Lost: An Analysis of Season Four, Part One
When
the producers of Lost negotiated an “end date”
for the ABC drama with network executives, it laid the potential for
the final forty-eight episodes to be a revealing, rapid-paced, roller-coaster-of-a-ride
to the finish line. Freed from not knowing how long the series would
last and the uncertainty of when to answer the multitude of perplexing
questions, co-executive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse could
finally take off the gloves and bring Lost to its full fruition.
Based on the first eight of those final forty-eight, it appears that
those lofty expectations have indeed been realized.
The initial
episode—appropriately entitled “The Beginning of the End”—picks
up where the revitalized Season Three left off, with the imminent rescue
of the survivors of Oceanic Airlines Flight 815, coupled with the knowledge
that a flashforward, heavily-bearded Jack Shephard needs to “go
back.” But we quickly find that not everyone achieves rescue,
as the ensuing flashforward of fan-favorite Hugo “Hurley”
Reyes reveals that only six passengers make their way back to civilization.
More importantly, the flashforward is filled with cryptic references—Hurley
denies ever meeting fellow Lostaway Ana-Lucia Cortez, an apparition
of deceased Charlie Pace declares “they need you,” and Hurley
himself pulls a bearded Jack when he tells the good doctor “I
don’t think we did the right thing; I think it wants us to go
back”—all alluding to a fabricated lie told by the media-dubbed
“Oceanic Six.”
On a television
show already firmly based on mystery, Lost built the foundation
of Season Four on two new mysteries: who are the Oceanic Six and what
really happened to them? The “lie” itself was finally heard
in episode four, “Eggtown,” when Jack took the stand in
fugitive-on-the-run Kate Austin’s murder trial: “Only eight
of us survived the crash. We landed in the water. I was hurt, pretty
badly; in fact, if it weren’t for her I would never have made
it to the shore. She took care of us, she took care of all of us. She
gave us first aid, water, found food, made shelter. She tried to save
the other two but they didn’t….” As for the identities
of the Oceanic Six, they were slowly revealed through a series of flashforwards
that kept fans speculating to the very end (and beyond) until Lindelof
and Cuse finally confirmed them as Jack, Kate, Hurley, Sayid Jarrah,
Sun Kwon and Claire Littleton’s son Aaron.
This revelation,
however, only led to more mystery: is Sun’s husband, Jin, dead
or still alive on the island? Similarly, does the fact that Kate is
raising Aaron as her own mean that Claire is dead or still alive on
the island? Apparently the answers will come in the second half of the
season, as Lindelof recently told TV Guide that “it’s
no shock that Season Four ends with the Oceanic Six getting off the
island. The real mystery is how, and what they have to sacrifice, and
what happens to the people who didn’t leave. You get all that
this year.”
Although more questions
were indeed raised in these first eight episodes, a handful were likewise,
both directly and indirectly, answered. Specifically, what happened
to Michael Dawson (he made it to New York City only to become Ben’s
“man on the boat”), more details of Ben’s relationship
with Juliet and insight into the mysterious “sickness” that
Danielle Rousseau’s crewmates experienced sixteen years earlier
(it apparently is the “time-jumping” that both Desmond and
freighter communications expert George Minkowski experienced in “The
Constant”).
Lost
also delivered on a storyline first set-up in the Season Two finale:
the epic love story of Desmond Hume and Penelope (Penny) Widmore. An
apparently insignificant character when briefly introduced at the beginning
of that season—he was stationed in the infamous hatch, pushing
a button every 108 minutes in an attempt to “save the world”
after crashing on the island during a race around the world—Desmond
was not seen again until the two-hour finale when he was given that
episode’s flashback scenes and the heroic task of imploding the
hatch.
Desmond’s
backstory is filled with references of him being a “coward”
who is “afraid of commitment,” and other obstacles have
likewise prevented him from being with the great love-of-his-life, Penelope.
But just as Odysseus took ten years, and many trials, to be reunited
with his wife Penelope, Lost has set up a similar epic that
just may be the major crux in an overarching Lost mythology.
Not only does Desmond need to overcome his own shortcomings, as well
as a three year exile on Lost Island and the curse of both
flash “visions” and the occasional bouncing through time,
but Penny’s father is apparently in contention for the title of
the show’s “Big Bad” along with head Other, Benjamin
Linus.
While the
first eight episodes of Season Four have firmly established Charles
Widmore as the man behind the freighter parked offshore, and that his
intentions are to capture Ben, it is less clear in regards to Widmore’s
ultimate motives and agenda. Do his plans include using the chemicals
at the Tempest Station to kill everyone else on the island, or is that
Ben’s plan? Is Widmore responsible for the “fake of the
century”—the apparent wreckage of Oceanic Flight 815 being
found off the coast of Bali with all 324 passengers dead—or (again)
was it Ben? The details of why Sayid—who referred to trusting
Ben as “the day I sell my soul”—has become a “hit
man” in flashforwards for this potential Devil-incarnate may hold
the key. Then again, maybe not; with Lost, one just never knows.
In that
sense, give the producers and writers credit: after nearly eighty episodes,
at a point when typical television shows usually fall into predictability,
the ABC series continually finds new ways to keep fans guessing, debating
and speculating. Answers are slowly given, only to then be replaced
by equally compelling ones. Suffice it to say that Lost constantly
keeps its audience on its toes and in eager anticipation for the next
installment. And for many fans, May 2010—the projected end of
the series as a whole—cannot come soon enough.
March 24,
2008
