OK, so what an episode.

Let’s start with the name. “LA X”. Not “LAX”, but “LA X”. That extra space adds so much mystery, no?

Think about it. Planet X, the X Factor, the year 200X, and most importantly, “x” as a variable in mathematics. The X implies something different, unknown, or unique. What we’re seeing is not the normal LA, but the “X” version of LA. Does that make sense?

Oh, and of course — it could be referring to my favorite “X” of all — the X-Files. After all…

The truth is out there…

Our lives are a series of choices. Each choice we make sets up a new series of choices to be made, and the path is forged by each choice along the way. The smallest decision can impact and influence a life in an entirely different direction.

Each universe, then, is one display in an infinite array; an infinite array of our choices laid out in front of us. Each universe has a different outcome than the other, and we’re watching two of those universes in this episode.

World one (the one we’ve watched unfold for five years) is the Worst Possible Scenario world. Things fall apart. People die. Bad news bears.

World Two is the Best Possible Scenario world. Shannon and Boone don’t hook up. Charlie lives (despite saying he was “supposed to die”). Hurley is lucky. Jack will fix Locke’s legs, and most importantly, the Island is completely submerged in the ocean.

A big one, in my mind: In World One, Sawyer loses Juliet to the Island. In World Two, Juliet and Sawyer have coffee, go dutch. Huh?

We’re watching Juliet space out before her death, just like Charlotte did when her mind flashed through time before she died. She’s uttering phrases that her mind is pulling from a different reality altogether.

What we witnessed was Juliet’s mind speaking through her body FROM ANOTHER UNIVERSE.

Whoa.

This concept certainly gives some significance to Jack and Locke’s discussion in the World Two airport, concerning the loss of Christian Shepard’s body, not Christian himself.

I imagine we’ll see Sawyer and Juliet meet in this second world, wherein Juliet will utter those same words (again, much like Charlotte and Faraday in the ’70s).

Also, this is why Juliet told Sawyer (via Miles) that the bomb worked - she made it to the other side, just fine. What’s significant though, is the kind of travel Juliet just accomplished. Instead of the time travel analogy of a record skipping over a few beats of a song, here we have a record with a needle jumping several songs over. Crazy.

A few other items of note from the premiere… The temple is amazing, and riddled with spiritual significance (most distinct, the biblical healing pool and Sayid’s supposed resurrection). We meet a Japanese mystic and a John Lennon-esque interpreter, who’s literally billed as “Lennon” in the credits. The biggest questions here are: who are these people?, and what happened to Sayid?

I call these a wait-and-see. If I had to bet, I’d say Sayid is still Sayid, and the rules of the Island have begun to change after Jacob’s death. Also, I’d wager the Temple Others are simply a collection of “good people” Jacob has assembled over the years (from Alpert’s Black Rock onward). Next week’s episode will certainly clear these items up quickly.

Hey, let’s talk about Egyptian mythology for a while. Ready? Wikipedia is your friend. In fact, most of the below is lifted basically verbatim from the relevant articles on Wikipedia. I think this brings some new thoughts to light concerning Jacob and Locke.

Osiris. The Lord of the Dead. A merciful judge of the dead in the afterlife, in addition to being a giver of life (most vegetation and the fertility of the Nile river were attributed to Osiris). His other names are “The Lord of Love”, “He Who is Permanently Benign and Youthful” and “The Lord of Silence”. The Kings of Egypt were associated with Osiris in death — as Osiris rose from the dead they would, in union with him, inherit eternal life through a process of imitative magic. By the New Kingdom all people, not just pharaohs, were believed to be associated with Osiris at death if they incurred the costs of the assimilation rituals.

—sound familiar?

Set. The god of the desert, storms, darkness and chaos. In Egyptian mythology, the evil snake god Apep became Set (through cultural appropriations). Apep’s snakelike form guarded the underworld and fought the sun god, Ra.

Now, Isis and her brother, Osiris, were recognized as husband and wife. Isis loved Osiris, but their brother Set (or Seth) was jealous of Osiris, and planned to kill him. Set tricked Osiris and murdered him, and Isis was highly distraught. She sought shelter on a small island and as a further safeguard against Seth, Isis loosed the island from its foundations, and let it float so that no one could tell where to find it.

She found Osiris’ body within a great tree, which was used by the Pharoah in his palace. She brought Osiris back to life, and the two of them concieved Horus.

Mind blown? Yeah, me too.

So, onto Locke. Fake Locke. The Man in Black.

He’s very disappointed with you, in case you couldn’t tell by that photo.

Also, he wants to go home.

Where is this home, exactly? At first I thought, great. The Man in Black has access to a pilot and plane, with knowledge of the coordinates needed to leave the Island. He’s going to go to the mainland and start tearing it up. But that’s just altogether too normal for this show, don’t you think?

Instead, what if World Two is the “home” the man in black is talking about going back to? We’ll have an evil smoke monster entity trying to crawl back into a different universe and wreak havoc on a basically good world (with the intent to balance it out a little bit more).

Every time a sci-fi show discusses to universes converging like that (I’m looking at you, Doctor Who), you run the risk of destroying both universes in the process. So what we’re potentially looking at is an all-out, good versus evil, dark versus light, epic war to save the universe on a mystical time-jumping Island.

…on PRIME TIME TELEVISION. America isn’t ready.

My thanks to friends, coworkers, and my lovely wife for many of the great ideas expressed here. A lot of this rambling was captured from the conversations we’ve shared over the past two days.

Some great recaps to read:
[Doc Jensen]
[Long Live Locke]
[Dark UFO]