*Before I begin, I will point out that I am aware that the first 4 minutes of the season premiere are viewable online, as are a slew of (perhaps other) spoilers.  I am doing my best to avoid any and all spoilers ahead of the premiere, so all of this is written without my eyes having been tainted with information I was not yet meant to see.

I am downright giddy about the season premiere of Lost tomorrow night.  The show always leaves you hanging, after every episode, but even more so with their season finales, and the Season 5 finale left us with the biggest question of all – did Jack’s plan work? I’ve already gone over some of the evidence that points to his plan working; that the H-bomb going off did in fact reset the show’s timeline. But after re-watching a few episodes from last season, and the recap show that aired right before the finale, I noticed a lot more evidence that seemed to favor the fact that our Losties actually did in fact cause The Incident, not prevent it. Here’s my evidence:

• The show has been beating us over the head with the “whatever happened, happened/you can’t change the past” theory of time-travel for quite some time.
• In the recap show that aired right before the Season 5 finale, Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof point out that as some of the characters get skipped around in time, they are sent to key points in the Island’s history, and that it isn’t random.  If the Island intentionally sent them to those specific points in time, that implies that the Island is ensuring that what is supposed to happen, happens, i.e. The Incident.
• Of what we know about Island history, nothing the Losties did changed anything; in fact their actions seemed to lead to the events that we now know of.  OK, that was a confusing sentence, so allow me to explain with a few examples.  We know from Miles’ flashback that his father sent him and his mother away when he was just a tot.  Because Faraday came to the Island in 1977 and warned of the upcoming incident, Dr. Chang sent his family packing.  We also saw Chang in videos describing the incident in the past tense with a prosthetic hand.  In the fracas around the Swan Station in 1977, Chang’s hand is crushed.  We know that Radzinsky comes to push the button in the Swan Station for many years.  During the gun fight, he escapes.  So all in all, what was supposed to happen ended up happening, all according to plan.
• The name of the Season 5 finale episode is simply “The Incident.”

Still, there is evidence that Jack and company DID change history.  There are the videos I posted before (hit the above link to see them if you missed them).  There is the fact that despite my evidence about Radzinsky and Chang going through what they were supposed to go through, for the Island history to continue as we know it, they would have to survive being in pretty close to proximity to a hydrogen bomb going off.  And of course, there is the fact that we know that the show is continuing for another season, which implies that we did not witness the deaths of Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Hurley, Jin, Sayid, and Miles.

So maybe there is a third option – the Losties somehow simultaneously helped the incident happen AND were able to negate history.  How is that possible?  I have no idea.  Could I very easily watch the first few minutes of the season premiere to see what they have to say about my theories before I hit the Publish button?  Sure.  But what’s the fun in that?  I’ve been waiting since last May, I think I can hold out for one more day.

Oh, and if you want to watch something Lost related that isn’t a spoiler, there’s this video about whether the show will be able to wrap up all of it’s loose ends.  It’s a bit long, but it’s pretty funny, and catchy.  And yes, that is Rhett and Link (of Brink fame) in the video.  Enjoy, and Namaste.