Lost Episodes 6.01 6.02 “LA X”…My Thoughts

**This review is loaded with spoilers…so if you haven’t watched the season 6 premier I would suggest waiting to read this until you do**

Well, I think it’s safe to say that the two-part season 6 premier was everything people love and hate about Lost.  As the white flash of the bomb fades out to find Jack sitting in his window seat on Oceanic 815 I was pleasantly surprised, since it was exactly how I envisioned the episode beginning.  What happens next, literally seconds later, begins the rampant speculation about what exactly happened when the bomb went off. 

For those of you who might not have noticed things begin to differ immediately from the events of the first episode of season 1.  In the series pilot we see a confident Jack reassuring a nervous Rose about the turbulence.  Now, it’s the exact opposite, Rose is the voice of reason and we see a jittery Jack strangling the life out of his arm rests.  Once the turbulence ends and we realize the plane is going to get to L.A. safe and sound then the real fun begins.  After Bernard returns from the bathroom both he and Rose mention how they missed each other, now this might not seem significant but if you remember from the pilot episode the plane breaks apart before Bernard returns and he ends up spending 48 days separated from his wife with the people from the tail section of the plane.  It seems like they both subconsciously remember this, which is why their comments to each other are more than just cutesy couples banter.   Jack finding the blood on his neck in the bathroom is another tie in with the island seeing as how he was all bloodied when the bomb went off, but the real head scratcher is who Jack finds sitting next to him when he returns to his seat.  Desmond being on the plane is the first major departure from the original story line, seeing as how he was in the Swan hatch when the plane crashes.  Now he’s on Oceanic 815…or is he?  More on that later…we then get to enjoy some really terrible CGI as we dive down through the clouds and under the ocean to find the island, foot statue and all, completely submerged beneath the waves.  Ok, that’s pretty strange, but then we see Juliet detonate the bomb again, only this time we don’t find Jack on the plane, nope now he’s back on the island, it’s above water and complete with Desmond destroyed Swan hatch, looks like we’re not in the 70’s anymore.

The reveal of what people are calling the “alternate timelines” could only work on a show like this, and give the writers credit for making it fairly obvious and easy to follow early on.  It seems that the 1970’s Losties have been bombed back into their present time (2007) and the same timeline with Fake Locke and Sun, Lapidas, Richard and the others at the foot statue.  This immediately brings a few things to mind, it seems like the time travel aspect of the show is over, Sun and Jin are now in the same time, and all the pieces are set for a big showdown with Fake Locke and everyone else.  But just like this episode did, I want to now jump back to Oceanic 815, currently in flight over the pacific.

Back on the plane, some familiar faces begin to pop up.  We see Boone sans Shannon chatting it up with Locke and seemingly making the same errors in judgement he made the first time around that ended up getting him killed, his line “if this thing goes down I’m sticking with you” is eery mostly do to Locke’s knowing look after he says it…does this Locke know more than the other passengers about their experiences on the island?  We also get to see Artz being his usual obnoxious self, and Charlie returns only to have his life saved by Jack for a second time, in a circumstance very similar to when Ethan left him hanging from his neck in the jungle in season 1.  Once again Jack intervenes, does this mean even in this reality Charlie is destined to die?  Charlie’s line “you should have let that happen man, I was supposed to die” seems to support that idea.  It seems these two universes might have a lot in common with one another.

Back on the island Jack, Jin, Hurley, Kate, and Sawyer are working to rescue Juliet from the bottom of the hole she fell into at the end of season 5.  The real important part of this scene is what Juliet says right before she dies, she seemingly begins to ramble about making coffee and it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, then she tries to tell Sawyer something but can’t get it out before she passes on.  When Miles is able to talk to her and find out she wanted to say “it worked” things become a lot more clear, it seems that before Juliet died she was able to glimpse the other universe for a few seconds.  What does this mean?  I’m not sure yet, but it seems that each character is at least somewhat combined with their alternate selves.  The first hour contained a lot to process, but it was also a nice setup for the things to come.  There was one aspect of the first hour that I didn’t mention in too much detail but I’ll get into that now…the aftermath of the murder of Jacob and the reveal about our good friend, the smoke monster.

Those who recall the beginning of the season 5 finale remember Jacob sitting on the beach in “the shadow of the statue” watching what I can only assume is the slave trading ship The Black Rock.  He is then joined by a mysterious man in black who tells Jacob he’s going to kill him.  Well as we learned later in that episode is that Locke wasn’t Locke at all, since his body was in the cargo crate that accompanied the group to the statue.  Well in this latest episode we discover that Fake Locke was the smoke monster in other form and most likely also the man in black from season 5 finally making good on his promise to kill Jacob.  Seeing Fake Locke or as I’m going to call him from now on Flock become smokie and destroy the people who were acting as Jacob’s protectors was a great scene for a couple reasons.  We now realize that the purpose of the ash wasn’t to keep Jacob in his cabin but to keep smokie out.  Then after the carnage ends watching Flock say to an understandably freaked out Ben “I’m sorry you had to see my like that”  was the icing on cake, but like everything on Lost this reveal poses a slew of new questions.

Back in the L.A. universe the plane has landed, the airline has lost Jack’s father, Kate escapes again from who might be the single most incompetent FBI agent ever, we get a glimpse of Claire, but the most important part of these scenes is the exchange between Locke and Jack at the lost baggage area.  Apparently Oceanic has also misplaced Locke’s big suitcase of knives along with Jack’s father, except Locke explains it as that they didn’t lose his father, only his father’s body.  This is another oddly accurate thing for Locke to say and is another reason why I think he may know more than the other passengers about the alternate reality.  Seeing Jack then offer to help fix Locke is pretty ironic knowing the history between them.

On the island dead Jacob appears to Hurley to tell him to bring Sayid to the temple, where we FINALLY!!! meet the group of others that we’ve been hearing about since season 3.  The temple was pretty much the last place on the island we hadn’t seen yet, but it’s been mentioned countless times.  It’s run by an asian dude and a guy that looks like John Lennon, and we discover that they have a spring that apparently heals all wounds.  This is obviously where they took injured Ben after Sayid shot him, now ironically, or not, Sayid needs the same spring to save his own life.  The spring is an important development for a couple reasons, I think it explains why Richard never ages, it also explains the secrecy behind the temple compound and why there is a massive wall protecting the grounds.  Except something is wrong and the spring water isn’t clear like it should be, and the effort to save Sayid seems to do the opposite and he is pronounced dead.

What happens next I think reveals the meat of what’s going to happen this season.  Hurley tells the asian guy and Lennon that Jacob is dead, which prompts them to put the temple on alert and to spread ash around the entire area, they then set off a signal rocket that alerts Richard and the others on the beach that Jacob is dead.  This happens just as Flock and Ben leave the statue and Flock says to Richard “it’s nice to see you out of those chains” which leads be to believe that Richard come to the island on The Black Rock as either a slave, or an officer that committed some crime.  Flock then knocks Richard out and starts to walk with him over his shoulder into the jungle.  The episode ends back at the spring when a seemingly dead Sayid suddenly wakes up.  Now the stage is set for the showdown between Flock and the others, Flock is on his mission to finally go home, wherever that is.

The premier did a great job setting up the dynamic of the final season, it’s going to flash between two realities that will undoubtedly become more and more intertwined as the season progresses, we are going to see the battle between light (Jacob, the others, The Losties) and dark (Flock, smoke monster, man in black) a battle first mentioned in the pilot episode during a conversation between Locke and Walt over a game of backgammon.  This should be an epic final chapter.

I want to leave you with some of the new questions posed by this première

Why is Jack’s hair different than it was when he was on the plane in the pilot?  He had a buzzcut, now he has a full head of hair.

Why did Shannon not come back with Boone this time?

Why was Desmond on the plane? And where did he vanish to?  And was that really Desmond?

Who/what is now inhabiting Sayid’s body?

What did the note in the wood carving actually say?

Tags: LA X, Lost, Season 6