“The events that occur in 2007 for the rest of the season can’t lead to what happens in LA X within the same timeline — that’s happening in 2004.”

Exactly. I think what’s going on in 2007 leads to what happens in LA X in a completely different timeline. There’s no way that the stuff that went down in 2004 in the original timeline could simultaneously go down in the LA X timeline because, I don’t know, paradox or lactose intolerance or some shit. What it looks like to me is that the producers are jumping between timelines to make people think they’re happening at the same time, when I’d put money that what’s going down in 2007 timeline causes a reboot which begins the LA X timeline at that pivotal moment when 815 crashed. Or didn’t.

Whatever. Ian, let’s just watch Seinfeld instead.

1) The nuke didn’t kill her or wipe out anyone on the island in their own timeline. It went somewhere.

2) She said (via Miles) that it worked. I don’t think we can dismiss that. I appreciate that Lost is always about mis-direction and different kinds of reveals than we expect, but that nuke did something. Miles jokingly alluded to the possibility of the nuke *causing* the Incident in the s5 finale, which in my mind, takes it off the table. It’s a much more interesting story idea to have the nuke neither cause the Incident, nor prevent it in the traditional sense. It did something else.

IMO LOL

With polar bears.

The events that occur in 2007 for the rest of the season can’t lead to what happens in LA X within the same timeline — that’s happening in 2004. The only reasonable explanation is that we’re dealing with a parallel reality, Sliders-style. The episode’s title, “LA X” (with the noted space between A and X), coupled with the writers’ insistence that the premiere would do away with time-jumping is enough evidence for me to suggest that these new 2004 events are happening in a different LA, an alternate reality a la Dimension X — what Ian said earlier.

So, that LA X reality branched off in 1970-whatever when Juliet detonated the bomb. We’re looking at that alternate possibility in the LA X storyline, where 815 never crashes, where the Island is flattened under the sea, where the nuke did apparently go off.

The puzzle for me is why the Dharma-era Lost crew was transported back to 2007. What we need is a further explanation of how Lost’s time travel logic works; our Dharma-era Lost crew seemed to be the only island inhabitants that jumped through time when the Wheel was dislodged, and they seem to be the only island inhabitants that were brought to 2007 when the nuke was detonated. It’s like they’re chained to their original time, and when Time doesn’t know where to put them when it’s fucked around with (say, during a violent space-time disruption like a nuke going off near the EM anomaly), it defaults displaced elements to their original era.

Juliet detonating the bomb creates the usual fun variation of the grandfather paradox. If it blows up, the Incident never happens, 815 never crashes, events never carry her and the 815 passengers back to 1970-whatever, so she can never be there to blow up the bomb. The common sci-fi answer to the paradox is the concept of the splintered-off parallel reality.

So you go back in time and kill your grandfather before you’re born. And then you ask, but how could I ever have then traveled back in time to kill him to begin with? Time’s answer (since the paradox can’t occur) is to allow both sets of events to happen in parallel realities. In your original reality, you go back, you kill your grandfather, and yet you continue to live, since that murder happened. It can’t un-happen.

It seems the Lost writers’ answer is to erase elements from the one original reality that would disrupt its timeline, allow it to carry on on its merry way (all the way to 2007), but let the consequences of that disruption play out in an alternate reality. I don’t see that there’s any other answer to why the nuke didn’t wipe out Juliet and every other member of the Lost crew now residing in 2007. It sounds an awful lot like a theory of timeline self-preservation that I read about awhile back. Wikipedia wins: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novikov_self-consistency_principle

I mean, the nuke’s gone, right? But it definitely went off. The effects of that event just cannot play out in the main timeline/reality – so by this universe’s logic, another reality has to be created to allow the results to happen. And by the self-consistency principle, history can’t change in the original reality. Juliet won’t die from the nuke. No one will. Not in that reality. The nuke just, disappears. Whatever happened, happened. And what happened in the original timeline/reality, is that no nuke ever went off.

What’s most fascinating to me is that Juliet is aware that it worked; that somewhere, some-time, their plan to prevent the crash worked. That revelation reminds me of Desmond’s predicament, of a mind that’s either dislodged in, or able to see across space-time in ways other minds aren’t. That little conversation with James where it seems like she doesn’t recognize him briefly made me think her mind was traversing both realities for a moment. It was Desmond’s proximity to the EM explosion in season 2 that caused his mind to become dislodged in space-time; perhaps the same happened to Juliet?

I don’t even know if all of that made sense. I feel pretty confident that it did, but the rules of space-time according to Lost don’t have to comply with other sci-fi works. Things can continue to change, and probably will.

What I’m most interested in seeing now, is how and if these two realities will converge. I mean, by all rules set out so far, they shouldn’t, they can’t. But from the point of view of creating an entertaining story, everything we’re seeing has to matter and contribute to the overall bigger picture. We’re probably not going the Sliders-route and having Jack A meet Jack X, and so on. (or maybe we will — I mean, Ben pushed the magical polar-bear wheel of Narnia two years ago and moved the Island from wherever it was to the Bay of Bengal or some shit, so anything’s possible).

Maybe the result will just be heartfelt and thematic — we’ll have both realities play out all season, and watch the same characters deal with situations in two different, “what-if” scenarios, which would be kind of poetic if drastically different things were happening in the same episode to the same character in both realities. Say, a shot of Jack crying over the body of a crippled, and oh yeah, dead John Locke, cutting to a shot of John Locke walking out of the OR in LA X with a smiling Dr. Jack waving him goodbye in the background.

My head hurts.

Best line of the night by far: Jack to Locke “Nothing is irreversable”

Also Ian I too was crushed when not-Locke expained Lockes death. That drained me.

Jack in 2007 just looks defeated throughout the episode such an interesting charcter evolution, can’t wait to see how he responds to Sayids miraculous revival.

Both are acceptable theories.

That said, the scenes on the plane and in the airport are not what happened in the other timeline directly after Juliet detonated the bomb. My theory is that what is happening in the other timeline is a result of some OTHER incident or reboot on the island that causes the timelines to split. Step 2. It’s the classic LOST reveal; here’s a hint and a few clues, think about this for a while, now look over here… oh wait, ACTUALLY, look over HERE! THIS is what is going on, and IT WAS UNDER YOUR NOSE THE WHOLE TIME! (See also: the Locke is still dead reveal at the end of season 5.) Also, remember that Jack’s neck was bleeding in the airplane bathroom and was probably a clue as to something that we have seen the effects of but not the cause. (See also: Ben’s ripped jacket at the end of season 4.) I’m sure that in a future episode we’ll see what causes the real reboot and will see the cause of Jack’s cut; I really don’t think they would have put that detail in there unless it had a purpose.

So, here’s the scoop: At this early point in the season we’re looking at two different TIMES as well as two different timeLINES. The timeline did split and there was a reboot, but I don’t think that we have been shown what causes the reboot yet. My money is that it most definitely was not the detonation of the bomb; that’s way too easy. Since when has LOST selflessly let us eat from its hands and delivered instant gratification like that? I can’t think of a Big Thing like that resolving the way they inferred that it would throughout any of the show’s history, even if they overtly hinted that something would happen in a certain way.

Now, the original timeline Losties are still on the island, post-815 crashing, post-Incident that led to the building of the Swan, but PRE-reboot, in 2007. I’ll call this timeline A. What we have been shown on the plane is timeline B, back in 2004, where 815 never crashed due to a reboot that we still haven’t seen yet. I predict that the show’s going to continue on for a good chunk of the season presenting these two timelines as simultaneous in nature, but then there will be Some Big Reveal that will let the viewers in that the reboot wasn’t due to what Juliet did after all… but something as of yet unforeseen, which will converge the timelines so that whatever happens on the island in A will lead to what happens off the island in B. The timelines are not concurrent as “LA X” leads you to believe, but they are separate yet temporally sequential. The scenes off the island are best looked at like a combination of a flash-forward as WELL as a flash-sideward.

Fuck, my head hurts.