Lost

So this past tuesday was the season premeire of Lost.

So when we left off last season, Ben had just killed Jacob and Juliett had hit the bomb at the bottom of the hole at the swan site.

When Juliett hit the bomb it sent Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Hurley, Sayid, Jin, Miles, and herself to the future. It also seems to have created an alternate timeline where the plane lands at LAX.

In the LAX timeline, there are some differences from the original timeline as we know (aside from the whole not crashing thing). As the plane first hits turbulence, Rose reassures Jack, as opposed to the other way around, Shannon is not on the plane, however Desmond is, and when going through customs, Sun is referred to as Ms. Paik and not Kwon.

Just after the plane passes the turbulence, the camera zooms out the window and to the ocean floor where the island is underwater.

According to lostpedia, Shannon's absence is a result of a scheduling issue with Maggie Grace, and probably not a significant detail.

Anything that happened after the incident could have been affected in this alternate time line, providing an explanation for any differences we see in the current time line.

In the Island timeline, the survivors are sent forward in time to about an hour after Jacob is killed by Ben. The Swan looks just like it did after Desmond used the failsafe key, and Juliet is still alive, buried in the wreckage of the hatch. Sawyer manages to dig down and Juliet says something about getting coffee, kisses Sawyer and is about to say somthing important before she dies. Later Sawyer has Miles find out what Juliet was about to say, and he comes up with "It worked". Philip DeFranco mentionned an interesting theory that Juliett had been flashing between realities (similar to Desmond's time travelling after using the failsafe key).

In the jungle, Hurley sees Jacob, and is instructed to bring Sayid to the temple, and to bring the guitar case given to him in LA before the Ajira Flight. The survivors (without Sawyer and Miles) travel to the whole in the wall (where Jin had been with the French Team) and are captured by the others. They are taken in front of Dogen who oreders them killed until Hurley says that Jacob had sent them. Dogen opens the guitar case and finds an Ankh, breaks it in half and finds a piece of paper, which supposedly says that they will be in trouble if Sayid dies. They then take the Sayid to a weird healing spring type thing (fountain of youth?) where the water is brown (which the Others find unusual). They put Sayid in the water face down, and hold him under even when he starts struggling. When they pull him out Dogen says that Sayid is dead. The Others seem to be quite calm despite the fact that Sayid has died. And just before the end credits, Sayid is shown to be alive.

I've seen a theory that Sayid has come back to life as Jacob (similar to the man in black's reincarnation as Locke). This theory goes well with how calm the Others seem to be after Sayid dies. Perhaps the paper in the Ankh told the Others to heal Sayid's body and kill him, to allow Jacob to be reincarnated.

Back at the statue Ben discovers that Locke is not really who he claims to be when he is shown the body of the real Locke. Ben is then forced to lead the way for Bram and his companions into Jacob's chamber, where they are attacked by the smoke monster. The fake Locke then admits that he is the smoke monster. It seems as though the smoke monster/man in black has been impersonating people like Alex and Christian Sheppard.

So it will be interesting to see how the whole alternate reality thing works out.