Lost Producers Say "Trust Us"

Simon in Boston: Since Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse said Juliet was going to be on Lost this season, do you know when she'll return?
"Pretty immediately, and then I'm not sure after that," Elizabeth Mitchell tells us exclusively. "I think it will be satisfactory." Stay tuned for more from Elizabeth in the coming days.


Marina in Pittsburgh: What's up with this alternative time line stuff that was revealed at Lost's Comic-Con event? Hurley became the CEO of Mr. Cluck's? Kate killed someone else? Oceanic Airlines has never had a crash? Excuse my French, but WTF?
Damon Lindelof asks Lost fans to trust in the writers. We're willing to do that (for now), but we agree the alt time line stuff is superstrange. Our best guess is that instead of resetting the clock to before Oceanic 815, Jack's plan actually changed the course of history at a much earlier point—perhaps beginning in 1977, when we last saw our heroes?



Marie in San Antonio, Calif.: Lost!
We asked Josh Holloway about Sawyer's state of mind following the events of the Lost finale, and he said: "I think he's pretty destroyed. All of that growth got ripped away. I think he's gonna be a bit salty again, which I'm looking forward to. All I know is that he's destroyed and has given up on life again and on having any positive lessons. So watch out!" (We love mature Sawyer, but bitchy Sawyer is damn fun too.)

From E!Online



And this from Comic-Con:
There was some more big news from ComicCon yesterday (Saturday). It looks like a real fan favotite will be returning to LOST in Season 6. There are few details available, but at a panel for the CW series, Vampire Diaries, Ian Somerhalter was asked whether he would return for LOST's final season and this was his answer:

"We were actually talking about it today and... Boone will be coming back to Lost."

Comic-Con Video

These from Dark UFO:

Emerson's Hurley Audition:


It's Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday:


The Panel Part 1:


The Panel Part 2:


The Panel Part 3:


The Panel Part 4:


Kate on America's Most Wanted:


EW Interview:


Mr. Cluck Ad featuring CEO Hugo Reyes & Oceanic Airlines Ad highlighting their perfect safety record:

Am I Alive?

Beloved Charlie Pace has been the subject of many Lost theories since his death. Recently fans have been teased with his return.
From Auseillo and EW:
"Question: Any info on which ABC show Dominic Monaghan will be on this season? I've scoured the web high and low and couldn't find any info. --Stacey
Ausiello: I think you mean what shows. And you'll get your answer soon enough"

Roundabout answers like this have been seen on many a website. But this weekend at the comic con panel Dominic fueled the fire even more by flashing this to the crowd:



"Am I Alive?" That is the question for Charlie Pace. What do you think? Is Charlie alive or still just roaming around in ghost form? Stay tuned as more stuff from Comic-Con is coming oh so soon.

Lindelof, Cuse, & Bender Q&A Session

Damon Lindelof, Carlton Cuse, and Lost director Jack Bender sat down for a little Q&A in Curzon. Dark UFO the Lost spoiler site had the audio recording and transcript from the session:


Initial thank yous, then showed a recap video of Lost.

1) D&C confirmed that Stranger In A Strange Land was the turning point for the studio, and they were allowed to establish an end date.
2) Jack’s beard is bad.
3) 16 episodes next year, but 18 hours of Lost. Jack Bender confirmed a two hour season premiere, and a two hour finale.
4) After Lost, they will go in to hiding for a while, due to the inevitably interpretive quality to the series ending.
Damon: You are married to your destiny, you can try to avoid it, but it will catch up to you. This is why Charlie shut the door in the Looking Glass station, because he embraced his death.
Sometimes they get pointers from the studio, telling them stuff is too outlandish. Originally, in the season four premiere, Hurley was going to come across himself in Jacob’s cabin, but the network urged them to change the scene to Christian Shepherd, afraid it would set a precedent of weirdness. With season six, there won’t be any of that

Questions:

Q: What was your favorite scene to watch or write?
CC: The scoring session we attended for the raft’s launch at the end of Exodus . These musicians were playing this incredible music without having rehearsed it, and the moment was so beautiful, there were tears in the control booth. That was just one of those great moments where you felt this blessed synergy of all these talented collaborators all come together and make Lost what it is.
JB: I love all of them
DL: I have many...but for me, during season one, when we first started writing the show coming out of the pilot, when it first started revealing itself, was really cool. I’m drawn to scenes that take place with just two characters and somehow they’re talking about very very heady things and I’m a huge fan of whenever Jack and Locke talk to each other. We’ve been very judicious in having those guys talk to each other, it happens very rarely. I go back back to White Rabbit and that 6 or 7 minute long scene where they’re just sitting in the jungle and Jack says he’s following the impossible and Locke says what if it’s not impossible and we were all put here for a reason, and that scene is the genesis for those guys’ relationship and if you think about how that was the 3rd episode shot out of the pilot, here we are now, 100 episodes later, and now Jack is finally saying ‘Y’know, Locke might be onto something’
CC: Jack’s kinda slow.
DL: It had to permeate through his beard
Q: My wife is fascinated with the artistry of delivering this idea into a script. We had, in a video podcast last year, a glimpse into the writers’ room and she’s fascinated that you get the idea and put it into a script
CC: We have a call centre in Delhi. We just ask them ‘we need a flashforward this week’
DL: We have a minicamp before we write, where we just discuss the season with the writers, the character arcs and we decide on the season’s final image so we know exactly our beginning and where we’re trying to get to. Once we start writing the show on a week-to-week episode basis it gets a bit more intense
CC: We spend a lot of time breaking each aspect of the story and once we have the story worked out from beginning to end, we’ll put it up on whiteboard and then pitch it back to ourselves, and we’ll have scenes in different colours, withan on island story, an off island story, and a C-story, split it into six acts for the commercial breaks and structure it so you’ll wanna come back after each act. Then we’ll give it to some writers to rewrite and send back, and we’ll give our notes, make some changes.

Continue Reading

A Word From Damon & Carlton

Team Darlton sits down to talk a little Lost:
Click here to watch the video

Ellen's lost when it comes to Lost

The latest from TV Guide and the dancing daytime hostess with the mostess:

“What the hell’s going on with Lost? I don’t think they know. I think from week to week they go, ‘Let’s do this.’ And then someone else says, ‘No, this would be a good idea.’ I love that show, but I don’t think they know what they’re doing.” —Ellen DeGeneres

“I am flattered that Ellen is a fan of our show,” says exec producer Carlton Cuse, who promises Ellen there is a master plan, with some sweet payoffs, if she sticks through the final season. Dominic Monaghan recently had a secret breakfast meeting with producer Damon Lindelof to discuss how he might manage returning to Lost as Charlie. “We would like there to be some visitations from people we’ve loved over time,” Cuse says. Michael Emerson, who plays Ben, confirms, “The final season will resemble the first. I know there are plans for big people we have parted company with to reappear.” But one crucial component from the very first pilot episode will most likely be absent from the reunion: cocreator J.J. Abrams, who tells me he won’t be returning to Hawaii to direct the series finale. “I would selfishly love it,” he says, “but director Jack Bender has been living in Hawaii for years and doing amazing work. For me to come in and direct the finale would be cruel and unusual.”

I think the big news is that J.J. will not be stepping up to direct the series finale. I for one certainly appreciate that he'll let Jack Bender, the director who has taken Lost this far, finish out the series.

Claire's Return & Zombie Theories

This is from EW:

Question: I miss Claire on Lost. Emilie de Ravin is such a great actress. Will she be back for all of next season? --Kelly Ausiello: Yes! After sitting out last season, de Ravin will return as a full-time series regular for Lost's sixth and final season, Team Darlton confirms. "Damon and I are very excited to bring Claire back to the show," says Carlton Cuse, "and even more excited for people to experience just how she will return." And even more exciting that that? Experiencing Doc Jensen's theory on how she'll return. Take it away, DJ: "Any scenario that brings Claire back to Lost must address the mysterious circumstances of her disappearance at the end of Season 4, in which many of us were led to believe that she was as dead -- or rather, undead -- as the Ghost Christian that's been haunting The Island since Season 1. So here's one thought: Juliet changed time in the season finale by detonating Jughead, and Season 6 will tell the story of the new timeline, one in which Claire is alive. Another thought: In light of the revelation that John Locke was actually a supernatural impostor for half of Season 5, perhaps in Season 6, we'll get a storyline in which Claire just emerges out of the jungle, with no memory of what happened to her -- just like Season 1 -- and we and the castaways will be left to wonder: Is this the real Claire or another impostor infiltrating them a la Locke? Heck, maybe that's going to be major idea of next season: Who's really alive and who's really (un)dead? It really will be the fabled! zombie season of Lost!" Thanks a million, Doc!


Well I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one with crazy Zombie Theories!

Elizabeth Mitchell: The Lost Interview

From the Daily Beast:

You’re both so experienced in theater—after Lost is off the air you could take the show to Broadway.

Michael and I could have a singing duel! As long as there are a few duets in there and the lights go out on a wonderful swan song.

You two have unfinished business on the show—is he going to bust into the love quadrangle?

Wouldn’t that be wonderful? I said to him, “You know the best thing would be if Juliet forgets all these guys and just ends up with Ben.” That would be the creepiest, but best thing. He’s like, [imitates Ben] “Yes, well, they’ll never do it.” Stranger things have happened.

Read the whole interview here.

Is It Too Late Too Get Lost?

This is an article from Pop Matters:

Complicated television

The increased complexity of TV shows is sometimes offered as evidence of an increasing sophisticated audience who has come to appreciate greater complexity in their entertainment. Look at shows like Lost and The Sopranos with their ambiguity and their multiple, interweaving plot lines and so on. Presumably, the implication seems to be, people have adapted to the conventions of television and require greater amount of complexity to hold their now-mammoth capacity for attention, for holding complicated details suspended in their minds.

But this argument, as flattering as it is to us and despite how pleasant its justification of our couch-potatodom may be, doesn’t seem quite right. The shows aren’t more complex so much as they eschew unnecessary reiteration of what is going on and what the conflicts and tensions are supposed to be. In reminiscing with a friend about Twin Peaks we recalled how the integrity of the show was compromised by the efforts it had to make to bring in and acclimate new viewers who arrived at the show late—perhaps after the avalanche of hype that greeted its first few episodes. New shows don’t confront that problem. Writers and producers don’t have to worry about incorporating inane exposition (like you see on daily soaps—the convention that most makes them seem sort of dense to non-viewers) or introducing new plot lines to hook new viewers. They know that when people hear hype, they will start from the beginning, not tune in in medias res. The writers can therefore plot accordingly, comfortable in the knowledge that new and potentially confused viewers can (a) see episodes on demand or during one of HBO’s frequent re-runs, (b) catch up online, (c) rent the DVDs, which come out almost immediately after a season first airs, or (d) download episodes from pirate sites. Considering (c), it almost behooves producers to insist on a certain complexity that would require viewers to pony up for the DVDs.

So I would argue that the apparent increase in complexity in TV shows is a consequence of the new technologies in delivering content as opposed to the advancing tastes of the viewing public. Lost, for instance, would be unthinkable without those technologies. The audience would have necessarily dwindled as it went on (because new viewers would be hopelessly confused) or the show would have had to solve many more of its mysteries more expediently, to make space for entry points for latecomers. So lamentably, Twin Peaks was ahead of its time in this sense; if it were being made now, there probably wouldn’t have ever been that awful Miss Twin Peaks side plot.

—Rob Horning

This is an interesting article and brings to mind a recent interview with Lindelof & Cuse from MediaBlvd:

MediaBlvd> Certainly the mission of any TV show is to draw in as many new eyes as possible. Was there a point with this show where you realized that it’s so complicated and there’s so much history to it that you just have to lean more towards the loyal fans?

Damon> We’re writing the only version of the show we know how to write, which is the same version that we’ve written all along. The network and studio have been enormously gracious. Normally, you would expect a tremendous amount of pressure to do a lot of re-capping in every episode, so characters are standing around, talking about what happened last week. But, they all accept that Lost is a serialized adventure, and the audience that we have is the audience that we have. That being said, we love to hear stories of, “Oh, my God, I told my friend about Lost, and they thought that it was too weird and too impenetrable to get into, but I gave them the Season 1 DVD and they started watching, and now they’re caught up to where we are and can start watching the show.” I remember hearing about the Harry Potter series, right around the time the third book was coming out. So, as a result of kind of getting caught up in the buzz around The Prisoner of Azkaban, I went back and bought the first Harry Potter books. By the time J.K. Rowling released the seventh book, it picked up a lot of people along the way.

Carlton> We’re hoping that, as the show wraps up, people are going to want to join the journey for the last couple of seasons of the show. We’re really much more in answer mode now. As we go deeper into the season, you’re going to learn a lot about the island’s history, so we really hope that people will watch. ABC.com provides the episodes, and DVD is a great way to watch them. We really hope that, as we go into the last season of the show, a lot of viewers, who may have fallen by the wayside, will come along for the end of the ride.

Damon> It’s a perspective that’s very difficult to speak to because we don’t have it. The Academy voting now is that you have to submit a single episode of the show to get an Emmy nomination, so Carlton and I are basically like, “We’re never ever going to get nominated for an Emmy again, for exactly that reason.” But, we submitted what we thought was our strongest episode last year, which was “The Constant.” It had all the things that an Emmy episode shouldn’t have, like non-linear storytelling, time travel, and none of the characters, like Jack, Kate and Sawyer, instead focusing on Desmond (Henry Ian Cusick) and Penny (Sonya Walger), but it had this huge emotional core at the end. Even though the basic conceit of the episode is a man is calling a woman, 20 years in the future, his conscious has traveled 15 years into the past, so how is that going to make sense to anyone? And, lo and behold, people who had never seen Lost before somehow understood the episode. Our guess is that maybe many of them will never watch another episode of Lost again because it’s not their cup of tea, but perhaps some of them thought it was such a cool episode, even though they didn’t get it all, that it made them curious enough about the series that they went back and explored the earlier seasons. That’s all we can hope for, at this point. If the first episode that you ever see is the premiere of Season 5, you will probably not understand a good majority of it. But, hopefully, it’s engaging enough and cool enough for you to say, “All right, let me go back and start at the beginning because I want to get on the ride.”

My thoughts:

It is the case that it's less pressure from the studios and the fact that anyone can watch any episode online at any time. However I want to make it clear that I feel it's never too late to start watching Lost! You'll have a better experience if you start from the beginning, but I don't feel that it's so complicated that a newbie can't keep up.

Oh and thanks to Dan Lehr for a heads up on the PopMatters article. Check out Dan's Political Blog, The Public Interest.

Lost In Kansas City

This is an article from TV Barn Blog out of Kansas City:

How "Lost" creators cured their writers' block

You can learn things about a TV show just by watching it with other people. At the television critics' winter get-together earlier this month, 200 of us watched the third episode of the new season of "Lost" -- the one airing tonight on ABC -- on the biggest high-definition screen west of Kauffman Stadium (or so it seemed). At regular intervals the whole room would erupt in laughter -- it was the sound of 200 "Lost" fans being served up another unexpected, what-in-the-hell twist ... and loving it.

Whatever mojo television's most ingenious thriller may have lost in its third and fourth seasons, it's come back with compound interest in season five. Last week's two-hour season opener easily eclipsed the fourth judge on "Idol" as the most anticipated non-political TV event of the new year. ABC has been eagerly serving up sneak peeks to critics for not just the usual reasons -- to gain a return on what is easily the riskiest investment in the entire network lineup -- but for a less obvious one. The show is brilliant again, and word needs to get out.

After the screening, out came the two men at the eye of "Lost's" creative hurricane, executive producers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof. After swearing the room to secrecy, they spoke with considerable candor about the storylines in store this season and next. They seemed delighted to be answering fansite-worthy questions about characters and storylines, so much so that you might never suspect that they've served themselves pink slips already. These are the final two seasons of "Lost," and paradoxically, it's this knowledge -- that the best job they've ever had is coming to a halt in 2010 -- that has made the producers so happy.

Negotiating the end date to the show "completely liberated us," Lindelof said. "We didn't know whether the mythology we had had to last two seasons or nine seasons, and that was utterly paralyzing."

Cuse agreed.

"Now that we know exactly how many episodes we have left has really allowed us to plan and to do this stuff with the confidence that we know exactly how much of a journey is left, and that's been enormously liberating and really the key to the whole show for us as storytellers," he said.

It's also allowed Cuse and Lindelof to slim down the sprawling cast of guest characters, jettisoning them in various creatively violent ways, while returning focus to the core people who arrested viewers' attention in the show's first season.

That's going to be a huge boon for fans of Sawyer (Josh Holloway), the one regular who did not make it off Lost Island in season four, and who therefore saw his role diminished as the action shifted to the outside world and the struggles of the Oceanic 6 to return to normal lives in civilization.

"This year, we've tried to sort of make up for lost time, as it were," Lindelof said. "And Josh has just been doing amazing work."

But the really big shift from previous seasons is the new emphasis on time travel.

"As season five unfolds, you will realize that time travel has been in the DNA of the show for quite some time, but we think the audience is now kind of prepared to go on that journey with us," Lindelof said.

We may be, but Sawyer sure isn't. If you thought he was unhappy to be caught in an endless rewind/fast-forward loop in last week's episodes, wait until you see him this week. (By the way, last week's second hour will re-air at 7 p.m. Wednesday, leading into "Lost's" regular timeslot of 8 p.m. CT on KMBC-9.) Also watch for Richard Alpert (Nestor Carbonell), probably the best addition to the show since Ben (Michael Emerson), to pop in and out of the castaways' lives like an ageless sphinx, an H.G. Wells character with perpetual jet-black hair and goth eyelines.

The funniest moment of our Q-and-A came when someone asked about Carbonell's eye makeup, and Lindelof responded, "When we first saw dailies of Nestor, we were like, 'Someone's gotta talk to him about the eyeliner situation,' (but) he does not wear any mascara, no eyeliner, nothing. He is completely 100 percent sans eye makeup. God's honest truth."

The second funniest moment came when someone asked the creators if they didn't think they were risking the show all over again with a whole new batch of storylines, including some that were "fraught with peril."

"You say 'fraught with peril' like it's a bad thing," Lindelof replied. "We sit around and go, 'Is it fraught with peril?' 'Yes.' 'Let's do it!'"

'Lost'

A repeat of last week's second hour of "Lost" will air at 7 p.m., followed by a new episode at 8 on KMBC-9. The G4 cable channel is reairing the entire series at 10 a.m. and midnight daily.

Lindelof & Cuse with Don Jensen

The famous Lost Blogger Doc Jensen sits down with Lindelof & Cuse the morning after the Lost Premiere to talk about Non-paradoxical Time Travel, shirtless Sawyer, and more...
To watch click here.

Interview with Stephen Williams

This article is from Lost Spoilers:

New rules. New twists. New time shifts. Stephen Williams, the Canadian producer-director of "Lost," says the new paradigm for this season is time travel.

Williams, who directed Wednesday's season premiere, says that first episode sets up the concept. "We also connect the dots from where we left off in season four and set up the context for what will happen next."

Last year, season four saw the rescue of the "Oceanic Six" and followed them into their lives after leaving the island. But life isn't peaceful for them -- especially for Jack Shepherd (Matthew Fox), who descended into a world of drug abuse and suicidal thoughts.

Discovering an obituary in the paper for a "Jeremy Bentham," Jack was distraught and visited the funeral home where his body is located. Standing at Bentham's casket, the camera revealed that Bentham is actually John Locke (Terry O'Quinn), who is now appears to be dead. Then Benjamin Linus (Michael Emerson) shows up, and tells Jack he must return to the island.

Season five begins with Jack and Ben preparing for their journey, while the castaways back on the island try to understand why the sky continues to pulse with purple light. According to one of the freighter crew, the island is skipping through time.

In an interview with CTV.ca, Williams talks about shooting the season premiere, how and why he first joined the crew of "Lost," and which character he identifies with most on the show.

You've directed several episodes of "Lost," but this is your first season premiere. In that regard, was there anything different that you had to accomplish in shooting this episode?
Not really. I've been on the show from the beginning, and to be honest, this episode didn't feel particularly different from any other episode. You just want to make sure you're being as clear and compelling as possible so that the audience feels like they are in good hands, and feels a certain comfort level so that they'll want to stay with the rest of the episodes. From a production point of view though, it wasn't that different.

Most of the time you and Jack Bender alternate directing duties on the series. Do you see much of a difference between your episodes?
We try to be as seamless as possible. However, each episode of our show has its own aesthetic. You try to be true to those elements in each episode, but beyond that we endeavor to maintain a consistency of tone throughout the whole season.

You built a working relationship with creator Damon Lindelof on "Crossing Jordan." Could you tell me a little about how you first became involved with "Lost"?
It was really kind of odd. After working on "Crossing Jordan," Damon and I went our separate ways. I was with New Line pictures, working on a remake of the Jamaican film, "The Harder They Come." I was deep in prep, casting that movie when Damon sent me the pilot for "Lost." I was so busy with the movie that I didn't watch it for ages! Finally my agent called and said, "You should really look at this thing -- at least respond to these people." I watched the pilot twice in one sitting, because I was so captivated. At the end of that I decided I would go to Hawaii for at least one episode, while I was trying to cast the movie, and five years have elapsed since then!

Would you come back to work in Canada once your finished with Lost?
The truth is, I'll go where the work is, so if it's in Canada or L.A., it depends. I'm interested in captivating material with strong characters and cool stories. So wherever the venue is on that enterprise, it doesn't matter to me. Although I did do a film about the David Milgaard story in Canada, and that was a great experience for me and I would love to do more Canadian stories like that. Should those opportunities present themselves, I would be totally thrilled to do that.

For my last question, I'm curious if there's a character you identify the most with, and why?
There are pieces of me in everybody, but if I had to pick one, it would be Jack Shepherd. His character is kind of a relentless seeker of truth in a way, and even though he comes into the series as a repository of science and reason, he's susceptible to the entreaties of faith and belief and increasingly so as the series goes on. The journey of his character is to find a place for both those sides of the temperamental coin, if you will. That journey just makes intrinsic sense for myself.

Lindelof & Cuse USA Today Interview

When USA Today interviewed Lindelof & Cuse, they asked serious and silly questions. See more here.

Getting Lost with Lindelof and Cuse

This is an interview from the Chicago Tribune (they still have newspapers?) with Lost producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse. Enjoy!

Is it hard to write for both the hardcore fans of mythology, of the Dharma Initiative and all that stuff, and to also write for the people who tune in maybe a half dozen times a season? I can’t get enough of the ’70s Dharma stuff, and so of course I want to know, will we be getting more of that in Season 5?

Cuse: It’s always a case of, “The porridge is either too hot or too cold” [for various fan groups]. We have learned over time that it is impossible to strike the perfect balance between satisfying the mythology fans and satisfying the character fans. So our solution in the season premiere is to provide heavy doses of both.

For the mythology fans, they will hopefully engaged by the fact that we are overtly discussing the time thing. And for the character fans, Sawyer’s got his shirt off for the whole first hour.

And God bless you for that.

Lindelof: You know, when I was a latchkey kid and had to fix my own dinner, I would eat these [Hungry Man dinners]. I would buy a baked fish dinner because it had a cherry pie. I never ate the fish, I would just eat the cherry pie.

The point being, as long as there is cherry pie in an episode of “Lost,” for everyone who watches it, they will sit through the entire dinner. They may not touch their entree, but if there’s a little bit of Marvin Candle, they’ll sit through anything. For some people, their cherry pie is the mythology, and for some people, their cherry pie is the romance story, for some people their cherry pie is Hurley. You just make sure that there is always something for everyone.

That speaks to the alchemy of the [writers] room, a few of the writers are really interested in the mythology of the island, and all they want to talk about is when the monster is going to show up again. Some of the writers don’t give a [darn] why Marvin Candle has five different names, all they want to know is, “Is Kate going to choose Sawyer or Jack?” So we have a small polling ground for the audience at large.

Obviously the big Season 5 question is, why do they have to go back to the island? Why is it so important that they go and why do they all have to go? In some ways, is that the story of this season?

Lindelof: The why of it all is always the hardest mystery to deal with on the show. If you were to say, “Locke tells them, ‘Hey, this is all happening for a reason,’" and then you’d say, "Well, what is that reason? Why were all those people on that plane?" Obviously that stuff is coming downstream. Probably much of it will be hinted at in Season 5, but why these people, why this time, why this place, why that plane? It’s Season 6 territory.

In terms of the very specific rules of -- in order to get back to the island, why do they need to bring back as many people who left the island as possible? There will be some further explanation of that stuff sooner rather than later from a source outside our characters speculating.


We’re told that bad things happen once the Oceanic 6 left the island. When will you get into that? Is that also Season 6 territory?

Cuse: Part of it unfolds this season, part of it unfolds next season. But obviously the fact that the island was moved by Ben sets in motion a chain of events, and that chain of events has very dramatic consequences. That’s really a very important question for the people who were left behind on the island -- what the hell is going on here and what are the consequences of the island being moved. What does it mean for us?

We were talking before about keeping the show on a character level, that’s really what it comes down to. Yeah, [a particular thing is happening this season; see note below], but what are the consequences of that for them in terms of their survival, in terms of their relationships, in terms of whatever their ultimate destiny with the island is? Those are the pertinent questions.

[Note: Part of this paragraph has been taken out; it referred to a plot point in the season premiere. The entire text of the paragraph will be posted after the Season 5 premiere airs.]

Ben says something in the Season 4 finale about not being able to return to the island once he’s moved it. Is there also a catch for the Oceanic 6, in that they won’t be able to go back to the regular world if they go to the island? They’ll have to stay there?

Lindelof: That’s certainly a question that we should be asking. When Ben says that whoever turns the wheel is never allowed to return to the island, is that a rule or is it a law? Those are two entirely different things. One would basically say, it would be impossible for him to get back to the island, no matter how hard he tried. The other would say that he could get back to the island, but if he did, he would be punished for it. So that’s going to unfold over the course of the season, based on whether or not Ben is successful in getting back himself.

The season seems to be structured around the Oceanic 6 getting back to the island. Is that something that doesn’t happen until the end of the season? Or is it mid-way? When do the Oceanic 6 and the island people meet up again?

Cuse: We wouldn’t want to say exactly, but we will say that we feel it would be very frustrating for the audience to have to wait until the end of the season for that to happen. The audience will be, I think, somewhat surprised at the speed of our narrative storytelling. We’re not taking our foot off the pedal this year.

Would it be accurate to say, at this point, that there’s a struggle between a Ben Linus faction and a Charles Widmore faction for control of the island? Or is that too simplistic?

Lindelof: Based on everything you’ve seen up to this point, we know that Ben and Widmore don’t get along with each other and that Widmore wants to control the island and believes that Ben has taken the island away from him. You don’t understand the context of that. You don’t know what their past is or their relationship. So if you’re going to look at it as, there’s a Ben side and Widmore side, I’d say, “Well, then what side are the Oceanic 6 on? Our castaways -- are they on their own side?”

Basically, the only two sides that matter in any grand, epic storytelling are good and evil. Who are the good guys and who are the bad guys? And for so long, Ben Linus has been identifying himself as a good guy, but we’ve been seeing him engage in behaviors that would lead us to believe that that is not entirely the truth. The only question that matters is, what is ultimately a force of good and what is ultimately a force of evil, and what side of it are our characters going to end up on? Will some go one way and some go the other?

The people who Locke is now leading, the Others, they are kind of the wild card in this mix. Are we going to get more into him, into the Others this season? I’m intrigued by the whole Richard Alpert (Nestor Carbonell) thing, I was glad to read that Carbonell is going to be in nine episodes this season.

Cuse: Yeah, he’s on the show a lot. We have all these characters that are in play -- Alpert, Widmore, Ben, Locke. What you don’t really understand is, what is their inter-relationship to each other? You’ll learn a lot more about that stuff this year.

I just wanted to ask you a lightning round of quick questions, if I could, about various characters this season. Pierre Chang/Marvin Candle -- is he around this season?

Lindelof: All we’re willing to say is that [he does appear this season; see note below].

[Note: Part of this paragraph has been taken out; the full text of this answer will be posted after the season premiere airs.]

Charles Widmore -- Is he more of a force this year?

Cuse: Widmore is very much a part of the show this year. Obviously there was a very intriguing scene in last year’s finale, with him and Sun, and what that means, and what their relationships is, and how Widmore figures is something that we’re exploring. I think the audience isn’t fully invested in exactly who Charles Widmore is, but as they are, I think they will find him increasingly intriguing. He is very important to this season.

Jin? I’ve read that Daniel Dae-Kim will be back this year, but is he an ongoing presence on the island, or will he just be back here and there?

Lindelof: All we can say is, Daniel is still a series regular on the show, but Jin is not on the Season 5 poster. Sort of extrapolate what you will from that. Whether or not Jin is alive or dead does not preclude him from being on the show.

Faraday Can you talk at all about new characters coming on the show, when we might meet them -- if they’re major presences or just coming in for a few episodes here and there? And by the way, I think the casting of the people we met last season -- Faraday, Miles, Charlotte, Lapidus -- I thought they were great additions to the show.

Cuse: We don’t really want to say anything about who’s coming on the show, but we will say that we never really got our chance to finish the freighter storytelling last year. There’s a lot more to be learned about those guys.

And I think that right up front, you’re going to really have a good dose of [information about] the science team that was on the freighter. Particularly Faraday is someone who really steps to the front of the show, he’s really intriguing and we learn a lot more about him. That was the one thing that, based on the strike, we really didn’t get a chance to do. We’ve made up for that this year.

Lindelof: One of the byproducts of moving toward an end point is that we do not need to constantly introduce new characters into the mix of the show to keep it fresh and entertaining. Especially when there are so many questions about Alpert or about Miles or about Charlotte or Faraday or Lapidus. There’s still so much storytelling to do with those guys.

And what happened to Desmond and Penny over the course of the three years between the Oceanic 6’s rescue and where we are now? We’ve got our hands full without needing to go shopping for new toys.


One of my favorite questions I ever heard at Comic-Con was something a fan asked you guys there two years ago, so I’m going to steal it. What question haven’t I asked you that I should have asked you?

Cuse: The question is probably, “Are you going to end the show where [fans will then go have to watch a theatrical movie to see the ending”]? The answer is no. We’re not ending it by going to black or saying it was in a snow globe. We’re ending it in a way we feel is definitive.

Speaking of that, how much of Season 6 is mapped out? I’m assuming it’s not set in stone, but are all the pieces laid out?

Lindelof: I think we have all these puzzle pieces for Season 5 and Season 6, and they’re two separate puzzles because they’re two different seasons. But all the pieces were mixed together. It’s sometimes time-consuming to take a piece and say, “Which season does this fit in better?” And some stuff is definitely in Season 6 because it’s end-of-show stuff.

We have to walk that line between giving the audience enough information so that they don’t get confused, and put off, and giving them too much information, so they’re not like, “Well, you gave me everything I care about in Season 5. So why watch Season 6?”

One thing we all decided was, the biggest mistake we could make in Season 5 would be to hold back or slow down or go back to a stalling modality. We’ve basically been feeding the audience crystal meth for a year, to cut them off cold turkey and give them a pack of chewing gum and say, “We’ll give you more crystal meth in Season 6,” would have been a disaster. When you piss off a junkie, they will do almost anything to get their drug.

Who Says You Can't go holma Again

This is a little late, but the Dharma Special Access is now in it's seventh week. If you don't know about the DSA click here or here. The new password is holma. Here is the latest from Lindelof and Cruise:

A little fun fact for you:
Holma is an extinct Afro-Asiatic language formerly spoken in Nigeria.