably “The Satanic Verses”. There’s no way that’s not significant – they love hiding clues in books, and we know Des is a passionate reader. The fact that he has a book makes it important in and of itself. Further research will be necessary, I think. He and Jack vaguely recognize each other from that chance encounter in their past. You know, “See you in another life, brother”? Well, that’s actually what is happening here!

Anyway, after that first scene, we see that the Island is at the bottom of the ocean. Houses, statues, everything. And yes, we do get a reappearance of Season Two’s Dharma Shark. Everybody is showing up this season!

This was mind-blowing enough, but then we cut to the Island, and see Kate and Miles, at the site of the Swan. It’s not what they left behind – it’s the Hatch that imploded after Desmond turned the failsafe key. It would seem like that didn’t work at all, right? Really well-done job on the sound in this scene, by the way. They find Jack, and then Sawyer finds Jack, who promptly kicks Jack into the pit. Man, somebody should fill in that pit and turn it into a park before somebody breaks both their legs.

So there’s more fun stuff on the plane, as the Marshall takes Kate to the bathroom, and she manages to steal a pen when he’s not looking. Arzt makes a return appearance, recognizing Hurley from the commercials. I also like Sawyer suddenly taking an interest in the wealthy Hurley. Remember, this is the Season One version of Sawyer. That guy was bad news. By the way, I can’t be sure, but I’d be willing to bet that Steve and Scott, the background guys from the first season, are on the plane somewhere.

Back in the past, Sayid is in rough shape. Yeah, he kind of got forgotten in all the chaos at the end last year. Neither he nor Hurley has experienced a time flash before, but Jin’s gotten good at it by now. In a setup for a joke that really made me laugh, Jin mentions that he found a flashlight. The rescue team hears Juliet calling out from beneath the rubble, while at the same time, a dying Sayid fears for his soul. “When I die, what do you think will happen to me?” As Jin goes out to find Kate and the others, Jacob appears to Hurley. Yeah, that’s right.

In another reality, we see some of our other parallel Lostaways. Jin is still a jerk. Locke is, of course, reading the pamphlet on airline safety. Boone makes an appearance, and I love that he chats with Locke and decides he’ll stick with him if there’s a crash. Hee. Also, note that Neil Frogurt is napping between the two of them. He was that creepy guy who popped up in a couple of the Verizon mini-episodes, and last season he loaned a shirt to Sawyer, before getting shot with a flaming arrow. Also, this is really nice acting on Terry O’Quinn’s part – when he talks about going on a walkabout, he sells the idea that he actually went on one, but there’s an air of regret to it. I really wanted to believe that in this world, Locke got what he wanted. This was short-lived.

I’m going to need a nickname for Fake Locke. Come up with something good, and I’ll give you bonus points and my eternal gratitude. Until then, we have Fake Locke and Benry in the statue. Benry looks traumatized – he can’t believe what he just did, and that Jacob didn’t fight back. And as spunkbuddy Sean pointed out, when he kicked Jacob in to the fire, that guy burned up in no time flat. He was apparently made of oily rags and kindling. Anyway, Fake Locke tells Benry to bring in Richard “Batmanuel” Alpert. Richard has his own problems outside, as Ilana wants to enter the statue. She claims that she’s been invited by Jacob, but Richard is just trying to keep order. I really love how he treats Benry here, smacking him around and forcing him to look at Locke’s body. I think this is the first time that Benry was not a step ahead of everybody else. Now he knows how the rest of us feel!

Over at the Swan, Sawyer and the rest are digging out rubble to find Juliet. I love that Jin immediately turns on this flashlight. In his last scene, he told us about the flashlight. In this scene, he turns it on. It’s Chekhov’s Flashlight! Meanwhile, Jacob gives Hurley some direction – he needs to take Sayid to the temple, and Jin can lead them there. That’s where Smokey attacked Rousseau’s team! Also, Jacob confirms that he is dead, so only Hurley can see him. Who knew that plotline was going to turn out to be important? Very cool. Also important? The guitar case, which Hurley will need to bring along.

In another world, Flight 815 needs a doctor. Also, they need a cool Middle Eastern guy to kick in the bathroom door – Charlie is on the toilet, not breathing. Jack needs something sharp to open up an airway, and asks Sayid to find a pen. Remember the very first episode? Boone thought Jack would need a pen for just that purpose, so Jack sent him out to find pens. Mostly, though, Jack was just trying to get Boone to leave him alone so he could save lives. I initially thought Charlie had OD’d, but it turns out, he choked on his heroin stash. Man, he’s even bad at being a junkie.

You know, between the recap episode, the “Previously on Lost…”, and the flashback early in the episode, we saw Juliet plummet down the mineshaft three times tonight. That was pretty rough. Finally, Sawyer gets to her, and I really want everything to be OK, but rationally I know that she fell about 60 feet, had a ton of debris fall on her, and got a starring role on V. This is not going to end well.

Over by the statue, some big stuff happens. Bram and some more of Jacob’s chosen people follow Benry back into the statue. They open fire on Fake Locke, to no avail. Bram actually finds a bullet that flattened out when it hit him. And then, Smoke Attack! Smokey is absolutely savage here, slaughtering everybody. It’s particularly gruesome when it snaps one guy’s spine. Bram sprinkles some ash in a circle and stands inside it, and Smokey can’t touch him. You see this in magic – an unbroken circle offers protection. More specifically, we saw it last season. There was a circle of ash around Jacob’s cabin, but Ilana and her people broke the circle when they stepped on it. It was either there to keep something in, or to keep something out. Either way, probably a bad idea to go smudging it. It might be worth noting that as he’s standing in the circle, a beam of while light shines down right above Bram’s head.

This is cool, because we see Smokey use some intelligence here – it can’t touch Bram, so it tosses rubble at him, and knocks him out of the circle. With everybody but Benry dead, Fake Locke returns and says “I’m sorry you had to see me like that”. Hee. Also, we’ve got confirmation that Fake Locke is Smokey. That seemed likely last season, but it’s always good to have facts.

Oh man. We start getting into the heartbreaking scenes here. Juliet and Sawyer share a kiss, and she says she has something important to tell him. But she dies from her wounds before she gets the chance. Wow. I mean, it didn’t look good for her last year, and she has that other job, but it was still a shock. Juliet’s been really important to the show for three years now, and I’m going to miss her. Rest in Peace, Juliet Burke.

On the plane, Jack resuscitates Charlie, who says “I was supposed to die”. He’s probably just being a rock star, but we know that he really was supposed to die. In a nice touch, the voice of the pilot in this scene is Greg Grunberg, who played the pilot back in the first episode. But more importantly, Desmond has disappeared. Dude can’t just disappear from a plane while it’s in flight!

Once the plane lands, Locke just kills me. Hearing him talk about his walkabout, I really wanted to believe that in this world, things turned out better for him. Stand up, Locke. Stand up! Nope. The staff brings him a wheelchair, and the look of embarrassment and pain on his face is absolutely heartbreaking.

That’s technically where the first episode ends, but we got two full hours this week! So we see Jack in the airport, where he learns that the airline misplaced his father’s body. Not that they didn’t load it on the plane, necessarily. It just doesn’t seem to be anywhere. So what if that coffin was properly loaded on the plane, and then somehow disappeared? Just like Desmond? See, I would have thought Desmond’s disappearance was the universe trying to right itself again, and getting rid of an unnecessary element. However, Christian’s body was on the original flight. And if both Desmond and Christian disappeared from the plane while in flight, where did they end up? Do they even exist in this world anymore?

On the Island, as Jack, Kate, Sawyer, and Hurley take Sayid into the temple, Sawyer and Miles go off to bury Juliet. And here we answer a small question. Last season, Smokey grabbed one of the Frenchmen, tore his arm off, and pulled him down the hole. Before Jin jumped in time, we heard the captured guy yell that he was fine. Well, they find the skeleton of a guy with a missing arm, and a backpack containing books in French. Smokey was totally trying to trick Rousseau’s team! “You guys, it’s totally fun down here! There’s a waterslide, and absolutely nothing that will toss you against a wall until you die!” The book we see is by Kiergegaard, and the title translates to “Fear and Trembling”. I’ll get more into that for next week’s pre-game, as it’s much too late at night to start doing the necessary research.

Anyway, down in the catacombs, they lose track of Kate. Jack goes to find her, and ends up lost. And then, a guy in a turban punches him in the face. If you tell me you saw that coming, I will call you a liar.

In LA, Kate tries to pick the lock on her handcuffs using the pen she stole while pretending to tinkle. She drops the spring, which is what I always thought was the part you really needed. The Marshall catches on, but she hits him with the door and just pounds on him. In a nice touch, he gets a cut the left side of his forehead, which is where the falling luggage hit him in the plane crash. The universe just wants that guy to hurt his head! She finally gets into an elevator, where Sawyer distracts security and helps her escape. By the way, nice job with giving this version of Sawyer his Season One haircut. They did a good job with the details here.

On the Island, Sawyer wants Miles to use his power to talk to Juliet. In fact, he grinds Miles’ face into the grave. The message Miles gets is “It worked”. What does that mean? The bomb? Because that sort of didn’t work. Well, it created another timeline, apparently, but it didn’t help the here and now Lostaways. What does she mean? Do we have to wait until her ghost appears to Hurley?

OK, big huge reveal here. Jack and the rest have been taken in by a group of mostly Asian and Middle Eastern men. I feel like that’s worth noting because generally the Others have been pretty WASP-y. And look at the way they’re dressed? These aren’t suburban types like the Others. There is an Asian man leading them, who has no name in the episode, or on IMDB. There is Lennon, played by Jon Hawkes – we know him as Sol on Deadwood, and we know how Lost loves casting the Deadwood guys. And then there’s Cindy the flight attendant! Remember how she disappeared when crossing the Island with the rest of the tail section? Yeah.

Actually, look back at how the Others were portrayed in Season Two. In one episode, Jin and Sawyer hide from a group of them – we only see their muddy, bare feet. The Tail Section folks claim that they walk without leaving footprints. And then when we met the Others, they were mostly dressed casually and hung out in houses. That always seemed weird to me. Also, we never saw Cindy back in Otherville, even after she supposedly joined up with them. And here’s why. This group is the group that lurks through the forests in their bare feet. These people are other Others! They live in the temple, as opposed to the old Dharma camp. And yes, we finally get a glimpse of the temple within the walls. It is very large and imposing.

While Lennon wants to shoot them and get it over with, Hurley namedrops Jacob. And then, we get to see inside the guitar case – it’s a giant wooden ankh. Just like the ones the statue held, back when it was still standing. They break it open to find a message. They ask the Lostaways for their names, and this is really kind of awesome. Remember how the Others always used to talk about Jacob’s lists? He has a list of good people, or there’s a list of people they need to take from the tail section. Well, now we’re seeing an actual physical list with names on it! Who knew that he actually had a list? Apparently, Benry tells half-truths some of the time. Satisfied that these people are in league with Jacob, Lennon says to bring Sayid to the spring.

In LA, Jin’s having translation troubles, and the huge sums of money in his suitcase aren’t making him less suspicious. Remember, this is the angry Jin of Season One, and he does not take kindly to being inconvenienced. Sun lets him get taken away by security rather than reveal that she speaks English. Wow, these characters really have come a long way in the last five years. It’s really weird to see them as their old selves now.

I may be crazy here, but this spring that they’re bring the wounded Sayid to? Do you think that’s where Richard brought Young Benry when he was shot? Lennon even echoes Richard’s statement from that episode “There are risks”. And then, they toss Sayid in the water and hold him under until he stops struggling. Then the Asian guy is surprised that he’s dead. Cause of death? Probably drowning. Jack tries to resuscitate him, while Kate protests. It’s almost an exact duplicate of the scene where Jack tried to save Charlie after Ethan left him hanging from a tree.

Meanwhile, the other version of Kate sneaks through the airport and tries to steal Frogurt’s cab. He’s not having any of that, so she finds another cab and puts the Marshall’s gun to the driver’s head and tells him to get her out of there. You may recognize the driver as Doyle, the puppetmaster from Heroes. But given the ratings on Heroes this season, it’s much more likely that you don’t. It’s only after she pulls the gun that she notices somebody else is in the cab. Ladies and gentlemen, making her first appearance since Season Four, it’s Claire! See, the universe is forcing their lives to intersect, whether the plane goes down or not.

In the temple, Cindy is joined by children named Zack and Emma. You know who they are? They’re the kids from the tail section who were taken during the night! Who thought we were going to see those two again? Yeah, me either. Sawyer and Miles are brought in, having been discovered by some lurking Others. Lennon takes Hurley to see the Asian Guy, and Hurley quickly realizes that Lennon’s translations go only one way – Asian Guy actually speaks English. What I have learned from Lost is that two out of three Asian people hide the fact that they can speak English. When Hurley tells them that Jacob is dead, they go into panic mode. Lennon mobilizes the Others, and they start to pour ash around the temple, and they launch a flare. Lennon says that they’re doing this “to keep him out”. Oh, yeah.

In the statue, Benry confronts Fake Locke. He calls him “the monster”, which Fake Locke finds hurtful. The Fake says that Locke was confused when Benry killed him – his last thought was “I don’t understand”. And when he talks about Locke being deluded and confused, it really makes me sad. And then, Fake Locke says he wants the one thing real Locke didn’t – he wants to go home. So where is home? Is he imprisoned on the Island? Jacob can leave the Island, so if Fake Locke is the other guy (who I’m calling Silas for now, since that was his character’s name on Deadwood), why can’t he leave? Is “home” a place, or is it a time?

While the temple prepares their defenses, Hurley says good-bye to Sayid. Miles acts weird near Sayid. Could it be because he doesn’t hear anything from the supposedly dead man? Meanwhile, Sawyer looks at Jack with this burning hatred – in his mind, this is Jack’s fault. And, well, a lot of it really is. Remember, Sawyer built a life with Dharma and Juliet – he was happy, until Jack and Kate returned and ruined everything.

In the airport, Jack and Locke are in the baggage office. Turns out, the airline lost Locke’s suitcase full of knives. Well, that’s another thing that was definitely on the original Flight 815. So the out-of-place Desmond disappeared, as did the correctly placed knives and the body of Christian. I am not sure what to make of that yet. It is a really nice scene, showing an affection between the two that disappeared a long time ago in the original timeline. Jack even offers Locke a consultation to see if he can fix his back. You know, the fact that there’s another Locke who’s alive and well(ish) makes me feel a lot better.

Back on the Island, Richard sees the flare, and he seems to know what it means. That confirms for me that the people in the Temple are just an offshoot of the established Others – it’s not another warring tribe. And then, Fake Locke emerges from the statue. He says to Richard “It’s good to see you out of those chains,” which was a real breakthrough moment. Why was Richard “Batmanuel” Alpert in chains? Remember the Black Rock? That was a slave ship. I’ve long suspected that Richard was part of the crew of that ship (which ran aground in 1845), but it would seem he was one of the slaves! That is something I didn’t see coming. Fake Locke beats up Richard and then tells the rest how disappointed he is in them, before leading them in the direction of the flare.

Finally, Lennon asks to speak to Jack alone. Jack refuses, and just before it turns violent, Sayid wakes up and asks “What happened?” Now, if this is the treatment that Young Benry had years ago, according to Richard, there will be some degree of memory loss. We don’t know how much, so who’s to say how much Sayid knows right now?

OK, that was awesome. To recap, it appears that the bomb created another timeline, while keeping the one we know intact. We found out that there’s an offshoot of Others who live in the temple and abduct people. Fake Locke is definitely Smokey, and although you can ward him off with a circle of ash, he can still hurt you. Even in a non-crash universe, the Lostaways are destined to intersect. Richard “Batmanuel” Alpert was a slave. Desmond, Christian’s body, and 400 knives disappeared off of a plane in flight. And we lost Juliet.

In a few days, I’ll have a follow-up report with more analysis of the references, discussion of a possible time loop, and more about this other timeline. Oh, Lost. It’s good to have you back.