President Barack Obama has had a rocky first year in office. But he made at least one indisputably sagacious policy decision: when he found out his State of the Union address would preempt the season debut of “Lost,” the president rescheduled the speech.
The two-hour episode, after all, launched the show’s keenly anticipated sixth and final season. Postponing the big event could well have caused the show’s insanely devoted viewers to riot. And you do not want to face an angry crowd of Hurley fans.
Speculation about what happens to the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 on their island asylum has reached the kind of pop-culture boiling point rarely seen since the Beatles’ “Strawberry Fields” sparked all those Paul-is-dead rumors.
For years, “Lost” zealots have pored over each episode, literally frame by frame, have enhanced and painstakingly examined the audio, scoured the mise-en-scene and tracked down every script reference, searching eagerly for clues to what it all means.
This type of Talmudic diligence and interpretation, unprecedented in TV history, stuns even the show’s creators. In a joint e-mail, the show’s brain trust, producers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelhof (Losties refer to them simply as “Darlton”), marvel at what they have overwrought.
“We consciously construct the story in places to leave room for debate. But the degree to which people analyze and parse the show is way beyond what we ever expected,” they write. “We are amazed at some of the theorizing, not because it’s necessarily right, but because it is often intelligent and thoughtful - and frankly it makes us look a lot smarter than we are.”
Darlton are going to have to be plenty smart to find a way out of the maze they have created. In addition to all the byzantine plots, with the paths of numerous characters crisscrossing over more than three decades, the show is also juggling some ponderous themes: numerology, quantum physics, faith, the nature of time, resurrection and destiny.
Obviously, in the immortal idiom of Ricky Ricardo, they have some ‘splainin’ to do. Mysteries abound. Exactly what kind of experiment was the Dharma Initiative conducting? What is the dynamic between the island’s presumptive deities, Jacob and the Man in Black? (No, he’s not Johnny Cash.)
Let’s not forget the fundamental question: What is the island itself? The Garden of Eden? Purgatory? The source of a vast electromagnetic force? A cruel stage where the human tragedy is played out over and over through the ages?
“As much as I’d love an explanation,” says Jon “DocArzt” Lachonis, producer of a highly regarded “Lost” blog, via e-mail, “I’m predicting the island will merely turn out to be a place where magical things happen, (a locale) infused with leftover ‘creation energy.’ Pure potentiality, influenced by the desires and motivations of people who near it.”
One thing we know for sure: the show’s producers have only 18 more installments (over 16 nights) to work it all out. That’s fine if they had an endgame in mind the whole time. Less encouraging if they’ve just been making it all up as they go along.
“I don’t think they knew where it was going right from season one, episode one,” says Stafford. “But I think somewhere in season two, they figured out the ending and started putting in place the elements that they would explore and eventually reveal.”
“Lost” is one of those rare series in the position of bringing down the curtain in its own time and on its own terms.
The plan to make this the final season was announced three years ago. Devotees of the show are trying to manage their expectations.
“I don’t think it’s possible to resolve all of the show’s mysteries,” says Kevin Croy, producer of the authoritative Lostpedia Web site. “But I think they’ll leave us with a framework of understanding that we can use to better theorize about the unresolved items.”
No one in the “Lost” tribe wants the show to end. But they’re all dying to see what the finale may look like.