Why The Bomb Going Off Does Not Negate Five Years Of My Viewing Pleasure

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken

This is the normal story. At every point in our lives we make choices and based on those choices we end up with one continuous timeline. We're born, to these parents, with these siblings, we go to this school, then this college, then marry this person, and have these children. We live here and then here and eventually we die.

But most of us have wondered what if? What if I'd gone to a different college? Chosen a different major? Gotten that other job? And those are the choices we control. What about the ones we don't like what if I'd been born on a different continent? Had different parents?

But what's the point in playing the what it game? We don't get do-overs. We make the best of what we have and press onward, perhaps with regrets and the capacity to make up for them or move past them, but not the ability to undo time.

But that's the beauty of fiction. I think we're going to get to see what happened had we chosen the road not taken. Well, not us, but Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Hurley, etc. But it's not going to take 5 years to tell that story because most of the choices they've made, and we've watched, aren't the ones they want to do over. Most of the choices will be the same. 

But there's one thing or a few things that might make all the difference in the world and I think those are the things we'll get to see a second time in Season 6. We may even get to see them the exact same way we did in Season 1 with a crash on the Island and flashbacks to show us who these people are. I don't think it'll go quite that way. I think the more likely way is to show us the new choices and then crash to end it all. But either way, it won't result in unrecognizable versions of Jack and the rest of the 815ers, but they will be altered or at least have the opportunity to be altered. The question will be do they always do the same thing or will they take the road less traveled and chose as Jacob encouraged them.