Friday, January 2, 2009

Lost - Season 4


With the fifth season of Lost about to start up on January 21st and the release season Four on DVD, I decided to rewatch what I think is one of the greatest TV shows in ever created.
I am about 8 episodes in and I have started to notice some things. Please note, there will be many spoilers along with my own personal thoughts, musings and guesses as to what may happen in the future based on what I have seen so far.

In Season Four's episode "The Constant" Desmond flashed back and forth in time and had to meet up with Daniel Faraday in order to get a semblance of how to deal with his shifts in time. Faraday explained to Desmond the idea of having a 'constant'. Someone to anchor you in both times. At the end of the episode Faraday found written in his journal "If something goes wrong Desmond Hume will be your Constant". On top of this in the 2nd episode of season 4 when the show introduced Faraday - his very first scene showed him watching footage of Oceanic 815 being found at the bottom of the ocean. His reaction as he watched this was by crying and being afraid. When his mother(? or roommate) asked him why he was upset, he had no idea. These 2 pieces of information tell me Faraday is going to be very important to the mythology of the show going forward. I am not sure exactly what is going to happen, but I think the island must have gone back in time somehow, and since Faraday wasn't actually on the island when it disappeared, he may get hit with the same 'time-jumping sickness' that Desmond got and he's going to have to somehow find Desmond in the past (or future).

The second thing I noticed the other day was in the episode entitled "The Shape of Things to Come". This may be my favorite episode yet. This was the episode that featured Ben in the near future after he pushes the Donkey Wheel at the end of season 4 and ends up in Tunisia about 10 months in the future. In October of 2005. This also showed his daughter get killed and ended with Ben breaking into Charles Widmore's home and threatening to kill his daughter - Penny - Desmond's girlfriend. This seems to be setting up the future of the show a) by the title of the episode, as well as showing and insinuating the roles Ben and Widmore play in the island and have been playing for so long.

The complexity of the characters and the big ideas behind everything going on is what makes the show so great. I almost do not want to guess what will happen and just enjoy the ride, but at the same time, I can't stop my brain. I am not going to philosophize now, I just want to point out what I believe are 2 important issues on the show and let these lie for now. I will return to my Lost themes as I finish season 4 on DVD and as season 5 airs at the end of the month.

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