Well, after five seasons, numerous and painfully prolonged hiatuses, and more questions than a smoke monster could shake a tree at (hah?), we have arrived at the sixth and final season of LOST. It’s hard to believe that we’re finally here. I can remember back in the day, when the world was young and I was but a wee sprout, and we had silly questions like: Does the button do anything? Is DHARMA a mind game? Is Alvar Hanso the leader of the Others? These seemed to be the main questions about the series at one point in its frustrating but astounding history, and they seem like hilarious trifles compared to the directions the show would ultimately take. This goes to illustrate just how much LOST has grown in subsequent years. There was even a time when we wondered if we’d ever see this story come to its conclusion, satisfying or otherwise. But here we are. The death knell has been rung, and our favorite and most beloved television show is finally about to detonate like so much paradox-inducing hydrogen bomb.

But maybe I’m being melodramatic.

Personally, I’m happy to see LOST going off the air while still vital, as opposed to being beat into a bony bloodless mass that is needlessly dragged out season after season. We’ve all seen it happen, and honestly it’s the fate of most TV shows that are, for lack of a better phrase, too successful. Somehow, some way, the gods of the island intervened and LOST gets to go out on its own terms. We fans couldn't’t be luckier.

Although I’ve sort of set this blog to rest for the better part of the last few years, I would still like to update when I can and offer my thoughts while the show is still on (and as Ms. Hawking might point out, that window is closing fast). So, before the premiere tonight I’d just like to offer a few ideas, a theory or two, and maybe a little commentary on the show in general.

HEY, I STUBBED MY FOUR-TOED FOOT

First of all, as the series nears its end, there has been an increasingly gargantuan tidal wave of internet bitching and moaning regarding the answers to the show’s myriad of mysteries which the producers and writers of LOST supposedly “owe” the viewers. Even today, the proverbial shit hit the fan(s) when Damon Lindelof said we wouldn’t learn who built the statue. Some people are practically screaming for blood. Maybe I missed something, but I thought the show more or less implied that the statue was built by the ancient Egyptians, hence, you know, it being an Egyptian deity and whatnot. What else about it do we need to know? See, the essential answers to many of LOST’s mysteries are not going to be these wild mind-blowing concepts that have never before been seen in the history of the universe. It’s all stuff that has been done before, just maybe not executed in this exact manner. But, rabid fans are screaming, why does the statue have four toes??? Because a lot of ancient representations of deities in certain cultures had four toes, not five. There you go. It’s not a major conspiratorial clue as to the true meaning of the universe. It’s just a damn statue of a crocodile god. As Anthony Cooper might say, “Get over it.”

As LOST winds down, the time might come to stop keeping track of the minutiae of every single conundrum presented by the show, and to start just accepting the inevitable. Lots of big questions will be answered, yes, but quite a few will be only partially answered, and many more questions will likely go unaddressed completely. Some of this has to do with the time constraints of the series nearing its end, some of it has to do with not making the show overly didactic. I mean, what should the writers do? Have Enzo Valenzetti come out in front of a chalkboard and explain, “Okay, the time you saw this was the smoke monster, but the time you saw this was Walt, and the Egyptians built the tunnels but actually the ancient Greeks built the pillar that Cooper was tied to, and Jack was just hallucinating that time when . . .”?

Yeah, that would pretty much suck.

But the main reason every question shouldn’t be answered is, LOST is a show about magic and mystery. Anyone who’s read a mystery story also knows the tremendous disappointment that comes when a mystery is completely solved. The sense of pervading mystery that LOST has maintained since the pilot should never be fully evaporated. We should get just enough explained so that we have a sense of what was going on, but have plenty to discuss and interpret long after our mutual friend has officially left the airwaves. I know it sounds like a ripoff to just say, “Well, the island is weird, so X, Y and Z happened,” but I think that’s largely the kind of answer we’ll be getting, and I’m okay with that. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure I might be disappointed about a couple of things remaining untouched. I’m just saying it’s probably best to let LOST give the basic answers to the mysteries as opposed to a point-by-point breakdown explanation of everything that we’ve seen. This doesn’t mean all will necessarily be boiled down to one general concept (more on that later), but on the whole it would just be impractical, tedious and dramatically uninteresting to go through a laundry list of specific island mysteries.

WHEREIN I BRIEFLY ATTEMPT TO SOUND SMART

On the other hand, some viewers are borderline-psychotically obsessed with answers because, well, they care. LOST has inspired the type of fandom and loyalty that can only occur when an audience is truly devoted to something, and if we all have a tendency to sometimes take our love of the show too far (I know I have), it’s only because we love it so damn much. I think LOST strikes a chord with people for several reasons. In many ways, the show began as a reaction to post-9/11 anxiety. Crashing planes, surviving disaster, imminent attack from a seemingly nefarious group of people . . . the series is nothing if not a perfect summary of War on Terror paranoia. And unlike much of the self-congratulatory “political” products generated by Hollywood, LOST is in many ways much more pure, as it reflects these things without trying too hard to discuss them or offer some type of commentary. Yes, Sayid is a Muslim from Iraq and fought in the Republican Guard, and although this gives his character a particular relevance in the world today, he is far from an allegory for Desert Storm Part Deux. Even a spectacular movie like “Avatar” can’t refrain from hitting you over the head with certain messages (noble though they may be), but LOST rarely has ever made a concentrated effort to be relevant.

It’s also worth noting that 9/11 was a brutal reminder that we now live in a global culture, and this is perhaps one of the most influential concepts on LOST. The series depicts a diverse international cast of characters, from all walks of life, each and every one of them drawn together by the show’s central enigma. Of course, when a story is about diverse groups of people struggling to live together on an island, it’s difficult not to see that as a larger symbol of the world as a whole. The concept of This Island Earth may be clichéd, but it’s still absolutely true. We’re all stuck on this galactic atoll, and how we live together (or destroy each other) will determine what ultimately happens to our species. It’s no coincidence that Jacob and the Man in Black speak of humans as a separate entity from themselves; they are outsiders observing our species, and they are sharply divided in their opinions of us. (I’d say we’re in Rod Serling mode at this point, in regards to the show’s depiction of humanity).

Another tremendous facet of LOST is information. In many ways, LOST is like a video game, but instead of killing bad guys or rescuing the princess, the real goal is to collect information. All of the various storytelling conceits on the series are ways of uploading information to the audience, whether it be intel on the characters’ lives or the island itself. As many have pointed out, each season involves some sort of meta-goal that, when accomplished, opens the door to an entirely new level of the story. The viewers themselves are drawn into this game of information-collection, but the characters are equally as engaged, as they learn new information yet continually hide secrets. No one on LOST shares everything they know. Even the island is engaged in this intelligence gathering: the black smoke literally downloads information from the characters’ minds. In this age where the internet and communications devices have made information more readily available than ever—and it’s worth noting that the universe of LOST is significantly expanded in various ancillary websites—the show seems to be upping the ante in terms of the true value of information. In the world of LOST, information is not only non-disposable, it’s the most valuable form of currency. (Other than Apollo bars, of course, which to me look pretty nasty in that jungle heat).

And of course, LOST is ultimately a search for meaning in a world where the big picture is never truly clear. Do we exist for a reason? Is all a choice or are we destined to do certain things? Can science explain everything, or are there mysteries that truly point to a larger force at work in the universe? LOST presents a wide variety of philosophical, religious, spiritual and moral viewpoints, all seemingly justified in one sense, and yet fatally flawed in another sense. Perhaps no one viewpoint is capable of completely explaining life, instead only presenting one specific part of it. This is in keeping with the status of LOST as a potentially unsolvable giant puzzle.

When the series began, it very specifically presented the argument of science vs. faith, exemplified through the characters of Jack and Locke. The question was, is this island a fantastical place, or are these miracles and mysteries explainable through every day hard science? By season three, it had become quite clear that a more far-out direction was in store, particularly when we saw a psychic cloud of sinister black smoke shapeshift into Mr. Eko’s brother before transforming into a giant demonic hand and crushing Eko like some kind of pissed off Marlboro-sponsored version of King Kong. Yeah, not so much with the hard science. Now that we knew the island was special, we had to ask: are the answers going to be more in the realm of science fiction, or are they actually going to cross over into the supernatural and maybe even the mystical? This also forces us to question if this island is indeed a mystical place at all, or if the salvation it offers is an artificial one. In other words, is the island god, or is it a false god?

A similar question was raised in the (underrated, IMO) final seasons of THE X FILES. For so long, we wondered whether or not the events of mythology could be attributed to extraterrestrial phenomena. Once that question was answered in the affirmative, we had to ponder whether the ultimate answer to questions of the paranormal merely boils down to, “Yes, aliens are real, and they’re coming to take over the planet and wipe out the human race,” or if there is in fact an even greater spiritual force in the universe which can offer some actual hope. Is the answer just “Yeah, it’s aliens,” or is there something bigger and more meaningful than that? I always found this dilemma to be really fascinating and, although the series was running out of steam by that point, it remained an engaging question up through the very end.

LOST finds itself positing similar questions. We can only wait and see where the (black and white) stones finally fall.

QUICK! YOUR THEORY!

Since this is a LOST blog, I would be remiss if I didn’t offer at least a brief theory as to the final direction of the show. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I am seriously considering the idea that the black smoke and electromagnetic energy are products of an ancient alien technology. The show has strongly implied that the smoke is some kind of machine, and even in the realm of science fiction, I don’t know how the ancient Egyptians would have invented technology quite that advanced. It also explains why Jacob and the Man in Black (who I believe is the monster) talk about humans in such detached terms . . . the island was left by an advanced race to study human beings, and the technology has since evolved into dueling personalities with opposite opinions on human nature. Jacob is the healing force on the island made flesh, and the various guises of the black smoke are the security system trying to masquerade as a human.

I know a lot of folks who like this theory, but then again I know a lot of people who are adamantly opposed to it. However, when I ask why, the normal answer I get is that it feels like a copout. People say it’s lame if the ultimate answer to the show is just, “It’s aliens”. But it’s not the ultimate answer. Even if the alien bit turned out to be true, it wouldn’t mean that all of the events we’ve seen on the series are attributable to extraterrestrials. There’s also time travel, weird experiments, an evil multinational corporate conspiracy, psychic phenomena, and (possibly) ghosts. Interrelated events, to be sure, but not all able to filed under one heading. Hell, even if the island is home to a giant alien computer, it still leaves a lot of open-ended possibilities, because this means that not even alien technology can truly solve the mysteries of the universe, if it can’t even make sense of human nature.

Speaking of “Mysteries of the Universe,” notice the subjects this little faux early 80’s TV program claims to cover: Cults, Conspiracies, Paranormal Events, Monsters, Lost Civilizations, and Aliens. Well, in some form or another we’ve seen all but the final topic, so I have to wonder if this is a little bit of a clue. Not to mention, LOST has borrowed heavily from “Solaris,” another great alien story, and Philip K. Dick’s divine-extraterrestrial novel “VALIS” has made not one but two cameos on the series. So I don’t think this theory is entirely unfounded, or any more ridiculous than frozen donkey wheels which can send entire islands traveling through time.

Really though, as I mentioned earlier, almost any answer is going to be considered lame by a lot of people. Whether it involves aliens, magic, ghosts, Jesus, Adrian Veidt’s giant exploding psychic squid, or whatever, plenty of viewers will feel that the bigger answers fail to live up to their expectations. Again, I think this has to do with the fact that so many people seem to be expecting this huge revelation that explains everything and which has never appeared in a story before, and that’s just not going to happen. So yeah, it’s probably going to be a mix of sci-fi and supernatural explanations that you’ve seen plenty of times, just mixed together in a really cool way, and the bigger stuff (fate, free will, the human soul, God) will be left up to the viewers to decide. And that’s as it should be.

I do like my alien theory, but I’m open to pretty much anything. LOST should be whatever LOST is supposed to be, not what I think it could maybe possibly be. This is the biggest pitfall of LOST blogging, I think; we get so wrapped up in our own theories that we can sometimes forget to love the actual show. This is why you get some folks frothing at the mouth when a whole episode is devoted to what Kate did with Aaron, and not an in-depth lecture on obscure quantum mechanical theory. At a certain point, you just have to let go of what you want the show to be, and just enjoy it for what it is. For this final season, we’ll all probably be better off if we just loosen up and let LOST do its thing, and just enjoy the ride.

Thank you so much to anyone who’s reading, and to all who’ve offered your time and thoughts over the years. I’ve loved contributing to this blog, and coming up with all sorts of stupid ideas that I’m lucky anyone would bother reading about. I’ll still update when I can, as I’m sure I’ll have a few things to say as we make our way through the final season of this amazing experience.

Okay, before I go, if I could get cocky one last time: four years ago, I was obsessed with the idea that “Through the Looking Glass” would present an alternate timeline where the plane never crashed. Obviously I was mistaken, but the fact that the season premiere is titled “LA X” gives me hope that I may have been ahead of my time. :)