The H-Bomb that Juliet set off at end of last season was the cause. This is what Jack wanted. But (of course) it didn't work out quite the way Jack (who got this notion from Faraday) expected. Instead of just eliminating the energy pocket which later would cause the first plane (815) to crash (which started Lost, it seems all those many years ago), this H-Bomb blast caused a split in reality, one in which 815 indeed did not crash, and the other in which 815 did indeed crash, just as it did in the Lost series pilot.
Now the idea that an H-bomb can cause reality to split in two is a chestnut in science fiction - I first came across it years ago in a Superman comic (the Man of Steel tries to contain an H-bomb explosion, but, although the bomb is contained, the suppressed power of the explosion created two realities, with two diverging story lines). Presumably something similar happened on the island.
So, one of the two realities has 815 not crashing, and landing in LAX. But bear in mind that that reality came into being years earlier, when the H-bomb went off, which was back with Dharma still on the island, Sawyer as LaFleur, etc. And from that instant on, that new reality had an increasing number of small and bigger differences from our original reality, in which 815 crashed.
Among the differences we see on the plane: Boone left Shannon in Australia. Desmond is sitting next to Jack on the plane (I was glad to see this, because it suggests we'll perhaps find out more about the coincidence of Desmond and Jack meeting at the stadium, and then on the island in the hatch in our original Lost reality - see my Keys to What Is Really Going On for more on the significance of these inexplicable coincidences). But Desmond is nowhere to be seen as the passengers take their seats for the landing. Meanwhile, Charlie doesn't care if he chokes to death on a heroin bag on the plane (he doesn't - Jack saves his life). And Locke later claims he did go for the walkabout in Australia.
All of these and who knows how many more differences between the original Lost reality and this new one, with the plane not crashing, were caused by the H-bomb going off, and not allowing Dharma and the island to proceed as they originally did. In principle, not only Boone and Charlie, but almost any character deceased in the Lost world we know could be alive in this new alternate Lost reality - Charlotte, Eko, Michael, Libby, Ana Lucia, Alex, Keamy - take your pick. (Possibly not Faraday, because Eloise was presumably killed in the H-bomb blast, but Jack et al survived it in this reality, so who knows.) And they can appear at any time off the island - Alex, for example, could have left the island in this new reality with Ben - a field day for the writers!
And there also are some great new story lines in this premiere, entirely new with our characters in this new reality, as Kate escapes from her marshal captor, and has some great small interactions with Sawyer, Hurley, and Claire. And Jack and Locke, in this new reality, also have a wonderful exchange, in which Jack tells Locke to call him, if Locke ever wants a second, more optimistic opinion about his legs. (Jin and Sun also have an interesting if less surprising new story line, as Jin gets held at customs for carrying a lot of cash, and Sun keeps up her pretense of speaking no English.)
And that's just the half of it.
Because, back on the island, in the other half of this reality split, our characters have indeed crashed on the island - twice, now - and discover to their near-despair that the H-bomb explosion did not get them off the island after all. Juliet, almost rescued from the bottom of the rubble in the hatch, dies in Sawyer's arms. (She wants to tell Sawyer something before she dies. Miles, who can read the dead, tells Sawyer that Juliet realized that "it worked" - this could be very significant, evidence that characters in this reality can have knowledge of the other reality.) Sayid is near death, Jacob tells Hurley to bring Sayid to the Temple, where Sayid can be saved, but it seems that Jacob's people only drown Sayid. I had a feeling he wasn't really dead, and, sure enough, he comes back to life at the end. But will he still be Sayid? People on Twitter are saying Sayid could now be Jacob - just as Jacob's nemesis is now Locke - and that does make a lot of sense.
So the stage is set for a really powerful finale season of Lost - and I'm looking forward to savoring every minute.
10-min podcast review of Lost Season 6 Premiere
See also: Three Questions Arising from the Lost Season Six Premiere: Linkage Between Two Realities, Dead Bodies Inhabited, Who/What Survived H-Blast?
More Lost - see : The Richard-Locke Compass Time Travel Loop ...
and Lost Returns in 5 Dimensions and 5.3: The Loops, The Bomb ... 5.4: A Saving Skip Back in Time ... 5.5 Two Time Loops and Mind Benders ... 5.6 A Lot of Questions ... 5.7 Bentham and Ben ... 5.8 True Love Ways ... 5.9 Two Times and a Baby ... 5.10 The Impossible Cannot Happen ... 5.11 Clockwork Perfect Time Travel ... 5.12: Ben v. Charles, and Locke' Slave ... 5.13: Lost Meets Star Wars and the Sixth Sense ... The Problem with Baby Aaron and the Return of the Oceanic Six ... 5.14: Eloise, Daniel, and Obsession Trumping Paradox ... 5.15: Moral Compasses in Motion ... Lost Season 5 Finale: Jacob and Locke
The Plot to Save Socrates
"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News
"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book
18 comments:
Charlie didn't try to commit suicide. He was trying to regurgitate a heroin baggy (presumably to shoot up) and choked. Good review and summary otherwise, though!
Thanks - that's a good point - I'll correct it in my blog post.
really loved the premier, and the flash-sideways'. did you notice desmond getting off the plane in the newer reality? i did not. is it possible his life from that reality fueled the rebirth of sayid?
I noticed Desmond was gone when Jack went back to his seat on the plane (after saving Charlie). Jack noticed, too.
Desmond will have some sort of continuing role in this story.
ok, i posted that way too late at night. :) the reset-plane is 2004 and the un-"fixed" reality is 2007, so there is no way desmond could have been used to feed that. maybe desmond is unstuck in time AND space now.
I cannot wait to see where they go with this.
Hi Paul,
I was blown away last night. I think I like this sideways thing. I also think Juliets message was very important. She first asked Sawyer to meet her for coffee remeber. I think the only way off the Island is to die and she saw the other world without the crash.Thats why she said It worked.I also think Miles heard something from Sayid
Do you think the Temple is Smoky's home.
My only dissent: I still think Locke was lying about the walkabout, only because of the somber look on his face as he exited the plane.
What a night for sure!
What seems to be missing here from the post is that of the imposter Locke and the revelation we are given about him--he is the black smoke and he wants to go home!
This begs the question, what is home for a creature like THAT???
Not only is he obviously powerful, people that know of him on the island absolutely fear him, as the Temple people do. I think I remember someone in a post last year suggesting the black smoke was the imposter Locke or Man in Black. Good call there!
Miles was also right, per se. The H-bomb did cause the event and stopped it at the same time. This was awesome. I loved that the episode started with Jack talking just like he was in the original pilot episode and when the shaking came, NOTHING HAPPENED! Had you on edge whether or not the old Lost reality was gone for good, until you came back from commercials.
I too wondered about Sayid now being Jacob, which does make sense! Besides, who's going to stop imposter Locke anyway? Ben, he's clueless now. Richard, he's unconscious over Locke's shoulder! So who, tell me WHO??
I loved the fact that the island in alternate-2004 is submerged at the bottom of the South Pacific (ala Atlantis or Lemuria). But I do have to go back to one thing. Desmond and everyone else pressed the button on the computer with the numbers to "save the world." Somehow that's going to come back into play and my prediction is one of these two realities will cease to exist by seasons end. Maybe not a surprise there, but it may be surprising as to how and which one.
Suffice it to say, this show never disappoints me! Love it and will surely miss it dearly at the end...unless it's the beginning!
Remember how miles said you cannot change your timeline? he spent a lot of time trying to explain to hurley that their life timeline isn't lined up with the regular timeline, which is why they cannot know what is going to happen even though they were in 1977. we also know that you cannot change what happened, as Daniel told us. So they could not undo the plane crashing, because it already happened.
the question is, what is the non-crash reality. i do not think this is a new reality created whenever someone makes a choice kind of thing. the time travel and changing the past is pretty unique to this island, since people cannot really do it.
also, (and i know i am rambling a bit), how do we know that Jacob is the "good guy?" i do not remember their conversation in the finale last season, but i don't remember anything particularly evil about him, other than wanting to kill jacob, and we know that jacob was preventing him from going 'home.'
maybe the island is a ship (space, dimension, time, etc.) that jacob has locked down somehow.
Wow!
A. I thought (as always) there were some very Christological comments with Ben & Locke/Smokey in regards to Ben killing Jacob. With Ben playing a Judas role and the implication that Jacob let himself be killed (much to Ben's confusion) BTW how great was that whole interaction..."Sorry you had to see me that way" ~ "So you're the monster" ~ 'Let's not resort to name calling"
B. Daniel better hope he knew what he was talking about when he said things couldn't be changed because by my calculations, Mama Faraday would have blown up/drowned with the Dharma people from the 70's and he would have never been born.(Although I think he was dead at the end of last year anyway right?)
C. I love that the side flashes show an alternate universe that still might work out in a positive way for everyone. I envision Locke receiving one of Jack's miraculous surgery like his wife-to-be did. There is the possibility of Sawyer meeting Julliette in the alternate world because she wouldn't have gone to the island (But the trade off would be, her sister dying)
D. What do you think about the missing Christian Shepherd? (As I've said before, can't more New Testament than that name!) Maybe that's who Sayid is! I was so glad to hear the train of thought that he is Jacob because I was afraid he was the Locke/Smokey character who is clearly able to (has to?) take over the body of dead people.
E. And last but not least...how about all the new "Other's" and their very Mayan-esqu temple. Interesting mix of temples and gods, Atlantis, Egyptian, Mayan, Christian etc.
What a ride!
You've got a good point about Jacob, Doni. That's why I tried to refrain from calling imposter Locke the "bad guy" or "evil Locke" because we honestly don't know. It's pretty obvious from the initial conversation we saw last year between Jacob and the Man in Black that they apparently don't get along (assuming this from MIB's statement, "I'm going to kill you one day." addressing Jacob). But did he want to kill Jacob JUST to go home? And again what is home? The rest of the Earth? Another planet? Another reality?
The only assumption you can make about whether Jacob or MIB are good or bad is from how people respond to each one. Jacob appears to be approachable and willing to address people and chooses life, while this MIB guy seems to kill people a lot (as the black smoke) and people are afraid of him. Kinda like Extreme Pro-Lifers and Pro-Choicers! Ben wasn't scared of MIB because he thought he was Locke, but was more confused after the fact than frightened. Of course, Ben is hard to gage anyway sometimes. You hate him one minute, then feel sorry for him the next, it's maddeningly unhelpful! Now I read somewhere else that maybe Imposter Locke isn't the black smoke at all and just wants people to think that. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaagggggggggghhhhhhhhh!!
Mutually exclusive existences, that's intriguing! Because to take Miles' interpretation a step further, Time is only relative to how human's perceive their own existence in relation to our revolutions around the sun. Linear, that's about all most people understand. Time on a universal construct, however, is not comprehensible to a human being because the universe could perceive reality as both beginning and ending at the same time, if it so desired. That seems to be what this island has tapped into. It's like the universal form of time has focused on this one island on Earth, making it bend all known laws of physics whenever it suits it. Not only physics, but philosophies as well because the natural processes we know in this world do not seem to apply either (dead isn't dead, wounds heal quickly, cancer is cured, etc.). But as another poster said, which proves your statement correct Doni, Juliet saw a glimpse of the alternate 2004 and knew what they had done had worked. But she only saw it as she was dying. So are the same laws of physics we know and love applying with this Alt-04 universe. Desmond seems to just disappear, as do packages and such, Juliet sees things and...I've got a headache!(rubbing head).
I'll come back after I have some caffeine!:)
Also, it looks like we finally got to see the two children that the Others abducted back in season one. I'm glad to see they weren't totally forgotten by the writers.
About Juliet: I think that as she was dying, her other self in the alternate reality was meeting Sawyer for the first time and that's what the whole coffee deal was about. Therefore, she knows that what they did worked and she tried to tell Sawyer.
About Jacob and "Locke": I don't think that they will turn out to be good vs evil but rather fate vs free will, which is what this show has been about since the beginning. Remember their exchange in "The Incident"?
Smokey: It always ends the same --> Fate
Jacob: It only ends once. Everything before that is just... progress --> Free Will
Looper: "because the universe could perceive reality as both beginning and ending at the same time" So well put, and so hard to wrap one's head around! It's tough not to think linearly isn’t it! There is a huge debate (for those who believe in an afterlife) questioning when do souls go to heaven: immediately upon dying or at the “end of time/earth” This kind of thinking would say it is both because now is then.
Funny point: I just learned that the Locke/Smokey character is being referred to as MIB Man in Black, but then heard someone call him MIL Man in Locke
Love philosophical debates, White Bear. That's something I've thought about for a long, long time, in relation to afterlife issues. There's never been what I would call a rational explanation for what does happen to a soul, largely because no one that dies ever comes back to tell us. So it is best guess I'm afraid and a lot of faith regardless of an instantaneous change or a delay of epic proportions.
Someone once told me that they believed when you die that everyone else you knew in life joins you at the same time, although they didn't die when you did, lending credulence to the beginning and end statement. But honestly, we'll never know until we know, or something like that.
But the thing about the universe, it's so big and vast I don't think there is any way you could ever wrap your mind around what makes it tick. I really believe you'd have to be at a God-like level to ever comprehend and then it would either be so minute it would be beyond belief or so profound our heads would explode. But, just as with the Atomic Bomb, I believe we can manipulate the universe quite easily. We may not have understood everything about how splitting an atom works, but we knew we could do it. That's basically what Jack believed about the H-bomb detonation. Now that they've done it, they have to figure out WHAT it did.
Looper,
Exactly :) Anyway who wants a God they can understand.
Anyone waiting to see a little more confident Jack? Man I hope he starts to man-up!
Interesting breakdown as always, Paul. I'm afraid I've only just caught up on these episodes, so I'm going to respond to all three of your Lost posts in turn!
One of the things I love most about Lost is how different people pay more attention to different details, and build theories based on them. All interpretations can be valid, but I've come to a couple of different conclusions that I want to share.
The main thing is that it seemed pretty clear to me at the end of the last season that every reanimated dead person that we've seen thus far was actually inhabited by the adversary, or black smoke.
The show had led us to believe that there might be a shady force for good operating on the island, as well as evil, but when it was revealed that Jacob hadn't been in that shack for a long time, it seemed clear to me that the appearances of Christian, Locke et al had nothing to do with Jacob.
The season finale suggested the same - It seems when Jacob manipulates events, he does it in person. The Other hides. I don't think we've seen any evidence thus far that Jacob can use other people's image as his own.
The shack is an interesting case, actually. We've seen that the ash can be used as a barrier to the black smoke, and this led us to believe, when we first saw the ring of ash around the shack, that it was there to protect it from the beast. But it seems obvious now that it was there to keep something in there instead.
I also think that Locke was lying about the walkabout. As a friend suggested yesterday, one way that Lost misdirects is by having characters say things in a way that, as trained TV viewers, sound definitive and like the truth. But they're often wrong, or are just plain lying. Ben Linus is the embodiment of the show in that regard, actually.
And briefly, two things worth considering. When Jacob visits Hurley, it isn't something magical that Jacob is doing - we all know that Hurley can speak to the dead, but because Jacob is so powerful it feels like we forget that it's Hurley doing the magical thing at that point.
What happened, happened, and dead is dead, right? Lost has gone to great pains to say that, despite appearances, the only place where causality and death can be altered is in a universe where they never happened in the first place.
(Actually, side note - Hurley saw the little bald dude wayback, and we were lead to believe that it was because he was imaginary, but what if it was somebody who had died that he was speaking to?)
Also, and this is just pedantry, really, but it helps with my parsing of the show, and it came up when I was doing my own write-up - We've all seen evidence that what the black smoke does is mimic the dead, not actually inhabit and reanimate their corpse, but the language we use hasn't caught up with it yet.
Oh gosh... and bearing that in mind, what if the reason Christian Shepherd's body didn't make it to LA is because it didn't ever get on the plane, in either reality? The suggestion is something more mysterious happened, but it's become apparent that the island doesn't need a physical body present to mimic someone, it just needs them to be dead. So it amuses me to think that his body is still lost somewhere in Australia, the victim of a clerical error of some kind.
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