This Week in Off-Topic: LOST's Final Season

NOTE: If you're not a fan of the TV show LOST, this will go right over your head. Sorry, folks.

Yes, I am a wrestling fanatic. I wouldn't be writing this blog if I weren't, but it's not surprising to say wrestling isn't the only thing that I'm passionate about. For one, I love the big four professional team sports. I'm a Nintendo fanatic, especially for the Mario and Zelda franchises. Rock music, especially played by my favorite bands, gets me going. And finally, there's a little television show that I never miss when it's on... LOST.

ABC's biggest non-femme bait show (fuck Grey's Anatomy) is entering its final season on February 2. This isn't a forced cancelling; there's nothing more that ABC would want than to keep the cash cow going. This was a designed end envisioned all along by producers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof. This aspect in theory would give the show more of a focus and a tighter grip on storytelling, a more concise road to a definitive end. Series that keep going and going often sprawl to places and they also don't have the luxury of ending on their own terms for the most part. Therefore, there are a ton of loose ends that never get tied up, major loose ends.

The key words are "in theory" here. Despite the concrete timeline, despite the focus on a single story, LOST has sprawled all over the place and spawned its own universe, its own mythology. The writers and creators have posited so many questions that it might seem impossible to answer all of them in the 14 or so hours of television run time they have this year. I don't expect them to answer every little detail, but they should, and I think they will, answer the most important things.

The first thing that will likely be explored will almost certainly be whether Daniel Faraday's gambit pays off. If you remember back to the season finale last year, Faraday postulated that if the castaways could somehow detonate a nuclear bomb in the near vicinity of the vast amounts of electromagnetic energy at the site of the future Swan station, they could undo the four years of their lives that were ruined because of the events following the crash landing of Oceanic 815 on The Island. I think the plan is going to fail for four reasons:

1 - Remember back to season 3, the first appearance of Eloise Hawking (known then only as the strangely omniscient ring shop lady from the landmark episode "Flashes before Your Eyes", the Desmond-centric episode where time travel was first teased), when she said "The universe always has a way of course correcting itself." It was a truism that was proven in the series finale when Charlie finally died after Desmond's repeated attempts at saving him because of his clairvoyance. What does that mean? Even if the bomb was successful in negating the energy in the Swan, Oceanic 815 was going to crash land for a different reason and that the castaways were destined to undergo that experience regardless.

2 - Jacob, after being stabbed by Benjamin Linus, uttered the phrase "They're coming." No, he wasn't talking about MVP and Mark Henry coming out to the former's theme song, but about the castaways who were thrown back in time arriving back on the Island in some way.

3 - In the Swan orientation video, Dr. Chang mentions "an incident" that caused the energy at the Swan to become unstable and needing to be controlled, via typing the numbers into the computer every 108 minutes. The Losties being at the Swan site and blowing up the hydrogen bomb didn't prevent that incident... it was the incident.

4 - Faraday himself said "What happened happened", implying that everything the visitors from the future did was supposed to happen anyway. Of course, Faraday was skeptical about that himself since it was his idea to change the past. It also bears mentioning that he seemingly successfully changed the past when he told Desmond to go see his mother while Faraday and co. were time-skipping. It also bears mentioning that Desmond was "special" and that the rules didn't apply to him like they did to most other people.

I get the feeling that the season premiere will open with a swerve, making people think that the castaways were successful at erasing history, but it'll soon be found out that they weren't and that they're either back on The Island, or they, once again, have to go back. That sets up the second major storyline, this war that several major characters like Ben, Charles Widmore and others have said was coming. We finally know who the leaders of the two opposing forces are: Jacob and anti-Jacob/Skrull Locke/Esau, but what side are the various people on? That's where the meat of this season will come from, with the side dishes being explanations of various things like the Smoke Monster, the Egyptian imagery, time travel, The Island's weird electromagnetic properties and the origin of folks like Richard Alpert.

The producers have said that there will be a lot of bloodshed this season, a lot of main characters dying, a lot of conflicts resolved. There'll no doubt be a lot of Easter eggs and cameos from former cast members; I've heard the actors playing Boone, Shannon, Charlie, Libby and even Dr. Arzt will make appearances among others. No matter what happens, whether it's satisfying or ultimately disappointing, I don't think they're going to be accused of not trying. I'll be sad when it's over if only because there won't be any new episodes, and because the stories, mythologies and the enthralling and engaging characters they've introduced, including Linus whom I think is the best TV character ever, and I think there's enough that they could spin off forever and even do movies.

Still, there are still 18 episodes left. The rollercoaster hasn't left the docking station yet, and hopefully, our expectations for the show are as fulfilled as the characters' destinies will be in the coming four months.