This post contains spoilers about LOST through Season 5 after the image. Be warned!

It's really only 2 (fara)days, but I stole this image from someone else!

I wish that I could tell you how much thought I’ve given to Season 6 of LOST without coming off as the craziest obsessed fan ever.

Here’s the thing about me: I’m not obsessive—and trust me on this point, because I’ve now lived with and loved two people with OCD, so I know it when I see it—but rather I am fond of obsessing. When I have something to obsess over, it organizes my brain very tidily. Without it, I am all over the place.

Zen Buddhism refers to it as “Western monkey mind,” this tendency for your brain to multi-task perpetually and never let you concentrate on one single thing. There are lots of different methods to tame your brain. Some people like drugs, either pharmaceutical or recreational. Some meditate. I like to just give my brain something to work on: “Here, brain, I really want to veganize this recipe from my childhood. I just bought this Will Oldham record. I got an Annie Dillard book from the library.” My brain takes my offering and scatters off in one direction and works on it, leaving the practical side of my brain free to pay bills and do my job and make my son lunch.

When LOST came into my life, it was not unlike falling in love. LOST has been the nicest little puzzle for my brain since I stopped playing video games. I will really miss it when it’s all over, but I will only miss watching the episodes a little bit. Mostly I will miss thinking about the show.

So after that long and protracted preamble, here is what I think will happen in Season 6. I’m putting it in writing, which is stupid, because now you have an entry to come back to in weeks to follow to laugh about how wrong I was. That’s fine. You have no better idea what’s going to happen than I do, which is why LOST is the greatest ever.

Do I think that setting off the bomb pressed a giant reset button and Episode 1 of Season 6 will show them all landing at LAX, safe and sound? Maybe. Originally I thought, “No way, they may lead us to believe that in Episode 1, they may show us Christian’s funeral and Kate being hauled off to prison and all of that, but then it will turn out to be just a dream or a fantasy.”

The writers of LOST spent all of Seasons 4 and 5 presenting us with their rules of time travel: This is not Back to the Future style time travel. In LOST time travel, any attempt to change history is futile and the course will correct itself: “Whatever happened, happened.” “You’re going to die, Charlie.” Elouise Hawking knew she would kill her son and let him go back to the island, anyway. It just doesn’t make sense to me that all of the sudden, Daniel Faraday would show up and be like, “Oh, psych, we were wrong, you can change the past, just do this!” and it would work.

What my good pal Susie made me realize is that what was presented in the Season 5 finale as being a matter of Jack vs. Sawyer is really a matter of Daniel Faraday vs. Elouise Hawking. Either way: rash impulse vs. calm and thoughtful decision-making. Historically on LOST, if a character makes a decision quickly and emotionally, it’s a bad one. Recall if you will the conversation between Jack and Sawyer in the Season 5 episode “Namaste”: “It’s how I like to run things. I think. I’m sure that doesn’t mean that much to you, ’cause back when you were calling the shots, you pretty much just reacted. See, you didn’t think, Jack, and as I recall, a lot of people ended up dead.”

So here is what I think: I think that minor events may change, and it will be really fun to see that all play out, and they might dedicate even 3 or 4 episodes to “alternate reality,” but I think that all the principal players will end up back on that island and I think that everyone who died will die again, including of course Boone, Charlie, Mr. Eko, Locke, and Jacob.

I also think that we will see most of the events from Seasons 1-5 from the perspective of the Others. I think that we’ll get at least one whole episode about Richard.

And—and here is where I diverge from 95% of LOST fans—I think we’ll find out that Jacob is bad and The Man In Black is good, and by the time that Season 6 is over, we’ll all be really happy that the Man in Black finally got to kill the bastard. Because it’s pretty much taken for granted at this point that The Man in Black is the Smoke Monster, right? And the Smoke Monster is the island. And the island is GOOD.

Ben vs. Widmore? I don’t care. They’re just puppets, anyway. There is something about being an Other which so thoroughly brainwashes you into thinking that you’re doing the right thing that you can become this kidnapping, murderous, deceptive automoton following orders in the name of “doing what Jacob/The Island wants,” and that interests me, but I’m not really into their petty little rivalry for who gets to be king of the mountain. At least, I’m not interested right now, but I’m sure the writers could make me interested!

I’m looking foward to seeing how this will all play out, and I’m already starting to grieve a little about this whole ride coming to an end.

Thank you, LOST!