Expect the unexpected. It’s a horrible cliché, but even after six seasons, it’s still totally true when it comes to Lost.
Case in point: At the end of last season, when we left half the castaways with a hydrogen bomb exploding into blinding white, like many Lost diehards, I went back and re-watched every single episode of the last five seasons, preparing for whatever would come next. I even got to see Darlton, some of the cast, and a couple of the writers, speak at both Comic-Con and Bumbershoot, relishing all tidbits and teases announced for the final season. Leading up to last week’s premiere, I had compiled a notebook full of crazy theories and scribbly notes that would put Faraday to shame. I was prepared for the last season of Lost like I’ve never been prepared for anything in my life – or so I thought.
Lost has always been a show threaded with riddles and questions, ranging from the seemingly unexplainable (“What is the smoke monster?”) to the borderline inane (“Who drops the crates of food on The Island?”). Now that the last chapter of Lost is finally being told, I think there’s a ton of pressure out there for this season to Answer Everything, and not leave a Black Rock unturned. Even though Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse have said very publicly – many times over– that they won’t answer every single one of the countless question that has been thrown out to the audience over five seasons, you think I would have actually listened to them and heeded their advice going into the premiere.
But it happened sometime in between Desmond’s appearance on Flight 815, Kate being blown up a tree (and into the future), and the introduction to the other Others. It was the moment where I had to accept that Lost was delivering another patented twist in the storytelling, and I had to try and keep afloat amidst all of the new twists and turns Season Six was throwing our way, lest I drown back-paddling for answers to old questions. (Although the official reveal that Not-Locke was the Smoke Monster was sooooo good.)
I don’t think anyone predicted this season could have a crazier premise than last year’s Time Travel season. If anything, I imagined the season starting with a sense of closure, bringing the show back more in line with its deceptively simple Season One high concept: mysterious castaways stranded on a magic island, fighting to survive together or die alone. Instead, Team Lost has opted to push the craziness in a big way, mostly with the help of this year’s storytelling device: the “flash-sideways.” The flash-sideways means we’re following the passengers of Flight 815 through two different realities, (1) the continuing adventures of Earth One, where the bomb has blown the time-travelling castaways to the same Island future where the mysterious Jacob was stabbed to death by a manipulated Ben, as well as (2) an alternate past (or is it?), where Flight 815 landed, but the passengers baggage is slightly altered; Hurley’s the luckiest guy alive, Boone didn’t bring Shannon on board the fated flight, Locke went on his walkabout (or did he?), and somehow Desmond’s on the plane. Jack wants to fix a case of irreversible spine damage (subbing Locke for his ex-wife Sarah?) and Kate totally steals something from Claire, albeit a taxi, and not her baby.
As potentially confusing and/or gimmicky the flash sideways may seem, I’m completely sold, and I’m already convinced it’s perfect narrative device to close the series. There are certain themes that make up the core of the show: free will versus destiny, coincidence versus fate, Good and Evil. And it’s not just the conflicts between these concepts, but how slippery each of the concepts or ideals can be. “Don’t mistake coincidence for fate,” we’ve been told at least a few times over the years, right? Well, take Benjamin Linus. He’s easily the closest character Lost has had to a being a Big Bad. He’s been a super-manipulative, murdering jerk… okay, so he’s still a super-manipulative, murdering jerk, but with his flashbacks, we started to understand why he became who he is. And after his guilt-fueled grief over Alex’s death, and the way he was manipulated to kill Jacob, like a pawn in a much bigger game, maybe we even feel a little sorry for him. (I’m not the only one that feels a little sorry for him, am I?)
During my Lost re-watch, I noticed another conflict that’s just as important as the coincidence-fate battle. In the Season Three episode “Par Avion,” the last Claire-centric episode, where she tags a migrating bird in a bid to get rescued, there’s a flashback showing her surviving a car crash (that she caused) that critically injured her mother. It’s a pretty serviceable episode that might be rigged with important mythology – especially a dynamite scene between Claire really talking for the first time with her father, Christian Shepherd. Christian tries to convince Claire to take her mother off life support, and he gives her some potentially Locke-ian advice, telling her not confuse Guilt (over causing the accident) with Hope (of her Mom ever recovering).*
The scene played like a mantra in my head after rewatching it, and I’ve noticed (or completely made up) how pivotal those two emotions are with at least 80% of the conflicts that happen on the show. And, even crazier, how interchangeable guilt can be with hope. I realize talking about emotions isn’t as cool or as exciting as Egyptology or time travel — unless we’re talking the Blue Lanterns versus Yellow Lanterns here — but the greatest mystery of the show has always been the characters. And I really believe that looking at each character through the ways they’ve coped with Hope and Guilt is an integral piece of the Lost puzzle. The two emotions are also the perfect lens to look at the time-traveling aspect of the show, with Hope representing a future with redemption, and where Guilt is tied into each of the character’s haunted past. And now the Hope-Guilt conflict has an added depth with two separate realities that individually represent Hope and Guilt for Jack Shepherd. Check it out:
The LA X-verse, Or A New Hope:
– Jack has saved everyone from The Island, which lays sunken underground.
– In one of my favorite scenes of the premiere, Jack and Locke comfort each other, offering each other hope. (Locke consoles Jack, pretty much saying it’s impossible to “lose” a soul, and Jack offers Locke a glimmer of hope that he might be able to fix his irreversible condition.)
And then on the other side of the mirror, we have Guilt Island, or The Dark Side:
– The castaways stand over a radioactive crater, clearly not saving the world the way Jack thought they would. Jack has to feel guilty about this — especially since the radioactive bomb blast didn’t even give them superpowers.
– Also, Juliet’s dead, and Sawyer decided to let Jack suffer with the guilt.
– Also again, Sayid’s shot and dying. Jack can’t save him, and when the Temple Others ask who shot him, Jack says it wasn’t him, but makes it clear to everyone that it’s still all his fault.
But obviously, neither side is completely perfect. That’s the point. Even after saving Charlie’s life, the junkie still lays a solid guilt trip on Jack, telling him that he was supposed to die. And even though The Dark Side is looking very much like personal hell for Jack, there’s also hope in the form of Juliet’s message from beyond the grave: “It worked.”
Alright. I know there was tons of cool stuff from ‘LA X’ that I didn’t talk about, and hopefully, in the weeks to come, I’ll get the chance, provided more pressing questions and answers don’t surface. (That won’t happen, right?) But if you’re still reading this and hoping for a theory that’s not likely to be discussed on Oprah, how about this:
You know when Fake Locke/Smokey says he wants to go home? What kind of odds can I get that his home is actually the LA X-verse?
Anyway, if you read this far, thank you very much. I’m hoping to contribute to the Lost conversation as the final season unfolds. And if I don’t, well, I guess feel really guilty.
*Although, Claire’s mom does recover by Season Five, so I guess it’s up in the air if Christian is worth listening to when it comes to philosophical or medical matters, since he was fighting to have the plug pulled.