Lost TV Series News and Theories

The Lost action figures are now in stores everywhere. If you are curious to find out how they look, you are in luck my friend, because photos of the plastic heroes have been published on the Internet by a dedicated fan.

Locke looks spot on, but the rest of the characters look a bit like, well, action figures. Except Shannon, she looks like a Barbie doll with more or less accurate body proportions.

Now you know exactly what you want for Christmas! Yay!

There is a pretty good article over at styleweek.com about the new shows that are inspired by Lost.

Since ABC would never let its critical and commercial darling air anywhere else, rival networks have tried to find their own “Lost” this fall, with mixed results. CBS’s “Jericho” has gone all-out to clone “Lost,” a little too transparently. The “Lost” island has been re-created in the titular town of Jericho, Kan., possibly the only place left in America after a nuclear attack. NBC’s “Heroes,” for its part, borrows the “Lost”-style large ensemble cast and ongoing mysteries, with several disparate characters developing superhuman powers and slowly discovering how they can save the world.

The big difference is that while “Heroes” has successfully re-conjured that “Lost” magic in an original way, the poorly thought-out imitation “Jericho” smells like desperation — like the unpopular girl at school who suddenly shows up one Monday morning (or in this case Wednesday evening) dressed exactly like the popular girl.

It’s fun that Lost is “the popular girl”, but what makes Lost stand out, is that it is the popular girl at the same time as it is the smartest person in school.

I watched the first few episodes of Jericho, but I quickly lost interest. Heroes on the other hand, is very entertaining and at the end of each episode I always want more, so I’ll keep watching.

While Heroes is great, Lost is still playing in its own league. The characters really feel like real persons with real problems and even though the island, the mysterious Others and the smoke monster are part of Lost, the show is very believable and truly feels like something that could be happening on the other side of the screen.

Jeff Jensen at Entertainment Weekly has finally published an article on his experience of the meeting between Lost execs JJ Abrams, Damon Lindelof, Carlton Cuse and one of Lost’s biggest fans – horror writer Stephen King!

If you know Lost well, then surely you know that the producers of the show are huge fans of Stephen King. And if you read the author’s monthly column in EW, you know our resident It man is a huge fan is a huge fan of Lost, too. In light of this mutual admiration, we thought it was about time these guys got together and talked — with us listening, of course.

Officially, their 90-minute conversation took place on Aug. 11 at Stephen King’s office in Bangor, Maine. I had the privilege of hanging out with this fab foursome — King, plus Lost producers JJ Abrams, Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof. I say ”hang out” because even though I was technically there to moderate, no moderation was necessary. King took charge from the start, serving the role of interlocutor with ease. The producers were candid and had questions of their own.

Read the article at Entertainment Weekly

Update: The Tailsection has published Stephen King’s answer to the question “How would you end Lost?” from the upcoming Entertainment Weekly issue:

I would take the main guy, Jack – the first shot of the whole series is his eye-ball close up, right? What that always said to me was that from now on, everything I see, Jack’s the eye of the beholder. So I would do something at the end where I flashback to the airport when they were getting on the plane, and I would have him taken away by people who wanted information out of him.

I would have them hook him up to a machine or something, or feed him drugs, and reveal the whole series had been Jack’s hallucination, built out of fragments of his real life – people from his past, people in the airport, his father, of course, and the numbers. The whole thing would be a lot of shuck and jive. I’d make it work somehow. It would creak, but I’d make it work.

I have to say, I’m not too impressed by King’s idea of how Lost should end. The theory that everything is just one of the characters’ hallucination has been out there since season one. Overall fan reaction to that idea has been very negative.

Besides, the end of the NBC series St. Elsewhere revealed that everything had occurred in the mind of an autistic boy, so the concept has already been seen on television.

The Lost team toyed with the idea in the episode “Dave” where Hurley’s imagined friend Dave tried to convince Hurley that the island and everything that happens in Lost is happening in Hurley’s head. Libby then explained to Hurley that he wasn’t imagining.

In my opinion, the episode “Dave” toyed with the idea, but also made it clear that Lost is not a creation of one of the characters’ imagination.

The always ambitious IGN.com has published a massive list of mysteries that haven’t yet been answered. Here is a sample from the list:

#50: The Others and the Outside World

Whether or not The Others and The Dharma Initiative are the same, one thing has become obvious – The Others, unlike the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815, have connections to the outside world. They apparently can watch TV, they know tons of details about each survivor, including Sawyer’s real name, Jack’s profession, etc. — things that you might get with some Internet searching skills or perhaps something more advanced than that. One also wonders whether their new clothes, food, books, medicine, etc. mean that they have intimate connections to the world outside the island, at least in order to gain life’s necessities.

So the question becomes why don’t The Others leave the confines of their surroundings themselves? If they know where to find rescue or how to get away from the island, what’s stopping them from doing so? After all, they promise Michael and Walt when they hand over their boat to them that by going in a specific direction, they will find rescue. How come they don’t utilize this outlet themselves in order to go back to the outside world, maybe for some spinal surgery?

Read about the rest of the unanswered mysteries at IGN.com.

Via TVSquad

Contactmusic.com reports that Dominic Monaghan, who plays Lost’s Charlie asked the writers about some of his theories about the show:

“One of the theories I came up with was that we’d all in some way pissed off some huge billionaire.

He’d managed to get us all on a plane and have it crash into this island so that he could watch us from his castle with hidden cameras and create a “Truman Show” nightmare for us all.

Maybe I’d s**gged his daughter, or Evangeline’s character, Kate, had stolen money from his bank, or Josh’s character Sawyer, had fandangled money out of him. But it got pooh-poohed by the writers.”

The billionaire Dominic is referring to is clearly either Alvar Hanso or Charles Widmore, with my bet being on Mr.Widmore, the father of Desmond’s girlfriend, Penelope Widmore.

While I agree with Dom that Widmore probably has a lot to do with the larger story of Lost, I don’t think he got them all together and crashed the plane on the island because he was mad at them. It is an interesting theory though.

What do you think about Dominic’s ideas? Did Mr.Monopoly send them to the island?

Contactmusic.com reports that Matthew Fox, Lost’s Jack, was afraid that his family would die in a tsunami when Hawaii was hit by an earthquake on October 6th.

“I lived in southern California for nine years, so I’ve lived through some earthquakes, but this was the most intense I’ve ever felt. It woke me and my wife, we bolted out of bed, the kids freaked out.

It was a 6.6 (on the Richter scale) right on The Big Island, which is a couple of hundred miles from where we are on Oahu. My first thought was tsunami. We live on the beach, and I’m thinking in an hour, a 10 feet wall of water might come sweeping through this house – I’ve got to get the kids and Margi up onto the hill where my daughter goes to school. But ten minutes later I was cool. I went to my car, turned on the radio and it said there was no worry about a tsunami.”

Thankfully, none of the cast or crew of Lost were hurt in the earthquake.

Sky One has started streaming the first two episodes of Lost season 3 for free on their official Lost MySpace page. The episodes can only be seen by people in the UK and only between November 24 to 26.

In the UK, this season of Lost is shown on Sky One instead of Channel 4. However, when the show switched channel, Lost’s UK ratings dropped by more than one million.

Matthew Fox, best known as Lost’s Dr.Jack Shephard is starring in his first big movie “We Are Marshall” which opens on December 22.

In an interview with comingsoon.net, Matt talks about the movie and reveals why he decided to star in “We are Marshall” during his last Lost hiatus:

ComingSoon.net: Obviously you must pretty busy with “Lost” and you probably don’t have to take other work, so why did you decide to do this movie during your break?

Matthew Fox: Well, it was the script. “Lost” does take up a huge chunk of my year, and I am reticent to fill my hiatus with other work unless it’s something that I’m incredibly passionate about and almost like I have to do it. And that’s the way I felt about the story. I felt very, very moved and it affected me. The way I choose things is always sort of a nebulous, sort of vague process, and ultimately just comes down to sort of the sense inside yourself that it’s really important for you to do this part and be a part of this project.

I know this isn’t directly Lost-related, but since we all love Matt, I thought some of you might be interested the interview.

The latest buzz in the world of Lost is that one of the most popular characters may not live to see the end of Season 3.

New York Post writes:

Rumors are all over the island that “Lost” is going to kill off Jack Shepard – the show’s lead character – when it returns in February.

“This is the most insane rumor regarding ‘Lost’ to date,” the show’s co-creator, Damon Lindelof, told E! Online, the website for the gossipy cable TV channel.

“The fact that you think we might do it is incredibly flattering,” he added ominously – a non-denial that has only stirred up speculation over the weekend.

I know a lot of you will be worried that we’ve seen the last of Jack now, but let’s look at the situation:

From a career perspective, it might be a good idea for Matthew Fox to leave Lost.
The show has skyrocketed him to popularity and into the attention of every casting director and agent in Hollywood. At the moment, he is one of the most popular actors in the world. If Lost continues to lose viewers and the show becomes less popular through the next seasons, naturally the popularity of the actors may go down too. I’m not saying that Lost will become less popular, but for the actors who are getting offers from Hollywood, it might be a risk to keep doing Lost and ignore the career opportunities they have right now.

Looking at the situation from the perspective of the mid-season cliffhanger with Jack holding Ben hostage in a room full of Others, I’d be lying if I said that Jack’s chances of survival are great.

If Kate and Sawyer escape, Jack is still trapped with The Others, and they didn’t seem very happy about Jack’s attempt to rescue his friends by putting Ben’s life at risk. As soon as Ben either wakes up or dies, Jack has lost his leverage and he will either be killed or severely punished. Unless there is a nifty twist in which Kate and Sawyer manage to save Jack that is.

I’m heading into semi-spoiler territory now but if you want to know why Jack may live, follow my footsteps. There is one quote by Lost exec Carlton Cuse that indicates that we will see more of Jack during the second half of Lost season 3:

Carlton: We’re doing a flashback story where you’ll find out how Jack got his tattoos.

Unless the episode where we find out about Jack’s tattoos is the one he dies in, this seems to indicate that we haven’t seen the last of Dr.Jack.

I still believe that Jack very well may die in a future episode, but I think there is more to his story than we’ve seen so it’s probably not his time to go just yet.

It should also be mentioned that Ben offered to take Jack home if the operation was successful. It is entirely possible that Ben stays true to his word and helps Jack leave the island.

We’ll just have to wait and see.

This theory was written by Jaystao for our Lost Theory Competition

The island is a naturally formed ecological computer that exists partly in the psychological spirit and also as a real place.

Eons ago, a cosmic event occurred (most probably the cataclysm caused by a comet striking the earth and layering part of the earth’s crust with cosmic radiation). The aftermath of this event was a ‘pocket’ of radio-active stardust that lay dormant in the earth’s crust, but contaminated magnetic materials causing strange fluctuations in the earth’s geo-magnetic field. Over time this attracted liquid iron from the earths mantle, which caused a volcanic vein to appear through the ‘pocket’; eventually erupting and creating an island in the mid Pacific, much like the geological particulars of how Hawaii was formed.

The cosmic irradiated material was distributed causing an atmospheric grid to appear around the island, still attracted to the pocket’s geo-magnetic pull (yet buoyant enough to remain air born). Some of the hybrid dust remained in the atmosphere, some remained on the island and within the lava vein. The high mineral content of the volcanic material, coupled with rain water and sulfuric acids, caused the material to crystallize (similar to how normal volcanic mineral deposits form crystal). These crystallized particles soon formed a complex ecological chain. The tiny fragments of dust-crystals in the atmospheric grid (perhaps seeded by repeated eruptions and forming from water vapor, ultra-violet light, electrolysis and cosmic radiation from the sun) helped to create a ‘holographic’ and sonic reverberating grid around the island with the crystal particles forming a reflective and unified field. Repeatedly renewed by cyclic conditions of the weather and solar influences they also attract rain vapor more readily then normal dust particles. In turn these enhanced particles fall to the earth as rain, thus reseeding the island with ’solar enhanced’ crystal fragments.

Plants enhanced by this form of sustenance coupled with photosynthesis produce a naturally forming ozone gas around the island’s inner field. This gas acts as a ‘plasma’ field for an electrical current to flow (much like what is found in a plasma globe). It can also be breathed in by living organisms as well as imbibed. It is conductive and helps to create a magnetic ‘picture’ of a persons limbic system once a hybrid state is achieved.

The final hybrid state is a sentient creature able to tap into this ordered ‘matrix’ of the island – preferably in a dream state, in which the subconscious mind forms a relationship with the island’s ‘electro-magnetic’ template and imprints itself, like the blank slate of a magnetic strip (similar to a record player or CD).

Finally, the ISLAND has an agenda. Perhaps made complex by the various protagonists who at one time or another have ‘imprinted’ their collective minds and souls on to its template, but the agenda is simple – The will to escape its earthly confines and return to its solar origins. This overwhelming ‘urge’ or attraction is at the heart of whatever psychological and social particulars its various hosts and protagonists form.

- Jaystao