Along with many of you, I watch the first episode of Lost Season 6 hoping to finally get some answers to the strange things that have been going on the past five years. Instead, I came away even more confused than before (but well-entertained nonetheless). Not only did we not get any answers, there is now an entire layer of new questions. SPOILERS AHEAD.

The plane lands safely. Sawyer is a nice guy, Hurley is lucky, Locke is still in a wheelchair. The Island is under water. The ‘77 folks are still on the Island, but they’ve time-shifted yet again. There are people on the Island that we’ve previously not met. Juliet is presumed dead, but is found alive, then dies. Locke is alive, and also dead. Sayid dies, then lives. Then things start to get complicated.

Theories abound about what the f*** is going on, and many are quite elaborate, but there is only so much discussion about alternate timelines one can endure before the head starts to seriously hurt. But there is one theory posted on Lostpedia that I found quite promising:

The Sideways universe is actually a flash forward - specifically, it’s the result of a reset - not from the H-bomb incident, but from some other incident that will occur later in the season. THAT reset will be the one that causes the island to end up at the bottom of the ocean; and we’ll also see Jack get that specific injury on his neck right before the new reset. So though the events on the plane in the Sideways universe take place in 2004, and our heroes are on island in 2007/8, the 2004 events are a flash forward because they occur down the road after a new and successful reset. It’s not so much a different universe, but more so the eventual result of changing the past (later on in the season).

This approach is stylistically consistent with how the story has been told in previous seasons, and I actually see a glimmer of a road to closure. Which is to say, it’s less flat-out crazy then some of the other ideas.