Tonight saw the beginning of the end for Lost, one of my favorite shows on television. Or is that the end of the beginning? You never know with ABC's hit series and the creative minds of Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, their writing staff, and everyone involved in the creative process.

After a long wait, Lost has entered its 6th and final season, something that was pre-determined several years back when ABC agreed to let the show set its concrete end-date so the writers could fully plot out the structure of the show - and set up its story appropriately without forcing extra "filler" episodes to milk the franchise.

Just as I did with our Lost Season 5 Finale Review & Discussion, I've made many pages of notes while watching the finale, having gone into it with no spoilers beforehand. Join us as I review and discuss 2-hour season 6 premiere of Lost, titled "LAX."

While watching the episode, I typed up a summary of everything that happened as it happened to help me remember. I’ll post that later as a play-by-play recap of the entire 2-hour premiere.

For now, let’s hit on the big topics.

Introduction

The show opens with the white flash resulting from Juliet setting off the bomb from the Lost Season 5 Finale. This transitions into the intro of the premiere which sees Jack back on Oceanic Airlines, flight 815.

So, did the bomb work? Did the Losties successfully put things in order and end up back on the plane? No, fool. This is Lost!

What we see is a re-imagining of the intro to the series, an alternate reality. The scenes start out the same as we remember and just like before, the airplane hits that foreboding turbulence but what we expect to happen does not, and the Flight isn’t interrupted by the airplane breaking apart into pieces.

Instead we see what would’ve happened with our favorite characters had their flight continued normally. We get several great cameos including Charlie and his drug habit, Boone who lost his life in season 1, exploding Dr. Artz and even a voiceover cameo from Greg Grunberg as captain of the flight.

Multiple Story Arcs

What happens in the alternate reality is only one of three stories being told at the same time and throughout the special we’re continuously jumping from one to another.

While seeing what the flight should have been and what happens to the characters at the airport once they land at LAX, we’re seeing the repercussions of what happened at the four-toed statue after what we thought was Locke manipulated Ben into killing Jacob.

Richard is there outside the structure, waiting with a large group of survivors and a bunch of armed folks led by Ilana (played by Zuleikha Robinson). Recall that at the end of Season 5, Ilana and co. brought the casket with the real John Locke to show Richard Alpert which had them all wondering who the heck they’d been following to meet Jacob.

So, following this story for a moment, some interesting revelations are made. We learn that the bad John Locke, who’s really Jacob’s nemesis (I refer to him as Esau) is in fact the smoke monster.

We also learn that he and Richard have history and are enemies of sorts. From the way everything has played out in the series so far, we are lead to believe that he is the villainous character of the show and that Jacob is the good guy. How Richard doesn’t age and what his history with these two are, or what his mission is, are still a mystery.

Continue to Page 2 of Lost Season 6 Premiere Review for more...

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What Happened With The  Main Losties After the Bomb?

I suppose we could call this part the main story arc of the show but that’s debatable and all are three plots are equally important.

We see that Jack, Kate, Miles, Sawyer, Hurley, Jin, etc. all wake up at night in the jungle all around what used to be the hatch from the first two seasons, or The Swan station as it's officially known as.

The station is in its imploded form after the incident in the season 2 finale where Locke let the hatch timer count down against Desmond's wishes. So, we know at least that this group of characters is no longer stuck in the 70s but that they didn’t exactly accomplish what they set out to do since they’re still there and the hatch was still built and destroyed.

There’s a lot of friction here with Sawyer pissed at Jack about Juliet who dies and with Sayid nearly passing away too.

For some reason, Hurley is able to communicate with Jacob who died an hour earlier (in the season 5 finale) and Jacob tells him that they must bring Sayid to the temple in order to save him. My first guess is that he wants to takeover Sayid’s body for himself like his nemesis Esau did with Locke (kind of, but not really, he's a smoke monster).

So, Juliet’s dead and Sawyer takes it upon himself to bury her, forcing Miles to stay with him. He keeps Miles with him so he can communicate with Juliet using his “ability” because just before she passed, she had something important to tell Sawyer but couldn’t.

We find out her final words were that “it worked” in reference to the bomb going off. What that means exactly we don’t yet know, unless she simply means that they went back to the future/present time… Time-travel is to confusion what ice cream is to goodness. Or, she may be referring to this alternate reality where some things are a bit eerie...

Anyway, Jack, Jin, Kate and Hurley must deal with Sayid’s little problem of impending death and Jack figures he cannot do anything to save him. This was tad bit off because knowing Jack’s history, he never gives up. Regardless, this happens so that Hurley can tell everyone that Jacob wants them to take Sayid to the temple and as crazy as that sounds, it’s Lost after all and the characters don’t have any better ideas.

When they get there, they’re captured and brought to the real temple with a new character we’ve not yet met played by Japanese superstar Hiroyuki Sanada. He has a large group of people working for him including a hippie translator and Cindy the Stewardess from the Oceanic Flight who was part of the others before.

We don’t know what this group is all about but they work for Jacob and fear Esau big time. Hurley is able to convince them of Jacob’s orders to bring Sayid into the temple and they perform the ritual to bring him back to life involving a fountain of apple juice and drowning him. Although a perfectly normal medical procedure, it fails and everyone is sad and/or bitter.

After that, the leader wants to talk to Hurley in more detail about Jacob and what he said and Hurley informs him that Jacob’s dead. This puts the temple folk into red alert and they set up their black ash defensive lines (Esau the Locke-impersonating smoke monster can’t cross these ash lines) and launch a flare into the air. I'm not sure what the flare is for unless they have even more folks out there to inform of the danger.

This story arc for the episode ends with the hippie translator trying to get Jack to go with him but Jack physically resists engaging in a little shoving match with two randoms until Hurley shouts to get their attention. Why? Well, because Sayid is waking up. Or, should I say Jacob?

Continue to Page 3 of our Lost Season 6 Premiere Review for our conclusion and thoughts going forward...

lost season 6 richard alpert

Poor Richard Alpert

All Richard wants to do is live forever, or something. When Bad Locke comes out from the four-toed structure after having ended Jacob’s life and taking out a bunch of Jacob’s servants in his smoke monster form, Alpert is completely freaked out with eyes wide open.

Locke/Esau goes up to Richard (while he’s standing beside the real John Locke, dead in his coffin) and says, “it’s good to see you out of those chains” then proceeds to beat him down pretty bad. Esau then shares his disappointment with the crowd (which includes Sun, Frank Lapidus and Ilana) then puts Richard on his back and walks away.

What Happens Next?

Esau is clearly on a mission and it involves retribution or something else against Alpert as well. We need to explore what the deal with him, Richard and Jacob is, perhaps through their own flashbacks.

The alternate reality ended with the characters going their own separate ways; Charlie is taken away in cuffs, Kate is trying to escape the marshal, Locke and Jack talk for a bit after Oceanic informed Jack that his father’s body is missing, Jin was booked by customs for carrying too much cash, etc. Where that is going and how it will tie-in to the other two stories we still have yet to see.

I’m assuming that the other two stories are now back in regular Lost time and will cross-over soon enough, meaning Jin and Sun will get to reunite. We can then reasonably assume the setting off of the bomb added the other reality which still has some weirdness to it. Why was Desmond on the flight? That means he's clearly not in the hatch. But, what happened with Jack's dad and Locke's set of knives?

As for Jacob, if I’m right and he’s now Sayid, he and his army of followers will likely be doing something about Esau/Bad Locke/Smoke Monster.

I really hope we get some more info on what and how he becomes the smoke monster and why Ben was able to control him in smoke form with that device in his house in Otherville.  We’ll also need explanation for why Esau was going after all those characters in earlier seasons.

In Conclusion

It was a pretty solid Lost-style episode although I feel bad for new viewers who had nothing to go on except the one-hour recap. That didn’t look like too much of a help and this episode would be all over the place for them.

For die-hard Lost fans, it was awesome to see so many references and appearances from classic characters, including a big one of Claire towards the end. The final scene and Sayid's resurrection was obvious but there was plenty set up going forward.

Share your thoughts and theories of the Lost Season 6 Premiere and your expectations going forward.

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