At the end of Season 5 of Lost, we were left with the image of a bleeding and broken Juliet at the bottom of a shaft desperately banging away on a hydrogen bomb, all in hopes of triggering a “reset” of everything that’s happened since Oceanic 815 crashed on the island. In the final moment, the screen faded to white and the show we’ve been watching for five seasons comes to a full stop with no clue of where it’s heading next.

*SPOILERS AHEAD*

And so begins the final season of Lost…

Scott: I think I’ve probably got the main concerns as everyone else: 1) what’s the cross-cutting format going to be (flashbacks? flashforwards? time travel? zombie season?) and, 2) will enough mysteries be answered? #2 is the key for this final season, because I have no illusions that the plethora of fake mysteries Darlton has weaved together to keep us watching year after year is simply too unwieldy to ever wrap up completely. The question is whether they can wrap up ENOUGH stuff satisfactorily.

Chris: I like how we have our answer to the big question from the Season 5 finale – did it work? – and the answer is yes AND no. Awesome.

Robert: I take we’re all in agreement that we’re dealing with two alternate timelines? What’s interesting to me is that they don’t diverge with the plane crashing/not crashing but sometime before that. No Shannon on the plane, Desmond now on the plane and Hurley claiming that he’s the luckiest guy alive. What was the event that changed everything?

Armando: Two timelines and which is true? Both? One or the other? Is it two timelines? Or the same one at different points in time?

CJ: I’m under the assumption that it’s two timelines. Both are currently true, but… I imagine they’ll converge at some point.

RC: A big question I had coming out of the first hour: what did Charlie mean by “I was supposed to die”?

CJ: You forgot:

- Where’s Claire?
- Where’s Shannon?
- Does the 1970s folk know that they’re in the present now?

Ay-ay-ay…lotsa new questions!

AR: And still no real hard clue about the what exactly is going on overall and who Jacob is.

RC: Well, at least now we know what was in Hurley’s guitar case. And I think the 70s folks know they’re in the present because they all recognized The Swan after it had imploded/exploded back at the end of Season 2.

One thing I’m finding is that the alternate “LAX” timeline doesn’t seem to matter to me right now. I’m still interested in what’s happening on the island, especially with New Locke now on the move. So New Locke is the new bad guy and Sayid the new Jacob? That’s an interesting proposition.

AR: I’m trying my hardest to not become the cynic right now. It was a fun, really good two hours of Lost. It’s everything we’ve some to expect from it: the mind-bending new “story device” of two timelines, the drama, the intrigue. And oh, the questions. I felt like I always do after these types of Lost episodes, like I just watched a gigantic bubble ALMOST burst but not quite. I loved it but at the same time I am feeling like enough already with the answering of the layered questions. Let’s start getting to at least what is at the core of what is really going on.

CJ: See, I think you’ve really got to set aside the need for the show to answer questions. It is setting yourself up for disappointment since the show has always asked more questions than it answers. That’s part of the appeal to me, and they do (eventually) answer the questions that deal with relationships between characters, the human angle. If some of the other mysteries are left up in the air, that isn’t going to bother me.

I’m digging the two timelines thing. I’m wondering how things will merge. Already Desmond seemed to disappear off the plane. Jack’s father’s body is gone. And Locke’s bag went missing. Are they already beginning to merge? I saw someone make the comment that these are “flash sideways.” Gotta say that I didn’t expect that at all. I expected just “the plane landed at LAX” and for that to be the only starting point for the season.

But what about Juliet’s last words, “It worked.” What do you think of that one?

AR: I totally agree with you Chris. This is why I am still in love with the show. But at the same time, I can’t deny that I do at least want to see them touch upon the underlying tapestry of the show and why all these others are there, etc. Do I need to know every little detail about how the island “works”? No. But I would at least like to know why these people are having this war and where they came from.

Flash Sideways is an awesome thought. Whose to say that time has to move in a straight line?

SH: Since we’ve got 16 hours left, I think we’ve already got two major answers: “What’s Smokey?” and “What’s the Temple/Where’d the other Others go?” I’m pretty happy with where we are at this point: Jacob and Esau/Man In Black/Smokey are two warring entities who had to come down to our level to make their philosophies have some consequence (that is, if Jacob is now crashing in Sayid’s body). A pretty archetypal story really, whether it’s the Iliad or Wings of Desire.

AR: Very nice point Scott. It’s almost like the eternal struggle of “Good vs. Evil” has manifest itself.

SH: A couple of things really clicked for me with the Man In Black/Smokey/Locke connection tonight. He’s clearly the “Help Me” apparition in the cabin, not Jacob. And it got me thinking back to the characters who came face to face with Smokey but lived to tell about it, namely Locke and Ben, who were both major parts of his plan (Juliet also comes to mind, I wonder if there’s some larger significance to that since her major purpose at this point – detonating the bomb – seems to work against him). My question now would be, why’d he have to inhabit Locke and not one of the other dead bodies on the island? I would buy that it’s because he’s in a leadership position, but it would be great if it was tied into his general specialness.

For me, I’ve always been much more into the mythological/religious side of Lost than the human subplots, which often manifest themselves as lazy romantic motivations I care nothing about. Who cares whether Kate ends up with Jack or Sawyer when THE VERY FABRIC OF THE UNIVERSE is at stake?? This first episode brought those larger issues to the fore, so I really couldn’t be more excited.

RC: I love how even though more questions come up, other pieces start to fall into place. I was trying to figure out why Sayid happened to be the one who’s now inhabited by Jacob and I think back to last season when Sayid shot Young Ben, claiming he now knew why he had to come back to the island. Maybe Jacob brought him to the island because he knew that deep down Sayid was a killer (something that was emphasized pretty heavily in recent seasons) and that he’d need that quality to both preemptively kill his killer and fight the larger-than-life war with his nemesis.

AR: I’m happy with it. I rewatched the 2nd episode and it was better. It hit more of an even flow of storytelling instead of the first half hour that was pretty “bang, bang!”

You have to love the tease for next week—”The Time For Questions Is Over.” We’ll see…

Chris Johnston talks about video games old and new at Player One Podcast. Armando Reyes talks comics, music and life on the road on Twitter.