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The scene opens the way many, including Jack Shepherd, thought it would; aboard Oceanic 815 with all of the characters we have come to know, love and hate, sitting there together on the plane that stranded them on a mysterious island.

And then, something different.

There’s Desmond Hume, sitting next to Jack. Even more unexpected is the follow-up shot as the camera dives into the ocean and in an amazingly shoddy display of television fx shows us something intriguing–the island is underwater. Dharmaville, the four-toed statue, the beach; everything, has gone the way of Atlantis. Welcome to another wonderfully wacky season of Lost.

That’s right kids. Lost is back, and although the two hour premiere, entitled LA X , has its share of flaws, there’s plenty of answers and intrigue packed into the running time. Lindelof and Cuse have woven a tapestry so tangled that not even Philip K. Dick could have hoped to unravel it without getting a headache. In fact, at this current junction–or is it terminal?–there’s no hope of unraveling it. Lost has burned more juicy bridges (Walt and his powers, why women die in childbirth, how Locke’s dad ended up on the island) than it could possibly rebuild.

We can only go forward hoping that they intend to stick the thematic landing, and the dueling banjos of good and evil, order and chaos, fate and chance will continue to play out in feverish melody until seasons end. And, hey, at least now we know who the smoke monster is. Well, sort of.

Without doing a plot rehash, lets take a look at some of last night’s more compelling mysteries and moments.

First off, there’s the implication behind the opening scene. Instead of choosing whether or not the bomb went off and changed things or whether the timeline remained the same, the creators did neither. They followed both possibilities. While this could seem like a cop-out, it’s actually in keeping with some of Lost’s more daring attempts.

We watch Oceanic 815 land safely, and at the same time Jack, Sawyer, Kate, the detonated Swan site, and  a motley group of The Others have all been transplanted to modern day on the island. At the same time, in potentially yet another facet of reality, the Black Smoke monster is wearing Locke like an old, rumpled suit and running circles around Richard, Ben and Jacob’s insurgent army.

What’s the deal then? Is there one true reality, or are we seeing the concept of ‘island universes? This idea, posits that there are entire other worlds that feature versions of ourselves going about their own business exist simultaneously with ours. They are not simply alternate realities with no future, but parallel existences, running next to but never intersecting with our own.

 Why bring this up? Because we are lead to believe that what we are seeing is the result of Juliette blowing up the bomb at the end of Season 5. Wait though, because there are already some significant differences in this universe that may or may not have been influenced by the actions taken in the 70s. Among them:

Desmond is on the plane, although it’s possible he’s still phasing in and out like Billy Pilgrim.

Charlie is choking on a bag of drugs, but not actually doing them, as he was in the first iteration. He’s signifcantly more derailed here than before.

Shannon never got on the plane.

We have yet to see if Claire is pregnant.

Hurley doesn’t appear to be cursed by bad luck.

Potentially, Sun never actually learned English.

 And there’s no Eko, Anna Lucia, or Libby seemingly present there either.

I’d point out no Nikki or Palo either, but why even mention it?

The biggest difference of course is one of global consequence, if the island is as important as Jacob and the Others believe it is; the entire thing is submerged and presumably not serving whatever cosmic purpose it was supposed to serve.

We know Jacob was greatly involved in the lives of the 815ers throughout their history, so maybe detonating the bomb takes him out of the picture and due to some small changes regarding his influence, events are different as a result. Or, what we are witnessing is a universe that was always different and is on a course to intersect with the world we already know.

It can certainly burn the brain, right? No matter, what’s actually so brilliant about this new tact is that it is dramatically satisfying without necessarily being an intellectual closure. We get to follow facets of characters we grew to love because of the circumstances the show put them through, and we are teased now with the opportunity to observe those same characters make an entirely different set of choices, plausibly free of the influence of the island. Lost has never found its most tantalizing material in its answers, but in its provocative ideas, and this is one of the most provocative yet.

Towards the end of the second hour, Jack and Locke have a conversation about his dad’s missing coffin and Locke mentions that “How could they know where he’s at? They lost your dad’s body. Your dad, he was already gone.” Jack looks at Locke’s wheel-chair and says ‘nothing is irreversible’ and puts his business card in John’s hand. Whats happening here? The man of science set to heal the man of faith? What dynamic will this bring about?

And what of the events back on the island, as Jack and the gang race to save Sayid by taking him to the temple of the Others, now lead by the very welcome Hiroyuki Sanada (The Twilight Samurai) . The Others apparently have a fountain of youth–or at least healing– afterall, although something has happened to it that they can’t explain. At first it doesn’t seem to heal Sayid, but kill him. When he rises from the ground, after being lifted Christ-like from the water, who can we expect find behind those eyes now? Is Sayid Jacob’s vessel? Is Mark Pelligrino set to wear Jared Paladecki on Supernatural and Naveen Andrews over here on Lost? That’s just a bit too much soul transference for one character actor to handle right?

Stranger still is that inside of the guitar case that Jacob gave Hurley is a giant wooden ankh cross. Inside that ankh is a message. Wow, could cosmic forces being anymore impractical in their symbolism. I wonder what was running through Hugo’s mind when he found out that the heavy thing he’d been toting through the woods could have served its purpose just as easily as a tiny slip of paper in his shirt pocket.

And then there’s the dark figure who now takes the form and appearance of John Locke who he describes to Ben as ‘admirable.’ The dark man, the Esau to Pelligrino’s Jacob, and now finally, the smoke monster. I’ve always suspected the force trapped in the cabin, surrounded by that ring of ash, was the same entity that revealed himself at the end of season 5. Back then I was worried that Lost might be setting their heavy up as a supernatural or mythical creature. The ring of ash, the ability to alter reality, and the billowing smoke all suggested a variation on the arabian idea of djinns, or ‘dust dogs’.

From my perspective then, the last thing Lost needed was a Barbara Eden wannabe. But, now, the idea of a djinn existing in this universe doesn’t seem so odd, and wouldn’t that sort of make him a kind of cruel demi-god, subverting and altering the world until he’s trapped on the island? But with the island sunk, has this dark angel been loosed from his cage in one reality, all the while seeking to return ‘Home’, not unlike Milton’s Lucifer, in another?

When Dark Locke says to Richard, ‘good to see you out of those chains’, the most logical assumption is that Alpert came to the island as a slave on the Black Rock, or perhaps he’s from earlier than that, a slave from Egyptian lineage. Is it possible though that  the chains spoken of are different altogether–similar to whatever Earthly chains were holding Esau on the island prior to his escape? What relationship do Richard and Not-the-John actually share? Lost has slipped from the quasi-spiritual to the near biblical with an almost imperceptible shifting. Now that we are here, what are the stakes of whats being set up in this final battle?

For me, the most tantalizing thing about Lost remains the character relationships and the empathy which which the writers craft them. Forget all of the gonzo revelations, the best bits were John and Locke talking after the plane, and the poignant moment where Sayid asks Hurley sincerely ‘Where do you think I will go after I die?” At the same time, there’s more than enough heavy-handed drama floating about to sink the island a second time. Juliet dies heroically at the end of season 5, do we really need another teary-eyed, bloody-faced death scene? There’s entirely too much broody Jack on the island as well. The show has moved so far beyond the Kate/Jack/Sawyer triangle that even suggesting its continued existence makes one want to roll their eyes. Well, me anyway.

Regardless of that though, Lost is back, and it’s found a way to remain fresh while actually slyly revealing it’s endgame without betraying all of the layered mystery that went before. If the rest of the season walks such a creative and stimulating line, then we could well be in for one of the finest series endings in the history of television.

See ya next week…