What we know....(SPOILERS from the Premier)

If you're worried about spoilers, then boohoo....you're lucky i even put it in the headline, because it's been 2 freaking days, since it aired, if you haven't seen it yet, you're a slacker that deserves to have everything spoiled, but I digress...



Juliette is really dead, not 'island dead'.



Despite what Jack and Dr. Daniel Farady led us to believe, setting off the hydrogen bomb known as “Jughead” did not quite reset everything. The bomb seems to have merged the past and present timelines and moved everyone to their correct time period. The Losties are now all in the same time period, which is known as “Island Present”. After the detonation of the bomb, Juliette is still on the island, physically unchanged which means she’s still dying and that really sucks for her.





Multiple timelines now exist?



While the bomb seems to have reunited the Oceanic Six with the Losties stuck in the 1970’s, it may have also created a separate timeline off the island. While I am not 100% sure that this separate (side timeline) timeline is exactly what it appears to be. We could actually be seeing a dream or vision like in the Locke centric episode, ‘Further Instructions’. In that episode we see the many of the main characters in the Sidney airport but in alternate lives, much like the new timeline, which also has major (Desmond on the plane) and minor (Hurley’s good luck) differences.





Sayid dies... briefly



Sayid did not fare as well as his friends in the 1970’s timeline. He was separated from the group, captured and later shot by Ben Linus’ jerk of a father. Things were not looking good for him at the beginning of the episode and they don’t get much better after he is taken to the Others Temple (much like Ben was after being shot by him) for a dip in their hot tub of life. At first the Others attempt to Sayid appears to work, and then fail, and then work again, which surprises everyone (including the 'new Others') and confuses Sayid.





Richard Alpert's past with the Man in Black



In this episode we learn that the mysterious ‘Man in Black’ knows Richard Alpert personally. In the first appearance of MiB in the season finale, we see a boat on the horizon which we assume is the Black Rock. From information found in the Lost ARG (Alternate Reality Game),The Lost Experience we know that the Black Rock was owned by Magnus Hanso, who was the great grandfather of Alvar Hanso (financial backer of the Dharma Initiative). After seeing Richard Alpert on the beach, the Man in Black mentions that it is nice to see him out of his “chains”. MIB's mention of chains makes us think of the skeletons found chained together on the ship and (Exodus, Part 2) in the Black Rock's past as a slave vessel.





The Man in Black is the Smoke Monster



The real shocker of the episode was the reveal that the Smoke Monster (aka Smokey) is not actually a monster, but instead the shape shifting Man in Black, Jacob's nemesis. We thought this reveal would come much later in the series, but instead we find out about Smokey pretty early on. Putting a face to the smoke monster puts his past activity in a new light. In the past, the smoke monster has taken the form of Yemi, Alex and most recently John Locke. We also learn that Smokey has an adversarial relationship with the others as well as Jacob. One interesting note is that Smokey wants to “go home”, even more than Juliette did. Two hours in to the final season of Lost and only sixteen more to go before it is over. We have learned a lot in a short time and we can't wait to see how these events play out over the season.