Two, two, two shows in one! The two-hour season premiere of Lost, with its dual tracks of parallel world yarns, was a twin-patty, double-pounder factory burger of story, slathered with saucy ideas, drippy with messy emotions, and chewy with mystery meat. It was a delicious meal for this ravenous eight months-starved Lost fan, and while it wasn't easy to digest (check that: I'm still digesting it), I felt properly served. Where to start? Should I sketch how the premiere was an elaborate metaphorical rumination on the afterlife? Should I be a good host and first introduce our newcomers, Mr. ''I hate the taste of English on my tongue'' Dogen (The Twilight Samurai's Hiroyuki Sanada), the crankypants master of the Island's spiritual heart, the Temple, and his scruffy-hippy sidekick/mouthpiece Lennon (Deadwood's John Hawkes)? Should we just begin with the beginning and deconstruct the brief yet deceptively dense teaser sequence, with Jack's cryptic shaving nick, his déjà vu-suffused encounter with Desmond Hume, and that wayyy cool-or-wayyy fake (debate!) f/x shot of a sunken Island? Maybe I should curb the geek stuff and dote on the rich emotional content and the plethora of poignant character moments — Sawyer's grief and rage over Juliet's death, Locke's shame and pain about his wheelchair, Rose and Bernard's gooey canoodling. (If it wasn't for a certain hobbity rocker hogging the airplane craphole with his dope-swallowing suicide attempt, I think the Mile High Club would have two new members today.) Then again, how could I not start by shouting HOLY FREAKING MOLY! over the revelation/confirmation that Fake John Locke = Man In Black = The Smoke Monster?!? ''I'm sorry you had to see me like that'' = greatest Lost line ever? And good lord, how satanically scary was Terry O'Quinn with those furious eyes and disquietingly ironic grins? Finally, I can relate with dastardly Benjamin Linus: I was totally bug-eyed terrified by that man/thing/demon/whatever. But let's not resort to name-calling...
Okay, time to choose and I say let's start with... none of those options! Because I think we need to spend a few minutes wrapping our minds around the season's high concept storytelling conceit, which the producers are calling ''flash-sideways.'' The premiere presented us with ''a separate reality,'' to borrow the title of the Carlos Castaneda book Lost name-dropped last season, a world where Oceanic 815 never crashed and the Island rests at the bottom of the Pacific, the cabins of Dharmaville and the Four Toed Statue now a sprawling industrial park for carp. Was there a Dharma logo branded on that shark? Help me out, readers, because I couldn't quite tell.
The introduction of this perplexing new world was preceded by a lengthy recap of the season 5 finale cliffhanger, culminating with Juliet's attempt to detonate a bomb called Jughead with a rock. The time-traveling castaways' intention was to reboot their post-Oceanic 815 lives. They wanted to prevent the Hatch (aka the Swan) from being built, thus preventing the plane from being tractor beamed out of the sky by Death Star Island. They also wanted no memory of their ordeal or each other, no memory of what they had gained or lost during their odyssey together. Lost encouraged us to believe they had gotten their wish. But why did Jack only get one secret bottle of booze from Cindy instead of two? Why was Desmond Hume on the plane? Why was Shannon absent? Why did Hurley consider himself the world's luckiest man instead of its most cursed? We had been trained last season to think that only everything after that point of the crash would be different. But in this world, the pre-Oceanic 815 timeline is subtly and radically different, too.
Last season also wanted us to think that the castaways were facing a choice between reboot or death. While we didn't fall for that bogus distinction, there were some of us (or just me) that then assumed season 6 could only really be about a reboot. Which genuinely interested me, provided somehow, someway the characters could retain the memories of their Island ordeal. I wanted continuity with past. Clean slate castaways would have negated our investment in their redemption. Well, I got what I asked for, but in a way I wasn't expecting. Namely: Lost's other ''other world,'' one where the castaways stuck in 1977 — Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Hurley, Jin, Miles, Sayid and Juliet — were brought back to the Island present of 2007 by means of... what? Time travel hot flash? (That was Jin's theory.) The course correcting work of paradox-policing fate? The will of now-dead Island deity Jacob?
A fair number of you found all this rather confusing. I know this because I saw the Tweets flood my Twitter feed as the episode aired. You have questions. Did the time-traveling castaways create this world? What was the significance of Jack's troubling déjà vu? Is there a relationship between this world and the Island world that keeps continuity with the past five seasons of the show? The good news I have for you today is that Lost exec producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse have valuable intel to share with you to help your reading of the show. You can check out our Q&A with them if you haven't already. But the main ideas are these: (1) You are not as confused as you think. The questions you are asking are questions you should be asking. (2) You will get answers to these questions — but patience will be required. (3) The temptation will be to dismiss the sideways story as ''What if...?'' trivia, but we should trust that we're being shown this story for a reason, and so we should take the leap of investing in its reality. Interesting: Last night's first of two conspicuous literary references was Salman Rushdie's fantasy Haroun and the Sea of Stories. Its famous line? ''What's the use of stories that aren't even true?'' The premiere's second conspicuous reference? Philosopher Soren Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling, which challenges true believers to embrace the absurdity of faith. Combined, both books send this message to us: This absurd sideways thing has a purpose. It is ''useful.'' Promise. Have faith. Just go with it...
And so the very existence of this world is a mystery to be solved. Should we speculate answers? Should we look to Gottfried Leibniz's theory of ''the best of all possible worlds'' or Hugh Everett's ''many worlds'' theory of quantum mechanics or David Lewis' theory of ''modal realism'' for insight? Should we be wondering if the sideways world characters are stuck in a time loop that they are obligated to fulfill in order to create their branch of reality? Or are they not bound by such strict causal logic? Yes, we could speculate/investigate/drive-ourselves-mad-with-more-time-travel-loopyness... but I'm going to take the producers on their word that we don't have to. Let's agree to take this up in my Doc Jensen columns over the next few weeks.
NEXT: Doc enters the Sideways World, with a confused Jack
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