Spoilers. Prior to season 3's climax, Lost's creators warned audiences there would be a last-minute "snake in the mailbox" surprise (which turned out to be the reveal that the episode's flashbacks were actually flash-forwards.) In season 5's two-hour premiere, that damn snake's really starting to bite...The events of season 4's finale were momentous: the off-shore freighter was destroyed (killing Jin), a group of characters managed to leave the island by helicopter (some becoming the "Oceanic Six" and creating a cover-story after they were rescued by Penny's boat), and Ben (Michael Emerson) risked unspecified disaster by making the island "disappear" to protect it from outside forces. In "Because You Left", the ramifications of Ben's desperate effort to save the island becomes clearer, in a story that splits the narrative into off-island/on-island strands, and shuffles everything out of chronological order.
Ben is now operating in the outside world, having persuaded Jack (Matthew Fox) that the only way for the Oceanic Six to lead normal lives is to return to the island they spent months trying to escape! That's not going to be easy, given everyone's circumstances: Kate (Evangeline Lilly) is back on the run with toddler Aaron, now that mysterious men are on her doorstep insisting she prove her maternity with a blood sample; Sayid (Naveen Andrews) has busted Hurley (Jorge Garcia) out of his asylum to go on the run from assassins, having spent the past year as Ben's own globe-trotting hitman; and Sun (Yunjin Kim) is joining forces with Charles Widmore (Alan Dale) to kill his adversary Ben.
On the island, Sawyer (Josh Holloway) is grieving the death of his friends, convinced their helicopter didn't make it to safety. Even worse, everyone left behind after the island "moved" are astonished to find their camp has vanished, along with the freighter on the ocean horizon. Physicist Daniel Faraday (Jeremy Davies) is the only one who can half-explain what's happened – either they, or the island, are jumping erratically through time like a needle skipping on a record. Intermittent white-outs herald random temporal jumps to various points in the island's timeline, exemplified by Locke (Terry O'Quinn) witnessing the crash of the Nigerian light-aircraft carrying those Virgin Mary statuettes full of heroine pouches.
Interestingly, Daniel insists to Sawyer that they physically won't be able to change the past – but, after finding themselves at a point in history when The Hatch existed, Daniel secretly makes contact with past-Desmond inside (wearing a hazmat suit, still pressing a button every 108 minutes), and instructs him to find his mother in Oxford after the helicopter rescue...
It appears that Desmond (Henry Ian Cusick) is genetically-unique when it comes to time-travel (as evidenced in previous time-bending episodes), and here he wakes up in the present-day aboard Penny's boat – having experienced his conversation with Desmond as a kind of "dream memory". Is it recollection inserted by Daniel's change of established history, or is Desmond in some way linked to the island a la his temporal mind-trips in "The Constant"? Either way -- up anchor, set a course for England...
Cleverly, the writers used two down-to-earth characters to act as buoys for anyone overwhelmed by the sci-fi indulgences. We've come a long way from the simple survivalist drama of that first season, so it was great to see Sawyer vocalize his disbelief at the latest island craziness, and the Hurley-centric "The Lie" kept things light-hearted.
By now, Lost has amassed a sizeable hardcore audience willing to continue down the rabbit hole, but there are still a group of viewers who don't ordinarily watch science-fiction and are admirably trying to keep up. Season 5's premiere is undoubtedly a fork in the road moment; where Lost's fantastical trappings are no longer irregular diversions with a dose of ambiguity -- they're now the fuel powering us to the end of this six-year journey.
It remains to be seen if the writers can keep everything afloat for the final 34 episodes (particularly now all the best characters aren't even on the island), but that should mean underused newcomers like Charlotte (Rebecca Mader) and Miles (Ken Leung) will flourish without any competition for on-island stories. Already, Charlotte and Daniel's relationship is being handled with renewed confidence, and Charlotte's nose-bleeds and memory loss indicate she's susceptible to the island's time-jumps (perhaps because she was born on the island?) All of that should be interesting to see play out, and Miles' psychic abilities will hopefully be utilized better, too.
Throughout it all, there were a few excitements to cause fan-gasms: from the opening teaser focusing on DHARMA's instructional video-star Dr. Marvin Candle (Francois Chau), as he learned of the Orchid's subterranean donkey wheel (with Daniel also present!), to the return of the late Anna-Lucia (Michelle Rodriguez) as Hurley's personal Jiminy Cricket. And it wouldn't be Lost without stirring a spoonful of new questions into the mix; from the presence of British soldiers on the island in one unspecified era (Widmore's team, pre-DHARMA?), to unseen assailants attacking the camp and killing copious "redshirts" like whinging Neil Frogurt (Sean Whalen) with flaming arrows (the indigenous islanders who built that four-toed statue, perhaps?)
And, in the final sting of "The Lie", it's revealed that a vital contact who will help Ben get the Oceanic Six back to the island is none other than Ms. Hawking (Fionnula Flanagan), the white-haired Englishwoman first seen in "Flashes Before Your Eyes", who seems to be able to predict the coordinates of a way back to the island using an Apple III computer and a Foucalt pendulum chalking intersecting lines on a floor map.
Fact is, if you're watching Lost's fifth season premiere, you're something of a fan. Even if you don't make an effort to plug gaps in your knowledge by trawling internet fansites and forums for clues, theories and background detail. Perhaps that's why this two-hour premiere got record low ratings in the US, as it's become totally inaccessible to casual viewers. But, with a guaranteed finishing line in sight for the Lost faithful come summer 2010, who really cares?
To be honest, I'm still unconvinced Lost can maintain the same level of intrigue with its off-island activities, but having the island-based characters flitting around in time (as the audience have been for the past four years) will be an interesting and effective way to shine light on the mysteries. Will we see the Black Rock ship before it was shipwrecked, for example? If there's one thing I've learned as an avid viewer since 2004, it's to trust the writers and their ability to keep this phenomenal juggling act in play.
Overall, this double-bill star introduced viewers to the new narratives very well, and gave us a sense of where all this might lead. It wasn't as impressive as the fourth season's start, but it was considerably more exciting than the third, and I'm sure this penultimate year will deliver the usual shocks, surprises, twists, pseudo-intellectual fun, and thrilling spectacle.
Unanswered Questions
- Who built the donkey wheel DHARMA discovered underground, that appears to be a mechanism to displace the island in time? Was it the indigenous people of the island? Does that include Alpert?
- Was Daniel a member of DHARMA when the Orchid was being built, or will he travel back in time to that point in a future episode?
- Why does Locke have to die to get the Oceanic Six back to the island, according to Richard Alpert? And why did he give Locke his compass? Is this in some way linked to the time when Alpert asked Locke as a boy to choose an object that belonged to him – considering one of the items was that compass?
- Who is Daniel's mother Desmond will have to find in Oxford? Is it Ms. Hawking, Ben's accomplice? But how can that be, if Ben finds her in America?
- How does Ms. Hawking know when the Oceanic Six have the return to the island? And how exactly do they do this?
- Who is trying to capture Sayid and Hurley? Widmore's men? Some other group who know the Oceanic Six are lying about their experiences? Likewise, who are the suits on Kate's doorstep asking questions about Aaron?
- Why are the people living in the barracks dressed in civilian clothes, rather than DHARMA uniforms?
- Who is Jill from the Butcher Shop? And who are Gabriel and Jeffrey, who Ben asked after?
- Who are the British soldiers who attacked Sawyer and Juliet? Were we witnessing a period in island history unknown to us? Were they perhaps Charles Widmore's men, from pre-DHARMA days, when the island was possibly under his control?
- Who are the unseen assailants who attacked the beach camp with flaming arrows? Indiginous islanders, who built that four-toed statue seen in the season 2 finale?
- Ben is a little bit vague about Locke's death. So, it seems strange to say this, but is Locke really dead? Can he be brought back to life somehow? Or is his ambiguity another red herring just to keep us guessing?
- Why is Charlotte getting headaches, nosebleeds and having problems remembering her mother's maiden name? Is it because she was born on the island and somehow susceptible to changes in the timeline?
25 January 2009
Sky1, 9pm
Writers: Damon Lindelof & Carlton Cuse (5.1) / Edward Kitsis & Adam Horowitz (5.2)
Director: Stephen Williams (5.1) / Jack Bender (5.2)
Cast: Josh Holloway (Sawyer), Henry Ian Cusick (Desmond), Jeremy Davies (Daniel), Elizabeth Mitchell (Juliet), Michael Emerson (Ben), Evangeline Lilly (Kate), Jorge Garcia (Hugo), Matthew Fox (Jack), Naveen Andrews (Sayid), Yunjin Kim (Sun), Sonya Walger (Penny), Francois Chau (Dr. Marvin Candle), Alan Dale (Charles Widmore), Rebecca Mader (Charlotte), William Blanchette (Aaron), William Mapother (Ethan Rom), Nestor Carbonell (Richard Alpert), Sam Anderson (Bernard), Zuleikha Robinson (Ilana), Said Taghmaoui (Caesar), L. Scott Caldwell (Rose Nadler), Sean Whalen (Neil Frogurt), Tom Irwin (Dan Norton), Michael Dempsey (Foreman), Jeff Fahey (Frank), Michelle Rodriguez (Anna-Lucia), Cheech Marin (David Reyes), Tom Connolly (Jones), Mary Mara (Jill), Dana Sorman (Darlene), Jeremiah James (Police Officer), Stephanie Conching (Nurse), Matthew Alan (Cunningham), Todd Bryant (Mattingly), Lilian Hurst (Carmen Reyes) & Michael Dempsey (Foreman)
