I Am DB

The return of Lost is so close I can almost taste the spit-roasted boar. As we enter the final season, Damon and Carlton have their work cut out for them in resolving a complex narrative rife with befuddling mysteries. Will we get all the answers we want? I’m sure we’ll get the big ones, but for every major and obvious question like “What is the smoke monster?” there are others that may be one person’s obsession and another’s “who cares?”

In one of many recent interviews leading up to the season premiere, Damon and Carlton said this of the series end:

“I don’t think it would be Lost if there weren’t an ongoing and active debate … as to whether or not it’s a good ending,” Lindelof said.

“Not everything will be answered, so there will be people who are upset,” Cuse added. “But to explain everything … would be a mistake. Hopefully it will be a healthy cocktail of answers, character resolution and some surprises.”

In a separate interview, they particularly addressed the oft-asked question, “What is The Island?” Offering a definitive answer to that question would be too demystifying they say, likening it to Star Wars Episode I’s explanation of The Force. Don’t we all wish we’d never heard the word “midichlorian?”

So aside from that all-encompassing question, what do we hope this final season will answer? Last summer, Entertainment Weekly‘s Doc Jensen asked his readers to email him their top three burning questions; the ones they felt had to be answered. He compiled the responses to come up with this list of the top 15. (The first slide never seems to load for me, but I think it is about the whispers in the jungle).

Chances are that list captures a lot of the questions we all have. But for me, there are loads of others, which may or may not be among the same ones you have. A burning mystery that I was shocked not to find on that list is Christian Shepherd. What role does Jack’s deceased father have on the island? I have to assume that Christian’s presence is going be one of the major things this season deals with, especially given how much of Jack’s personality is shaped by his relationship with his father.

What else? Well, as I’ve re-watched the whole series there have been things big and small that have lodged in my brain. Here’s a rundown:

• What’s with the guitar case Hurley brought back to the island, which was “given” to him by Jacob?

• Why were pregnant women dying on the island?

• Whose eye have we seen in Jacob’s cabin?

• What is the significance of Jacob’s lists? At separate times during Season Three, we learn from the Others that neither Jack nor Kate was on the list.

• -How/why do people – and animals – materialize in the jungle out of nowhere? (Walt, Kate’s horse, Harper Stanhope – the Others’ therapist who appeared to Juliet and was also seen by Jack…)

• Will Claire finally get the Drive Shaft ring that Charlie left for her before his fateful trip to the Looking Glass? (This probably gets filed under the aforementioned “Who Cares?” list for most of you, but I remain crushed by Charlie’s death and the end of his romance with Claire. I hope for some resolution here. And a point was made last season of Sun finding the ring…)

• Who are the off-island people that helped Ben in his attempts to corral the Oceanic Six back to the island? There was butcher named Jill and some other names mentioned as well. I speculated last season that there might be a whole network of people off the island who are nonetheless involved in what goes on there. I wondered if Richard Malkin, the psychic who insisted Claire be on Flight 815, might be part of this group if it exists.

• Speaking of which, what is Aaron’s significance to the events on the island? Clues from over the years – some from the show itself and others from things I’ve read – suggest that Claire’s baby is an essential piece of the puzzle. Something I had forgotten about until re-watching the series was a dream Claire had in Season One, in which Locke is sitting at the table where she received her ominous psychic reading. He looks up at her, revealing one white eye and one black eye, and says, “He was your responsibility but you gave him away, Claire. Everyone pays the price now.” Recall, of course, the scene from the series pilot in which Locke explained backgammon to Walt by holding up one white piece and one black piece and essentially laying the meta-theme for the entire series: “Two players. Two sides. One is light, one is dark.”

• What’s up with The Lamp Post, the Los Angeles church-based Dharma station manned by Eloise Hawking? Its features include a giant pendulum meant to calculate the island’s whereabouts in time. Hawking cryptically refers to a “clever fellow” who built the pendulum and came up with the way to locate the island.

• Why is Eloise Hawking even in that place? What does she – a former Hostile/Other – have to do with the Dharma Initiative? There are actually lots of questions around Eloise and her role in all of this. I think we have to go into a sub-list:

• She once told Desmond that pushing the button was essential to mankind’s survival. Why did it have such far-reaching consequences? Or was she just saying that?

•  Why is she trying to get the Oceanic Six back to the island? Is it because she knows that most of them will wind up in 1977, where her son Faraday will be able to make them detonate the hydrogen bomb? Is she trying to steer those events?

•  What happened to her just before she talked to Daniel as a child and told him he had to focus on studying physics and mathematics? She came into that conversation having just experienced something emotional, as if she knew she was setting him on a path to his death.

•  What is the nature of her relationship with Charles Widmore? If he has been trying so desperately to get back to the island, and she knows the way, why doesn’t he know that? Why hasn’t he asked her? Why hasn’t she offered to help him?

•  She says in The Lamp Post that the Dharma Initiative had gathered proof of the island’s existence, but couldn’t find it – until that “Clever Fellow” came along with his magic pendulum. By how did the DI even know about the island? How did they know to look for it?

• Why did the Oceanic Six really have to return to the island? It doesn’t seem that they were needed to save those left behind, as they were led to believe by Locke.

• Why didn’t modern day Rousseau recognize Ben as the man who kidnapped her child?

• What is in The Temple? When Keamy’s team is coming for Ben, why does Ben tell Alex that The Temple may be the last safe place on the island? Why does he say it’s only for the Others, denying Alex’s request to bring Claire and the other Flight 815 folks there?

• When Ben goes to Widmore’s apartment, Widmore asks if Ben has come to kill him. “We both know I can’t do that,” Ben answers. Why not? With what authority did Ben banish Widmore from the island? Why did the remaining Hostiles/Others follow Ben’s leadership?

• Ilana tells Bram that Lapidus might be “a candidate.” A candidate for what? Does she consider Sayid to be a candidate for the same thing? Is that why she brought him to the island?

• Why did some of the Ajira passengers end up in 1977 while others landed in 2007? In the current issue of Entertainment Weekly, Damon and Carlton say that the show will not explicitly say why Sun was the only member of the Oceanic Six to wind up in 2007, but that there will be clues to suggest the reason.

• Sun shows Richard the photo of the 1977 Dharma new recruits and asks if he remembers Jack, Kate and Hurley. Richard says he does remember them…because he watched them all die. Will the results of Juliet detonating Jughead shed light on Richard’s answer?

• How did The Purge come about? Ben claims that he acted on Jacob’s orders when he killed everyone in the Dharma Initiative. Is that true?

And the list probably goes on. And it will probably grow before it shrinks…but hopefully some of these answers will start falling into place sooner than later.

Until tomorrow…