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When last we saw our Lostaways, Jack and pals were trapped in 1977, and Jack had the bright idea that if he nukes the island, they will have never crashed on it in 2004. The season ended in a flash of white, which could indicate two things, bomb detonation, or another time jump. Lost fans speculated and argued for months over it. So it seems the answer is still a bit vague. If Jack detonates the bomb, does the future change? Or is the reverse true - that whatever happened, happened and the bomb had always gone off? Lindelof and Cuse give us both.

I'm still trying to wrap my brain around it. On the one hand, we see Jack and many other characters back on Oceanic in 2004, and, despite some familiar turbulence, they pass right over the now sunken island without any fuselage splitting action. We see some subtle changes such as Jack's haircut, and some major ones like Desmond being on the flight, but the big thing is, it seems Jack succeeds in preventing the crash.

Not so fast. We later see the same characters, back in 2007, right where their stories leave off from last season, indeed having experienced one last time jump, white flash, headaches and all. Lost no longer seems to be flashing back or flashing forward, but flashing parallel.

Several questions arise, of course. The first that springs to mind is how these two timelines will reconcile. I'm not too interested in this question. Well, that's a lie, I am interested, but I know that the answer to this question will be revealed in coming weeks, so I'll set that aside for now. Hell, for all I know the parallel versions of themselves might have been the people shooting at Locke, Sawyer and the gang in the boats back in the season five debut. So I'll set it aside for now.

My first question that does interest me right now is really more of a speculation. Again, not where is this dual storytelling going, but why? My immediate thought is to Jacob's fifth season finale claim that "they're coming". We still don't know what this means, but I'm wondering if Jack's reset plan might not be Jacob's countermove to Smokey's elaborate plot to kill him.

Perhaps, as Smokey has, Jacob's also been manipulating our heroes all this time. Well, maybe not manipulating, that would make him no better than Smokey, but nudging them in the direction he wants them to go. And this explosion in 1977 and resulting dual realities is Jacob's checkmate to Smokey's check. (Perhaps a backgammon analogy would be more fitting to the series, but I don't know the game well enough.) The reconciliation of the two timelines results in Jacob's eventual upper hand, with one or the other set of characters being the "they" whom he promises are coming.

That's all master plot stuff and it's fun, but, whether or not it plays out in this manner, my other question is a little more philosophical. Does a split timeline contradict the idea that whatever happened, happened? Since we see that, in one reality at least, Jack and pals do return to their proper time and do continue their wacky adventures unabated, one might speculate that yes, nothing changes, that nuke exploding always happened. In that case, there had always been a second timeline created right then.

I'm not sure if this works. After rolling it over in my mind, I haven't yet quite figured it out. It's a little too much geometry for my right brain way of thinking. Certainly it contradicts the argument that there is only one timeline. If the two timelines do reconcile, however, does this reconciliation indicate that they were really a part of the same timeline to begin with?

It does seem to me to be a bit of a cake-and-eat-it-too scenario for Cuselof. Among the themes of the show is that of fate vs. free will. If Smokey and Locke represent the fate side of the equation, Jacob and Jack argue the side of free will. For that matter, the two timelines represent the two philosophies as well. 815 crash timeline is the fate timeline, and 815 LAX is the free will one. By giving us no definitive answer to the question, Cuse and Lindelof avoid siding with one point of view or the other. This leads me to believe that we might be in for a similar vague resolution to the series as a whole.

I wouldn't necessarily mind this. It's in keeping with the spirit of the show, and it's certainly nothing new for such speculative fiction. I have a feeling that, were it to come to pass as such, the fan base would be up in arms. If there's one thing I've learned in my years of over-analyzing stories, it's that people en masse don't like vague endings. One need look no further than the uproar over The Sopranos' infamous cut to black as evidence of this. Of course, I could be wrong. Lost may not end that way. We have but 16 television hours left before we find out. Okay, my mind is, as usual with Lost, spinning. Gotta end this now before I sprain my noggin.