I Am DB

Greetings Lost fans, and welcome back. The beginning of the end is upon us, as you no doubt know: the final season begins a week from tonight, and my anticipation is at a fever pitch. I’ve been re-watching the entire series over the last few months, and on Sunday night I was once again slack jawed as Juliet bashed that bomb core and the screen faded to brilliant white. Next Tuesday’s two-hour season premiere, LA X, has popped up on my DVR To-Do list with the maddeningly vague plot synopsis, “The aftermath from the detonation of the hydrogen bomb is revealed.” Yeah…we got that.

Over the last few months I’ve been gathering material for what I thought would be one pre-season message, sent the day of the first episode. But I’ve got too much stuff for that, so welcome to Eight Days of Lost. If you weren’t sick of me before, I’m betting you will be soon, ‘cause my name will be popping up in your Inbox every day for the next week (maybe I’ll take the weekend off; we’ll see). Don’t worry, most of the messages will just have few links and other stuff to share. We’ll get into the heavy prep in the last day or two. For now, think of this as my way of staying sane for the next week. I’ve got Lost fever, and having these messages to send between now and premiere night is like taking my medicine. Plus I need to get back into the groove of writing these things. I have to rediscover my voice, and assembling a week’s worth of brief updates beats building a sweat lodge (John Locke’s method of voice recovery, if you recall Season Three).

THE RETURNING ROSTER
I talked about some of this in my last message a couple months ago, but here’s the most up-to-date word on who we’ll be seeing in Season Six. Henry Ian Cusick, who plays Desmond, will not be a regular cast member this year. He’ll be around, but presumably he doesn’t factor into enough of these last 18 hours to merit full-time status. On the other hand, Nestor Carbonell, Jeff Fahey and Zuleikha Robinson – Richard Alpert, Frank Lapidus and Ilana, respectively – will be factoring in significantly; they have been anointed series regulars. Last season regulars Elizabeth Mitchell and Jeremy Davies – Juliet and Faraday – will also be off the permanent list, but both will be seen again. Other dearly departed characters confirmed for reappearances are Charlie, Boone, Michael, Libby, Charlotte, Minkowski (the freighter’s communication’s officer) and Helen (Locke’s special lady friend). I have no idea if these returns will be substantial or amount to one-time cameos, but I look forward to finding out. And there’s no word yet on whether other former island denizens like Shannon, Ana Lucia or Mr. Eko will be back, but I’m hoping Damon and Carlton have some surprises up their sleeve. Walt remains a big X Factor. Damon had this to say in an October Q&A from USA Today:

“I think a lot of people are justifiably frustrated about the Walt of it all. We said he has this special ability, and the Others obviously grabbed him and studied him for awhile, then they got freaked out by him and decided to let him go. I think that there are certain stories on the show that feel like dangling participles based on external factors. For us, we were incredibly limited by the fact that Malcolm David Kelley was growing at an exponentially faster rate than the show was progressing. So, you know, when we showed him in Season 5 and Locke is trying to recruit members of the Oceanic Six, the only way that it worked was to see him three years older. But hopefully, why Walt was special and the role he played on the show will have a new significance when all is said and done. And I’m not sure we really need the character of Walt to explain the significance.”

Well, I didn’t hear a denial in there. He didn’t say that Kelley won’t appear again, so even though it doesn’t sound good, I’m hoping that he’s just trying to throw us off the scent.

THE LINE-UP
In my last message, I included pictures of an un-official Season Six poster, created specifically for last summer’s Comic-Con, which featured almost every major character from the show’s history. An official poster has since been released, and they’re very similar.

Some different pictures are used in the new one, but the order of their arrangement is exactly the same except for Lapidus, who is in an entirely new position in this official version, which can be seen in close-up here. For those of you interested in comparisons, here are the two close-up halves of the Comic-Con version:

What jumps out to me about these is that they do not feature Walt. Hell, Vincent the dog is in the official poster (though not the first one), but not Walt. Ilana is also conspicuously absent. But there is a reason for everything. In the same interview referenced above, Damon was asked about the poster (at the time of the interview, the official poster had not yet been released, but the answer still applies):

There’s been so much analysis of this year’s promotional poster. Do you have a big part in creating that?

Yeah. Everything in the design of that poster is intentional. We oversaw it — now we know the audience looks at that stuff so closely, so we don’t want there to be anything that we don’t approve, especially at this point in the game. I’m not going to explain why anything is what it is, other than that everything is by design. You’ll just have to watch the final season and decide for yourself. It’s a little bit like, “Why is Paul McCartney holding a cigarette with his right hand when he’s a lefty on the Abbey Road cover?”

Keep that admission in mind, because it will prove relevant for something else I’ll share later in the week. For now, I’ll wrap up day one of my Lost countdown with this short video that features some of the cast members looking back and ahead.