"Lost": What to Know Before the Final Five

By Married Media Archives
Cover image for  article: "Lost": What to Know Before the Final Five

 
When Lost’s fourth season started on January 31, TV was deep into the 100-day WGA writers’ strike and practically none of the other prime-time shows had any new episodes to air. Longtime Lost fans already were eagerly anticipating the show’s return. For other viewers curious about this great show, and others who were just bored with reruns, it was time to give ABC’sLost a try. 
 
ABC had to come up with a way to help new viewers catch up with the complicated back story of Lost. Fans who have watched from the beginning know the good guys from the bad (or do we?), plus their pre-island history, the ways each character links to others and “Others,” and the whole list of island oddities seen, heard, and, for the most part, still unexplained.
 
Enter the recap and “special, enhanced” episodes. Clip-show-style recaps ran before the first Season 4 episode and summarized what had transpired in the previous three seasons. The enhanced episodes were reruns from the previous week with pieces of history, hints, popular theories and other tidbits added to help draw new viewers. These shows did fairly well in the ratings and gave new viewers much-needed background. Even if you did know the show, the enhanced episodes helped point out things you might have missed, and they served as refreshers before new episodes aired.
 
The first five episodes of this season averaged just over 14 million viewers, making Lost the No. 12 most-watched program of the season at that time. Some 16 million viewers watched the midseason premiere, making it the most-watched episode of the season up to that point, according to Nielsen Media Research’s overnight ratings.
 
Lostis so rich in stories, characters, mystery and strangeness that being a fan is a major commitment. There are hundreds of fan-sites on the Web that explore theories and reveal “Easter eggs” (hidden hints to island mysteries and possible storylines to come). They offer Lostphotos, videos, recaps and more. The ABC Web site forLost has webisodes and podcasts that offer insights and clues, with full online episodes, photos, games and more.
 
To prep for the five episodes airing from April 24 to the next big cliffhanger on May 22, here’s a summary of highlights of the events of the first eight episodes of this fourth season:
 
Factions
In earlier seasons we learned that the Oceanic 815 survivors fell into two groups: Our original cast, affectionately called “The Losties,” and the new gang that showed up in Season 2, who apparently also were survivors from the crash. They were dubbed the “Tailies,” since they all had been sitting in the tail section of the plane before the crash. One of the best scenes of that season was the emotional reunion between Rose, a survivor from season one and her husband "Bernard", who unbeknownst to her, had also survived and had been living with the "tail-ies".” We have also come to meet “The Others,” a mysterious, unseen threat in the first season. Later, they were introduced as a group of very real and very scary people, led by Ben Linus, played by Michael Emerson (aka “Creepiest Actor Ever”).
 
This season, the Oceanic 815 survivors and the Others have blended and split into two factions. Those who hope for rescue--Kate, Juliet, Jin and Sun, Sayid, Desmond, Rose and Bernard--have joined Jack and are staying on the beach. Locke, Ben Linus, Hurley and Sawyer have no desire for rescue, feeling they’re better off staying on the island than going home. They have taken up residence in the Others’ village.
 
Season 4 introduced yet another faction: The Freighter People. When we learned a freighter was on the way to the island at the end of Season 3, the island dwellers thought rescue was at hand. However, when we finally met The Freighter People this season, we learned that rescuing the islanders was NOT their primary objective, which begs the question that Jack ultimately asked: “Then what IS?”
 
The last but most important new faction introduced this year was “The Oceanic Six.” Flash-forwards giving the audience glimpses into the future were added this year hinting at who does get off the island, how and why. Early on, we learned that the future world reveres “The Oceanic Six” as celebrities. Based on Season 3’s finale, we already knew that Jack and Kate were two of the six. As the first eight episodes unfolded this season, we have seen that the remaining four are Sayid, Hurley, Sun and Aaron.
 
Losses
Characters dearly departed in Season 4 so far, are Naomi (a freighter person), Charlie and Jin. But wait--we see Jin’s tombstone in a flash-forward to the future, but the date is 9/22/2004, the date of the Oceanic crash. We KNOW he survived the crash and we have learned that details about the crash have been faked to fool those in the rest of the world “off-island.” So is Jin REALLY dead?
 
Oddities
What would Lost be without them? A few we saw in this first “half” of the season:
  • Another glimpse of the mysterious “Jacob” and his cabin, which disappeared as quickly as it appeared.
  • Charlie appearing in the future. Hallucination? Or another undead survivor?
  • Warps in Time: The helicopter taking longer to get to the freighter than it should, Desmond living in 1996 and the island present simultaneously, and more.
  • A polar bear skeleton, found in a Tunisian desert archaeological dig wearing a Dharma collar and tag.
  • A random woman casually walking across the deck of the freighter wrapped in chains and jumping overboard. This elicits no attempts at rescue or reaction of any kind from her fellow crew members, other than to say, “She had extreme cabin fever. It happens.”

Character Links

Throughout Lost history, flashbacks have revealed links that the characters have to each other, many of which even they are not aware. With the introduction of flash-forwards this year, we’ve seen a few more of these links revealed:
  • Hurley is arrested in the future and questioned by Ana Lucia’s former cop partner.
  • The man who visits Hurley in the asylum in the future is the same man who hired and sent out the freighter crew in the present.
  • Elsa, a girl involved romantically with Sayid in the future, is wearing the same bracelet as Charlotte the freighter person on the island now.
  • Ben tells us he “has a spy on the freighter.” We later learn it is Michael, the Oceanic survivor who left the island on a boat Ben gave him in Season 2.
These are just a few of the pearls that make up the beautiful necklace that is Lost. In the remaining five episodes, we can expect to learn how the Oceanic Six got off the island, what the effects of the hatch implosion were, who was in the coffin in last season’s finale and much, much more. As is always the case with Lost, we’re sure to end up with as many new unanswered questions as answers. But that’s what going to get us all to tune in next fall, isn’t it?
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