Lost: At LAX

At last, the final season of LOST is just a couple weeks away. With the sixth and final season ready to air Tuesday, February 2^nd at 8pm on ABC, us diehard fans are both eagerly awaiting and dreading the beginning of the end.

As a LOST-addict since the first episode, I have had questions about the nature and direction of the show for years. Even with a little bit of a “what the hell is going on here, where on earth are they taking us” in season 3, LOST has avoided the downfall of another JJ Abrams cult favorite of mine, Alias, which got way too complicated, boring and sci-fi for anyone to stay hooked. LOST‘s mysteries and main story seem to have been bolted down in the glory days of the first season, and the creators remind and reassure viewers that there will be a definite end and that they are going to give answers. In preparation for the final season (tear, yayyy), I have gathered some of the biggest questions plaguing me since the cliffhanger, and more general questions about this crazy island that I am going to miss terribly. Here we go, from where last we left:

The Incident: Oy. So the big question here is did the Losties prevent or cause the incident with the hydrogen bomb? Did they successfully reset time and redirect their fates, or were they the impetus to the event that brought them here in the first place? I am on the side that they caused the incident and didn’t change the course of history, or at least not in the way they think. What’s to come? I have no idea.

Variables: In the same vein, Faraday seemed to indicate (at least to Jack) that people are the variables in the time equation and whatever happened doesn’t, in fact, have to happen. Jack thinks he is going to be able to change their lives, but I’m a little iffy, since Faraday whispered to his mother (Eloise) that she knew he would die, and that she always knew. HOLD ON. Ok Eloise seems to be a huge part of this but I can’t figure her out. She was a Hostile, she was Faraday’s mother, she told Desmond he didn’t have a choice in his destiny (then why did he need coaxing?), and she was the one who told the Oceanic 6 how to get back to the island. She seems to know what’s up with all this time travel, but when Des is in the hospital, she tells Penny that for the first time in a long time, she doesn’t know what is going to happen. So how did she know before? Does her memory loss of the future coincide with the dropping/hitting of the bomb? Also, when Charlotte died she recalled (or foresaw) Faraday coming to her as a child telling her not to come back to the island. He did in fact do that later after she died. So was that the future? Did it affect Charlotte the second time around? Woof.

Dharmaville: Why did only Jack, Hurley, Kate and Sayid end up in 1977, while Sun, Ben, Lapidus (I’m not even getting into those other people who had Locke in a box), etc. are in present island time? Was it because they did a better job recreating the conditions under which they first went to the island, or….? That has been a real head scratcher for me, and it just seemed so cruel when Sun had to look at the picture of the Others in the 1977 photo. Christian said that they would have a long journey to get back to their friends, sooo how is that going to work out? Unclear.

Runway: On a similar note, was it a coincidence (I think not) that the runway the Others had Sawyer and Kate building back in season 3 was able to save (most) of the passengers on the Ajira flight that crashed on the smaller island? Did the Others know all along that that would happen? Why would they need a runway when the way to/from the island has always been submarine? Maybe Eloise told them.

Juliet: Not really a mystery since I am pretty sure she bit the dust when she heroically and tragically son-of-a-bitched the H-bomb into exploding, and since she is starring in a new show, V, but I just wanted to mention poor Juliet. She really got the short straw every single time when all she wanted was to get back home to be with her sister and niece.  She was an awesome character and hopefully she will be around in some way.

Big questions:

Time: The creators have said that there will be no more flashbacks or time travel and that time will pretty much be linear now. I guess they have eased us into this transition, but I am still going to miss the jumping around. My biggest questions about time travel other than keeping it straight are a) what did the bomb do and b) what was Ann Arbor slash the rest of the world like for the people in 1977 island time? Is it like an entirely different time plane (is time in planes?) where if, say, Kate somehow got off the island in 1977 and went back to Iowa, would she be able to see little Katie? Couldn’t Faraday have given us a little insight before his mom shot him? How did time skipping on the island change for Ann Arbor, Michigan, where the research is being done? AH.

Richard: If you watched the special features on the season 5 DVD like I did, you will know that the actor who plays Richard does not wear eyeliner; he just has very thick lashes. So there, one mystery down. Other than that, your guess is as good as mine with Ricardo. Why doesn’t he age? What is his relationship to Jacob? Was he on the Black Rock? Who are the original hostiles? WTF.

Candidate: The other other others who had Locke in a box mentioned that Lapidus could be a candidate. For what? As the leader? That would seem weird since the process for choosing leaders is apparently very complicated and Ben and Locke were both super into the island and Lapidus is just kind of like, whatever, let’s get out of here.

Whispers: Have been going on since the beginning, what the hell are they? They have been transcribed and still don’t make a lot of sense, but suggest that there are people around we can’t see. How is that working? Who is talking? The hostiles? Whaaaaaaaat.

Jacob and MIB: Jacob and the Man in Black from the beginning of last season’s finale seem to be important, duh. We have heard about Jacob and how he basically runs the island, but where did he come from? Been around forever? Why doesn’t he age either? Who is the other guy? Clearly hates Jacob and apparently inhabited Locke’s body in the end there. Does he not have a body? Is he the smoke monster? Given the emphasis throughout the series of light vs. dark, good vs. bad, are we supposed to assume he is the bad guy since he is in black and Jacob is good since he is in white? Or are they pulling a fast one on us and it’s the other way around? Why does the MIB want Jacob dead? Why was it so important for the MIB to find a loophole, and with these people on the island? What did Jacob mean when he told the MIB/Locke that “they’re coming”? What is going onnnnnnn?!

Destiny/ Fate: A central theme to the show, are our futures a result of our actions or are they merely a fulfillment of our fates? The Losties tried to take matters into their own hands, but did the bomb do anything? Does changing time do anything? Is the passage through time the same as arriving closer to one’s fate, or are time and fate separate entities? Is this getting too heavy? Is this making sense? What are we going to watch when LOST ends?

I could go on forever, but these are the main questions that will be rattling in my head and cause me to rewatch episodes before February 2^nd.  Until then, on behalf of the DeGroots, Alvar Hanso, and all of us at the DHARMA Initiative, thank you, namaste, and… good luck.

For more on Lost, click here.

Lost returns to ABC on February 2, 2010

Photographs courtesy of ABC, Bob D’Amico, and Mario Perez.