The writers literally could go either way on this.

Not if they want to play fair. The newspaper has been identified as one from April 2007.

all I can say is that I was pretty sure Jack was in the future the whole time. He looked crappy and older than the past flashbacks.

I didn't twig that it was the future, but I couldn't figure out how that Jack fit into what we knew of his history. Clever of you to make the leap.

I couldn't figure out how that Jack fit into what we knew of his history.

Me neither, -t. It immediately struck me that we had seen SO MUCH of his history that this bearded guy didn't fit in there. But I just never considered the possibility that they would be showing us the future.

when they showed him using the Motorola RAZR, i figured it out because they've been fairly careful about props like that in the past and it really jumped out at me that that phone wasn't available pre-crash.

I'm so used to seeing people on television using that phone that it didn't even register to me that he shouldn't have had it pre-crash.

The writers literally could go either way on this.

I meant: if Jack's father is alive or dead.

It seems to me that they could either say: he's dead and been dead; or he's alive and this is a different timeline.

(and probably Jin, but I just remember Sun's face for certain)

I saw this too Cindy and took a big ol' double take. But the woman in question was Japanese, I'm pretty sure. Very similar but not the same. At that moment it made me smile...oh you tricksy producers, trying to spoof us like that.

Somehow I immediately knew that was Jack in the future and had an intuitive sense, before he said it to Kate, that he was so screwed up because there was something wrong/missing due to the lack of island.

The sense that the island provides something (un!paralysis, precognition, courage, etc.) and then grown!Walt showing up pinged me with a giant "It's ULY! Is this Earth2?" moment.

Right -- if the Island is some sort of nexus of different timelines then they could have gone back to the "wrong" one. (Which may also explain why Kate isn't incarcerated.)

I don't know what pinged me about that first flashforward. I am so not detail oriented - > it just gave me a feeling that it was the future not the past. And the phone thing would definitely not have been something I would ever notice. (It might have been the graying at the temples.)

I'm digging the multiple timeline explanation(...also very Earth2...plus!Others...huh, there are a LOT of parallels I didn't think of until just this minute...) because it helps me to wave away a lot of the missing logic.

Funny how that one idea has turned me from "Turns out I DO know how to quit you, stoopid show", to "Okay, maybe one more date."

The first 6 eps of the season were bad enough that I was wondering if I was going to continue in the Fall.

Lost has definitely won me back. Grey's Anatomy on the other hand...