Daryl Tay.net

After four episodes this season (Because You Left, The Lie, Jughead, The Little Prince), with roughly two focused on the Losties on the Island and two on the Oceanic Six off the Island, I figure I’ve been shown enough to finally give some first thoughts on the season so far. I’ll split between “on” and “off” the Island for simplicity:

Losties on the Island
This is definitely the more intruiging story in season five so far. The Losties are jumping through time and encountering different people at different times. How long have the Others been on the Island? Who has been on the Island previously? Is Jughead buried in the Swan?

Some thoughts on the characters:

Locke
He’s been told by Ageless Richard he has to go back and bring the rest, even if he dies. We know Locke ends up in the coffin, but what happened in between?

Sawyer
Definitely seeing a Sawyer-Juliet relationship develop. I love how he wants Kate to be happy off the Island, but betrays selfish emotion to wanting her back.

Faraday
The highlight of the Losties (or maybe, Freighter Folk). Clearly, Daniel knows what is going on. Why was he in the Frozen Donkey Wheel chamber years before? Who is his mother?!

Juliet
I used to hate Juliet, but they’ve done a good job of making her a sympathetic character, and being the last “Other” of the group, brings a great dynamic to the Losties.

Miles
Miles is still relatively “mysterious” and we still don’t know much about the character. What’s the deal with his ghost powers?

Charlotte
I can’t really care much about Charlotte other than the fact that it’s hinted she’s born on the Island. Faraday’s the physicist who tells us about the time jumps, Miles is the ghost dude, but Charlotte doesn’t even bring her anthropological roots to the scene. I was almost glad when it seemed like she died at the end of Jughead

Richard
Clearly, Richard knows what is going on. But how much? How old is he? What does he have in store for Locke?

Big question: Is Locke going to turn the Donkey Wheel? Apparently Locke tells the Oceanic Six that terrible things happened to the “rest” of the Losties on the Island after they left, but who really are the Losties “left”? Besides Locke and Sawyer, the rest of the Losties are extras (with the exception of Rose, Bernard and Vincent). So why would the rest care?

Oceanic Six
So the O6 have to get back to the island, and miraculously they’re all in LA. Mighty coincidental, but we’ll let that slide. Desmond’s story with Penny is easily the most sincere, heartwarming story of Lost, which makes me worried that there is going to be no happy ending for the couple.

Jack
Still the leader. I don’t know why it took him 3 years to come to his senses, but better late than never.

Hurley
We haven’t seen much of Hurley except for him to be “saved” by Sayid and then captured by the police again. His little dialogue with Ana Lucia was interesting and I wonder what role he has to play, given that he could find Jacob’s cabin on the Island and can speak to dead people off it.

Sayid
Killing guys with a dishwasher, dodging tranq bullets, Sayid is kicking all sorts of ass this season, and I love it. I’ve never been a Sayid fan, but he’s finally growing on me by being such a bad ass.

Sun
I have to say I was SO sure that Sun was behind the troubles that Kate/Aaron were having. She’s acting very weird. I’m not sure how I feel about that because I’m a huge Sun fan, but I can totally understand it if her character turns to the dark side.

Kate
Don’t care much about Kate, never have and probably never will. Her sudden love for Aaron is bordering on disbelief and just like back in season two where she would run off and get them captured by the Others, I can see her being the source of “weakness” here again.

Ben
As always, Ben has all the cards. Right now, we don’t know WHY he wants to get them back to the Island, except that he wants to do that very much. Can’t wait to see more of his schemes develop as the season goes on.

The Big Issue: The Oceanic Six story is a little mundane to the time-traveling story happening on the Island. I suspect Charles Widmore is going to come into play at some point to spice things up, and that can only happen sooner rather than later.

With just over 30hours of Lost left to go before it’s done for good, it’s a crazy ride from here on out. If you left the show when it dipped in season two and early season three, it’s time to come back. All the time-traveling bit may sound a little crazy, but I assure you it’s done in a much better way than Heroes.

In the meantime, if you’ve never caught Lost, check out this fan video. It proves how awesome it is.