Spoilers revealed at San Diego Comic Con 2008

Let's just get right to it. For those of you who didn't want to watch an hour plus of low-res video, but who did want to know what spoilers were revealed at Comic Con this year by Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, here you go:

• The Island did not move when Desmond turned the failsafe key at the end of the second season, even though this event, like the frozen donkey wheel-induced disappearance of the island, both were accompanied by a bright purple sky.
• For that matter, the island did not physically move after Ben turned the frozen donkey wheel (which most likely means it just jumped to another time).
• Jin and Locke, both of whom apparently died in the finale, will appear in some form this season.
• The flashback/flashforward narrative structure will still show up from time to time, but will gradually be replaced with an as yet undisclosed new storytelling device.
• Richard Alpert will be around more. He is "old", though exactly how old was not revealed. We will see him barefoot this season.
• Along the same lines, the mystery of the four-toed statue from the finale of Season 2 will be explained this year.
• The true history of the late Danielle Rousseau will be revealed this season, as well, though not in a flashback sequence.
• The extras whom Farraday ferried out to the freighter are dead. Not so for Farraday, himself. Also, expect the ever-resilient Vincent to survive until the series finale.
• Kate will see Sawyer again.
• Daniel's notebook (the one containing all the inside knowledge of DHARMA's presence on the island) will figure very prominently into Season 5.

So that's about it. They're now four weeks into writing season 5, with production set to begin in about another 2 weeks. We can expect Lost to return in February and run for 17 consecutive weeks (or, perhaps, 16 consecutive weeks with a 2-hour finale - the point is, no breaks).

The Future for Christian Shephard and Charles Widmore(?)

Actual Lost news? In July?? Weeks before Damon and Carlton emerge from their self-declared media blackout????

It turns out that Mr. high-on-himself Michael Ausiello, who recently defected to ew.com from TV Guide, learned the following tidbit that may reveal a bit about the ultimate future of two fringe but important characters (fortunately, he had Doc Jensen around to translate on the meaning of the scoop...)

Question: I'm dying to have some juicy Lost tidbits. I'll take anything I can get. — Brittany
Ausiello: Damn straight you will! Team Darlton is doing their annual “radio silence” thing, so Lost scoop is at a premium these days. Luckily, I managed to unearth this little morsel: John Terry (Christian) and Alan Dale (Widmore) are in talks to return next season on a recurring basis. Big frakkin’ whoop, right? Well, here’s where it gets interesting: In the fine print of both their contracts, it states that Lost has the right to pick up series regular options on both actors for the show’s sixth and final season. For insight into what this could possibly portend for Lost’s endgame, please join me in welcoming the man, the myth the legend, guru of all things Lost, Mr. Doc Jensen! “The prospect of expansive roles for Jack's maybe-dead dad and Penelope's dastardly deep-pocketed pop suggests a theory about the Island's true significance. Here is a seemingly-magical place where the lame can walk anew, the impotent can once more shoot bullets, and anyone can crank on ancient donkey wheels and leap through time. In other words, the Island provides the means for death-spooked mortals to cheat the grim reaper. I'm betting that's why Old Man Widmore is so desperate to find it. As for Ghost Dad, the Island allows him to stick around in his inexplicable spectral state and might even be facilitating a full-blown bodily resurrection; either scenario represents a violation of the natural order of things. In the end, Jack will no doubt have to convince his father — and possibly his maybe-dead half-sister Claire, too — that they need to move on. Regardless, keeping Terry around portends an emotional climax to Jack's father issue arc.” Really? You got all of that from my one little casting item? Cool.

(Temporarily) Departing Cast Member

This is the most spoilerish spoiler I have posted since I set up the side blog, so be warned before you go any further....













Still with me? Okay. You were warned. Kristin Dos Santos of E! Online reported this week that a Lost cast member who has been around since Season 1 will not be returning in Season 5, largely due to contract problems. However, the idea is that this cast member will return in Season 6, and the story will be structured to make this absence make sense. Want more details? It gets all the more spoilery from here on...













Still here? Well, Kristin also revealed that the cast member in question is a woman, which dramatically narrows the options. Here are the five recurring women introduced in Season One, in reverse order of how likely it is in my mind that each one may be the one Kristin was talking about:

5. Kate Austin (Evangeline Lily). Kate is one of the Oceanic Six, raising Aaron, fulfilling a secret errand for Sawyer, and romantically linked (at some point in the future) to Jack. I'd say the likelihood of Kate not returning next year is next to nil.

4. Shannon Rutherford (Maggie Grace). On the flip side is Shannon, who, despite a couple of clever flashback appearances, died and apparently satisfied her character arc back in Season 2. I'd say Shannon won't be returning, but that she is not the cast member referenced in Kristin's spoiler.

3. Rose Henderson (L. Scott Caldwell). Rose was conspicuously absent all through Season 3, appearing only in the finale, and has only appeared sporadically in Season 4 (i.e. whenever the fact that the island healed her cancer services the plot). The producers have certainly made her disappear and reappear several times in the past, but is Rose an important enough character to be spoiler-worthy? I don't think so.

2. Sun Kwon (Yunjin Kim). This is where the speculation gets interesting - Sun has already had the baby, and, by next week, we'll know the circumstances of her leaving the island without Jin. She has taken over her father's company, so we already know what post-island life is like for her. To me, the biggest unresolved questions for Sun are 1) is Jin still alive, and 2) if so, how will she get back to him? Since the producers have said that the Oceanic Six's return to the island will be the focus of Season Six, I think Sun may be the odd one out, but not as likely as...

1. Claire Littleton (Emilie de Ravin). In the past weeks, Claire has morphed from main character to island mystery. Is she dead? Is she now a manifestation of the smoke monster? What does "dead" mean on the island, anyway? As with other island mysteries (the four-toed statue, Jacob, the Black Rock), Lost has a tendency to introduce them early on and not return to them for many episodes and, sometimes, multiple seasons. Now that Claire is such a mystery, and Aaron has been separated by her by virtue of being one of the Oceanic Six, I believe Claire will not reappear until the final season, when our characters reunite on the island for Lost's endgame.

Previewing "Cabin Fever"

Not a lot of information has been released about episode 411, "Cabin Fever," which airs Thursday, May 8. What we do know is this:

• This will be a flashback episode focused on John Locke (which is intriguing, since it would seem there were not a lot of loose ends in his backstory);
• During "island time," Locke, Ben and Hurley will quest for Jacob;
• During this quest, they will encounter, Horace, the man to recruited Ben and his father into DHARMA (which is intriguing, since Horace quite clearly died during the purge!);
• Horace will tell us that the Purge took place 12 years earlier, or in 1992;
• On the freighter, Michael will try to enlist Frank's aid in thwarting Keamy's people from returning to the island to kill everyone; and
• Matthew Abbadon will make his third appearance (which is intriguing in a Locke flashback).

No confirmation as to whether or not we'll see Jacob, or learn more about him, but I'd say that's a good bet!

Are y'all excited? I know I am!

Scenes from 410

Kristen Dos Santos at E! Online posted these preview clips for "Something Nice Back Home." Enjoy!

What To Expect For The Rest of Season Four

When Lost resumes (Thursday, April 24 at 10 Eastern, 9 Central), you can expect the following (given that the only so-called "Spoilers" contained below come from promos that have been airing on ABC, there should be no actual spoiling going on here)...

• There will be six more hours of Lost (two fewer than originally planned this season, but one more than the previously-announced post-strike total). The fifth and sixth will air as a two-hour block on May 29, two weeks after the fourth episode back.
• The first episode back with be a Ben Flash-forward, which will be entitled "The Shape of Things to Come." I'm just speculating here, but I believe this will bridge the gap leading up to Sayid's flash forward from "The Economist."
• In "The Shape of Things to Come," the smoke monster will make an appearance, and we will learn more about its nature.
• We will learn the ultimate fate of Rousseau and Karl in the second episode back.
• Alex will have been taken captive by Keamy and the mercenaries, who plan to use her as leverage against Ben.
• New Otherton, where Team Locke has taken up residence, will be attacked by the mercenaries.
• We will learn how the Oceanic Six make it off the island.
• Finally, we will visit the three-level DHARMA station called "The Orchid," which Lost fans first encountered in footage shown at the San Diego Comic Con last Summer.
• Ultimately, we will bridge the gap between the flash forwards we've seen this season and Jack's screaming "we have to baaaaaack" at the end of last season.
• We've been promised a spectacular kiss before the season's end.
• The finale will include another game-changing moment, which has been codenamed the "Frozen Donkey Wheel." This continues the tradition of big finale moments that began with season 1's "Bagel" (Walt's abduction), season 2's "Challah" (the hatch implosion), and season 3's "Snake in the Mailbox" (the flashback was actually a flash forward).
• What we will not see this season are previously planned flashbacks for Farraday and Miles, but these stories will be told.

You excited yet? I know I am.

Jeff Jensen's Interesting Whispers Theory

A great theory was put out this week by ew.com's Jeff Jensen. (To read Jensen's full column, click on the title of this post).

I posted this to the spoilers blog because, hey, it makes enough sense that one could be spoiled by reading this, if it turns out to be true. In discussing "Meet Kevin Johnson," Jensen had this to say:

The mystery of Walt became 76 percent more intriguing.
I assumed we would learn Michael and his son returned to the Island together. Wrong! And I'm glad I'm wrong, because it makes the whole business of Tall Island Walt even more provocative. If you recall, we saw in last year's finale how an adolescent Walt beckoned left-for-dead Locke out of the Dharma mass grave. Was he a ghost? Was he corporeal? How did he get so big? Here's my prediction: Ultimately, some or all of the Oceanic 6 will try returning to the Island in the flash-forward future, and they're going to bring Walt with them. But when they pass through the electromagnetic anomaly, they're going to arrive at a point in the Island's past, perhaps even prior to the crash of Oceanic 815. Yes, folks, I am suggesting that here in the Island present, while Jack and the castaways are clashing with the freighter folk, flash-forward Jack and company are also on the Island, too. They could be hiding; after all, they can't interact with their past selves, as that could screw up the timeline or create some kind of time-space catastrophe (although Walt would be exempt, as his past self is no longer on the Island). Then again, maybe Island magic precludes them from interacting with their castaway lives. Perhaps they share a separate, parallel existence with their old Island selves. Could this explain The Whispers? Could these voices belong to the flash-forward characters returned to the Island, watching and commenting on past drama? If my theory is correct, then here's my prediction for the season finale: In the last scene, exactly one minute after the Oceanic 6 departs from the Island, the flash-forward Oceanic 6, released from the restrictions of Island magic, will step out of the jungle and greet the remaining castaways. I'll leave it to Hurley to make the inevitable quip:
''Man, I thought they would never leave.''

Teases following "The Constant"

Following are a small number of teases given to us by Jeff Jensen and by Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse in interviews and colums this week:

• Next week, in "The Other Woman," we will finally visit the Orchid station, which was teased in the footage Damon and Carlton brought to the 2007 San Diego Comic Con. It appears this will be where Daniel busts loose, perhaps attempting to travel through time (is that what bunny 15 did in the Orchid film?)
• Damon and Carlton have revealed the "themes" for the remaining three seasons. Season four is about how some people leave and others stay on the island...
• Season five will be about discovering why it is, as Jack screamed at the end of last season, the characters who left have to get back to the island...
• ...and Season six will be about what happens when they get back.

Exciting stuff!

Lindelof and Cuse on when questions will be answered

Thanks for clicking through, Lostophiles...

As I teased on the main blog, below are some hints, and some of Lost's pending questions, and when we will (and won't) be getting answers. The source for this information is the interview posted to ew.com today between Jeff Jensen and Executive Producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse.

• There is no reason, per se, that Ben could not be one of the Oceanic Six. After all, he has multiple identities and detailed information on who was on that plane...
• Time travel will factor in to Lost; changing the future will not.
• By the end of the seventh episode (the last in the current string), we will know each member of the Oceanic Six.
• By the end of the fourth season, we will know why the Oceanic Six are the only ones who left, and why the other survivors did not.
• Also by the end of the fourth season, we will know who was in the coffin at Hoffs/ Drawler in the third season finale.
• The characters' relationship to the outside world once they've been on the island will be an important theme going forward.
• Jacob's cabin and smokey will factor in to the rest of the season, but will not be fully explained by the end of season 4.
• The skeletons from the first season ("Adam and Eve") will be explained, but not this year.
• The larger DHARMA Initiative mythos, including details about the purge, will be dealt with next season.
• The dos and don'ts of using the funky sat phones will be explained in episode 5.
• By the end of season 4, there will be two alternate explanations given as to what the fake Oceanic flight 815 found in the Sunda Trench really is. Both explanations will be supported by some evidence, but it will not be clear which explanation is correct.
• The "Find815" game was not "in canon," and the Maxwell Group is not part of the larger story. That said, the aspects of the game that did touch on "Confirmed Dead," i.e. that a salvage boat called Christiane I "found" flight 815 while searching for Black Rock, are part of the larger story. The producers also teased that finding Black Rock may not have been the only goal for the owners of Christiane I.
• Charlotte's name ("C.S. Lewis") is an important clue to her backstory.
• Do not expect to figure out this season how the polar bear ended up in Tunisia.
• Finally, do expect the orientation film from the Orchid station, which was released online this summer, to be relevant this season. In case you missed it when I posted it previously, here's that Orchid clip again...

Questions to be answered in "Eggtown"

According to Kristen at E! Online, the following questions will be answered on this week's episode, entitled "Eggtown":

1. Why isn't future Kate behind bars when Jack calls?
2. Who was the "he" Kate referred to when leaving future Jack at the airport?
3. Who is the fifth member of the Oceanic Six?
4. Is Kate pregnant?

Now, until the episode airs, I don't know the answers to these questions. But Thursday's not that far away!