Setting an end date for “Lost” during Season 3 has allowed the producers to figure out exactly where they want things to end up in next year’s series finale.

Because of this, the show has been moving at a frantic pace for the last two years, especially during the early part of this season.

The result is the most mind-bending and mysterious drama on television. The new dimension to the narrative this season was time travel after Ben moved the island in the season finale last year.

The island has been shifting through time and exposes those that were left behind during different periods of island history.

Discoveries included the fact that a nuclear bomb is buried on the island, Charles Widmore was an “other,” Danielle Rosseau’s boat crew was killed and corrupted by the smoke monster and the fact that those who had spent the most time on the island suffered severe nosebleeds following the flashes.

John Locke finally figured out from Christian Shepherd that he was supposed to be the one who moved the island and bring the Oceanic 6 back.

Once he moved it the island stopped flashing and left Sawyer, Juliet, Faraday, Miles and Jin stuck in the early Dharma Initiative days of 1974.

Faraday was stunned by the death of Charlotte on the island. The time-traveling wizard believes the flashes are done and that they are stuck in the ’70s.

Interestingly enough, his mother was revealed to be Eloise Hawking, a woman who provided the Ajira Airlines flight information that got the Oceanic 6 back to the island.

Over the three-year period when Locke leaves the island to when the Oceanic 6 comes back, Sawyer and Juliet fall in love and all the castaways find prominent work in the Dharma Initiative after Sawyer perpetuates a lie that his crew crashed a boat into the island and that his name is James Lefleur.

Sawyer has built a new life for himself in this alternate universe and lost what little hope he had of ever being found again.

Now that the Oceanic 6 flashed from the plane they came back on to the ’70s after flying over the island, a reunion is upon us and it will be interesting to see if Sawyer is as over Kate as he says he is and how he and Jack, two past rivals, will interact.

Some questions that need to be answered are why Sayid was in cuffs being led on the plane, how Hurley got on the Ajira flight after he was in jail, what Kate did with Aaron, and why Ben was so beat up getting on the plane.

The interesting fact is that only the Oceanic 6 beamed to the ’70s and the rest of the people on the Ajira flight survived and landed on the mini island with the Hydra Station where the “others” worked out of in season 3.

A mysterious man on the flight named Caesar and his friend Illana, the woman who had Sayid in handcuffs, clearly have some sort of agenda that will be explored.

Ben was wounded by the rough landing and in a hospital of sorts with other wounded flight passengers.

Locke was shockingly alive again upon his dead body reaching the island. Even though he did not know it while he tried to hang himself but was ultimately killed by Ben, Locke succeeded in getting the Oceanic 6 back to the island.

Locke must now get answers about why Ben strangled and killed him in his hotel room in Los Angeles and what his true purpose is.

Clearly a power struggle is taking place between Ben and Charles Widmore for control of the island.

Widmore cannot get over Ben banishing him from the island years back while Ben hates Widmore because he murdered his daughter. Do these two men have any good in them, or are they both covering their tracks?

Ben, Locke and crew are in 2008 at the Hydra station so it will be interesting to see how the show gets the people from the ’70s back to present time.

Will the Oceanic 6 alter the events of the future by what they do in the ’70s? Will the castaways stuck in the ’70s have any interaction with a young Ben?

My theory is that Ben being bloodied before boarding the plane back to the island was a result of a murder attempt of Penelope Widmore, the daughter of Charles and girlfriend of Desmond.

With everybody of purpose back on the island, the intensity will shoot up to another level for the rest of the season, and the journey should prove immensely entertaining for the show’s fans as the pacing, stories, acting and excitement are unmatched anywhere else on television.