"Lost" - Season Three

I can't wait.

If you'd planned on spending the dog days of August working on your Lost theory - the one that explains everything from the polar bear to those parka-clad guys in last season's finale - maybe it's time you abandoned the quest and hit the beach instead.

Because there is no one explanation for what's gone on in the first two seasons of ABC's Lost.

At least not according to executive producer Carlton Cuse.

"We hate to debunk" anyone's theory, Cuse said - though he and fellow show-runner Damon Lindelof have dismissed a few, including the one that posits that the characters on Lost are in some kind of purgatory.

[...]

[W]hile the writers have explanations for everything that's gone on in Lost so far - and script coordinator Gregg Nations keeps track of the documentation - "it doesn't reduce down to a single, simple sentence," Cuse said.

But if there's more than one theory at work on the island, doesn't that mean coincidence - that shaky crutch too often employed in TV drama - is a factor?

Not necessarily, insisted Cuse.

"There are theories in physics ... that govern small particles, and there are Newtonian theories that govern gravitational fields for larger objects. Those two co-exist. They aren't unified into a single theory, but the connection between them is not coincidental," he said.

I don't need for their to be one theory-of-everything. All I ask is that it all make sense. Well, and that it isn't so stoopid that it'll make me want to throw something at the TV screen. That's not too much to ask, is it?

Some potentially spoilerish stuff is beneath the fold.

"The show's going to be about our characters' interaction with the Others. It's going to be more of an action-adventure year, more romance. We'd hoped to get romance last year, but the story didn't really get us there. We didn't get as far as we wanted in that regard," he said.

"It's going to be more character-oriented, less mythologically oriented. You know, last year was sort of dark and intense and underground and in the hatch," he said.

"Obviously, the other element that we introduced at the end of the season was that after 49 hours, we went off the island for the first time. And that was not a casual or coincidental or random choice," he said. "The introduction of the outside world as an element into the world of Lost is also something new for Season 3."

And because the strongest link to that world so far is Desmond (Henry Ian Cusick), you can expect to see Desmond again, too, and not just in flashbacks.

"It would be very stupid of us to kill Desmond," Cuse said.

We'll also - eventually - see Michael (Harold Perrineau) and Walt (Malcolm David Kelley) again, he said.

"We were interested in exploring what price you would pay to get your son back. The price that Michael paid was so extreme, it didn't seem possible that he could remain a part of this society after what he had done," Cuse said, noting that banishment goes back to the Greeks.

"He's been banished from the island, and that to us represented sort of the necessary consequence of his action. It doesn't mean his story is over," he said.

Hmm. I wonder if this means Michael and Walt will make it back to civilization. Given that a big theme of the show so far has been about how all these characters interacted (mostly unknowingly) before they ended up on the island, I think a fitting fate for Michael would be to be reminded of the island, and everyone on it (in particular Libby and Ana Lucia) every day, in ways he doesn't expect and can't avoid. He certainly deserves some harsh punishment for his actions last season.

Posted by Charles Kuffner on August 15, 2006 to TV and movies | TrackBack