Lost is off to a strong start for its final season, and it looks like it’ll have a fairly strong audience for its farewell tour – over twelve million people watched the premiere last night, up significantly from the season opener last year. There may have been some significant viewer attrition during seasons four and five, when the narrative looked particularly convoluted and didn’t seem overly invested in providing answers. Now, though, the prospect of jumping down the rabbit hole is a lot more pleasant with the guarantee that you’ll eventually come out the other side.

Lest you get too comfortable, last night’s episode did want to make it clear that you’re definitely jumping into a crazy narrative free-for-all. The biggest question to come out of the two-hour “LA X” was the real nature of the alternate storylines. The first few seasons were flashbacks, the next few seasons were flashforwards, and we now appear to be living in a Sliding Doors, Star Trek-reboot, Back to the Future, alternate timeline limbo land. There was some grumbling about this from some people I watched with last night – unless everything gets stitched together in a way that allows for meaningful conclusion, alternate timelines can be a serious cop-out. It’s already on weakened ground in terms of character development, because we’ve spent a great deal of time becoming invested in Jack, Kate, Locke et al. as they are affected by the island. I don’t really care about Alt-Kate or Alt-Locke, because they’re nascent, undeveloped versions of the characters I already like. (I don’t care about either Jack or Alt-Jack, though, so that’s okay.) If I grow to be invested in them only to watch them get snuffed out of existence when the timelines get fixed, it’s going to be seriously annoying. I think the best case scenario here is for the timelines to have a significant impact on each other in a cause-and-effect sort of way, and I’m holding out hope that Desmond’s disappearing act on Alternate-Flight-815 is the beginning of a breakdown between the two timelines. He travels between them? He’s a Matrix-like glitch in the timeline split?

The episode did offer quite a bit in the way of answers, giving us our first view of the temple, returning to Cindy-the-flight-attendant-turned-hippie-priestess, and fleshing out this whole Evil Locke, Man in Black business. (By the way, I believe there are now three Lockes: Dead Locke, Evil Locke, and Alt-Locke. Sigh.) Evil Locke/Man in Black is the smoke monster! Which is pretty cool! In fact, one person I watched with last night stated that all he wanted out of season six was to figure out who Smokey was, and now that it’s been revealed, everything else is pretty much extraneous. It has some nice implications for previous information about the island, too – if Smokey is actually Jacob’s nemesis, and The Others have been Team Jacob all this time, that explains why they built a big sonic fence to keep out Smokey, and why Jacob’s cabin was surrounded by magical anti-Smokey ashes. Smokey’s ability to look like other bodies could also explain various islandy illusions, like Kate’s horse vision, Eko’s visions of his dead brother, and the many early images of Walt scattered around the jungle. Did Smokey make Ana-Lucia shoot Shannon?

Evil Locke, Alt-Locke, Dead Locke. Heh, "Deadlock."

So now we’re left with poor dead Sayid, who is probably now also three people (Jacob-Sayid, Dead Sayid, and Alt-Sayid). The idea that Jacob is now inhabiting Sayid’s body might require a little tweaking, though, because why does Jacob need Sayid’s actual body while the Man in Black had no trouble becoming Evil Locke without actually inhabiting Dead Locke’s skin? What is it about this show that leads me to end every paragraph with a question?

In any event, Lost is back. Break out the fish biscuits, Dharma beer, and Apollo bars, because I think it’ll be a long, confusing season.