Season 1 Cast Not to Return to Lost

I'm not sure if you've heard the rumors flying around about Season 1 cast members rejoining the show, but they are not true. The rumors said that Charlie would be returning for four episodes, Shannon for eight, and Boone for six and that Claire would return for the whole season. The only truth in that is that Claire will be returning, but we don't know how many episodes she'll be in. Team Darlton told us that earlier this week, that's when the other rumors started spreading. Ausiello, EW's TV expert put these rumors to rest. This from EW:

Question: I'm pretty sure I saw you at the Renegade Craft Fair in Brooklyn last weekend. You're even cuter in person! With that said, can you give me anything on Lost? --Sean
Ausiello: I was hoping I'd have an excuse to run this question, and my prayers were answered last night when this piece of scoop fell in my lap: Contrary to what a loose-lipped agency assistant Twittered yesterday, no deals are in place for any season 1 Lost alums to return for the show's sixth and final season. That said, I can confirm that Team Darlton is checking the availability of several MVPs. My guess: We'll get the official scoop on who's returning at Comic-Con next month.

Matthew Fox Gives Tidbids About Sixth Season

This from Dark UFO:

Well the interview has several little minor spoilers and tidbits about season 6. Nothing too shocking, but still some interesting details. Fox, once again confirmed that he knows the end of the show and this time I got the sense he knows it really well.

Here is a little summary of the tidbits:

1) He knew that that Jack and Locke would have to go head to head quite a bit in Season 6. Now if he is talking about the real Locke or Darth Locke who knows? At least we will get a good dose of Terry O' Quinn.
2) The opening scene in Season 6 will confirm what happened in the Season 5 Finale and that it will be both confusing and surprising at first.
3) About a third of the way through the season both time lines will be "solidified into one time" and there will be one linear time throughout the story on the island with no more flashbacks.
4) When describing the end of the show he uses several different adjectives. He confirms talking to Damon Lindelof many times about it and that each time he does that it is surprising that it is so "moving". Some of the words he uses are Beautiful, Redemptive, Sad and ends with saying it is just Awesome!

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!

Team Darlton Need Attention

I guess that being out of the spotlight for a minute was driving Team Darlton crazy, because yesterday out of nowhere they decided to trow a tidbit at us. It's nothing, it's really less than nothing, but these nothings are how we get through the off season.

This from sundaymercury:

Lost masterminds Carlton Cuse and Damen Lindelof dop hints about how ABC hit drama will end

Jun 2 2009

Lost masterminds Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse have been dropping hints about how the show will end next spring.

Among the mysteries unravelled in the very last episode will be the significance of the four-toed statue, what the Smoke Monster really is and who the skeletons in the cave were.

(We reckon Egyptian fertility goddess Taweret, conscience and Penny & Desmond respectively, for what it's worth!)

Says Cuse: "The end of the show will be a combination of trying to answer mysteries the audience still cares about, such as the statue and the Smoke Monster.

"We'll also be answering the skeletons in the cave question. We will answer the questions we feel are important and central to the plot.

"At the same time we will be trying to tell redemption stories about the characters. These characters do indeed have a destiny.

I would like to go on record as saying that I think Rose and Bernard are the skeletons in the cave. I can't see how they would have gotten Desmond and Penny to that point, but stranger things have happened. This is Lost.

Lost Hiatus

I've had time to digest the finale and cope with the fact that Lost wont return until 2010. The questions are still swirling in my brain and will be for the rest of the year. Since this is a Lost blog and there is not a lot of Lost news, the posts will come fewer and further between. Do not fear though I'll get you any and all Lost news as soon as becomes available. As well as some extra stuff over the coming months. So be sure to check back in regularly and if you follow me on twitter ( _Lost_Island ) you'll receive updates every time I have something new.

By the way, I'll be re-watching the entire series leading up to the season six premier. I hope you are too. Enjoy the hiatus!

Juliet: Dead or Alive?

Juliet news from EW:

And now for some news that should surprise no one: ABC is expected to announce tomorrow that it has picked up a reboot of the camptastic '80s thriller V and that Lost heroine Elizabeth Mitchell is a full-time castmember.

Translation: She will not be returning to Lost as a series regular.

However, before you go declaring Juliet DOA from last week's detonated hydrogen bomb, I should point out that this piece of scoop comes with a big but attached: Mitchell's Lost days are not done. Multiple sources confirm that the actress is expected to appear in an unspecified number of episodes next season, so it's entirely possible Juliet survived Jughead and her absence will be explained in another way. (Check out Doc Jensen's column this Wednesday for a comprehensive Juliet theorypalooza.)

I for one am still under the belief Juliet did not die from the bomb, but I also assumed she would still be a regular. Either way I hope it goes better than the last time a Dr. Burke left an ABC show.

The Dharma Initiative

In USA Today they have an article of the University of Michigan and it's recent appearance in Hollywood. This is what they had to say about Lost. Here is the rest of the article.

...Another critical hit, Lost, wraps up its season with a two-hour show on Wednesday. But unlike House,Lost decided to go ahead with its Michigan connection without any input from the school — a move that at first was a tad unsettling for Doyle, the film office chief.

She found out about it while watching the show.

"I was sitting in the living room with my husband and said 'Oh my goodness!' I won't quote exactly what I said. (It was) more colorful than that," she said, laughing.

The university talked about it, but opted against reaching out to the Lost producers to discuss the use of the name.

"We decided to let it ride," Doyle said. "As time goes on, it's more apparent they're (the Dharma Initiative) not horrible people."

But, much like the show itself, they're plenty mysterious.

According to an "orientation film" played during a past Lost episode, Dharma is described as being the brainchild of the DeGroots, who "imagined a large-scale communal research compound where scientists and freethinkers from around the globe could pursue research in meteorology, psychology, parapsychology" and other disciplines.

During this season, viewers finally are getting a better idea of how Dharma-types lived and worked on the island setting of the show, which through its time-travel trippiness sent its main characters 30 years into the past.

With Dharma at the forefront of the current season, the Michigan references have been coming at a greater frequency, with a Dharma resident in a recent episode threatening to "call Ann Arbor" to settle a dispute.

Lost executive producers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof stress that the decision to base the Dharma folks at a 1970s-era U of M should be viewed as a compliment. After all, Cuse said, they chose the school because of its reputation as "a real center of intellectuality."

"There was an incredibly vital university academic community, and we just felt like acknowledging that by making the characters from there was just kind of cool and very sort of appropriate for the time," he said.

Cuse and Lindelof say to expect the Dharma-Michigan connection to play a significant role as the show heads into next season, its sixth and final one.

The Future of Locke

Terry O'Quinn talks about the future of John Locke:

Viewers of ABC's "Lost" saw the body of a dead John Locke in the show's Season 5 finale Wednesday night. However, a very alive Terry O'Quinn, who plays Locke, was in Spartanburg on Thursday to play in the BMW Charity Pro-Am at Carolina Country Club.

Between holes, O'Quinn was happy to talk to fans about golf, the finale and the fate of his character in the show's final season, beginning in 2010.

O'Quinn called himself an OK golfer, saying he would be happy with an 85 or under.

"I played well on the front. A little bit rough on the back," he said as his group neared hole 17.

O'Quinn said he hasn't seen the finale and didn't know how the story was edited.

"Don't tell me," he joked. "I want to be surprised."

In the season cliffhanger, a bomb, which could prevent Flight 815 from ever crashing on the mysterious island, was detonated.

As for his character, O'Quinn says he's really gone. Locke's dead body was rolled out of a metal box toward the end of the two-hour episode, baffling islanders who had been following a Locke imposter. Exactly who is now occupying Locke's body wasn't revealed. O'Quinn said it would be "a good guess" to assume it's a man seen with the infamous Jacob in the beginning of the episode.

"I think, unfortunately, I think it's ended for Locke. But I'm still there, as far as I know," O'Quinn said. "I don't know how it's going to end for this other guy. I'm sad. I miss John Locke, poor guy. He was a pawn."

O'Quinn is gearing up to play a new character when the sixth season begins next year. As for the rest of the story line, he swears he has no idea.

"Your guess is honestly as good as mine is," he said. "There's going to be some confrontation that will somehow, I'm guessing, have to do with Jack or Locke or something like that. I think these guys are just setting up good and evil. It's the way Locke said in the very beginning of the show: One is light and one is dark. Two sides. I think that's what we've got."

Go Up State

Juliet Will Be In Season Six

Latest From Watch with Kristen:

Can you tell me if Elizabeth Mitchell will appear on Lost in season six? She was my favorite actress on the show, and I think after last night, I may have died a little on the inside. Thank you!
Sources confirm that Elizabeth Mitchell will appear on Lost next year. But does that mean Juliet's alive and a going concern on the show? Well, we're meant to debate all summer who lived and died in the Lost finale, but you will note that she fell hundreds of feet into the waiting arms of a hydrogen bomb. You'll have to do your own calculations about her realistic prospects for survival—there are many variables to include in your equation!—but we've been asked nicely not to show you our answers. Good luck.

Well I personally believe that Juliet along with the rest of the 77 crew caused the Incident but blowing up the nuke and the energy that was released time warped them, just like Marty and Doc Brown, back to the future! So I think she'll be alive in season six not just in flashbacks or through reanimation. So what's you're theory on Juliet, is she dead or alive? Either way it's good to hear she'll still be on the show.

The Incedent Review

The Incident started around 1845, when the Black Rock was coming to the Island. We meet Jacob for the first time, and we meet the yang to his yin. The man who is not Jacob questions why he continues to bring people to the Island insisting it always ends the same. Jacob comes back with “It only ends once. Everything before that is just progress.” The other man tells Jacob how much he wants to kill him and tells him he'll find a 'loophole' eventually. Through the course of the episode we see that Jacob visits several of the flight 815 survivors at pivotal moments. He visits Jack after the surgery he told Kate about in the Pilot. He shows up at a convenient store after Kate and Tom steal a lunchbox. Jacob distracts Sayid, while Nadia walks into the road and gets hit by a car. He's waiting for Hurley with Charlie's guitar case when Hurley gets out of jail. Jacob visits Jin and Sun at their wedding and tells them to never take their love for granted. He gives Sawyer the pen he used to write the letter to Anthony Cooper. And after his father threw him out the window, Jacob brought John Locke back to life. There is one other person Jacob visits off Island and that's Ilana. She's in a hospital, but Jacob comes to her requesting her help. She tells Jacob she's been waiting on him. With flashbacks out of the way time to move onto the meat and potatos of The Incident. In 1977, Ellie, who we found out was leading the Others at the time, and Richard helped Jack and Sayid get the bomb, but that's as far as they're going. This leaves Jack and Sayid to make their way out through Dharmaville. When blending in doesn't work out thanks to Rodger Linus, a gunfight breaks out. Sayid gets shot, but Hurley saves the day, again. What would a season finale be without Hurley saving the day with a Dharma Van? Meanwhile, Kate convinces Juliet that they need to go back to the Island because Jack is going to detonate the nuke. Once Sawyer, Juliet, and Kate return to the Island, they run into some old friends. It's Rose, Bernard, and Vincent! They've been living “off-the-grid” in retirement on the beach. They are very happy and want to be left alone. Sawyer, Kate, and Juliet catch up with Jack and the rest of the gang on their way to the Swan station. This doesn't go well, Sawyer tries talking some sence into Jack, but they end up in a fist fight. Juliet then changes her mind and wants to help Jack, all over the way Sawyer looked at Kate. Eventually, Jack will get just about everyone on board with this idea and they head into the construction area to detonate the nuke. This leads to another shootout with the Dharma drones. A handful get away, but by this point the electromagnetic energy is sucking anything metal down the hatch. A chain gets caught around Juliet and pulls her into the pit. Sawyer tries to save her, but after a tearful goodbye she lets go. In 2007, Ben goes along with John's plan to kill Jacob with little resistance. The group for flight 316 tries to get Lapidus into their club, but he's not so sure about them. He sees what's in their box, but he wishes he hadn't. They make their way to the cabin, but Jacob is not there. They burn the cabin to the ground. Both groups make their way to the statue, John and the Others make it their first. John and Ben go in to see Jacob. The Arjians show up and ask Richard, “What lies in the shadow of the Statue?” He answers in Latin, but it translate to, “He who will save us all.” Then they show Alpert, what's in the box. Just like last season's finale, we see it's a dead John Locke. The episode ends with Juliet at the bottom of the shaft. She wakes up and beats on the nuke until it flashes white and Lost season 5 ends. And that's what you need to know so you're not lost when it comes to Lost.

What You May Have Missed

There's quite a bit here but wow was it a big episode. Also coming soon, a review and some thoughts toward the upcoming season. Just because the season ended doesn't mean we have to stop obsessing. Here's what you may have missed:

• Lost uses black and white to show opposites, good and evil, yin and yang, such as in chess or backgammon or the stones found with Adam and Eve in the caves(speaking of Adam and Eve could they be Rose and Bernard) Jacob wore a white shirt while Man #2(as he's credited on imdb) wore black. So this would lead us to believe Jacob is good and Man #2 is evil. (I'm kinda routing for Man #2)
• In the opening scene, the Black Rock is coming over the horizon, which puts this flashback around 1845.
• The boy with the toy airplane in Kate's flashback, was Tom, Kate's childhood sweetheart. She went to great lengths to get that toy airplane back.
• The license plate of the truck young Kate and Tom are standing in front of has the number 23 in it.
• Patsy Cline's music is heard in the convenience store. The music of Patsy Cline appears in every single one of Kate's flashbacks.
• When Jacob visits John, he was reading this Flannery O'Connor book of short stories. Published posthumously, the book was written when O'Connor was in the final stages of her illness and many of the short stories deal with the end, with religious-sounding titles like "Revelation" and "Judgment Day."
• Ben admitted to being a liar, so it's possible his claim to John Locke that his sign is a Pisces is just a lie. Either that or a continuity error, because we know he was born on December 19, which makes him a Sagittarius.
• In Aaron's crib, Sun found a ring marked D.S. This was Charlie's old ring that he left behind for Aaron. D. S. stands for Dexter Stratton, the paternal grandfather of Megan Pace.
  
• In Jack's flashback, Jacob visits him right after the surgery he told Kate about in the Pilot.
• After surgery, Jack's snack of choice was an Apollo Bar. The Fake Apollo Bar has been seen in many situations on and off Island.
• "What lies in the shadow of the statue?" "He who will protect us" or "He who will save us all." These are the translations of the line of Latin Richard gives as the answer.
• When it's revealed that John Locke's body is in Ilana's box, the camera angles and movements are identical to the same scene in last season's finale when John Locke's body was revealed in the coffin.
• Jacob spent many years weaving the threads together for this tapestry. It contains two ancient Greek sayings from the book The Odyssey. The first is: "May the gods grant thee all that thy heart desires." The second is: "May the gods give you happiness."
  

The Incident Sneak Peaks

Team Darlton with The NY Post

The NY Post sat down with Lindelof and Cuse for an interview and Team Darlton gave some serious insight to the shape of things to come:

This season of "Lost" has been the story of how five of the Oceanic 6 - all but young Aaron - returned to the island, which has jumped back in time 30 years.

When four of those five - Jack (Matthew Fox), Kate (Evangeline Lilly), Hurley (Jorge Garcia) and Sayid (Naveen Andrews) -- finally are reunited with Sawyer (Josh Holloway), Juliet (Elizabeth Mitchell), Jin (Daniel Dae Kim), Miles (Ken Leung) and the now dead Daniel Faraday (Jeremy Davies) - back on the island, they find themselves 30 years in the past.

Heading into the two-hour season finale on Wednesday, May 13, Sun (Yunjin Kim) is in the present with Ben (Michael Emerson) and Locke (Terry O'Quinn), who are battling over who will lead the island. "In the grand mapping out of things, one would assume Sun has a larger role to play," says Lindelof.

Jack, Kate, Hurley and Sayid are all in 1977. Sawyer, Juliet, Sun's husband, Jin, and Miles have made a home for themselves there among The Dharma Initiative, a group that's set up camp to study the island and construct research facilities. Sawyer, Jin and Miles are all part of Dharma's security team, but that cover has just been blown.

Dharma has enemies on the island, The Hostiles, so the Initiative is a bit jumpy. The arrival of Jack, Kate, Hurley and Sayid upsets the balance; exposed as outsiders, Sawyer and Juliet are forced to arm themselves and fight their way out.

Meanwhile, Jack and Kate must decide their next course of action.

"There are two fundamental approaches to the show. There's the Jack approach, which posits that there's no real explanation for what's going on. Or there's the Locke approach, which assumes that everything on the show is happening for a very specific reason. We are very strong supporters of the Locke approach," says Lindelof.

The reason some folks have traveled back to 1977 was explained by memory-challenged physicist Daniel Faraday (Jeremy Davies). Faraday thinks people might be the variables in time-travel equations. That means it might be possible to diffuse the electromagnetic energy that brought down Oceanic 815 by exploding a hydrogen bomb (named "Jughead") that just happens to be on the island, allowing the past - and thus the future -- to be changed. Faraday dies before he has a chance to test that theory out, now it's up to Jack, Kate, Sawyer and the rest to decide what to do - try to change the future or let it ride.

"Not everybody is interested in Faraday's mission," says Lindelof. "It's a very divisive issue and one that the audience is feeling too. It would be a big cheat, erasing the last five years of the show, and making it so that we never came to this island in the first place."

Jack, however, has already expressed interest in Faraday's mission, while Kate is clear she wants to stick with the life she has. Regardless of what Jack and crew decide, next season will find the show's core characters all back on the island resolving why they landed on the island in the first place.

In the finale, more will be revealed about such mysterious symbols as the four-toed statue and the Egyptian hieroglyphics, says Lindelof.

The show has been a wild and often confusing ride, but Lindelof and Executive Producer Carlton Cuse say they know exactly where it's all headed.

"That was a conversation that started back between seasons one and two of the show," says Lindelof. "We are following the plan pretty much to the letter, although there is room for improvisation." Lindelof says next season - which will be the Emmy- and Peabody Award-winning series' last - will bring things full circle.

"Season six will feel a lot like season one," says Lindelof. "The focus comes back to the characters with whom we began. We've been winnowing away everyone else who came along. The Tailies are gone, only Miles [Ken Leung] is left of the Freighter Folk and only Juliet [Elizabeth Mitchell] is left of The Others. We're getting down to the end now."

"The metaphor we like to use is that this is a road trip. We know we intend to end up in New York City, but maybe we'll pick up a hitchhiker or stop at a bar and get drunk along the way," says Cuse.

"And then linger there for six episodes," jokes Lindelof.

Michael Emerson's EW Interview

(Artwork from Flickr)

Michael Emerson gives us entertainment weekly, so Entertainment Weekly sat down with Emerson from the set of the season 5 finale:

Michael Emerson rocks our world.

We just chatted up Lost's Ben Linus about the season-five finale, and according to Emerson, who's been a very reliable source in the past, we're in for just about the two craziest hours of television ever aired!

Find out why he says that Lost's last two hours of the year might truly be the most game-changing finale yet...

As a Lost fan yourself, how shocking did you find this season's finale? Is it more shocking or less that the season-three finale where we learned Jack and Kate got off the Island?
Ours is a show that specializes in big shock endings, but I think season five...None of the other shock endings left me wondering how the show goes on. We have two kinds of huge shocks at the end of this one. Each one alone would be enough to keep an audience eating its own soul for the whole hiatus, but with two, I don't know what you can do with that.

It's like nine months until season six! We're gonna die!
[Laughs] It's going to be a long one. I'm sorry.

It's OK, just come to Comic-Con this summer and talk to us. Now, does Ben still have a plan?
I think Ben has a lot of layers of plans, but I think we're way off the main stem of anything that works for him. I mean, Ben's doing like moment-to-moment scrambling now.

Ben's role was always all-knowing evil overlord of the Island—and pardon me for using the word evil, I know that's debatable—but these days he seems very buffeted by circumstance. Will we see a different persona for him in season six?
Ben has tended to swing like a pendulum from positions of power to positions of questionable circumstance, but I think it's possible that we could have a wholesale change in how Ben ticks next season if the circumstances of the show are as altered [as they would seem to be]. If there's a wholesale set of new problems, Ben's role may shift at the same time. Actually, I'm curious to see. If Ben has a dramatic life in season six, I'll be curious to see what the nature of it is.

Ben tried and failed to kill Penny this season. Will he try again, or is he done with that effort?
I think he has bigger fish to fry. And I think he's still digesting what happened that day.

Getting his ass kicked?
Getting his ass kicked is all in a day's work—in fact, that's a strategy of his—but there's the business of how Penny escaped his wrath. What was the trigger? What was the thing that made that not happen? And what must he be thinking about it? We shall see.

Ben has tried and succeeded to kill Locke once this year. Would he try again, or does he believe Locke is untouchable, which Locke almost seems to believe about himself?
Yes, John Locke is certainly newly expansive and bold. He seems not to have any of his old vulnerabilities. I think Ben would think twice about attacking John Locke on a purely physical plane.

Are you already eating your soul over the finale? Any theories on those two giant shocks?

Lost's two-hour season finale airs next Wednesday at 8 p.m. on ABC. See you there!

EW

Lost: What You Need To Know

Lost: What you need to know for Follow the Leader

Questions Will Be Answered, But Not All of Them

Damon Lindelof tell us what we'll get answers to and what will be left unanswered. This is the latest from Watch with Kristen:

WHAT'S TO COME

Lost boss Damon Lindelof attended the excellent Juan-Manuel Rocha-hosted Comics on Comics event at Meltdown on Sunset tonight. He offered the assembled crowd several very interesting insights about the future of Lost.

VOTE NO ON MIDI-CHLORIANS: Damon gave us a sense of what kind of Lost questions will be answered, and which other mysteries won't explicitly be explained by the end of the series: "There are certain questions about the show that I'm very befuddled by like, 'What is the Island?' or 'What do the numbers mean?' We're going to be explaining a little more about the numbers, maybe significantly more about the numbers, but what do you mean by 'What do the numbers mean?' What is a potential answer to that question? I feel like you have to be very careful about entering into midi-chlorian territory...I grew up on Star Wars, I've seen the Star Wars movies hundreds of times, I can recite them chapter and verse, and never once did anyone ever say to me or did it occur to me to say, 'What is the Force, exactly? Can you explain that for me, better than Alec Guinness does?' I understand, 'When are we going to find out about Libby?' That's a very finite question. 'Who is Jacob?' OK, yes, we've been talking to this guy named Jacob, so those questions then should have answers, but 'What is the Island?' That starts to get into 'What is the Force?' It is a place. I can't explain to you why it moves through space-time, it just does. You have to accept the fact that it does." Can you live with that?

SURVEY SAYS, ZZZT! WRONG ANSWER: Regarding the approaching final season and possible fan reaction to the accompanying reveals, Damon says, "There isn't a perfect way to end the show, but the end inevitably approaches and so the show has to start answering more and more questions. To me the greatest thing about Lost, just in terms of writing it, was that [over the years] the show could ask a question, and everyone [watching] could say 'Here's what I think the answer to that is.' And next year we're basically going to spend the entire season telling you you're wrong. 'Here's the actual answer to that question.' And you're going to say, 'S--t, my answer was actually much better.' " Have you been satisfied or displeased with the answers we've gotten so far?

HOW IT ENDS: Just as an insight into Damon's mind (and thus a pointer to possible plans for the Lost series ender), you might be interested to know that the M*A*S*H finale is Damon's all-time favorite series conclusion.

MORE SERIES FINALE CLUES: Damon says that when the show ends, "All of the character resolutions will be very defined. There is going to be no cut to black. The show for me and Carlton [Cuse] and J.J. [Abrams] and all the people writing it—it's not about the Island. The Island is where it takes place. It's about this group of people who crashed on the Island on Sept. 22, 2004, and how they influenced the history of the Island in some ways and had a very significant and pivotal role to play there. You're going to see that role play out, and their fates will all be resolved by the end of the series—that's the story that we're telling. In terms of every little bit of minutiae about the Island itself...there will be questions [left unanswered] after the show [ends]."

LIBBY SAYS HI: Libby's story will not be wrapped up on the show. Says Damon, "I have learned that if you kill someone off the show, they are less likely to cooperate with you." Basically, Cynthia Watros is busy until further notice and they can't explain Libby without her, at least not in any way that shows her story rather than annoyingly tells her story. What's the takeaway for us fans? Next time you've got Damon cornered, don't waste your breath asking about Libby. Instead, bust his chops about another very important blonde: Claire! Where is that little minx, anyway?

THE SUM IS 108: This one goes out to all the Lostpedians out there. Damon said, "Here's the story with numbers. The Hanso Foundation that started the Dharma Initiative hired this guy Valenzetti to basically work on this equation to determine what was the probability of the world ending in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Valenzetti basically deduced that it was 100 percent within the next 27 years, so the Hanso Foundation started the Dharma Initiative in an effort to try to change the variables in the equation so that mankind wouldn't wipe it itself out." This information, in more convoluted form, was leaked out via the online games rather than explained on the show itself, says Damon, because, "That would be the worst thing ever. We have to make the show for the hardcore fans who care about the numbers, but we also have to make it for my mom, who just wants Sawyer to take his shirt off."

SO THERE: While discussing Wolverine and the role of canon in comic adaptations, Damon said, "At the end of the day, you can do anything you want [as a storyteller] so long as it's cool." Certainly applies to Lost too, don't you think?

E!Online

What You May Have Missed

• When Hurley and the gang first got back to the 70s, Hurley worried that someone might question him on something like, who's the President. Sawyer told him it's not a quiz, but that's exactly what question that Dr. Chang asks him.
• Eloise says, "All right let's get started." when Jack, Sayid, Richard, and her make it to the cave with the Jughead. It's also what she tells Jack and the others in the lamp post station before explaining how to get back to the Island.
• And what would an Episode of Lost be without at least one numbers reference. As they begin to dive in the sub, the captain calls for a check on engines 2 and 3. 23 being on of the Numbers.
  

The Incident Promo

Follow the Leader Review

Follow the Leader stayed entirely on Island, no off island flashes. It started with the return of John Locke to the others camp. He brought Sun and Ben with him, Sun asks Richard about Jin and the other survivors from 1977 and he tells Sun that he remembers them because they all died. Things are not going well in 1977, Jack and Kate get caught by the others and Sawyer and Juliet get caught by the Dharma Initiative. In the 1977 Others camp Ellie believes Daniel is her son and from the future so she goes along with Jack in trying to see out Daniels plan to change the future. Kate doesn't agree at all. In 2007, Locke, Richard, and Ben trek off in the jungle on a mystery trip. The three of them end up at the moment when John was skipping through time and had just been shot. Current John tells Richard what to say to past John. How did John know when to be there? Turns out the John has been talking to the Island and apparently Ben never talked to the Island. It also seems Ben has never seen Jacob either. In 77, Chang presses Hurley, Jin, and Miles about being from the future. Hurley needs to be quicker on his toes, because he cracks under the pressure and tells they're from the future. Chang agrees to evacuate the Island. In the Other's camp, Richard, Ellie, Jack, and Kate are on their way to the Jughead, when they run into an old friend. It's Sayid! He's not happy to hear that Kate and Sawyer saved Ben's life. Kate has also had enough of Jack's plan to change the future and she heads back to Dharmaville. Jack, Richard, Ellie, and Sayid head to the tunnels to retrieve the Jughead, unfortunately the Initiative has built their city over the bombs finale resting place. Sawyer and Juliet make a deal that they will tell all if they can get on the sub. So they get on the sub to go live happily ever after, however freckles once again throws a wrench in Sawyers plan when she shows up on the sub. Once again in 2007, John gives his people a speech, telling them that he's tried of taking orders from someone he's never seen, so Richard's going to take him to Jacob and everybody's going with. The episode ends on their pilgrimage to Jacob, John let's Ben in on his plan, he's going to kill Jacob.

Six Sneak Peaks for Follow the Leader!

Jack and Kate get caught by the Others:

Hurley needs to learn his history:

Sun talks to Lashes about Jin and 1977:

Kate and Jack discuss changing time:

Locke returns to the Others camp, this time will a purpose:

Sawyer gets the third degree: