the blast door map

written by: damon lindelof and carlton cuse, of course.

damon and carlton are insistent on calling these flashes 'sideways' and not 'alternate.' they want us to understand that this is not a 'dream' outcome, or a 'possible' outcome. the events in the sideways timeline are real and have consequences. what we don't know yet is how these two timelines are related to each other. and to that damon and carlton have said: 'be patient.' we don't know what it is yet, but that cut on jack's neck is going to be a major link between the two timelines.

2007 (linear story): as expected, jack, kate, jin, sawyer, miles, hurley, sayid, and even juliet were timeflashed back to 2007, probably the exact moment jacob was killed, and the spring went dark. jacob knew this, which is why he just stood there when ben stabbed him. these are also the people he meant were 'coming,' not ilana's people on the ajira flight. i criticized the show last season for inserting a 3 year break into the linear island story (in addition to throwing time travel into the mix). we'll get a better picture of the season as a whole coming up, but it looks like we are going to have two linear timelines happening in separate universes, possibly making this the easiest season to follow, ever.

2004 (parallel timeline): we are entering into this sideways story from the same moment that the original pilot episode gave us our very first flashback: jack looking out the window of the plane. the differences are both subtle and obvious. jack is sitting in a different section of the plane - we no longer see the plane's wing out his window. his conversation with cindy is slightly different. she only gives him one bottle of liquor instead of two.. the turbulence passes and (gasp!), bernard returns from the bathroom! every moment of this sideways story was exquisitely crafted. this final season has so much potential - because it's really getting back to the core of who our beloved characters were in their flashback stories, before the crash. let's look at each person's similarities and differences in this new trajectory:

1. desmond
well, first of all, he's on the plane! what!? why!? how!? well, let's consider - if the island is underwater, desmond is totally free of his responsibility to push the button. he is also wearing a wedding ring. is desmond married to penny in the sideways story? penny must have been born before 1977 off-island, so she's out there somewhere, but did charles widmore make it off the island before it sunk? do desmond and penny still have a child? did they name their child charlie after her deceased father? also, jack seems to recognize him. did jack and desmond have the same meeting that once occurred at the stadium?i'm going to say not likely. in the original timeline, when jack entered the hatch and first saw des on the island, he recognized him immediately. so, is jack having a deja vu from the sideways universe? did they still train together at the stadium, but not have the conversation? did desmond still need to race around the world in order to win the approval of charles widmore?

when jack returns from having saved charlie's life, desmond is gone. jack looks around and doesn't see him anywhere. rose and bernard were asleep. is desmond time flashing again? or, perhaps, universe hopping? is this what ms. hawking meant when she said the island wasn't done with him yet? this is a good sign that desmond's arc on the show is not yet over.

2. charlie
if his story is the same, charlie is returning from australia having just visited his brother who refused to reivive drive shaft. his suicide attempt makes sense in this context - and the introduction of jack into this storyline is also logical. and - jack needed a pen to save charlie! oh the irony.. in the pilot, jack sends boone on a false mission for a pen just to get him away. what remains to be seen is if charlie has any future in the parallel story, or if this is his only appearance. it would be a mistake to contrive the parallel story into every possible happy ending - it wouldn't be fair to the story or characters, but it's possible that by season's end, the writers will find a way to bring charlie and claire back together.

3. boone
his scene was wonderful. also, notice frogurt asleep between them. the scene encapsulated the season 1 relationship and dynamic between these two men perfectly. another change here is that shannon is not on the plane - having decided to stay in the abusive relationship she summoned boone to rescue her from. of course the real reason shannon wasn't in the scene is because the producers were unable to sign maggie grace, but it's possible we may see her by season's end. i would love to see the show address the sayid/shannon relationship again in some way, any way. so much focus has been put back on nadia, that it's easy to forget sayid had this relationship. i'd love to know if the original script included an encounter between the two in the parallel story.

4. kate
damon has confirmed in the podcast that the 'america's most wanted' video screened at comiccon is canon, meaning the kate's trajectory is different, but mostly the same. will she run into jack again? considering that she's now hijacked a taxi holding his half-sister, this could be the path through which they meet. it made perfect sense that kate would try to run at the first opportunity. edward mars is probably the most inefficient us marshall in history, losing kate again and again. an interesting difference between our original kate and the parallel kate is that in the original timeline, kate went searching the island for mars' halliburton case. she wasn't interested in the guns it contained, but rather the toy airplane her childhood friend tommy had given her.

in the parallel story, kate abandons the hallibuton case in the bathroom without a second thought. is tommy still alive? is parallel kate not obsessed with trinkets? the next episode will be kate-centric and is titled 'what kate does,' a lovely inversion of the season 2 episode 'what kate did.' so, what does kate do? folks, this is probably going to be the last kate episode. as the final season progresses, we will move closer to the final piece of the endgame, but with each episode we're also saying goodbye to each character, as it's the last time that they will have a full hour devoted to them. i'm excited, anxious, and a little sad to see each person's big goodbye.

5. claire
we got one shot of claire! because the next episode is kate-centric, i have a feeling we will finally also see claire in the island story - since claire is the entire reason kate returned there. here's what i'm hoping to find out this season in regards to claire: who was the couple in la that wanted to adopt aaron? what is her psychic's relationship to the island? was he an other? how will jack and claire discover their relationship to each other in the parallel story? where will aaron ultimately end up?

6. sun and jin
oh this one is interesting. first off, they are not married. they do not have wedding rings, and the guard calls her 'ms paik,' instead of 'ms. kwon.' also, was sun lying about not knowing english, or in the parallel timeline did she not have a reason to run from jin? my theory: sun's father, being a business associate of charles widmore, was subtly course-corrected when widmore was killed in the jughead explosion. while sun's father is still a tyrant, events reveal to sun her father's true nature. jin is still working for him, but the wedding hasn't happened yet. they are on the plane to elope. it's possible sun never took english lessons (and thus never had the affair), or it could be that both of them learned english in order to prepare for their new life together in the states. we still need to find out what the wad of cash was for - it seemed to be a surprise to sun. some people have pointed out that jin is back to being his original assholish self - yes, but after rewatching the pilot, i think he's marginally nicer than he was originally. when he tells her to button up in the parallel story, it's not with the open hostility of the original. one of the unfortunate consequences of sinking the island is that jin is now sterile again, and without some kind of intervention, sun will never give birth to ji yeon.

7. hurley

8. the tailies

cindy!!!! wow. this episode was all about cindy! it was great to see her again, both in the parallel and island stories. conspicuously missing however are libby and mr. eko. were they on the plane and we just didn't see them (the way we didn't see claire until later?), or were they not on the plane at all?
i'm really excited to hear that libby will be returning this year, because there is a good chance to finally get some real closure on her character through the parallel story. will she and hurley end up happily ever after? does she still give desmond her boat? does she still have her kathy griffin wig?
what is mr. eko's path in los angeles? assuming he was on the plane - he would have been travelling to la to be a priest at a local church. if he's going to be written into the show later, it would be completely awesome to have him be the priest at ms. hawking's lamp post station church.

9. jack and locke
best scene of the episode. both have lost luggage (well, a little more than 'luggage' for jack), and so are stuck in the waiting area together. unlike the locke/boone scene, which paralleled the two character's relationship, this scene between jack and locke revealed how these two men might be destined to save each other in the real world. i slap my forehead now, but the obvious connection between jack, a spinal surgeon, and locke, a paraplegic, never occurred to me - because on the island locke told almost no one of his original state. rose knew. walt knew, and ben knew. that was it. the possibilities for the paralel story are thrilling - will jack be locke's savior and cause him to walk again? will locke become a surrogate father figure to jack? which ever way this story goes, i have a feeling i'll be crying my eyes out about it.

• the island story
everyone on the island is in the same time period! two different places, but the same time period! at the swan station, the entire first hour of the island story consisted of our heroes orienting themselves (and us) and digging juliet out of the imploded hatch. the second hour of their story was the attempt to save sayid by dipping him in magic water.

at the foot statue, jacob's nemesis reveals himself, finally! he throws people around, tells richard he looks better than he did when he was in chains, hits him in the throat and walks off with his body.

1. jacob
jacob's plan is starting to reveal itself. he went to hurley precisely because hurley would be able to see him after he'd been stabbed by ben.. which means jacob must have known that hurley et. all would flash back to 2007 at that exact moment. jacob sure knows a lot about what's going to happen. jacob orders that sayid be brought to the temple, and provides instruction to the dwellers there that if sayid dies, they are in big trouble. why did jacob touch sayid in los angeles the day nadia was killed? part of the reason had to be that ben be shot and dipped in the pool, but was it also so that sayid could be dipped in the pool himself? wtf happens when you dip in the pool? did jacob inhabit sayid's body, or was the healing effect of the water just delayed?

so it turns out that jacob's guitar case was in fact a message intended for the inhabitants of the temple. we still don't know exactly what the message says, but we can presume that it at least has the names of those who would arrive along with the giant ankh. how did dogen know the message would be inside? is this an established delivery system for jacob's messages? did jacob take advantage of ajira's proxying of flight 815 in order to assure his message 'whooshed' off the plane into the proper place? again, jacob sure seems to know a hell of a lot about what's going to happen. quiz: how many days have passed for hurley since he saw jacob in the cab? (answer below)

2. jacob's nemesis
see last week's entry for more info on jacob's nemesis, the smoke monster, and how this person operates. this episode has confirmed a lot of my theories. the mystery surrounding this guy now is: what next? where is 'home' for someone who has been fighting a metaphysical war for 150 years? what is he going to do with richard? what exactly is the ash that repels him when in smoke monster form?

here is the corresponding shot from 'apocalypse now:'


3. ben
michael emerson does the wtf face better than anyone. his intake upon seeing locke's true dead body.. amazing. his effortless lie to richard after he exits the statue 'everything's fine!,' hilarious. his slow turn after smokey's rampage to find locke standing behind him, fantastic. it will be interesting to see what they do with ben from here on out. he's no longer leader, and he's been used by jacob's nemesis. his feud with widmore seems fleeting by now. does ben exist in the parallel story? was he killed on the island as a boy, or will we run into him in the parallel world, perhaps as an insurance salesman, or child psychologist?

4. juliet

how did juliet know that 'it worked' before she died? her last words to sawyer were 'we should get coffee sometime. we can go dutch.' i'll bet money she says this to him when she eventually runs into him in the parallel story. without the island, though, juliet is a very different person. she's meek, indecisive, even clumsy. she gets walked on by her ex-husband. will sawyer awaken the tough girl within? some people wondered why juliet needed to die twice - i think it's because she's setting up two very important things: sawyer's trajectory for the final season, and the relationship between the parallel and island timelines. everything sawyer does from here on out will be partially motivated by juliet's death, and by season's end, we can look to her death scene as the first clue about how the timelines relate.

5. cindy!
we know now that cindy, zac and emma were not jumping through time during season 5 along with all the other crash survivors. they have clearly been living at the temple for the last three years, which means that they have somehow become indoctrinated as 'true' others. did they each go for a swim in the temple spring? some people were confused by these others living at the temple, but their presence has been established earlier in the show. in season 3, ben tells alex, rousseau, and carl to head for the temple - he tells them that there is a group of others living there, and that it's the only place where they will be safe. unfortunately they never made it. we still don't know what's been happening on the island during the three years that the oceanic six were self destructing on the mainland. were they just making beads and ships in bottles, waiting for ajira 316?

• minor gripe
the final shot of the opening scene, while a thrilling mythological puzzle-piece, was too overtly cgi. it's a tall order for an effects company - it unloads lots of information at once, and by being an unbroken shot, eliminates any confusion about it being a flashforward or flashback - it clearly states that in the parallel timeline, the island with its sonic fence, dharma barracks, and swingset, is underwater with ezra j. sharkington. i just wish it looked a bit more realistic.

• another detail

• preboomer
sayid, after being well and truly dead, awakens with a wtf face and says 'what happened?' boom.

what happened indeed.. does jacob have the power to possess a body? we've never seen this type of power on the show before. it's not jacob's nemesis in sayid because nemesis doesn't possess that power. jacob's nemesis duplicates the body when taking its form. this is something different. did jacob bring sayid to the island knowing he'd die in the pool? did dying in the pool give jacob the right circumstances to enter sayid's body? is this show suddenly becoming 'dollhouse' now? why was the water murky? why didn't it heal mystic asian guy's hand? what is the history of the temple and the pool? what does kate do? any more questions? i could seriously write another 22 pages on this episode, but i don't have the luxury of 8 months to procrastinate again, so ask any questions below..

answer: 5 days