Lost Premier: "Because You Left" and "The Lie"

At long last, the wait is over, and the new season of Lost has begun. Picking up precisely where last season's finale left off, they jumped right back into the action and have already set the stage for what looks like it will be a very fast-paced season.  As always, they have given us a few tantalizing answers, but at the usual cost of several more questions.  What's more, they're definitely setting us up to be able to see more of some of the characters we currently believe to be dead. Let's get right into it (spoilers ahead, naturally): They started us off right with an brief look into the past of one of the more intriguing characters in the DHARMA Initiative: Pierre Chang.  You know him better as Marvin Candle, Mark Wickman, and Edgar Halliwax from the various DHARMA orientation videos.  We get to see him go through his morning routine from waking up next to his wife to feeding his baby, then off to start filming the orientation for the Arrow station.  He's interrupted, though, by a worker informing him of a problem at the Orchid.  As it turns out, attempts to drill through the stone in one area of the Orchid's construction have led to multiple melted drillbits and serious physical side effects for at least one worker.  When the construction crew suggests blasting through the wall into the chamber beyond (shown on a sonor image to contain the frozen wheel Ben used to move the island), Chang says no.  Beyond that wall is a source of near limitless power, enough to manipulate time itself.  As Chang turns to leave, he passes none other than Daniel Farraday, looking much the same as he does in the present day, except that he's wearing DHARMA coveralls. Whew!  All that before the credits, even.  An excellent beginning that raises so very many new questions.  As we've seen, the Orchid station is clearly prepared for someone to go into the wheel chamber, even if they apparently never directly opened it.  Ben had to blast his way in, but there were parkas ready and waiting for him to enter the sub-freezing chamber.  Chang didn't show any surprise that the chamber existed or the wheel appeared there, so it's hard to tell just how much he knows about it.  And what's Daniel doing there?  There's clearly some kind of time travel going on, since he looks no younger than he does in the present. The rest of the two-episode premier is split between the on-island survivors and Ben's attempt to reunite the Oceanic Six and return them to the island.  He is personally working with Jack to get Locke's body squared away, then to get Sayid and Hurley on board.  Unfortunately, Sayid had a pang of conscience after going to break Hurley out of the mental hospital and warned his friend to do the opposite of whatever Ben tried to convince him to do.  When Ben finally catches up to Hurley, on the run from the law and hiding at his parents' house, Hurley makes a snap decision and runs out the front door to turn himself over to the police. Meanwhile, Charles Widmore caught up with Sun at the airport, and cornered her about their "common interests."  Sun tells him simply that the common interest is killing Benjamin Linus, and they appear to forge some kind of alliance to that end.  She then travels to Los Angeles and meets with Kate, who has gone on the run with Aaron after two lawyers appeared at her home demanding blood samples to prove her relationship to the child.  They refused to disclose their client, but I suspect it's Widmore, trying to find the truth about what happened on the island. Meanwhile, back on the Island, three years in the past, the noise and white flash from the dischage has left the Oceanic survivors, the remaining freighter people, and Juliet unstuck in time.  Repeated discharges pop them backwards and forwards in time, as evidenced by the survivors' beach camp disappearing and Sawyer's group coming upon the hatch both before and after it was blown up.  While in the past, they try to get Desmond to open the back door of the Swan station, but Daniel repeatedly argues that they can't reach him because it hasn't happened; the past cannot be changed.  However, after Sawyer and the others leave for the beach, Daniel manages to get Desmond's attention.  Identifying Desmond as someone to whom "the rules don't apply," he begs him to go to Oxford and find his mother when he gets off the island.  Another flash takes him away before he can give Desmond (or the viewers) her name.  Desmond awakes three years in the future with a sudden memory of their meeting, and immediately plans to return to Oxford with Penny. Locke, meanwhile, finds himself having no end to trouble.  The first flash makes it look like his tribe of Others vanished from around him (in truth, he is the one who disappeared).  While alone in the jungle, he is then nearly hit by the crashing Beechcraft loaded with drugs, the same plane that would later claim Boone's life.  When he tries to climb up to the plane, he's shot in the leg by none other than our old friend Ethan Rom and plummets to the ground.  Ethan, naturally, doesn't believe Locke is Ben's annointed heir to the leadership of the others and prepares to execute Locke, who is saved by a timely transition to another time. Here Richard finds Locke again and shows some inexplicable knowledge of both the past and future.  he knew Locke had been shot and immediately begins to administer first aid, all the while trying to quickly explain what Locke needs to do to save everyone.  Locke is going to have to leave the island to get everyone to come back, and he is going to have to die to do it.  Richard then gives Locke his compass because, when they next meet, Richard won't know who he is.  Locke is to give him the compass by way of identification. The other survivors aren't without troubles of their own.  Charlotte is displaying some kind of reaction to the shifting time: nosebleeds, headaches, and loss of memory.  It's similar to the effects the island's proximity had to the freighter people who tried to approach from the wrong bearing.  She finally convinces Daniel to level with her about it when they're interrupted by a hail of flaming arrows raining down upon the beach.  A good sized group, I suspect the Others in force, attack and drive them all into the jungle.  Everyone splits up in the jungle.  Sawyer and Juliet try to locate some of the other survivors, but are captured by jumpsuited figures, one of whom threatens to cut Juliet's hand off if they don't explain who they are and how they got there.  Lucky for her, Locke arrives in the nick of time and takes out the captors. Off island, Ben meets with Ms. Hawking, who has been experimenting to calculate some kind of event window using a computer similar to the DHARMA workstations and a Foucault Pendulum.  She informs Ben he has 70 hours to finish his work.  Having lost Hurley to the police, Ben protests that this isn't enough time.  Hawking is adamant.  If Ben can't get them all together within 70 hours, "God help us all." So there you have it.  With a 70 hour deadline, we're looking at an extremely fast-paced set of episodes coming up.  And so many new questions have been posed.  Just how much does Richard know about what's going on.  He seems totally unphased by Locke's shifts through time, expecting them even.  And he knows that if Locke keeps his bullet wound clean, "the island will do the rest."  Who is he, really?  One theory going around, one I like a lot, has him a member of the crew of the Black Rock, who is either wandering through time himself, or enjoying unnatural longevity granted by the island.  And speaking of becoming unstuck in time, what determines who is affected, anyway?  Juliet is technically one of the Others, yet she doesn't remain fixed in time like the rest of them.  This could be because she was an outsider brought into their ranks, rather than an island native.  And what's Daniel's connection to the island?  Was his stint working for DHARMA in his personal past or future? There were also a couple of great nods to the fans in the episodes.  When Ana Lucia appeared, either as a hallucination or a ghost (by the way, I hope they never clear up the mystery of whether Hurley's crazy and having hallucinations or simply seeing ghosts), she warns him to stay away from the cops.  In addition to being sound advice for a man on the run with a comatose assassin, it's advice Michelle Rodriquez failed to heed in an incident that coincided with her character's death on the series.  The second was watching Hurley try to explain to his mother exactly what had happened on the island, telling her the real truth for once.  I don't know about you, but I've had exactly that conversation myself trying to explain the show to someone who has never seen it.  it was a great little wink at us and a way of showing that the show is just as confusing to the characters as it is to the viewers. I'm really happy with how the fifth season has kicked off, and looking forward to the coming weeks.  If they can keep up this pace and level of writing, it's going to be a fine season indeed. Until next week, see you in another life, brother.