LOST in thought

It should come as no surprise to anyone that knows me that I have spent countless, untold hours thinking about LOST. We have only 2.5 hours of new LOST to watch on Sunday, and a lot of ground to cover. But for those of you out in the cyberworld who care for my predictions, here they are:

This season opened (with an eye! I always love the eye shots) with our first peek into sideways world. We saw the Losties (mostly) all on-board Oceanic Flight 815, as if the plane had never crashed. Most tellingly for my prediction, we saw the plane fly over The Island, buried way, way, way down under water.

Clearly, something happened at some point to make The Island disappear. We've had a lot of thoughts as to what this could have been: Juliet detonating the Jughead bomb; Desmond turning the fail-safe key at the end of Season 2; the initial "Incident" that led to the button-pushing every 108 minutes. But it seems pretty obvious to me, at this point in time, that someone on the Island now is going to cause that to happen. I'm not 100% certain who that will be --my money is on Ben, Jack or Desmond, though.

All season, we have been treated to a happily-ever-after life for many of our Losties ("Happily Ever After" tellingly being the name of the empirical Desmond themed episode this season) in Sideways World. Without question, every single person seems better off.

For one, many main folks are still alive (Locke, Charlie, Widmore, Boone, Sayid, Jin, Sun, Charlotte, Daniel, Ana-Lucia, Libby) and even some of the smaller characters, some of whose liveliness alone constitute a happier main character (Helen, Nadia, Alex, Rousseau, Anthony Cooper, Patchy, Keamy, Ethan, Arzt, Frogurt, Fisher Stevens' character). I still think we'll see my favorite dead character, Juliet, appear on Sunday as Jack's baby mama, too (and if she doesn't ... oh ... I'll be upset. Possibly angry enough to fire off a terse email to Damon Lindeloff and Carleton Cuse). But its not just that they are alive - those that are there are clearly more grounded and much, much less f*cked up. Jack, Locke, Sawyer, Desmond, Miles, Hurley, and Claire -- all are in a much, much better place than they are in the present Lost universe.

And given that the creative team seems to believe quite heavily in the good vs. evil battle, I can't help but think they aren't just teasing us with these glimpses into a better world for our Losties. If they are, that would be cruel, and I just don't think we are going there with the ending. Let's face it, all the references to Star Wars recently can't simply be coincidental (and there have been a LOT).

So taking Star Wars (and, its basis, the theories of Joseph Campbell) as our springing board, we are looking ahead to an ultimate showdown between good and evil. And we need an anti-hero to redeem himself. We need an Anakin Skywalker, the bad guy throughout the SIX episodes/seasons of Star Wars/LOST, to rise up from the Dark Side and throw the Emperor down into the well. And who better to do this, than our resident bad guy, Ben, who was literally begging for redemption to Illiana recently?

Yes, it appeared last night as if he had rejoined the Dark Side when he killed Widmore. But he gave the walkie-talkies to Miles for a reason, and that reason has got to be ... I don't know. But it seems like some sort of hint that Ben is still on Team Jacob to me. And Ben is our best bet to help overthrow the Man in Black, the Darth Vader who turns on his master, the Emperor, to protect the innocent. I suspect that Ben will, in fact, end up as our new Jacob. While Jack did drink the wine last night, I think something will happen to make him unable to continue, and that Ben will help take over the job. With Desmond's help, the Island will end up at the bottom of the ocean floor.

Which brings us back to sideways Los Angeles, circa September 2004.

At present, most - if not all - Losties are about to reconvene at a musical concert. Held at Miles' father's museum (who, I suspect, is still Pierre Chang). Let's see who we know will be there: Miles; Miles' dad; Eleanor Farraday Widmore; Charles Widmore; (most likely) Penny Widmore and Daniel Farraday; Jack, Jack's son, Jack's son's mother (again, I suspect she must be Juliet); Desmond; Kate; Charlotte; and Charlie. There have been enough hints that Sawyer might be there. Most likely Claire, as the new auntie to a musical prodigy, will join her brother and nephew, too. I'm guessing Hurley and Sayid find their way there, too, but I think that since they left in a different vehicle from Desmond and Kate that they are off to pick up some other Losties, first -- perhaps Locke and Ben. or Sun and Jin, or Rose and Bernard? Boone and Shannon ran in lofty circles - this seems like the kind of shindig they would be at, too. There has to be a reason Eleanor was guarding that guest list so harshly. He (we) weren't ready to see it yet. But we'll be ready on Sunday.

Something - something HUGE - will happen at this concert. And it will impact what is happening back on the Island in the other universe. What, I don't know. But I can't wait to find out.

As for Juliet... they intentionally haven't named Jack's son's mother. But she simply HAS to be someone we know. If it were his ex-wife, I think they would have told us about her already. Flashback, if you will, to Juliet's dying words after the bomb explosion. "We should have coffee... we can go dutch." And then, via Miles, quite tellingly... "It worked."


The bomb explosion worked. It sent the Losties onto a different trajectory, one in which Juliet and Sawyer meet again at a concert. They have an instant connection, and decide, "we should have coffee... we can go dutch." 


And they... along with Desmond and Penny, Jin and Sun, Jack and Kate, Charlie and Claire, Locke and Helen, Daniel and Charlotte, and any other couple we've ever cared about on Lost, can live ... happily ever after.

And that's the hopeless romantic in me, but I can't help but think that LOST has set me up to think this way. If I'm wrong, well, I guess I'll just have to get lost all over again and see where my thoughts went wrong. ;)