Pop Distillery

Daniel's journal from "The Constant"

Today at Seattle’s music and arts festival Bumbershoot, three writer/producers of Lost announced that when the show finishes its sixth and last season next year, not every skull-scratching, mind-blowing, jaw-gaping-mouth-breathing mystery will be answered.

This is a good thing.

As executive producer Carlton Cuse explained, sometimes not knowing the whole story is more interesting and more fulfilling than knowing, and he wisely offered Star Wars’ midi-chlorians as an example. What gives mysteries their power is, well, how mysterious they are, and taking that away can take away the fun. So not everything on Lost will be made clear, but Cuse (along with executive producers Eddy Kitsis and Adam Horowitz) said that the creative team does have a road map of what they think must be explained. My question is, are the things I desperately need explained the things that the writers want to explain? I damn well hope so.

Other tidbits from the panel, some of which may be outright lies, include:

• Many faces from past seasons will appear in season six, including Charlie and possible Cindy (the flight attendant).
• While it normally takes the Lost writing team two weeks to plan an episode, “The Constant” took five. “Time travel is hard. It’s a lot of math!” —Kitsis.
• The boat sailed so well, its chase boat couldn’t keep up with it.
• Season six will have a fairly significant spiritual bent.
• The final shot of the show is already planned.
• While the producers have no personal plans for future incarnations of Lost, Cuse pointed out that it’s a powerful franchise and Disney would be foolish not to capitalize on that. So I think we can expect more Lost of some stripe in the future (or the past, because there’s often time travel involved.)
• Taking up that topic, Kitsis proclaimed that there really, really should be a Saturday morning cartoon show called Locke and the Monster in which Locke and the Smoke Monster teach kids lessons and build things. Coming this fall.

—Brooks