You can't have it both ways. Or can you?

Going into the sixth and final season of “;Lost,”; the show's creators have taken millions of fans on a convoluted, confounding five-year journey, only to stop short at the edge of a cliff. There is a blinding white light, a literal atomic bomb blast, after which anything can happen.

Beloved characters with a depth and diversity never before seen on television have grown, evolved and often regressed. For all the twists in their journey, we've always felt they were going somewhere. But the grand plan, at the end of season five, would undo the catastrophic plane crash that set everything in motion.

Show creator J.J. Abrams, known for the spy series “;Alias”; and the blockbuster “;Star Trek”; revival, has a fondness for hitting the reset button. Can he resist rebooting “;Lost”;?

Maybe.

Only the first hour of the two-hour season premiere of the final season of “;Lost”; was screened before thousands of fans on the beach in Waikiki Saturday, but we did indeed see what comes after that blinding white light within the first 10 seconds of new footage.

We saw familiar faces, some of them unexpected, and we were all hungrily scanning them for the slightest hint, some faint nuance or glance, to tell us what's going on. Then there was another flash.

The stunned silence on the sand spoke volumes. “;Lost”; is nowhere near done messing with us. But I loved that first hour, and tonight couldn't come soon enough for the second half.

Bomb or no bomb, mythology or science, in “;Lost”; I'm all about the people. And I'm happy to say that it's clear the writers have the same priorities.

The most brilliantly executed unexpected romance of season five, between Sawyer (Josh Holloway) and Juliet (Elizabeth Mitchell), deservedly gets an early spotlight. My wife couldn't hide how much she was moved. While we're huge fans of Mitchell, Holloway is easily the hour's standout.

Fan favorite Hurley (Jorge Garcia) got a cheer from the crowd, as both his history of bad luck and tendency to see the unseen are deliciously explored. Hurley — like Australia in the game of “;Risk”; — might be key to the whole game.

But it's Locke (Terry O'Quinn) who has the greatest burden to carry. Fans lamented his pathetic end in season five, then nervously cheered his apparent resurrection. When we last saw him, he was simultaneous lying dead in the sand and masterminding the seemingly impossible murder of the all-knowing Jacob. His story, too, picks up right off where we left off. It's epic. If he's no longer Locke, I might just start calling him Superlocke.

For those who crave clues and answers to the show's countless mysteries, there were cheers as one truth of the mythical “;smoke monster”; was revealed.

And yes, after three years of flashbacks, then flash forwards, and even flash both-ways, this season brings yet another storytelling twist. For better or worse, our characters remain separated by time and space, as they often were for the last six years, and we continue to jump back and forth among them.

I'm more convinced now than ever that “;Lost”; is best when it's set in the mysterious jungles of “;the island”; rather than chasing conspiracies in the real world, and that the story is most satisfying when our beloved Losties are all together. The nagging fear that “;Lost”; might delay the inevitable and necessary reunification of story lines and character paths was the only downside of the evening.

That, and one unfortunately weak early plunge into special effects, which made one pivotal reveal slightly awkward, were the only disappointments.

As a fan who has followed the show since stumbling across a downtown set months before it hit the airwaves, my expectations were high. I can't say they were met or even surpassed, as I decided to throw them out. Instead, the feeling evoked most of all by that 30-foot screen was trust.

Like every other fan, I have an idea of where things are going, but I'm happy to be wrong. I'm ready to follow “;Lost”; anywhere.

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Ryan Ozawa is a local “;Lost”; fan and blogger who, with his wife, Jen, produces “;The Transmission,”; a weekly podcast devoted to the show.