LOST Rules

After waiting so long for the new season of LOST, it is great to see it come back full steam ahead, providing answers to our questions. It is nice to have the science-fiction aspect of the series out in the open, and there is no longer any doubt that time travel is a major component. A key theme that will be explored is whether it is possible to change the past. Daniel Faraday has studied the physics of it, and seems quite persuaded that “if it didn’t happen, it can’t happen”. Yet it dawns on him that the rules (a word that keeps coming up in LOST lately) don’t apply to Desmond, who is uniquely special, perhaps because he has become unstuck in time and found a constant. And presumably Daniel’s involvement with the Dharma Initiative, glimpsed in today’s episode and in the clip featuring Dr. Pierre Chang made available off the show, indicates some second thoughts about the subject.

The most interesting revelation to me was the extent of Ben’s connections off the island. He is not working alone, trying to get back to the island. He is part of a larger project, and behind it all appears to be Ms. Hawking. Her presence in a monk-like robe and then meeting Ben in a church suggests that there will be spiritual as well as scientific overtones to the season, as has been true of the show from the very beginning. But does the focus on getting the Oceanic Six and John Locke back to the island also indicate that there was manipulation involved in bringing them to the island in the first place? I’m almost sure of it now, that they had to be brought there, and then brought back, because something happened, and some who know the future know that that means those things have to happen. But to what end? What is the goal of the shadowy figures behind it all? Did Ms. Hawking turn the donkey wheel once in the past? Was she there when the first “incident” at the Swan station occurred and affected by it? Will “Adam and Eve” turn out to be Jack and Kate, or Desmond and Penny, or Charles Widmore and Ms. Hawking, or someone else?

What makes this point in the series exciting is that we are getting revelations and yet still have enough questions (including new ones, or old ones redefined in new ways through new information) to keep it exciting. And the most interesting hint from Cuse and Lindelhof is that we don’t yet know enough about the relationship between Linus and Widmore. There are keys that they still haven’t given to us yet. But the Lostmas present they did give us we’ll be unwrapping for weeks to come.