Lost’s Final Season Leads to New Theories

Filed under Lost, TV

Lost has officially kicked off its 6th and final season. If you’ve been waiting for answers, this is where they’ll finally arrive, but show creators Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse won’t make it easy. Just as flashbacks and flash-forwards have been used, they’ve now introduced the concept of flash-sideways…yup, this show is now operating with two different realities.

The premiere opened with a very familiar flight hitting some familiar turbulence, but surprisingly, the flight did not crash, and more importantly, revealed a shot of Jacob’s statue…submerged under water. In the other reality, the losties were back in the present, all around the familiar site where Desmond (Henry Ian Cusick) blew the hatch up, under the impression that the plan cooked up by Faraday (Jeremy Davies) and Jack (Matthew Fox) did not work. Or did it?

Thanks to our friends at MrMet.net for verbalizing this theory, and putting some things in perspective. We could argue that, as Juliet (Elizabeth Mitchell) says, “It worked,” because the hydrogen bomb may have actually saved the island by helping neutralize the electromagnetic energy beneath the Swan station. We could reasonably say that this was the incident Dr. Chang (Francois Chau) referred to in the Swan station video, causing them to need to press the button every 108 minutes. What may have caused the island to sink was drilling too deep into the wall containing the electromagnetic energy. Had Jack and the rest of the losties sat back in 1977 and done nothing, this would have happened, thereby releasing that energy, sinking the island, and the flight never crashing on the island because there was no island to crash on. Therefore, detonating the hydrogen bomb may be just what saved the island. But as of now these are all just theories. Good theories though.

What we have yet to understand from the flash-sideways is how the island sinking changed certain events. Hurley (Jorge Garcia) only has good luck, Shannon (Maggie Grace), Michael (Harold Perrineau), and Walt (Malcolm David Kelley) are not on the plane, and Jack’s father’s coffin is never loaded on the plane [nor Locke's (Terry O'Quinn) suitcase of knives]. How did these things change simply because the island sank? Answers will hopefully come.

Now, as for what we did learn. Thanks to a major showdown in Jacob’s statue, it’s been confirmed that the man in black, now in the form of Locke, is indeed the black smoke monster, and that Ilana (Zuleikha Robinson) and her crew have come to the island as Jacob’s bodyguards. Also, the man in black, who I suppose it’s okay to just call Locke at this point, reveals that all he wants is to return home…the temple perhaps? Meanwhile, Hurley, after a conversation with a dead Jacob, leads a group of the losties on a mission to the temple to save Sayid (Naveen Andrews). Yeah, we’ve been hearing about this place for quite some time, and we finally see it. Suddenly, the gang finds themselves in a place reminiscent of feudal Japan. And when this group of Others learns that Jacob is dead, all hell breaks loose and they suddenly go into full defense mode…defense against the smoke monster.

Focusing on Sayid, after a strange ritual that kills him, he mysteriously returns back to life. Dogen (Hiroyuki Sanada), the leader at the temple, attempts to get Jack to give Sayid a pill, which Jack learns is poisonous. Dogen explains his motives, stating that Sayid appears to have been claimed by some kind of darkness, which also happened to Rousseau‘s (Mira Furlan) expedition, and, apparently, Claire (Emilie de Ravin). But maybe not.

Sawyer (Josh Holloway), angry after Juliet’s death, runs off into the jungle away from the temple, but Kate (Evangeline Lilly) and Jin (Daniel Dae Kim) along with a couple of Others go after him to bring him back. Kate and Jin escape the others but then split off, coming across traps akin to the one’s Rousseau once left in the jungle. While Kate meets up with Sawyer at the barracks, Jin is again attacked by the Others but saved when they are shot…by Claire, who looks far more capable than when we last saw her and appears to be much like Rousseau.

The premiere was great, and while the third episode felt a bit like filler, at this point we really just need to trust the writers, and justify it as potential setup for greater things to come. After all, we did learn some things at the end, that being that Claire is alive, and I might even argue that she has not been taken by the darkness as Dogen claims. I’m betting Sayid is somehow safe as well, but hey, this is Lost, so who can really tell?