It’s back. Wait, it’s gone again! Okay, it’s back again. Ah, crap, it’s gone. Wait, I think it’s –
Yeah, that about sums up the current incarnation of Lost, which premiered its fifth season last night. Debuting the first two episodes of the season, “Because You Left” and “The Lie,” the world’s most confusing show just got even more mind-blowing. So what exactly happened? Keep reading and we’ll try to fit the pieces together.
Be warned, spoilerific material inside if you haven’t seen the premiere.
If You Can’t Play The Record: The space-time continuum has been damaged. When Ben Linus moved that frozen donkey wheel in the season four finale, not only did he jump forward through space and time, but it would appear that everyone still on the island is doing the same. Not only are Sawyer, Juliet, Locke and the others the unwitting subjects of time travel, but their time traveling experiences are completely unstable. One moment, Locke witnesses the African drug plane crashing onto the island, the next he’s under attack by a should-be-dead Ethan Rom, then the next he’s all alone in the jungle again. Daniel Faraday is one of few people who knows what’s going on — besides, hopefully, the writers — and even he has difficulty explaining the situation to his companions. But like Billy Pilgrim, the castaways and perhaps the island itself have become unstuck in time.
No Time Like The Present: Jack Shephard wants to go back to the island. Scratch that — he hasta go baaaaack. But as we learned in last night’s two hours, the other Oceanic Six members might feel differently, especially when they learn who Jack’s working with: Ben Linus. Sun wants Ben dead so badly that she’s aligning herself with Charles Widmore. Sayid, once Ben’s right-hand man, warns Hurley that anything Ben tells him, Hurley should do the opposite. Hugo takes this advice literally when he meets the bug-eyed twerp near the episode’s conclusion: he allows himself to get arrested rather than accompany Ben to rejoin Jack and Sayid. Kate, meanwhile, is on the run with Aaron as someone knows that she’s not his biological mother. Apparently, there are forces at work trying to keep these people from reuniting. If nothing else, Jack and Ben have their work severely cut out for them, and that’s bad news for everyone still on the island because…
70 Hour Party People: Ben has only 70 hours to bring Jack, Kate, Sun, Hurley, Sayid and Aaron back to Isla del Lost, according to Ms. Hawkings, the mysterious old woman at the end of “The Lie.” This isn’t the first we’ve seen of her, but it’s been a while — she helped Desmond Hume through his time-traveling crisis back in season three’s “Flashes Before Your Eyes.” Ben is frantic by the end of the episode because Hurley is under arrest and, as Hawkings predicts, the clock is ticking on their window to return to the island. That aside, it’s very strange to see Hawkings in these circumstances, especially because of the crazy equations she’s writing on the chalkboards. It could be the “Valenzetti Equation,” a doomsday formula that’s calculated based on the dreaded numbers: 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42. If so, it’s nice to see the numbers back in play.
Danger Island: Sticks and stones can break bones, but wait till you see what a barrage of flaming arrows can do. Neil Frogurt (pictured above) was the first island casualty since the time jump and will most assuredly not be the last. If the time-bending wasn’t bad enough — it’s already causing Charlotte to have one of those ultimately fatal nosebleeds — then how about we add some mysterious arrow and rock slingers in the jungle?! That should help things along pretty nicely! Just who are these mysterious people anyway? It’ll largely depend on when exactly our survivors are in time, but for now, let’s all be grateful that John Locke knows how to hurl a knife or two. Speaking of Locke…
Death Becomes Him: If Jack fails to bring the Oceanic Six back, John and everyone else on the island will die. Locke told this to Jack in the “present,” whenever that really is, which motivated Jack’s current path. What Jack doesn’t know is that this idea doesn’t come from Locke — it comes from Richard Alpert. The seemingly immortal Alpert warns Locke that in order to fix the record-skipping of the island, Jack et al need to return. In order to convince Jack to return, Locke will have to die. Which means, in the future, Locke’s death is likely a cognizant decision at least on some level — he’ll either kill himself or allow himself to be killed in order to motivate the O6 to return. Either way, it’s a cool new layer to the already compelling mystery of Locke’s death.
Rules are Made to be Broken: While Locke’s busy trying to wrangle back the O6, Daniel Faraday has a different plan of action. He pays Desmond a visit in the hatch, where he reveals that the Scotsman is “uniquely and miraculously special” and that “the rules don’t apply” to him. We see the direct result of this conversation in “real time,” when Desmond awakens next to love-of-his-life Penelope Widmore with the memory of his encounter with Faraday. According to Dan, Desmond can defy the laws of time travel and as a result can work in cohesion with Faraday to repair the damaged space-time continuum. Maybe the most interesting bit about this is how it defies what producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse have long maintained — according to them, the future is predetermined and cannot be altered in any way by changing the past. That’s why Charlie had to die, remember? Well, it’s becoming clear that there’s some contradictions in Cuse and Lindelof’s stance — if Desmond can change the rules, if the rules don’t apply to him, then who knows what could happen with the other members of the cast. Regardless, it’s evident (at least to me) that the producers have been intentionally misleading us and that we’re supposed to make our own predictions about whether or not time can be tampered with. In other words? Don’t listen to anything that Cuse and Lindelof say!
Bonus Points: Not everything on Lost is doom and gloom. Sayid Jarrah’s fight scene proved once again that this is one Iraqi assassin you don’t want to mess with. On top of that, how about Sayid and Hurley’s old Weekend at Bernie’s routine? Classic. Even more classic is Hurley’s conversation with his mother, in which he effectively explains the entirety of Lost in under a minute. He gets all the essentials — the Others, Dharma, the smoke monster — all within sixty seconds! Someone’s gotta find a YouTube video of that. Also, nearly three years after her death, Michelle Rodriguez returns to Lost in what is clearly her best scene in the series. Nice to see Hurley’s sixth sense up close and personal again. Not to mention the very best part of all: just as the characters have become unstuck in time, so too has the format of the show. Flashbacks are not altogether gone, but episodes don’t stay centric to any one character. The flashes from real world to island are a much welcomed change that uses time in a highly effective and economical way. With the series rapidly reaching its ending, it’s very important that the show uses time wisely to explain as many mysteries as possible. Looks like that’s going to happen.
Last Take: Ultimately, the combined effort of “Because You Left” and “The Lie” was an incredibly solid season opener that left jaws hanging and brains melting for two straight hours. It also hammered home that Lost is a complete enigma, but if you pay attention to the details you might get closer to solving the answers. It’s like that game with the three cups: there’s an object under one cup, the three cups are then shuffled and you have to figure out which cup the object is under. In Lost‘s case, there are about 4,815,162,342 cups. Good luck figuring out what’s underneath.
Come back every Thursday for an all-new edition of Lost: Island Fever!
