By now, the repetitions that we have seen across several seasons are coming thick and fast, another Lostie faces a ‘test’ and fails, Kate almost ends up delivering Claires baby, Sayid is strapped to a bed and electrocuted and tortured and we have another woman who comes to the Island pregnant, delivers a baby which is stolen and then she goes a delightful mix of crazy feral. When Kate tells Sawyer she never should have come after him, Sawyer asks “Which time?”. Even the characters are pointing out the repetition.

After 6 seasons, our mad Lost watching skillz have been so honed we should know that whenever a document is shown with a date on it’s usually important, and the ultrasound was no different as any parent would know. I missed it first time round but a quick rewind on the DVR shows the date to be October 22nd 2004, one month after the original flight 815 flew.

I don’t plan on doing blow by blow recaps since there are plenty around the web and I don’t have time so consider this some general thoughts over the last two episodes, LA X parts 1 and 2 and What Kate Does. I have some concerns over this whole alternate timeline/sideways flash. Incidentally, note how when transitioning between the main and alternate timeline we have a sucking jet engine sound as opposed to the sucking whoosh sound we had with the flashbacks for the first few seasons. The alternate time, and I’m not sure that is what it is, but let’s stick with that for now, has the losties landing in LAX and the island underwater. To me, that says that the bomb never went off and as a result, ‘the incident’ was the unhindered drilling at the swan hatch that probably ended up causing the Island to sink. In the main timeline, the losties on flight 815 crashed, fought the others, went back in time and blew up the swan hatch before the incident. Miles commented in “The Incident” whether anyone had thought that setting the bomb off caused the events of their future (the swan being built and their plane crashing). This solution not only makes sense, but is paradox free, and yet the writers in their pod cast last week said that the island sinking was because the bomb went off which is quite annoying.

So far, we have seen in the alternative timeline how things are similar, but different in small and subtle ways. I’m a proponent of Whatever Happened, Happened as opposed to the idea that the losties can change their future (and therefore their past). Once you open the door for alternate timelines you open the door for multiple timelines. Furthermore, the additional timeline would have always existed regardless of the actions of the losties on the Island so it really doesn’t make sense as to why we are seeing this particular timeline. There are probably timelines where 815 crashed on take off and Jack is a drug addicted rock star, Locke is a marathon runner and Charlie became a priest. Why show us this timeline? I think the answer lies in the fact that our losties in this timeline have some kind of link of conciousness to the main timeline as we see them have bouts of recognition and familiarity with the main time line. In LA X, I thought the writers were just messing with us in the initial scenes were we see Jack on 815 looking disoriented. However, What Kate Does, they make those links stronger. The name Aaron just pops into Claires head, Kate and Jack have a moment of recognition as she drives off in the taxi, and the friendship of Claire and Kate probably made it that much easier for Kate to be more sympathetic to Claire to go and help her. I therefore think that the writers will somehow pull these two timelines together somehow and the introduction of the new timeline is not accidental and arbitrary.

It is also worth noting that there might only be a single timeline and the start of LA X is where the ‘main’ timeline is leading to. If you ignore the ‘main’ timeline on the island, we are seeing the end of lost, i.e. what happens to the 815′ers if they never crash. It could be that the final episodes show us how the main timeline leads up to the start of the LA X ‘alternate’ timeline. This is possible if you consider that the island moves through time, although it mostly seems to move back in time which I think is relevant. If the losties start moving back in time as soon as they crash on the Island, the Island isolates them from the rest of the world as they pass back in time, therefore there won’t be two Jacks in the timeline because alternate Jack is travelling on a plane on October 22nd 2004 while main timeline Jack is shifting slowly back in time on an Island which will never cross paths with main timeline Jack. Perhaps that is how the island avoids detection, it moves through time and only stays in places where it knows there is nobody looking if you go for the idea of being able to see all time at once.

Anyway, I give the writers a 50/50 chance of pulling this all together in a sensible way. The fact that they already introduced a paradox regarding the bomb going off and sinking the island and the cherry picking of alternative universes is a bad sign though. Of course, we could be mis-interpreting this completely and the alternative story is very relevant to the main story and will merge seamlessly.

For a while there, I forgot it was a Kate centric story which usually means it blows, it’s not actually the Kate centric story that blows, it’s just that more screen time reminds us of how Kate is like the flame that Sawyer and Jack both fly close to. After 6 seasons, I’m sure there is going to be some allegory to how Kate is the axle that keeps the Jack and Sawyer wheels on the same track without which they would both fly off in different directions. However, after 6 seasons it’s hard to imagine that either of them would be interested in someone who changes her mind more often than her underwear (it’s an island people, there isn’t a lot of underwear).

WKD also introduced a few new mysteries, what did Kate do? She tells the garage mechanic she was wanted for murder, then tells Claire she’s innocent, which I might actually believe. It seems that so far, people in this timeline are much nicer. The interaction between Locke and Boone, and Locke and Jack was enjoyable to watch, even hinting there there is a mutual respect of each others beliefs in science and faith and even that they both have a healthy dose of each. Kate might even be innocent of all charges, Hugo thinks he’s lucky, and while Sawyer may not be squeaky clean, I think he’s in a much better place morally. I think Sawyer gave Hugo a genuine warning as opposed to the warning that was the opening moves of a con like he did in “Every Man For Himself”. Charlie is the only one who it seems is not better off, even to the point that in the alternate timeline, he is still destined for death by suffocation. The motto for Season 6 is Destiny Found, is this their destiny? Is all this about getting them to the point where the can continue onwards?

I was also very surprised that there actually was a family that Claire was supposed to meet. I suspected that the psychic knew the flight would go down and Claire would have no choice but to raise the baby instead of it being raised by another. Why else would he be so specific about the flight? Of course, this is the alternative timeline and he may have actually arranged someone to adopt Aaron since the plane wouldn’t be crashing. Unfortunately, I think “It’s an alternative timeline” is going to be the new scapegoat for any weird changes or unanswered questions. We still have to address the issue of ‘fake’ psychic Richard Malkin and his daughter Charlotte coming back to life screaming about John Locke.

Here’s a thought, the idea is that around October 22nd 2004, the timelines split or separated which introduced changes in the timelines. Let’s go back to the old mystery of the changing photographs and their frames in Mrs Gardner’s house when Miles comes to do his ghostbusting bit. That took place around the time the wreckage was supposedly found which could put it around a month after the crash. Perhaps these changes are a result of the same event that caused the splitting timelines on 22nd October 2004, we just didn’t realize it at the time.

It seems Locke gets back in on the action next week, and he might be up for manipulating Sawyer. I’m hoping that the story arc doesn’t have Sawyer end up the way he came onto the island. Prior to the crash, Sawyer had been manipulated into killing Frank Duckett by Hibbs who took advantage of the tragedy in his life. I’m hoping fake Locke doesn’t use the same mechanims to manipulate Sawyer into doing something stupid.

Still lots of mysteries to go, with new ones being added, and in true Lost fashion, most answered mysteries result in the addition of new ones.