1. It seems like the writers want to have their cake and eat it too. The talk since the finale was, did the bomb work - leading the characters to avoid the crash - or did it not work, killing everyone (hence Richard's claim to have "watched them die" in one of the final episodes of season 5). As it happens, this wasn't just having your cake and eating it too - this was like eating your cake twice. While it's not like I expected them to kill everyone off, the answer turns out to be, apparently, "Parallel timelines." In one, the plane lands safely; in the other, the survivors get bounced back to 2007. This seems odd. I mean, either the plan worked or it didn't, right? How can both things have happened? (I'm dubbing this "Schrödinger's Hatch.")
I suppose it depends on how you view time. If we're assuming that things that have already happened cannot be erased, the Losties in 1977 can't simply vanish. Their change to the timeline by blowing up the energy pocket ripples forward, creating an alternate 2004 where the plane doesn't crash... but at the same time, the existing timeline continues to exist, and they end up back in 2007 because in that timeline, the detonation also initiated a time skip. I guess.
2. Following up on that, what are we in for this year as regards the two timelines? Should we expect them to meet? What kind of horrible paradoxes would result if they ever did? Is there actually a possibility that they might not meet? (Remember, the producers have said that the rest of the series will be a lot more character-driven along the lines of season one - and given how much 2007 island plot there still seems to be to resolve, it seems like the best way to get that is by tracking the non-crash 2004 characters back into their real lives, as we've clearly started to do.) Surely they couldn't get away with the two never meeting.
3. Along those lines: Desmond on the plane with Jack. This isn't impossible in a timeline where the Swan's energy pocket was destroyed in 1977 - if Desmond never crashes his boat on the island in 2001 or so, by 2004 he could just as easily be flying from Sydney to LA as anywhere else. However, Desmond seems just a little too wise (although he's good at covering it), and his sudden appearance and subsequent vanishing act seem a little too convenient. Desmond's certainly traveled through time before, and he's got a history with Faraday's mother, who knows more than a little about the subject herself.
4. It certainly looks like the 2007 plot will be "battle for the island" or perhaps more specifically "battle for the soul of the island." But when Esau, or whatever you want to call him, says that he wants to go home... well, what does that mean? What's home for a guy who's hundreds if not thousands of years old and changes into a smoke monster when he gets upset?
Plenty more to talk about as the season continues, I'm sure.
