LOST? Yes, that begins to describe it

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 03/02/2010 (5708 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Well, THAT certainly cleared things up, didn’t it?

The long wait for the premiere of Lost’s sixth and final season was rewarded by a two-hour opener that not only compounded the show’s lingering mysteries but also added more layers of confusion and lent credence to the theories of those who’ve supposed that the series’ storyline is built on a parallel-realities assertion.

In other words, I have even less idea what’s going on than I did when I tuned in.

How ’bout you?

Lost’s first few steps toward the final-season finish line were tentative at best, offering little in the way of explanation of what happened in last May’s finale when the bomb went off.

Apparently, it didn’t re-set the time-space balance as Jack predicted it would; then again, maybe it did, based on Juliet’s dying declaration to Sawyer that “It worked”…

What we’ve got, it seems, is dueling realities – one based in the not-so-distant past, with Oceanic 815 experiencing just a few bumps as its jets over a patch of the Pacific that conceals a submerged island (sunk by an H-bomb blast, perhaps?) and then continuing on to a safe landing at LAX, and another in the sort-of present, with Jack and Kate and Hurley and Sawyer and a lately resurrected Sayid still on the island and in the company of a bunch of temple-dwelling Others.

And in that world, the Locke who’s not really Locke but a human embodiment of the Smoke Monster instead seems intent on wreaking havoc on the island and then taking his paranormal brand of mayhem out into the greater world.

It was, in Lost’s signature time/space/dimension-skipping herky-jerky style, a very entertaining two hours, producing multiple storyline possibilities for each character as the series heads into the clubhouse turn for its final sprint.

Entertaining, yes. But elucidating? Not even a whit.

Still, I’m feeling a good kind of confounded by Tuesday’s premiere, and that hasn’t always been the case for me during the long meander through Lost’s labyrinth of logic. I’m looking forward to seeing what happens next, even though I’m sure I have only the most tenuous grasp on what just happened.

How are you feeling? Lost?