Watching Lost

According to co-creator Damon Lindelof, the secret recipe is, “Why do people do the things that they do, and can we give the audience an understandable explanation as to why they do the things they do?� In an interview published by Wizard Entertainment, Lindelof shares this bit of information and a whole lot more! He tells us a little of what we can look forward to concerning some of the hanging questions. Read those after the jump.

1. What’s going on with Desmond? Lindelof responds, “Right out of the gate in one of the early episodes, we are going to explain what is happening with Desmond [Henry Ian Cusick] and what the story function of that is.” So, that’s good news.
2. Why’d you kill Eko? “[Eko's death] told the audience that, ‘Yes, we are willing to kill characters that you love as opposed to characters that you just want us to kill, like Shannon and Boone or Ana-Lucia.’”
3. What’s up with Nikki and Paulo? “Nikki [Kiele Sanchez] and Paulo [Rodrigo Santoro] are actually part of a larger story that has not yet quite activated itself, and what you have seen so far is really setup for the big payoff that happens in the middle of the season, around episodes 13 and 14. It’s just a scenario where all I can say is that we think the payoff of the idea is very cool, and you just have to trust us a little while longer.”
4. What’s the deal with the four-toed statue? “The statue does become a big part of the storytelling in much the same way that you have to wait for things on Lost. At the time that we showed the statue, it was a reminder to the audience that this island has been around a lot longer than the Dharma Initiative. There is this incorrect way of thinking about the Others in that they are the remnants of the Dharma Initiative—the foot was sort of a not-so-subtle reminder that this island and its mystical aspects have been in play for many, many hundreds of years, as opposed to just 1980 when the Dharma Initiative started making their little orientation movies. The origins of the foot and the rest of the statue and all of those things will be revealed in time—probably not soon enough for a great majority of the fans, but at least it has activated their imaginations.”
5. What really happened when they didn’t push the button? “The characters don’t really have any understanding quite yet of how momentous it was to not push the button. Other than the fact of the not-pushing of the button is what crashed Oceanic 815 in the first place and brought them all there, the idea that the sky turned purple and the island shook… Events in the finale last year catastrophically screwed them all in a way that they don’t really appreciate yet.”
6. Will we see Michael and Walt again? “It would be a massive and depressing cop-out to not see them again and to not fundamentally understand what happened to those characters. I would be loathe to say that we will never see Michael [Harold Perrineau] and Walt [Malcolm David Kelley] again, but in what context—whether they actually made it off of the island or any of those things—is all up for grabs. I would say that you’ll not be seeing them again any time soon.”

That’s good stuff there!

Statue Photo
Michael and Walt Photo

Lost, secret recipe, four-toed statue, Desmond, Michael and Walt, Nikki and Paulo, Mr. Eko