Spoilers for LOST Seasons 1-5 below the image!
As all good LOST fans know, the beginning of Season 6 is upon us. On February 2, in the U.S. at least, the first episode of the final season will premiere. And like I’m sure many of you are, I’m both indescribably excited that we’re finally going to learn how this story ends, and more than a little sad to see my favorite show go.
But no time for wistfulness! Juliet just blew up a bomb, Ben just killed Jacob, it seems that Locke is actually Flocke (Fake-Locke), and there are a million and one directions that the show can still take us from here.
To do our very humble best to try to figure it all out, the LOST-obsessed members of the Feministe team will be having a discussion every week. In this new Thursday LOST Blogging format (yes, we’ll be sticking with Thursdays), we’ll be having a roundtable with Sally, Lauren, Jill, and myself each laying out our analysis and predictions, whatever they may be. Every week, Sally and I will be taking turns introducing and moderating the discussions. And this week, we’re starting out in advance with a free-form conversation about what this final season might have in store.
Check it out below the jump, and leave your own predictions in the comments. (Just remember: NO SEASON 6 SPOILERS ALLOWED! If it hasn’t aired, or been made readily known by the producers, don’t post it.)
LAUREN: I would bet money that Season Six Locke is not Locke as we’ve known him. I think Locke is dead and that his body has been inhabited by Jacob’s pal that the Losties are calling The Man in Black. In a flashback we saw the two of them together, with the unnamed man saying he’d kill Jacob if he could ever find a loophole, and I’m betting that inhabiting Locke’s body was exactly that loophole. If I’m wrong about this, my secondary prediction about this story line is the boring one, that this guy communicated to Locke (forget about the dead body) and told him that he had to convince Ben to kill Jacob and that was his loophole. Locke is egomanical enough to take on this role, but this seems too obvious so I’m going for the more complicated answer.
At this point I’m in it for the Sayid eye candy. And to see how and whether Sun and Jin are reunited.
JILL: The Sayid eye candy is what sustained me through Season 3. Hot damn.
CARA: Psh. Season 3 was definitely my least favorite, thus necessitating the intervention of hotness the most, but Seasons 4-5 so win for best Sayid eye candy.
JILL: Fair point!
LAUREN: Did anyone else see the half-hour series recap that ABC aired last week? It was a decent recap for newcomers that covered how the show has influenced pop culture, but they also posed that the only reason that ladies like the show is that ladies are in it for the on-screen romance. Jack loves Kate, Kate loves Sawyer, Sawyer loves Juliet, but Juliet loves Jack. Love triangle! Or, love square? But c’mon, the idea that a woman wouldn’t be interested in any kind of science fiction if it doesn’t involve romance undoes half of the burgeoning geek and gaming culture that has overtaken the last decade.
SALLY: Is that really what they think? That women watch for the love polygons? Odd because that’s my least favorite aspect of this show. Well, that and Jack’s annoyingness.
JILL: Agreed! I mean, I am always happy to see sweaty, shirtless Sawyer (and to be totally honest, sweaty shirtless Kate, too) but the love triangle/square/polygon is annoying and must stop. Also, I would not be sad if they killed off Jack. Although he is kind of pretty.
CARA: The death of Jack is perhaps the thing I both want most and expect least out of Season 6. Off with his whiny, misogynistic head!
SALLY: Ditto to Cara! Getting back to predictions, I’ll go by character:
Locke – I think most of us agree that Flocke/MIB/Smokie are the same.
Jack & Sawyer – If the final season goes back to the struggle of faith & reason, I think Jack will represent faith (as we saw last season), and I’m guessing Sawyer will take the reason side. I’d rather it be Kate but I don’t see them bringing her to the forefront.
Kate – She’ll focus on finding Claire.
Claire – She’s alive! I’ll be sad if she’s dead – she didn’t even get a death scene!
Sayid – Sayid is alive too, mostly because I might stop watching if he’s dead.
Hurley – He’ll be the one to discover what the numbers mean, assuming they tell us, which they have to or I’ll be annoyed.
Jin & Sun – My hope is they’ll be reunited soon if only because “I need to find my husband” is getting old.
Ben – Poor Ben. I think he’s probably evil, but this whole Locke/Flocke having the power thing made me feel bad for him, especially last season’s finale.
Desmond – The island’s not done with him yet, so said Eloise. I’m not sure what it means, but I really hope he doesn’t go back. But I assume he will since he said to Penny “why would I go back” all ominous-like.
Dead characters – From the promo poster, we know most of them are back. How do we think this will happen? I’m guessing either flashbacks showing how they’re connected, or the good-old “talking to people on the island while dead” thing. Hopefully the former, because that’s something I’ve always loved about the show, how they’re all connected.
LAUREN: I’ve seen a lot of predictions that someone is going to die in the season opener, and I’m betting on Claire or Sayid.
What do you guys think Jacob, the omnipotent weaver that just happens to be able to manipulate time, is about? And how do you think Christian is related to all this? Is this a god/prophet relationship? Or is Christian also inhabited by the MIB?
SALLY: I definitely see Claire dying in the premiere. I don’t care much if she lives or dies, I just want to be right about the fact that she’s currently alive.
I haven’t figured out if Christian is MIB or Jacob; I tend to lean towards Jacob. I don’t really know what to make of Jacob. I think MIB is supposed to be evil, which makes me guess Jacob is good and holds MIB at bay. But because nothing is ever what it seems, it’s hard to sort out. I think Richard is there to help Jacob but also represents the interests of the island. I’m not sure how that will change now that Jacob is dead.
JILL: If they kill Sayid, I will stop watching. I think a lot of people would stop watching if they killed Sayid — so I don’t think they’ll do that. Claire though, meh. They might kill her off, although it would create storyline problems with the whole “Kate took Claire’s baby” thing that at some point has to blow up, right?
Also, I keep wondering if they’re ever going to go back to some of the weird things they introduced in Season 1 — like the polar bear and that black stallion. And Walt! I know they brought him back for a while, but the “Walt is magic” theme was just left hanging.
CARA: I don’t think anything could get me to stop watching at this point, but the death of Sayid would crush me to my very core. With regards to Season 1, the writers have said that Season 6 will reference it a lot, so I’ve got my fingers crossed!
As for predictions, in my mind, when Juliet blew up that bomb, and when we learned that Locke isn’t really Locke, everything just went out the window entirely. I really don’t have any idea where the show is taking us, anymore.
But with that being said, I think that the show has been dancing around the ideas of good vs. evil for the entire series. And I predict that not only is the final season going to greatly revolve around good vs. evil, but that we’re going to finally learn who stands where, particularly in the realm of Jacob vs. “Esau” (MIB), and Ben vs. Widmore.
Secondly, I think, as I have thought for quite some time now, that Desmond is going to play a very significant role in the resolution of the show. Desmond is “special,” so we’ve been told repeatedly. I think we’re finally going to figure out how, and learn why it is that he and seemingly only he becomes unstuck in time in the way he does, and I think that it’s going to be big.
Lastly, I think that the “war” that Widmore said was coming is going to come. This likely ties into the good vs. evil. And I don’t know who the sides are going to be, which side is the “right” one, and if the war in question is going to take the form of any traditional kind of war, but I think we’re going to see it. I think that’s why Ilana and her people were sent to the island by Jacob. And I think it’s going to be a big determining factor in how the show ends, if not the determining factor.
JILL: I agree that Desmond has to play a key role in the conclusion of the show. I think Walt should too, but he won’t, only because the actor is too old and it’s too hard to incorporate him. Juliet is dead and won’t come back.
CARA: I’ve heard rumblings that Elizabeth Mitchell (Juliet) is scheduled to appear, but alas you are probably right, and sightings will be in flashback or dead character mode. Which is a damn shame, isn’t it? We’re just about out of female characters to root for.
JILL: Ugh, I know! I loved Kate in Season 1, and was floored when I read reports that she was supposed to be the group leader, but NBC execs thought that people wouldn’t watch the show if a chick was in charge, so they gave that role to Jack and turned Kate into one corner of a love triangle. So disappointing. But, predictions for this season: I think the writers are just going to can any explanation of the Seaons 1 and 2 weirdness — there’s too much to explain at this point, and they seem to have moved on from “hey, look, a polar bear!” Agreed that the smoke monster is Esau. And with LOST getting all Biblical, I kind of think that the pregnant-women-dying thing is tied into Adam & Eve and some sort of lady-curse. I also wonder how the good/evil Jacob/Esau story is going to play out, especially with Locke ostensibly being tied to Jacob, but Esau (we think) impersonating Locke — reversing the Biblical story if we accept that Locke is tied to Jacob — but with Ben killing Jacob. Is that final definitive proof that Ben is on the dark side? Does that put Widmore on the good side? (Impossible!). Will the Others (Jacob’s people) rise up and defeat Esau? Or are the writers just effing with us? (I think that’s probably it).
I also love that the LOST writers are huge lit nerds (hence practically every character’s name), and the lit nerd in me hopes that the character names are foreshadowing devices. Because that + all this Bible stuff would be fun.
CARA: Really, I just have a lot of hopes for Season 6. I hope that we’re going to finally learn what the numbers mean. I hope we’re going to learn what exactly the smoke monster is (I still think it’s Esau). I hope we’re going to find out what’s going on with the dead people walking around (I still think it’s the smoke monster/Esau). I hope we find out who Adam and Eve were (I don’t think it’s Rose and Bernard). I hope we’ll learn more about Alpert specifically. I hope that we might finally, somehow, get some closure with Libby. I hope we’ll find out how the island moves. I hope we’ll find out what happened to the statue, and why pregnant women die on the island (I suspect it might possibly be related). And above and beyond anything else — even the numbers — I hope simply that whatever it is, it’s going to be good. And maybe even make some sort of sense.
Does every show now have to do an homage to the Last Supper?
http://elblogdelemperador.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/battlestar_galactica_last_supper.jpg
Screw you, Dan Brown, this is your fault.
What a great summary of the unanswered questions!! I won’t miss these Thursday discussions. My brain hurts even more. Everytime I try to understand the time traveling in season five, my mind just says “no, I have been a loyal comrade for 64 years, but this is too much.”
I’ve been rewatching a lot of Lost recently, and going through season 5 again, I think that Locke still is Locke. He just acts so much like the same, even with characters who never knew him while he was alive. Now, he very well might be being manipulated by the MiB, or maybe he was the MiB all along reincarnated or something, but I just don’t feel like he’s a straight up impostor.
I am not sure that Ben and Widmore are actually on opposing sides in the grand scheme of things, because they both work towards the same goals sometimes (like getting the Oceanic Six back to the island) and are bound by some kind of rules, meaning they might have their faith in the same authority (Jacob? I would have thought so *before* Ben killed him, but after? Obviously Ben listened to the smoke monster over Jacob). And they both do “good” things or “bad” things in about equal measures, even though the both claim to be on the side of good.
I hope that they never really explain what the Island is, but I sure as hell want to know who the players really are. There are so many factions right now and they all act in morally grey areas (except for Hurley and maybe Frank Lipidus) and we don’t know who is really in charge. I suspect that the Island is just a magical place without a will of its own, and any guiding forces are created by the entities that control the island’s powers the most. The war might just be a power struggle between rivals and nothing more, only those rivals have tremendous resources, and thus the ability to do great damage.
I also have a theory that the smoke monster is a collective conscience of all the people who have died on the island. That’s why it’s so unpredictable – so many people have died and they all want very different things. It would be a good way of holding leaders of the island accountable for the people that they killed, anyway.
I want Ben to die a horrible death. And not to be further redeemed first! He’s a first class treacherous bastard and catastrophic asshole and I hate him so much and I want him to get what’s coming to him!
I love Sayid a ton, but he hasn’t done anything reasonable in a few seasons. The whole working for Ben thing? I didn’t buy it. And then shooting little Ben without getting the 411 on how time travel worked? Didn’t buy that either. Sayid thinks things through too much for that.
I’m not sure who coined the “Flocke” portmanteau, but I wonder if they were aware of the polar bear cub born in a German zoo named Flocke (German for “flake” as in “snowflake”).
Flocke the polar bear
It’s almost like one of those seemingly coincidental “crosses” that happened so many times in Season 2 flashbacks.
Interesting! I don’t know how many other folks are using it, but I actually got it from Sally. :) As we’re both huge Beatles fans, I assumed she came up with it based on the fact that “Fake Paul” in the Paul Is Dead myth is regularly referred to as Faul, but you’d have to ask her!
You gaiiiiiiiiiiiiz. How can this show be over after this season? I don’t even…
I don’t want to make any predictions, because mine always turn out to be crap. I definitely like the whole Jacob/Esau thing that has been going on. I like to see Biblical mythology being used this way in pop culture – it’s more than just winking references, it’s actually kind of intense, and I dig that, as a writer.
I really hope for some sort of redemption for Sayid. He’s a great character, and I just feel he’s been so underused/misused recently. Same with Hurley. Despite all the wonderful eye candy on the show, Hurley is still my favourite character, and “Tricia Tanaka Is Dead” is still my favourite episode, and I just hope that the potential there can really be harnessed in the final season.
I’m ridiculously excited about the statue. Child-like glee. Etc.
I’ve seen “Flocke” all over the net…
As to Juliet…I read that the producers of V allowed the filming to be scheduled around her because they decided to bring Juliet back for the last season of LOST…who knows….we shall see.
Last scene will be the Losties on the plane trying to redo what they have already done.
THEY STOLE FROM BATTLESTAR GALACTICA!!
Who, granted, may have stolen from Da Vinci, but . . . oh, whatever.
I hope we get some answers and also some eye candy this season. However, I will confess that the most fun I ever had with the show was picking it apart for a sociology paper in which I used it as a dramatization of female marginalization (and ultimately male impotence) in post-9/11 America. Fun times.
BSG wasn’t the first one to redo the last supper either. this blog compiled some of the renditions: http://fishbiscuitlandblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/lost-supper-so-far-first-cast-photo-for.html
i’ve been bugging every one who would listen to me about lost for the past 8 months (well, not really, but i managed to get 2-3 people to start watching the show, and they were glad i convinced them :p). i’m gonna be insufferable from feb. 2nd to… may? and then incredibly satisfied (i hope) and depressed. because even though LOST has flaws, it’s still THE. best. show. evar.
Take it from me, we’ve been brainwashed.
MIB is the good guy while Jacob is the manipulative one who goes around touching people and telling them they have a choice when they really don’t. E.g. did Ben really have a choice not obeying Locke when he stabbed Jacob. What would you do if your dead daughter came and ordered you to obey Locke. Jacob HAD To be killed as he gives people wrong and false ideas. Here’s the scoop…MIB is actually Moses.
As Locke said, things are going to change in season 6…starting with our perceptions of who’s right and who’s wrong
In regards to “Flocke,” I just thought it sounded cool and went in the spirit of Benry (from LOST) and Faul (from The Beatles). Since then, I’ve seen it a few other places but I didn’t know about that polar bear thing which is a neat coincidence.
ElleDee, I like your predictions, and I actually think you’re on the right track with Ben & Widmore not really being on different sides. I think they’re both more bad than good. I feel like the only person so far who is anything close to “good” is Alpert, though he’s really more neutral than anything else.
Glostie, that is definitely something I’ve seen around, that MIB is actually the good guy. Most people point to the fact that the obvious signs that Jacob is good and MIB is bad are just way too obvious – like wearing white instead of black, the fact that bad people kill good people more often than the other way around, etc.