Tuesday!

When Season 5 ended last spring, it seemed like an eternity until Season 6 would premiere.

And now? It's four days away! And you know what that means... it's prediction time!

I'll post four or five predictions about what will happen this season. If other blog authors want to do the same, feel free. If readers want to post their thoughts in a comment to this post, feel free.

Here we go:

1. Flight 815 lands in LA, if just to tick me off. The timeline will, in fact, be reset; everyone will go their separate ways. Jack and Juliet can stop whining about lost love.

2. The universe will course-correct. Everyone will end up on the Island anyway, one way or another. Plane crashes, boat trips, temporal vortexes, whatever.

3. Jacob's death was part of some larger scheme... him dying allows him to finally persevere over Esau. Christ parallels galore.

4. By the end of Season 6, we'll be back where we were at the end of Season 5. Jacob will die, but this time, Juliet/Jack/Faraday won't work to set off the nuclear bomb and the timeline will continue as it was supposed to. Jacob's plan is revealed, and peace comes to the Island forever.

As I'm typing this, I find that I hope I'm wrong. This would be the lamest season ever.

Let the theories flow!

Ratings

Click on the image for a bigger view.

Appears that viewership peaked around the end of Season 1, was good for the start of Season 2, and then has been steadily declining since. Season 5, especially, started out lower than any other season began or ended, and lost almost 5 million viewers by the end.

I wonder what makes people leave the show.

Theories?

The crash of Flight 815

Over the five seasons of Lost, we've been given parts of the crash of 815 from many different perspectives and in different chunks. This guy pieced all those chunks together into this video.

And today, Damon Lindelof linked to it.

Cool stuff.

More Locke/Christ imagery

US Weekly photo from TV Overmind via the Lostpedia blog. Click for a larger image.

Fun times with Locke ahead, I'm guessing.

The Onion comments on Lost season 6

Final Season Of 'Lost' Promises To Make Fans More Annoying Than Ever

Protip: marry a fellow Lost fan. That way, you can both work on the paranoid schizophrenic chart and get more done.

Clues (maybe)!

Fellow blog author John brought the above image to my attention. Click the image for a full picture for closer examination.

Here's what John had to say about it:

Check out the link, and look and see the cast of characters that are shown. Typically, these promotional posters/photos only contain the characters involved with the current season, so it could be that we get to better know some of those who have passed (i.e. Mr. Eko).

That is definitely an interesting aspect of this promotional poster. Upon closer inspection, I count the following dead characters present:

• Boone
• Shannon
• Charlotte
• Faraday
• Eko
• Ana Lucia
• Charlie

And there are a couple whose identity I'm unsure of: the woman fourth from the left and the man fifth from the right. Anyone know who those guys are?

Anyway, there are a three established ways the Lost writers could involve dead characters in this season:

1. Flashbacks.
2. Time travel.
3. Hurley seeing dead people.

The most interesting part of this poster for me is Locke. Standing in the middle of the group, closest to us, but with his back turned. I had a discussion with my wife a couple days ago about Locke and his role in this last season. I was wondering if his currently dead status implied he wouldn't be all that involved.

Apparently I was wrong.

So that leaves us with some questions:

Who or what is impersonating Locke currently?

Can Locke be brought back from the dead, or will he return as there is another major time shift on the Island?

Another reason I question Locke's prominence in this season is that his "special" quality was almost entirely manufactured. The reason Alpert and the Others were so interested in him is because Not Locke created that interest in 1977 by planting the idea that John Locke was special in Alpert's head. That's why Alpert was at Locke's birth. That's why he visited young Locke and tried to get him to the Island when Locke was a young adult.

The other thing that impressed the Others about Locke was that he was healed of his paralysis on the Island, and they'd never seen someone recover from such a damaging injury before. This evidence still stands, though it could just be they'd never seen a paralytic arrive at the Island before.

Locke without his higher calling, without his purpose, is a very depressed, bitter and hopeless man. Not exactly a leading character.

One thing my wife said is that Locke in Season 6 may be the embodiment of the good/evil black/white conflict that was established in the pilot. Good Locke and Evil Not Locke at odds for the fate of... the Island?

And finally, the phrase "Destiny Found."

"What happened happened. "It's our destiny." "What if everything that happened here, happened for a reason?" Charlie being fated to die in Season 3. There's a whole page on this at Lostpedia.

I'm guessing we'll find out exactly why Flight 815 was brought to the Island, and what Jacob wants from Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Juliet, etc. There's something threatening the Island, something worse than Widmore and the Kahana. I think it all boils down to the conversation Jacob has with his enemy sometime in the 19th century.

JACOB: I take it you're here 'cause of the ship.
HIS ENEMY: I am. How did they find the Island?
JACOB: You'll have to ask 'em when they get here.
HIS ENEMY: I don't have to ask. You brought them here. Still trying to prove me wrong, aren't you?
JACOB: You are wrong.
HIS ENEMY: Am I? They come. They fight. They destroy. They corrupt. It always ends the same.
JACOB: It only ends once. Anything that happens before that is just progress.
[The gray-haired man stares at his compatriot.]
HIS ENEMY: Do you have any idea how badly I wanna kill you?
JACOB: Yes.
HIS ENEMY: One of these days, sooner or later... I'm going to find a loophole, my friend.
JACOB: Well, when you do, I'll be right here.
HIS ENEMY: Always nice talking to you, Jacob.
JACOB: Nice talking to you, too.

Shivers.

Less than three weeks!

This Means War!

It’s somehow comforting to remember that all these characters are as lost as we are.



Alright, Amy didn't care for my puzzle when I posted it, but I've got news. Haha!

Someone figured it out. I completely quit working on it after the finale, and now I wish I didn't. Check the following excerpt from this post:

Page 105 solution:
In the recent LOST episode "The Variable," there is a quick shot of Wired issue 11.08 from August 2003. Scott Dadich's twitter hint led me to the time travel article in that issue. The part of the article on Thorne Plates refers to the "Casimir Effect," which was also referenced on LOST in the past. In order to USE LETTERS BACKWARDS FROM END, count the letters backwards from the end of the Thorne Plates portion of the article. So, count 4 letters back (the "t" in "trip"), then 34 letters back from that (the "h" in "happen") and so on. The final solution is:

T H E F O U
R T O E D S
T A T U E I S
T A W E R E T

which refers to one of the reveals in the Season 5 finale of LOST.

It was totally worth solving Amy! For those wondering what 'Taweret' is, she is an Egyptian goddess. She is believed to be the goddess of childbirth and fertility. You can read all about her on her Wikipedia page. I just want to point out two things in particular.

One, she was the protector of children.
Two, since she was considered the consort of Apep, Taweret was seen as one who protected against evil by restraining it.

Was Jacob, Apep, or was he the one keeping 'Taweret' alive? Now that he is 'dead', will evil be free to reign, or will there be peace for the children finally? Does it even matter? Did the bomb really reset everything? What does this bode for the future of the children in LOST? And not just the younger children, but also the adults who have daddy issues. I said it before, Egyptian Mythology could quite possibly reveal the rest of the story line, and all of these daddy issues will surface. With that said, I don't think the bomb did much of anything in the major scheme of things. I think the 'war' is finally here, and either Apep or Taweret now has the upper hand. It's just a matter of who.

My two pennies.

Pilot - Part 2

As part of my ongoing quest to watch a few old episodes of Lost before Season 6 premieres (less than a month now!), I watched "Pilot - Part 2" today. Here are my thoughts:


-Is Charlie dead were it not for his heroin addiction? He was seated behind Jack on the plane, and Jack was pretty close to where the tail section fell off. Charlie ends up near the cockpit because he needed a fix and was running from the flight attendants. Only 22 people from the tail section survived.

-I am so glad Shannon and Boone are dead. Shannon being extremely flighty and just all-around unstable and Boone freaking out about her... not good times.

-Awww Aaron is in-utero. What's his deal? Come on, Season 6.

-Sun pretending to not understand Michael is looking for Walt.

-Walt is one brave kid, wandering off into the jungle to find his dog, just one day after they heard Smokey out there.

-He finds handcuffs.... are they Kate's? They're closed, and I don't think Kate took the time to lock hers after getting them off.

-Ha! Sawyer and Sayid fighting right off the bat.

-Sawyer says he saw Sayid on the plane with his hands in his lap and a blanket over them, accuses him of being a terrorist. I'm not sure the relationship ever really improves from there.

-And Kate manages to break it up, after Jack tries and fails. Of course, she does so because the topic of conversation is moving towards the handcuffs. She changes the subject to the transceiver. Ha.

-Sawyer's first nickname: "Lardo" to Hurley.

-Sawyer's come a loooong way. He's dead angry these first two episodes. While he's not exactly super social that first season, he at least gets to the point where he doesn't yell as much. And now he's positively domesticated. Good work, Juliet. Scoring points for women everywhere.

-So frustrating for Sun that she has to use Korean to communicate when she speaks and understands English perfectly.

-Kate seems awful invested in getting off the island. After Sayid tells her they need a high place to test the cockpit transceiver, she says, "How high?" all eager-like.

-Oh right Kate wants off because of Smokey. Still, I think she should be a bit more conflicted.

-Michael isn't so great at this dad stuff. "Get you another dog"? Really? Your kid is afraid his dog is dead and you act like he can just be replaced? In fairness, Walt was living with his mom the last decade or so.

-Another Shannon and Boone scene. Did I mention I'm glad they're dead? Oh but look, Shannon is showing humanity. She reminds Boone about the guy who kept them from sitting in first class... "He saved our lives" She feels bad for being mean to him. Still don't like her.

-Sawyer's letter!

-Little team building exercise in climbing the mountain. Everyone helping each other up over ledges and stuff.

-Locke playing backgammon. I didn't remember the game had been introduced so soon.

-Locke is good with kids because he treats them like adults. There is no difference between his tone with Walt than with Jack or Sayid or Kate.

-Jin runs around offering prepared fish to everyone. For such an ornery dude, he's pretty nice sometimes.

-Oh! And it's magic fish that wakes up Aaron!

-Polar bear! First and last one we see on the show. Well, except for the skeleton in Tunisia. How long has that guy run around the island? The Purge was in '92?

-Good man, Hurley. Assisting in surgery. And then fainted.

-"Saw a guy lying there with an ankle holster, so I took the gun. Thought it would come in handy. And guess what? I just shot a bear!" Gotta love Sawyer.

-Bam! Kate disarms Sawyer which helps Sawyer see what she is.

-Sawyer is fairly happy with the result of the conflict. The revelation that Kate has a bad girl side cheered him up a lot.

-As the plane is crashing, Kate puts an oxygen mask on U.S. Marshall guy, thereby establishing that she's a good person.

-And Rousseau's transmission. Poor Rousseau.

-"The others are dead... it killed them. It killed them all." How true is this? Were the crew members she shot and killed really her husband and coworkers? Fuzzy.

This episode seems dedicated to showing that everyone has some redeeming qualities. Jin is a jerk, but shares his food with the others. Kate is a fugitive, but doesn't want her captor to die. Sawyer is mean to everyone, but stands his ground as something big (could have been Smokey) charges him. Sayid was in the Iraqi Republican Guard, but gets the transceiver working and helps others.

Feel free to start posting again, everyone. Theories about Season 6, insights into last season, whatever.