Major spoilers below!
As Cara explained last week, we’ve got a weekly LOST roundtable discussion for you all. In awesome news, Sady will be joining us!
This week was the two-hour season premiere and it was a doozy. The bomb created two realities: one in which everyone is on the island (on the same timeline??) and one in which the plane doesn’t crash. Off the island, Hurley’s lucky, Kate escapes, Jack and Locke bond. On the island, Flocke reveals he’s Smokey, Ben still feels left out, we see the temple, Sayid is alive… or something.
There’s so much going, let’s begin!
Let’s start with the obvious question: WHAT THE POOP?! Alright, no, that’s vague. General reactions?
SALLY: I really liked the premiere, but I expected more major questions answered from the start. Instead, we got more questions.
CARA: I thought the premiere was great — I was tossing and turning all night thinking about it, which is a positive sign. But it was also the most confusing of all the season premieres, and we did get more questions than answers! ARGH!
Really, I would just like to note my aggravation with the fact that they have now essentially killed Juliet 3 times. WTF? She was already getting the most awful death ever in last season’s finale, with falling down the hole that ends the world. Then we find out she’s not really dead, and we’re presumably going to watch her die a slow and agonizing death while she either bleeds internally or starves to death! Thankfully she just blows herself up, but nope! Still not dead. After making us watch both those horrific deaths no less than 3 times in 20 minutes (during the recap episode, during the “previously on Lost,” and during the episode itself), she dies again. Jesus Christ, have some mercy, writers!
SADY: Never. They will NEVER have mercy on Juliet. For lo, she was a female character on Lost, and did conspire to steal focus from Our Lady of the Kate. Although I’m kind of glad she got the final scene with Sawyer? It makes it feel less like her death was a last-minute plot contrivance so that she could go star on V, and more like a character on the show just lost what is (I think?) his most long-term, meaningful, and non-con-game-focused relationship. Granted, he will grieve for like two episodes and then his motivations will miraculously alter completely, but whatever.
My general feelings about the premiere can be summed up in one word: ARRRRRRRRRRRRRZT. I was so excited to see Arzt, you guys!
We learn the bomb sorta worked: it created an alternate reality. Plane didn’t crash, Hurley’s lucky, Shannon’s with her boyfriend, Desmond’s on the plane, Rose is calm, Jack is panicked. What’s the significance of these changes?
SALLY: Hurley seems easy to explain – nobody ever heard the numbers so the numbers aren’t cursing him. I was thinking maybe Desmond wasn’t actually on the plane, but Jack’s subconscious is trying to tell him that this reality is wrong. Everything else is a mystery to me.
CARA: I will be upfront and say that I have NO IDEA what the whole two timelines thing is about. Thus, as for the changes, I have no idea what they mean, though I would note that a really, really big one was the island being under water! Did the bomb somehow put it there? I don’t know! I’m mainly paying attention to the action on the island, at this point. But perhaps that is a mistake?
SADY: I’m more into the off-island action! And I DON’T KNOW WHY! But at this point, it just feels like the It’s a Wonderful Life deal that someone brought up last week. Look: if the plane never crashes, Boone never sleeps with his sister (?) but he and Locke are still best buds, sort of! But alas, their friendship, based on acid trips, bossiness, and the premature crushing death of one party, cannot come to full flower, for the plane remains in the air. I think we’re just meant to note that things ARE different, and to feel sad for what they’re missing out on (for example: their own premature crushing deaths) due to the lack of Island in their lives. ALSO? I was sad when Charlie died, but then I noticed how much better the show was without him, and so, to amuse myself last night, I was predicting an episode in which Charlie never landed on the Island, but was still destined to die, and thus OD’d in the plane’s bathroom. And I almost got my wish! But I also got the call-back to Boone’s pen trach from the first episode, which was wonderful. So I think we’re going to see how much each character’s “destiny” remains in play with the Island removed as a factor.
JILL: Is it an alternate reality, or a parallel one? That’s where I’m confused — at what point in time this is happening. And how the eff Juliet knows that the bomb worked.
SALLY: Well, ABC is officially calling it a flash sideways. In regards to the actual years involved, that’s unclear. My assumption is the flight timeline’s in 2004, and the island timeline’s in 2007, but a lot of people seem to think there are two island timelines, not one.
Sticking with off-island happenings, Jack’s dead daddy is lost and Locke’s as faith-y as ever. Jack says he can make miracles happen and Locke will walk again. Do we think Locke will go to Jack? Will it work?
SADY: Locke basically HAS to go to Jack, to make sure the plotlines continue to connect, doesn’t he? Other than Kate and Claire, he and Jack have made the only actual connection in the off-island timeline. Of course, Jack made his connection in the typically Jack way of meeting a dude in a wheelchair and being all “oh hey whoa WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR SPINE I am a magic surgeon FALSE HOPE IS THE BEST HOPE OF ALL,” which: yeah.
LAUREN: That was bad.
CARA: I was just glad to see that some things never change. Jack is an insufferable, overbearing, rude douche who sticks his nose where it doesn’t belong.
JILL: Word. Locke of course will go to Jack, but the missing body issue is more interesting to me…
Back on the island, Flocke reveals he’s Smokey, then wastes no time and kills Jacob’s “bodyguards.” What’s with that magical Smokey repellent powder?
SALLY: I didn’t realize until they also used it at the temple that this is the same powder surrounding Jacob’s cabin. I dub it “anti-smokey.”
CARA: That was a badass scene. Both when Smokey killed the dudes, but also with Ben’s reaction afterward. I love Terry O’Quinn/Michael Emerson scenes. I assumed that it was just regular old ash, but knowing the island, it probably has some magical properties.
SALLY: I LOVE the O’Quinn/Emerson scenes! If O’Quinn is gunning for an Emmy, he deserves it.
SADY: See, the ash is what I love about this show. It is total fairy-tale dream logic – make a circle of ash or salt or chalk, and keep the demons out; they do it on Supernatural all the time, NOT THAT I WATCH THAT SHOW – and yet the disturbance in the ash is way more scary to me than anything else. And I think it says something that I’m less scared of the giant CGI smoke monster (faaaaake) than I am of Terry O’Quinn and this completely lo-fi special effect of pouring ash on things. If I had to guess, I would say that they will probably give it a sciencey explanation, about electromagnetism and such, but right now I just like it as a circle of ash.
CARA: With Flocke/Smokey, I’m mainly confused/intrigued by his statement that he wants to go home. There were a lot of “OMG” moments in this episode, but that was the point at which my eyes truly bugged out of my head. The idea that even (some of) the controlling forces on the island want the hell off of it is quite the revelation.
SALLY: Agreed! That is quite perplexing.
In other Flocke news, he tells Richard: “It’s good to see you out of those chains.” Are these metaphorical or literal? Either way, what’s your reaction?
SALLY: I think these are literal chains. As soon as Flocke said that, I yelled “RICHARD WAS A SLAVE ON BLACK ROCK!!”
CARA: Same thought. But then again, if we’re all thinking it, it’s probably not true …
SALLY: Well, we thought Flocke was Smokey, and we were right!
JILL: Richard must have been slave somewhere, and I suspect Egypt, only because of the eyeliner.
LAUREN: I think they mean chains figuratively, regardless of how good he looks in eyeliner. I just can’t see how Alpert, who has been on the island for a “very, very” long time, extra emphasis on “very,” can be a slave from Black Rock. I think if he’s a slave, he is a slave along the lines of having been indebted to or ordered to serve Jacob/the island indefinitely. And now that Jacob is dead (maybe) WILL RICHARD AGE?
Meanwhile, dead Jacob wants Hurley to take almost-dead Sayid to the temple so he can be saved. But he dies. Then he wakes up suddenly. Is he magically alive or possessed? If so, by whom?
CARA: SAYID IS ALIVE!!!! I KNEW HE WASN’T REALLY DEAD!!!
LAUREN: I was kind of wrong on Sayid dying in the premiere. Thankfully. But only on the count that he stays dead.
JILL: Dudes. I really thought they killed Sayid for a minute there, and was ready to boycott. But when they brought him out of the water in that Jesus crucifixion pose? Yeah, obvs not dead for long! I was surprised, though, that they resurrected him to so quickly. I thought it would be three episodes before he came back.
CARA: Okay, gloating out of the way, he didn’t come back to life, he just didn’t die. Here’s how you know: 1) they didn’t play the “Life and Death Theme.” There’s music that they play every single time a significant character dies. This was the reason that I thought that maybe Juliet wasn’t really dead, because they hadn’t played the Life and Death Theme, and I was right — she wasn’t dead until they played it this episode. 2) Miles couldn’t talk to him. You saw Miles sitting there really confused, and he tried to shrug it off, but I knew — Miles was puzzled because he couldn’t hear anything coming from Sayid, and that means he was never really dead.
SALLY: Yeah, I think our biggest clue here is Miles’ reaction to Sayid. At first I thought “oh snap, Sayid isn’t dead because Miles can’t talk to him.” But then I also think the other explanation could be that Miles sensed something was happening, like somebody possessing Sayid. If that’s the case, then we’re obviously supposed to assume it’s Jacob and that he brought him there for that reason. But. I think Sayid never died. Just because.
SADY: Alternate perspective, though: how awesome would it be if Sayid were possessed by Jacob, and magically became the avatar of all that is good and right about the Island? Because that is basically how I feel about him anyway. And last season Sayid just seemed really broken, to the point that I honestly did believe they would kill him because there was nowhere left for the character to go. I would like him to have a second chance and play this really beneficial, central role. So, yeah: I think we’ve established that people don’t come back from the dead except as avatars for someone or something else. The question is what Sayid is now.
LAUREN: And these new characters (thank you, Writers of Lost, for introducing two dozen new characters at the beginning of the final season, Jesus H.) were told that they, presumably their side of the war, would be in serious trouble if Sayid died. That’s pretty good support for the theory that Sayid is going to have some higher purpose on the island regardless of whether he is literally inhabited by Jacob.
SADY: Okay, potential irrelevance on the topic of new characters? The translator guy was immediately recognizable to me, because he was on The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. Which was a show co-created by Carlton Cuse, starring Bruce Campbell, which started as a western and turned out to be about… time travel. And Bruce Campbell’s dead father showing up to give him advice (!!!) and make inscrutable mystic pronouncements about They (!!!) and help him get over his daddy issues (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!). Mr. Friendly, the Other that showed up to get Michael on the boat, was also on Brisco County. So, this has nothing to do with anything, but I’m really tickled by the fact that Cuse has been working on time-travel-dead-daddy-issues shows for as long as he’s been around, apparently. He loves that business! And it leads to my new theory, which is: maybe Sayid has been possessed by the spirit of Bruce Campbell.
LAUREN: If we’re lucky, Sayid’s hand will turn into a zombie and we’ll spend a whole episode looking for a chainsaw.
We also learn what’s been in Hurley’s guitar case: an ankh with a note inside. Um, what?!
SALLY: Was I the only one who thought this was just a guitar?
SADY: Yeah, the Egyptian thing is really confusing to me on any number of levels. If this turns out to be a show about Ancient Astronauts and the Mysteries of Atlantis, I will sue my television set for one million dollars. But I guess it makes sense, the ankh: we have at least three characters by now who qualify for “eternal life.”
LAUREN: I’m trying to think of a joke re: Freud/cigar/guitar, but I’m failing. And I have to reveal a particular prejudice here, in that I find the whole Egyptian mysticism storyline kind of annoying and cliche and played out on all kinds of sci-fi levels, and I totally turn the side-eye on the appropriation of ancient cultures to denote that a story is mystical and mysterious. It’s lazy. And it’s been done. Usually poorly. I’m willing to see where this goes, but if the writers introduce aliens (or zombie hands) I am OUT.
JILL: They wouldn’t do that to us, would they? I think the writers just have a North Africa interest… characters keep popping up in Tunisia and Morocco too, right? But yeah, if aliens become involved I quit.
CARA: Yeah, I think aliens are definitely the cutoff point. My theory is that if they’ve joked about it on the show, it’s wrong. As such, just as they are not all actually dead and stuck in hell or purgatory, there are also not aliens involved.
Last question, what does the alternate reality mean? Are both real or is only one real, and if so, which?
CARA: This is the big question, isn’t it? If only one is real, I hope that it’s the island one. Obviously a ton of bad stuff has happened on the island, but I’d hate for the whole show to be canceled out, and there has also been a lot of growth among the characters that otherwise wouldn’t have happened.
My best guess at this point is that both are currently real. But the characters will learn of this, and try to somehow merge them, or cancel one of them out.
SALLY: I think the island one is real, and the off-island reality will merge into it. Or… did Juliet say “it worked” because the island one is the wrong one? OMG! CONFUSION!
SADY: I think they did create an alternate reality, both realities being equally real, but now there is probably a Disturbance In The Force due to their coexistence. Disturbance in the force! Chaos! Up is down, right is left, Hurley is Sawyer! Possible wormhole action! This excites me.