Previously on Lost: A Primer for the Final Season

It happened this morning while watching the Oscar nominations on ABC: I inadvertently caught a promo for the final season of Lost that contained new footage. Naturally, it almost gave me a heart attack. From what I can discern, the premiere takes place immediately after the season five finale and it looks amazing. Yet seeing the promo was also disappointing because I wanted to go into this final season as pure as just fallen snow. No spoilers, no surrender!

This conclusion came to me during the last six weeks. Between the holidays and my unemployment (hey, anyone need a radio producer?), I’ve had a good deal of free time. And like any good geek, I used that time to re-watch Lost from very beginning. What I realized after the 103 episodes—outside of the fact that the series is quite possibly my favorite ever—is that Lost is best experienced when experienced in bulk. Most of the seasons take place over such short periods of time, that they flow together like one long movie.

Take season five: those early episodes that dragged when The Oceanic Six were plotting to go back to the Island and the Left Behinders were travelling through time? They took place over less than 48 hours. Yet it took nearly two months of real time before everyone got back together (Sun, Ben and Zombie Locke, notwithstanding).

This is probably true with most shows, with Lost it really stands out. Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse write the show in blocks and, not surprisingly, it plays best in blocks. Of course if you think I’m going to hold off and not watch the final season until the DVD release, you obviously know nothing of my commitment to Lost or my complete lack of willpower. This is my destiny.

I’ll have a detailed recap up tonight, but in the meantime, here’s a preview of where we stand heading into the last hurrah.

* Jack detonated a Hydrogen bomb in an effort to reset the entire course of his life. And by "course of his life," I mean he wants yet another chance to blow it with Kate. Never mind the fact that if his stupid plan works and the castaways land at LAX like nothing ever happened, he would have never met Kate. This is Jack we’re talking about, the biggest non-heroic hero television has ever seen! If Lost goes down this road, it will be interesting to see how much the characters have changed. When Oceanic 815 crashed, Sun and Jin hated each other, Sawyer was miserable and reeling from murdering the wrong man and Charlie was still on heroin. My how things have changed...

* Ben murdered Jacob at the urging of Zombie Locke (who is, in fact, the “Man in Black”/Jacob’s archrival/Esau). The tricky bit here is that how could someone as immortal as Jacob—witness that he’s been around since the Black Rock—get killed by Ben? Also, a note to everyone: Zombie Locke is so obviously Esau/"The Man in Black" that it is kind of ridiculous there are people still unclear on this. To make things easy: in the beginning of “The Incident,” Esau tells Jacob he’s going to find a loophole to kill him; at the end of the episode, Zombie Locke says that he found his loophole. End of story. Zombie Locke is Esau, who is also the smoke monster. That means unless Jack's plan actually works, the John Locke we've come to know and love is dead.

* Speaking of which: Juliet is dead too. Sadface! And Sun and Jin are still separated. And Stu Radzinsky is still a flaming tool who needs to get killed. Oh, and Richard Alpert speaks Latin and doesn’t age...

Who else cannot wait for tonight?