Time is a flat circle. Time keeps on slippin' slippin' slippin' into the future. It's the time of the season for loving. The fundamental things apply as time goes by. The time is gone, the song is over, thought I'd something more to say ...

Previously, On LOST: Oceanic Flight 815 ... you know what? Nah. You get it, right? A group of seemingly unrelated people have come by seeming accident to an island, where they begin to suspect that they are parts of a much larger story, a story in which they’ve been entangled without knowing it their entire lives. There are ghosts and creatures and very strange time-related shenanigans, murders and polar bears and Nikki and Paulo and islands that move and detritus from a shady cult/scientific group known as Dharma. Now some of our heroes are are off the island, trying to get back on it, and some of them are on the island, trying to get off it. One of these heroes, name of John Locke, is presently on the island, vigorously trying to take what he believes to be his rightful place as the leader of the people who have been living here for a very long time, but also, as we have learned, he is off the island, lying in a coffin in a funeral home, and considerably less vigorous.

There are a bunch of other people, too. Read previous entries for their names and interests.

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O B S E R V A T I O N

We have entered the seasons of revelation. We're going to get answers now, but we're going to get them in LOST style, which means that they are going to be presented as new mysteries. This is going to slow us down; gone I fear are the days of 3-episode and maybe even 2-episode entries. Every one of these buggers is jam-packed. I will at least endeavor to at least make these entries more regular from here, and pick up the pace that way, and who knows? maybe even wrap up in 2027. Wheeeeee!

Episode 1: BECAUSE YOU LEFT (Faraday, kind of): As per usual with season cold opens on this show, we begin with people we don't know in a place unspecified. The people we don't know are a lady, her baby Miles (spoiler), and her husband, who is quickly revealed to be the mysterious Dr. Candle aka Dr. Haliwax, aka subject of many a Dharma orientation film. We now have our setting: This is the Dharma Era of the island, which I think we already knew is the 1970s relative to earth chronology, but if we don't know that we sure are about to know the hell out of it. And sure enough, Candlewax is living in the by-now-familiar Dharma barracks, shooting a familiar-looking orientation film—until he is interrupted by a worker of some sort. Worker reveals that Candlewax's real name is actually Dr. Pierre Chang, which is what I'll call him from now on.

The worker says that there is "trouble at the Orchid." That gets Chang's attention; before you know it he's riding in a shiny new Dharma VW bus to an underground dig, where he proceeds to have what is, frankly and also unfortunately, a rather clumsily written and acted scene. I say "unfortunately" because it's also mighty important, information-wise, so I have to go through it in detail.

It breaks down thus: The team was drilling to Chang's exact specifications when weird shit went down. This tells us Chang isn't just a pretty face for the camera; he's on-site Dharma leadership. He's also a total dick for mostly no reason. When Chang is told that the drill melted six inches from his "margin line," and that the drill operator "started grabbing his head and freaking out," Chang snarls sarcastically at the foreman, even though it's made clear enough by ensuing dialogue that Chang would have or should have expected such an eventuality. Anyway, the foreman shows us that there is a chamber behind the wall into which they are digging, which has "something in there." We can tell pretty easily from the printout of the scan that the "something" that is "in there" is the frozen wheel that Ben Linus turned last episode to move the island (and wow if you're just picking up the series here, I don't know what to tell you about that last sentence).

Chang scoldsplains to the foreman that behind the rock face into which they are drilling is a limitless energy source that Dharma hopes to harness to manipulate time. This to me seems like either information the drilling team should already know, or else information sensitive enough that none of them should know and Chang shouldn't just be bellowing out at a worksite, but hey I told you this is a clumsy scene. The understandably skeptical foreman says yeah right let's go back in time and kill Hitler, and Chang snaps not to be absurd, that there are rules about time that can't be broken, which makes me wonder what exactly Dharma intends to manipulate if nothing can be manipulated. Anyway, Chang warns the foreman not to drill even a centimeter further, or he might release that energy, and if that happens, then (and I'm not kidding, this is what he actually says) "god help us all." This is definitely something that should have already been disclosed to the drilling team. Chang may be an effective trainer/indoctrinator, but he is not a very good people manager.

Chang huffs off dickishly, and bumps into another worker who is ostentatiously trying to not be noticed. It's ... Daniel Faraday, last seen circa 2005. He looks at the drill holes and gives his patented "oh shit oh dear" face (see above). Time travel is afoot!

Off Island 2007: Funeral parlor. Jack and Ben prepare to get the band back together. Ben reveals that they're going to take the body along with them, and they need to get everyone else, too: Sayid, Hurley, Jin, Sun, Kate. Not Aaron, interestingly enough. Or Desmond, interestingly enough.

Last time we learned that Locke has been off-island for some weeks, and that he's visited each of his fellow Oceanic castaways under the assumed name "Jeremy Bentham" to try to get them back. We don't have more details. Now Jack reveals that Locke told him that everyone Jack left behind would die if Jack doesn't return to the island, and Jack, who has long been an adversarial skeptic of Locke's proclamations, has been convinced. Later the two see in a news report that Hurley, last seen a patient in Santa Rosa psyche facility, is wanted for murder and his location is unknown.

Hurley's with Sayid, who we last saw in the Season 4 finale committing the murder for which Hurley is wanted. Sayid is rounding up Oceanics, not because he wants to return them to the island, but because Locke's death has convinced him they're all being targeted and Sayid hopes to protect them. (This is why Sayid killed that guy; he was surveilling Hurley and Sayid is a "better dead than sorry" kind of guy these days.) Now Sayid brings Hurley to his motel room ... but there are two more dudes there. There is a big fight and in the kerfuffle the two dudes are also killed. One goes over the motel rail where Hurley is standing in full view of witnesses. So now he's even more wanted, and his location is much more known. That's bad. Also Sayid has been tranquilized by many darts. That's worse. Also the frogurt is cursed. That's even worse.

In still other plot, Kate, who is very anti-going-back, is given a clear motivation to get out of this dimension. Some jerk-ass lawyers from central casting knock on her door and serve her with a court order demanding a sample of her blood in order to test her parentage of Aaron. (I presume they'll also need Aaron's blood, but this doesn't come up. In any case, Kate is not Aaron's mother so this is a big problem.) Since this is a sensitive matter, these two deliver this news in the most dickish and hostile way possible. Kate slams the door in their faces and then, in true Kate fashion, fugitives away with tow-headed Aaron in tow.

Sun meanwhile is at an airport for a flight to Los Angeles when she is detained and brought to a holding room. Her captor is Charles Widmore, last seen in the Season 4 finale being approached on the street by Sun with a proposal for a partnership of unspecific nature. Widmore would like to know wid-more about what the hell Sun meant by that. Sun drops some knowledge: She's interested in working with Widmore to kill Ben Linus. Widmore doesn't say anything that we see, but he doesn't seem not interested in killing Ben Linus. I think Jack and Ben can consider Sun a tough sell for the old team-up.

OK, that's what's happening off-island. More next time. But now ...

Island, Three Years Earlier: Ben turns the wheel and the island moves. We see: Sawyer and Juliet on the beach, drinking and watching the smoke of the exploded freighter; Faraday and some randoms in the Polaris inflatable out on the ocean ("we must have been inside the radius," Faraday postulates); Locke among all his brand new Jacobian followers. Not seen: everyone else, but they're out there.

Suddenly, flash! No freighter on the horizon. No Jacobian followers. Bernard and Rose show up with the news that the entire camp is gone. "It's not gone," says Daniel, coming up on the beach. After some exposition, Faraday reveals that they're jumping through time. He brings the A-team (it's basically all the named characters except Bernard and Rose) on an expedition to a man-made structure—the Swan station is nearest—to use as a bit of a time-stamp, and see what condition their condition is in "before it happens again." Sawyer wants answers, and Faraday explains that the island is like a record spinning on a turntable, and now it's like they are on a skipping record, dislodged from time. Also, it's just as likely that it is not the island that is moving, but them. This is indeed the case, as we'll see.

Meanwhile Locke is jogging overland when he sees Yemmi's little yellow plane full of heroin Virgin Mary statues. (Yemmi is Mr. Eko's brother, if you forgot. In case you forgot Mr. Eko, he is ... look we could be here all day.) The plane crashes atop the cliff/tree/vine, just like we've always seen. Locke climbs up to the plane for some reason (I guess he forgot everyone was already dead in there or he never knew). Halfway up, he's shot in the leg and falls down to the ground. The gunman comes up and points his gun Locke-ward. Hey look! It's everyone's favorite long-dead doctor/psychopath, the Others' very own Ethan Rom!

Ethan wants answers, especially once Locke, who is unknown to him, calls him by name. Locke introduces himself and explains that he has been appointed to be leader of Ethan and all other Others by Ben Linus. Ethan's response is "yeah that's total bullshit" and he prepares to shoot Locke, but Locke is saved by a

TIMEFLASH

and it's nighttime. Locke bleeds.

Post-flash, Faraday and the Sawyers find the Swan site. It's an imploded hole in the ground, which means they're back from some years before the Oceanic crash to something approximating their 2004-05 present. (It's actually the island circa Earth 2007 after everyone in the off-island plotline has returned, but never mind that for now.) Sawyer, hoping this is a time before the bad stuff went down, wants to go back to camp to try to warn his friends, but Faraday explains (as Pierre Chang has) that there are rules. Time is like a street: You can move forward, you can move back, but you can't make a new street. You know how you can't ever make a new street? That metaphor needs some work, but whatever: Quoth the Faraday: "whatever happened, happened."

Sawyer wants to know how Faraday knows so much about it. Faraday reveals (to Sawyer, anyway; I think we already mostly knew) that he has been studying time travel and the Dharma Initiative his entire life, and by the way it's all in his notebook, right here, every last thing he knows about those two subjects. You guys, I may not be some big-city physicist, but I think we're supposed to understand that this notebook, she is important.

Locke crawls to the little yellow plane, which has by now fallen to the ground in Boone-killing fashion. He attempts to tourniquet his leg with a seat belt, but this appears to be mostly unsuccessful. Suddenly, an interloper arrives, carrying a torch. It's Richard "Ricardus" Alpert, everyone's favorite ageless mystery man! Richard, who is is clearly expecting to encounter Locke, has a first aide kit at the ready. He extracts the bullet and patches the wound. Locke wants to know how Richard knew that he was shot. "You told me, John," Richard says. "Or you will."

"When am I?" asks Locke. "That's all relative," Richard says.

"Where did you go when the sky lit up?" Lock asks. "I didn't go anywhere," Richard replies. "You went." So that's the confirmation of that one. The island was moved to another track, but as for the ensuing and repeating flashes, it's only certain people jumping around.

Richard doesn't want more questions. He doesn't have time. Locke is about to move on again, and he has extremely important information he needs to pass along.

1) Next time you [Locke] see me [Richard], I [Richard] won't know you [Locke].

2) When next you [Locke] see me, you [Locke] have to give me [Richard] this compass. [Here Richard gives Locke a compass.]

3) The only way to save the island is to get your people who left [Sayid, Hurley, Jin, Sun. Jack. Kate. Not Aaron, interestingly enough. Or Desmond, interestingly enough.] back here.

4) In order to convince them to come back, you [Locke] have to die.

Locke clearly has follow-up questions, but just then there is a

TIMEFLASH

and it's daytime again. Plane is back up in the tree. Locke is holding the compass.

Post-flash, Faraday and the Sawyers see that the imploded hole in the ground is gone. The Swan station is still operational. That means Desmond is down there. Sawyer heads for the back door to confuse a Scotsman and get some supplies. As he beats on the door, Faraday timesplains that it's fruitless. Whatever happened, happened. They head back to the beach ... but Faraday lingers.

Rummaging in his pack, he pulls out his journal and checks something, then knocks again on the hatch door. Out comes Desmond in his hazard suit, gun pointed at Daniel, who, as the time-flashy starts once again, says:

"You're the only person who can help us, because, Desmond, the rules don't apply to you. You're special. You're uniquely and miraculously special. My name is Daniel Faraday, and right now me and everyone else you left behind are in serious danger. You're the only person who can help us. I need you to go back to Oxford University, go back to where we met. I need you to find my mother, her name is—"

TIMEFLASH

Off-island in 2007, Desmond wakes up. He's on a boat with Penny. He's had a dream.

No, not a dream.

A memory. One he hadn't had before.

End of Episode 1.

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B E L I E F

OK but really and truly, what the hell? on top of what on earth? mixed up into a slurry and packed into bespoke casing of what the fuck?

Welcome to Season 5. Let's unpack it. Quick hits first.

The chamber already has the wheel. Just pointing out a proof that Dharma didn't put it there. We'll eventually get far more direct proofs of who did put it there, and roughly when.

Chang vs. Candlewax. There's a lot in the cold open scene that doesn't make sense, raising questions to which the best answer seems to be "this is a clumsily-written scene, and so-and-so said such-and-such not because it really makes sense or fits the plot, but because it got the needed exposition out of the way." I poked mostly-gentle fun at most of these in the episode recap already. However, other questions are raised in this scene that I believe have better answers. For example, we are very deliberately shown that Chang uses aliases in his training films. Why? Let me suggest the most obvious answer: Dharma has been planning to experiment on people all along, and the stations (or at least many of them) were how they intended to sequester their subjects from other members of Dharma, who have—from the Dharma director all the way down to the humble Work Man—been given a more transparent awareness of who they are and why they're there. Apparently Dharma plans to set up a lot of its operation to run automatically and on a very strict need-to-know basis.

The situation Desmond finds himself in (in a hatch, no real idea how he got there, presented with just enough information to perform whatever task) was probably always the Dharma plan in some form. There's some more evidence of this waaaaay at the end, when we see that the food-drop people had no contact with their bosses, and thus kept sending food drops month after month after month.

Why this no-contact situation? Let me come back around on that.

One child left behind. Young Aaron isn't one of those off-island who we are told have to return to the island, even though he was on the island. Part of this is script convenience; the showrunners probably (and sensibly) didn't want its characters to have to deal with a child on-island. But I believe there's also a story reason.

It's time to remember the very important fact that the entire plot of the series rest atop an ongoing struggle between two godlike extradimensional entity, one of whom is interested in progress and one of whom wants to destroy reality and end all progress. This fact has yet to be revealed to we viewers, but the metaphor, given to us in the very first episode, is a game with dark pieces and light pieces.

I'll have more to say about the destroyer soon, but it's salient here that the progress-minded being tends to work through intermediaries, and his current intermediary, Jacob, is sick of the job and has been bringing candidates to the island to replace him. Aaron isn't one of those candidates. He's not in the game. He's not on the list. Neither is Desmond, but ... well, that part is not a quick hit.

So much for quick hits. Slow hits now. Let's dig into it.

The Adversary's plan. The Adversary is what I name the godlike entity who wants to destroy reality. (The Island is what I call the progress-minded entity.) The Adversary's machinations are the reason almost everything that has happened has happened, and Season 5 is going to show us the slow culmination of Its grand plan. I've mentioned parts of this plan before, but I don't think I've ever laid it all out at once. If I have, here we go again!

The Adversary wants to destroy reality by releasing the power at the center of the island—the very power that Dharma has nearly drilled into during the cold open. It is prevented from doing this by certain restrictions placed upon It by both The Island and by Jacob. We'll get into all these restrictions some other time, but an important one of these is that It cannot kill Jacob, so It needs to groom somebody willing to do the job—and the somebody It chooses is Ben Linus. It's not enough to have a murderer, though, because Jacob, himself an intermediary of The Island, only communicates through an intermediary—namely, Richard, who is profoundly aware of The Adversary and Its ability to manipulate people to Its own ends. As such, Richard does not permit access to Jacob—not even leaders of Jacobian factions like Ben Linus.

(As a quick aside to come back around again as promised, I think this same awareness is present among certain leaders of the Dharma Initiative, and I think for similar reasons of precaution they are attempting to set up the operation of their plan using individuals who have a minimum of contact with anyone. I think they also set up a system that could immediately kill them all if they were compromised or infiltrated. Unfortunately for them, before they could complete operations, The Adversary tricked somebody into murdering them all with their own precautionary suicide machine. Why the gas? That's why the gas.)

The Adversary has many advantages over Richard, but Richard knows about them, and takes precautions as a result. This means The Adversary needs to groom somebody Richard will trust so much that he will actually give that person access to Jacob, along with anyone else that this trusted person names. This person The Adversary grooms from birth for the sole purpose of tricking Richard Alpert? His name is John Locke.

Richard doesn't know that The Adversary has the ability to move his consciousness across time, and, under the proper circumstances, to move others across time.

But It sure does have such an ability.

The interaction between Richard and Locke in this episode is one of the most crucial moments of The Adversary's plan. This meeting, orchestrated over decades by The Adversary, creates a perfect loop between Locke and Richard and the compass that exists to convince Richard that Locke has a very special relationship to The Island, and to convince Locke that he needs to die in order to bring everyone back. Why does The Adversary need to convince Locke of this? Another day, my friends. Another day.

Dharma's plan. Here's another question from the cold open I think has a discernable answer: What exactly is Dharma up to with its time experiments? More specifically, if you can't change time no matter what, and they know that, why are they trying? After all, characters in this show with an awareness of the island's time-asynchronous positioning relative to the earth could not be more clear that you cannot change time, no matter what you do, not ever, which leads a lot of people to conclude that you cannot change time, no matter what you do, not ever. This demonstrates why it is very important to observe this show before you believe, because this show also could not be more consistent in showing that oh yes you can.

What Dharma actually wants to do isn't ever really made clear; it's not really the point of the show. I think some just want to access the limitless power. But I think some actually are at least dimly aware of the buried understory of the godlike entities—or, at the least, they understand that there is a godlike entity that wants to destroy reality, and they'd like to prevent it. Funny enough, I think they really do want to enact some version of going back and killing Hitler. Even if they—like Daniel Faraday—say that time is a street you can move backward or forward on but that you can never make a new street, they also seem to believe that there are other streets, and you can move to them.

You know who else seems to believe this? The same person who we'll soon learn has provided Dharma with a great deal of its understanding of the island's interaction with time: Daniel Faraday.

Uniquely and miraculously special. Faraday tells Sawyer that it doesn't matter how long he pounds on the door, Desmond won't emerge. The thinking here seems to go like this: If Desmond were to answer the door, then he would meet Sawyer, and if Desmond were to meet Sawyer before the Oceanic crash, then Desmond would have recognized Sawyer upon their next meeting (which will be/would have been Sawyer's first meeting), and Desmond didn't recognize Sawyer when they first met back in Season 2, therefore, Desmond won't answer the door, because he didn't answer the door; ipso, meet facto.

But Desmond does answer the door, once Sawyer has gone, as Faraday seems well aware that he will.

What happens next is worth paying attention to, because Desmond didn't recognize Faraday when the two met in Season 4, and—using the same logic we just applied to a potential meeting with Sawyer—Desmond clearly should have remembered the strange man who once knocked on his door and introduced himself by name and then suddenly vanished. But that's not the only problem, because, as we saw in The Constant, a pre-island Desmond visited Faraday at Oxford and interacted with him extensively, and yet this on-island Desmond has no idea who Faraday is. Moreover, as we'll see, Desmond has absolutely no discernable impact on the story as a result of this new memory. He'll do what Faraday asks, but he won't convince anybody to return to the island, nor will he convince anyone not to go, nor will he return with them. He'll get shot and he'll survive. That's about it for this season.

A string of mistakes by the writers? Sure, maybe, if you like. But then again, Faraday makes a point of noting that Desmond is uniquely special. I've written before about evidence that Desmond has become multidimensional, able to perceive not only time but various branches of possibility, and to directly influence what possibility everyone around him exists within. In this episode, we're shown very deliberately that Faraday's interaction created a memory in Desmond's mind that he hadn't been in possession of previously. It hadn't happened ... until it had. I presume something similar happened in The Constant, when Desmond's pre-island consciousness visited the freighter and talked (directly) with Sayid and (via technology) with Jack and Faraday about this island. The Desmond we met on the island in Season 2 didn't seem to remember this interaction at all. I think he didn't remember it until it happened ... and then he did remember.

It sounds like making a new street to me, or at least moving to one. Another channel of possibility, created by Faraday just by accessing Desmond. It doesn't really matter what Desmond himself now does with the memory; things are just a little bit different ... because, with Desmond, unique among human beings, things can be a little different.

And this brings me back to The Adversary and Its plan.

It wants to destroy reality, as I mentioned. The thing is, I believe It sometimes does destroy reality. If you release the energy at the island's heart, you destroy reality. The Adversary isn't permitted to do this Itself; it is restricted by the entity known as The Island.

However, It sometimes tricks people into releasing the energy at the heart of the island, which does destroy whole branches of reality, but not all of it. I think we've seen at least one instance of this happening at the end of Season 2. But people, being people, only exist on one street, so when The Adversary tricks them into destroying reality, there's always more reality left afterward; The Adversary wants to destroy it all. If it was permitted to do so, It would do so for all branches of reality to which it is a constant, which I believe would get the job done as far as The Adversary is concerned.

But maybe, if It can trick the right person, It can find somebody (or create somebody) who can access all streets at once.

You just need the right tools.

You need to groom a murderer to clear the restrictions. You need to establish a trusted party who can give the murderer an opportunity.

And then you need a constant to blow it all apart.

L O S T

Next Time: Frogurts, I've Had a Few, But Then Again, Too Few to Mention

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A.R. Moxon is the author of the novel The Revisionaries, and the essay collection Very Fine People, which are available in most of the usual places, and some of the unusual places. You can get his books right here for example. He is also co-writer of Sugar Maple, a musical fiction podcast from Osiris Media which goes in your ears. No one told him where to run; he missed the starting gun.