Monday, April 26, 2010

'Wired's' Got Lots of Intriguing 'Lost' Coverage


Wired Magazine has a large package of stories/interviews about Lost, including an interview with the show's mastermind showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, a short article on the show's continuity expert and a piece on various Easter eggs that either wound up having significance or were red herrings (that drawing by the young John Locke, of what looks like a Smoke Monster -- see below -- freaked me out).

Below are a few quotes of relevance from the Lindelof/Cuse interview in Wired:

Question about the sideways flashes: "You now have two timelines: life after the hydrogen bomb is detonated and life as if the plane had never crashed. Will season six end up making sense of how these two timelines fit together."

Lindelof responded:

"In previous seasons it was very clear that this happened before, and this happened after. Now you watch and you go, 'I don't know when this happened, because things are different.' It's not just what would have happened if the plane landed; now Jack has a son and there are these changes.

 The audience is saying, 'I hope they explain the relationship between these two stories,' and that, to us, is the only answer we owe. Because at this point, the characters are not aware that there's any timeline other than the one they are in. But if they were to become aware of the parallel worlds, what might they do about it? That becomes a fundamental question."


When asked whether the show will ultimately be shown to be a "man of faith versus man of science" story, Lindelof and Cuse have a variety of answers.

Lindelof said:

 "That’s right. It’s order versus chaos, which is what it always was. But first it had to start as science versus faith, because Jack is a doctor and Locke is a guy who got up from his wheelchair and walked. Now the question has been boiled down to its essential root—is there a God or is there nothingness?"

Another question was if there are "questions for which any possible answer is not as interesting as the question would be before you knew the answer." To this, Cuse said:

"These heady questions are ultimately unanswerable, and we know the audience is hoping that those things are going to be answered. The great mysteries of life fundamentally can’t be addressed. We just have to tell a good story and let the chips fall where they may. We don’t know whether the resolution between the two timelines is going to make people say, 'Oh, that’s cool' or 'Oh, f--- those guys, they belly-flopped at the end.' But the fact that we’re nervous about it and that we’re actually attempting it—that is what we had to do. We had to try to make the dive."

Don't know if this bodes well or ill for the prospects of some of my most pressing Lost-related questions will be answered by the time Lost airs its last scene.

Image credit: Wired Magazine and ABC (for the Locke drawing).

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