[Posted by Krissie Rettig]
Warning -- spoilers ahead.
Lost fans may have come to see series creators Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, but they stayed for the prizes.
Like the Heroes panel before it, Lost needed time to hit its stride. Meeting the fictional head of recruiting for the Dharma Initiative (Hans Van Eeghan) was interesting; video of Octogon Global Recruiting representatives answering bizarre queries can be entertaining. However, fans want only one thing: Answers to burning questions left over from the previous season.
Adding to the fanboy and -girl glee, there were prizes for those who did the asking. One of the most unexpected prizes was the surprise arrival of star Matthew Fox, but it proved superfluous as all inquries continued to go to Lindelof and Cuse.
“Death is a relative term, really,” Lindelof told a fan who asked if the characters Jin and Locke were actually dead. “The show will still have both of those characters on the show.” (The fan was rewarded with bottle of water from Lost’s Oceanic Airlines).
And, when asked by a cave-dwelling fan whether Lost would end after two more seasons, Cuse gave the man a Lost calendar. “Mark the date,” Damon instructed. Well played.
Another fan was rewarded with a Lost DVD box set after slapping Lindelof and Cuse on the wrist for season 4’s flash-forward/flashback episode with Jin and Sun, a combo that thoroughly punked many fans.
Here’s a list of other Lost tidbits revealed in the Q&A:
- The reflection in the water of the Oceanic Six (which resembled a cityscape to an inquiring fan) doesn’t mean anything. For once, it’s just a reflection.
- We will get to see Rousseau’s story in season 5.
- Cuse and Lindelof will employ a new storytelling device that is neither a flashback nor a flash-forward. In their classic nebulous style, the two didn’t elaborate.
- The show begins shooting in three weeks.
- Vincent (the dog) did “make it” beyond the season 4 finale and will be in season 5.
- Cuse and Lindelof wouldn’t say whether Jack and Kate will wind up together.
- However, they did confirm that Kate and Sawyer will see each other again.
- Daniel Faraday knows about the “secondary protocol” because his notebook (seen mostly in The Constant) holds information from both the past and present.
- Richard Alpert is “quite old.” Fox guessed that he was about 125.
- We will see Alpert barefoot in season 5 (for those wondering if the giant stone foot at the end of season 3 was his).
For rabid Lost fans, these tiny yet significant revelations are the biggest prize of all.
