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The final season of Lost begins tonight. Will all the mysteries raised during the hit ABC show's run be answered? Probably not. Will we even like the answers we get? That's even less likely. But we'll be watching every minute of every episode, because Lost's wonderful, frustrating storytelling has had us hooked from the first polar bear.

A big part of that storytelling is that Lost ends every season with a cliffhanger so maddeningly suspenseful that fans both love the writers and want to slay them. But just as importantly, after leaving viewers hanging for the better part of a year, the writers of Lost know how to top themselves, and create opening scenes for each new season with twists no one sees coming, and which set up Lost's story in a whole new way.

Every season opening and closing of Lost has been top notch, but some have been more effective than others. As we prepare for the last season to begin tonight, we're going to flashback and rank all of Lost's season cliffhangers and intros... so far. We have a hunch tonight's beginning -- not to mention this final season's finale -- will be pretty darned good too.
THE SEASON INTROS:

5) "The Beginning of the End," Season 4
Season 4's opening scene was action-packed, but lacked the big reveal or sense of newness contained in the other season openers. We had already learned in the Season 3 finale that the show would be flashing forward to a future time in which some of the Flight 815 survivors had escaped the Island. Season 4 just continued that idea, showing Jack having spiked orange juice for breakfast as he watched TV news coverage of police chasing a red and white 1970s Camaro down an L.A. highway. The exciting car chase ends with a crash, and the driver is surprisingly revealed to be Hurley, who isn't exactly known for being on the LAPD's Most Wanted list. As they arrest him, he starts yelling like a madman that he's one of the "Oceanic 6." An intriguing beginning and good start to Season 4's Oceanic 6 storyline, but it felt more  like the beginning of a mid-season episode.

4) "Because You Left," Season 5

Season 4 ended with the spectacle of the Island moving as the Oceanic 6 (plus some) escaped and the warning that bad things would happen to those left behind. Viewers, however, were left with no indication about what exactly was going to happen on the Island once it moved. The answer proved to be pretty surprising, at least to people who don't read all the latest spoilers online. Like Seasons 2 and 3, it began with a person we don't know (although we really did in this case; his face just wasn't shown immediately) waking up in the morning and going about his daily routine. In this case, the alarm clock goes off at 8:15 (the number of our main characters' perilous flight) and we see a man feed his infant son while playing a record of "Shotgun Willie" by Willie Nelson, which begins to skip. As the season went on, we would learn the identity of the baby and the significance of a record skipping. The man heads off to work, which turns out to be among the bright yellow houses that we recognize as the homes of the Dharma Initiative and later the Others. The man is revealed to be scientist Pierre Chang, aka Marvin Candle and many other names, who we've seen throughout the years on many old educational Dharma film reels. As he begins to record one of his famous videos, a workman bursts in and says there' a problem down at the Orchid, which has been shown in the past to be the site of time travel experiments and hides the Island-moving Frozen Donkey Wheel. Dr. Chang rushes to the Orchid and, in a really corny and forced speech, warns the construction workers there to stop drilling there or they might unleash energy that could manipulate time and "God help us all" if it gets released! While this clearly takes place in the 1970s, our current day quirky Island physicist Daniel Faraday anachronistically strolls down into the Orchid and glares like the Dramatic Prairie Dog at the wall that's being drilled into. At this point, it was official -- Lost had fully displayed its sci-fi trappings, something that had been suppressed in early years lest they scare away the general viewing public.

3) "Pilot," Season 1

The writers of Lost have proven during the course of the last five years that they know how to drive their audience crazy with non-stop mysteries. For every question that is answered, eight more pop up. It's hard to believe everything will be resolved in the final 18 episodes (and it probably won't, aside from the major mysteries). Right from its very first scene in the pilot episode, Lost ensnared the audience's attention with non-stop questions and suspense. Who was this man waking up in a disheveled suit in the middle of the jungle? How did he get there? What's with the dog? Okay, he's got one of those small liquor bottles that they serve on airline flights... He's running madly through the jungle. Whose tennis shoe is that ominously hanging from a branch? Hmm, he's at the beach. Why is it so quiet (aside from the creepy music)? Oh wait, there's a plane crash! Jack, our new hero, had come to in a grove of bamboo and then ran into the fray to help the crash victims in what may be the most intense first eight minutes of a TV show ever. Thanks to masterful directing by J.J. Abrams, the viewing public was hooked.

2) "A Tale of Two Cities," Season 3

Like Season 2, Season 3 of Lost began effectively in the cozy home of a character we had never seen before as they went about their chores and played a catchy tune on their stereo. In this case, it was Juliet playing a CD of "Downtown" by Petula Clark (which almost made her burst into tears before forcing a smile in front of a mirror) while she burned muffins in the oven and prepared her living room for a monthly meeting of the local book club. Just when you were about to change the channel because you thought you had accidentally put on Desperate Housewives, the house is shaken to its foundations. Juliet and the rest of the book club run outside and witness a certain airplane we're very familiar with breaking up in the sky. Ben, who was known to the audience at this point as Henry Gale, the leader of the mysterious Others, appears and order two more familiar faces-- Ethan and Goodwin -- to infiltrate the communities of survivors. What was shocking as this point wasn't just seeing the day of the crash from the perspective of the Others; it was the revelation that the Others were actually suburban folk living in well-manicured houses stuck incongruously in the middle of the Island's jungle. Up until this moment, the show had mostly presented them as grungy, almost supernatural forest people. It can be argued that the premise actually changed from the original intent, but it was a cool reveal, nonetheless.

1) "Man of Science, Man of Faith," Season 2

Season 1 of Lost ended with a maddening finale. After the Flight 815 survivors finally dynamited the lid off the mysterious hatch they'd found on the jungle floor, Locke and Jack had gazed down to see... a long, long tunnel and a broken ladder -- CUT TO THE LOST LOGO. After a grueling four month wait, viewers turned into the premiere of Season 2, desperately needing to know what was down that god-damned hatch! And in the first scene, it didn't look like they were going to get it. Instead, they bore witness to a puzzling sequence in which an unknown character woke up in what appeared to be his New York City loft apartment, put on a record, made his breakfast, washed his clothes, worked out, showered and injected what looked like insulin, all set perfectly and surreally to "Make Your Own Kind of Music" by Mama Cass. Then suddenly, an explosion from above jostled the record player and sent a plume of dust down from the ceiling. Instantly, the viewer's mind connected with the last explosion they had heard on the show -- and then had that very same mind blown when the man threw on a jumpsuit, grabbed a rifle and peered into a spyglass that used a series of mirrors to look up a familiar long tunnel and reveal none other than Jack and Locke looking down! Although we didn't know it for the first couple of minutes, the answer to Season 1's biggest mystery had been given to us immediately in Season 2.

Lost's most mind-blowing season-ending cliffhangers are ranked on the next page.