Lost Season 6 Debut -Tracks of Time

I admit, I am a mild Lostie, as I am a mild Trekker. I had been waiting eagerly for the sixth and final season of Lost to begin, and last night it did, with three hours of ABC prime time to kick it off.

Because this is a season premiere, and the last run of Lost to boot, the first two episodes were filled with alumni, many of whom are dead or missing. Previous seasons have used flashbacks, flash-fowards and time travel, and now, with Season 6, it appears plots will follow two time tracks, either or both of which was triggered after Juliet whacked Jughead the hydrogen bomb, and it went off.

In one, set in 2004, Oceanic Flight 815 successfully landed in L.A., with some character encounters still occurring. In the second, it is 2007, and the 1977 DHARMA time travelers have jumped into that time-frame, where a rumble is about to begin between good and evil.

Lost has been notable for grabby first scenes in its season debuts, such as in Season 3, when the Others seemed like a bunch of suburbanites in the jungle, with their book club and comfy bungalows, and then a jet breaks up and falls from the sky. In this episode, Flight 815 experiences some uneasy turbulence as it flies over the Pacific -- which is exactly the point where the Island has been submerged by the bomb blast! In a CGI panorama, temple ruins, Dharmaville houses and swingset are quickly shown, as if we are following the rapid swim of a great fish. It is confirmed the Island is under the sea, as a shark swims by the four-toed remains of the Tawaret statue.

In timeline #1, 2004, characters' paths are still crossing. Kate Austen escapes Marshal Mars by saying she has to go to the bathroom. After she's unable to undo her handcuffs with a disassembled pen she stole from Jack, she surprise attacks Mars in the restroom and runs off with his jacket and gun. She gets into an elevator, where Sawyer is casually hanging out. And earlier on the jet, they had flirted with each other.

Eventually Kate exits the LAX terminal, runs into Frogurt and commandeers a taxi, driven by the Puppet Master from Heroes (David Lawrence XVII). Claire Littleton is her fellow backseat passenger!

Doc Arzt shows up on the jet, happy to tell the passengers around Hugo Reyes that he's the owner of Mr. Cluck's Chicken Shack and is flying coach like everyone else. Arzt gets Hurley to do his Australian accent from the fast food chain's commercials (which were shown by the show creators at San Diego Comic Con last summer). Hurley is also a very lucky, very confident man in this time track.

Desmond Hume is also on the plane, something that didn't happen in the original timeline. Jack Shephard and he have a chat, and Jack tries to remember if he met the Scotsman before then when he calls him "brother." There is also a book moment, which Lindelof and Cuse have done throughout the show's run, by offering parallels or clues to the program's themes by throwing in a novel or philosophical work. Desmond is reading Salman Rushdie's Haroun and the Sea of Stories, a children's book of fantasy tales. And Desmond disappears from the jet after that!

Jack also gets an assurance from Rose that the turbulence the jet hit as it passed over the submerged island is nothing to worry about. She tells him he can let go of the arms of his seat after that white knuckle moment. Jack goes into the restroom and looks at a little cut on his neck. Where did that come from?

Cindy Chandler, the flight attendant who slips Jack a little bottle of vodka, gave him two bottles in the pilot episode. Matt Parkman from Heroes -- well, Greg Gruenberg as the pilot -- is seen but not heard after the turbulence. There are several changes like this from Season 1 in the 2004 timeline, such as Desmond being on Flight 815.

In another example, Charlie Pace almost chokes to death in the bathroom in a suicide attempt by swallowing a small bag of heroin, but Jack rescues him by yanking the bag out, instead the dramatic "traching" that I was expecting. As a result, Charlie is arrested and is taken off the plane. For Jack it's damned if you do, damned if you don't, because Charlie was angry about him saving his life.

Jin Kwon also ends up in custody because he is carrying a massive amount of cash, probably part of his attempt to flee from his corrupt father-in-law and his company, Paik Heavy Industries. The Customs guy says things might go easier of Sun or Jin spoke English. Jin is led away, and a woman Customs agent asked Sun speaks English. She stands there, deliberating carefully, "No English," Sun finally says. Does she know the language or not? Did she not have her secret lover in this timeline, along with his English lessons?

Oceanic also screwed up big time and never loaded Christian Shephard's casket on the jet in Sydney, and the airline has no idea where it is. Jack meets John Locke in the baggage claim office at LAX, because the latter's knife collection suitcase also has been lost. John is also still in a wheelchair, so it's not really certain if he was telling Boone Carlyle the truth that he went on the 10-day walkabout. While Boone and John chat, Frogurt sleeps away while wearing an eye mask.

And Boone didn't have his stepsister, Shannon Rutherford, with him, either, failing to get her out of the bad relationship in Australia. In a kind of reference to Season 1, Boone tells John that he'd be happy to stay with him in case of an emergency. The two had a kind of a father and son relationship in their outings to the jungle in that season, the rich boy learning how to rough it from a man trying to reinvent himself after much tragedy.

When John and Jack meet up in the baggage office, Jack give him his business card and offers a free consultation on spinal surgery. They also bond about Oceanic losing their possessions, especially the lost body! John seems quite relaxed, as if Australia did help heal him more.

In time track #2, in 2007, all the time travelers who had worked at DHARMA in 1977 have landed around the ruins of the Swan station. Kate is up in a tree! She has to work fast to right herself and not fall. The Ajira passengers, Sun Kwon, Frank Lapidus, Richard Alpert are still all at the beach, as shown in Season 5 finale.

The Swan ruins specifically were the ones caused by not pushing the button at the end of Season 2, and Desmond set off the station's fail-safe system. Juliet Burke is down in the pit where she was 30 years earlier, and she is fatally injured. Jack, Sawyer, Miles Straume and Kate start to dig through the wreckage to get to her. Sawyer can barely restrain himself from throttling Jack, who he blames for their landing back on the Island at the point they started, and for Juliet's precarious situation.

Also on death's doorstep is Sayid Jarrah, who was gut shot in last season's finale and is losing a lot of blood. Hurley is with him. A ghost form of Jacob appears to Hurley and tells him an "old friend" killed him, and to take Sayid to the temple if he wants him to live.

Inside the building under Taweret's foot, Smokey-Locke orders Ben to go outside and get Richard, because he wants to talk to him. Yes, the Man in Black is Smokey, a creature who can take human form, as when he appeared as Ben's daughter, Mr. Eko's brother, and possibly Jack's father.

In a spectacular counterattack against four rifle-toting Jacob bodyguards, Smokey resists bullets like Superman and quickly dispatches the men, including Bram, who tries to protect himself by standing in a ring of powder that creates a kind of force field against the creature. The monster simply knocks him out of his protective circle by smashing the ceiling above him. Bram falls and gets impaled on a big chunk of rock.

The protective powder previously was shown as the ring of ash around Jacob's cabin, and explains why it was put there -- it can repel Smokey if properly used. When Smokey-Locke returns to human form and tells Ben that he was sorry he had to see him like that, all I could think of was Bill Bixby as Bruce Banner, saying, "You wouldn't like it when I'm angry."

Ben goes out to tell Richard that John wants to see him, until the ageless man yanks him across the beach to see Locke's corpse. Ben looks as stunned and helpless as John has in previous seasons when someone out-maneuvered or took advantage of him.

In the episode's most wrenching scene, Sawyer has his last moments with Juliet as she dies, and he laboriously buries her body, along with Miles' help. Sawyer attacks him in grief-y rage, demanding he do his Ghost Whisperer thing and find out what Juliet wanted to tell him. The answer to Sawyer from Juliet is, "It worked," I guess meaning setting off that H-bomb.

After the Juliet sendoff, they go looking for the temple. Hurley insists on taking the guitar case, resulting in a sarcastic "Kumbaya" joke by Sawyer. Hurley counters that there is no guitar inside there, and he does need it for their trip.

As they go into the tunnels below the wall around the temple, some Others dressed in a cross between hippie and Arabian Nights garb point rifles at them and drag them them into the temple square.

Also in the the cave, there is a second book moment. Hurley finds the body of the French guy, Montand, who was dragged down into the tunnel by Smokey in Season 5, losing his arm. The Frenchman had Soren Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling in his pack.

The Others (Other Others? Temple Others?) take the gang to the leader, played by actor Hiroyuki Sanada, a Japanese guy who speaks no English and is translated by his right-hand man, Sol Star from Deadwood (John Hawkes, playing a bearded, bespectacled hippie type called, appropriately, Lennon). At first, Sanada -- whose character name wasn't given -- orders them all to be shot, until Hurley tells him that Jacob sent them. (UPDATE -- apparently Sanada's character name is Dogen.) He presents the guitar case to Sanada and Lennon, and finally we see what is inside there.

And another of those weird what the hell scenes or moments of Lost, the Temple Others open the case and take out a big wooden ankh, an ancient Egyptian symbol of life. Sanada cracks it open and takes out a rolled-up note. Lennon orders everyone to say his or her name, everything seems to check out, and they take Sayid into the temple. When Hurley asks what the note says, Lennon replies that it indicates that everyone's going to be seriously screwed if Sayid can't be revived.

Cindy the flight attendant and the two kids who were abducted in Season 1 also show up with refreshments.

The temple itself seems like a cross between Aztec and ancient Egyptian, with hieroglyphics all over the walls. Inside, Sanada first tests the waters by slicing his hand and putting into a large pool in the center. He then turns over a jumbo-size hourglass while his men push Sayid into the pool. Perhaps these are healing waters. Even as Sayid wakes up under water and struggles for air, the men won't let him up as long as the hourglass' sands run through. Rifles get turned on the gang when they try to intervene. Finally they bring Sayid up when the time is up, and he's dead. Jack can't revive him, no matter how much CPR is given.

Finally Hurley calls out Sanada on his language abilities -- Lennon was not translating -- and he admits he can speak English, but hates the way it sounds upon his tongue.

Inside Jacob's old Taweret Foot House, Smokey-Locke tells Ben that John Locke was the only person who really never wanted to leave the Island because it was only place he felt at home. He can relate, as he also wants to go home. He adds that John's last thoughts as Ben strangled him in Season 5 were "I don't understand."

S-Locke emerges, stunning everyone with the doppelganger effect of corpse and living version of the same guy. S-Locke tells Richard he looks good "out of those chains," a what-the-heck-does-that-mean line. He attacks Richard severely, knocks him out and throws him over his shoulder like a blanket. S-Locke says he's going to the temple, and though rifles are aimed at him, no one dares to intervene.

Back at the temple, Jack is brooding over Sayid's death. A panic breaks out because Sayid has bought the farm. The Others get ready, because they know Smokey is coming. They ready rifles and spread the magic ash everywhere around the temple in a mass bedlam.

There is a gasp and and a shout inside the temple as depressed Jack still sits there, the only one from 1977 who still hasn't discarded his DHARMA coveralls. Jack turns and looks.

Sayid is sitting up and asks, "What ... happened?"

What's next?

1. What will happen in the taxi with Kate and Claire?

2. What will happen when S-Locke arrives at the temple with Richard?

3. Will John and Jack meet again in 2004? What other character paths will cross in this time track?

4. Is Sayid resurrected, or has Jacob taken over the former Iraqi soldier's body?

5. What is the relationship between the 2004 and 2007 timelines? Will they ever cross or affect each other?