FANS OF LOST will be pleased to learn they'll get some answers to the questions that the hit series has tormented them with since it first crash-landed onto television screens around the world last year. Just don't expect them anytime soon.
Not since the early days of The X-Files has a television series spawned such a vigorous guessing game. What does it all mean? Where is it all heading? What's the monster living in the forest? What's inside the hatch? Who else is living on the island?
For the uninitiated, Lost is about a group of plane-crash survivors stranded on an island somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. What appears to be a straightforward castaway drama evolves into a supernatural tale as the survivors' stories and the island's secrets are uncovered.
Some of the show's mysteries will never be answered. Anyone craving to discover, for example, the true meaning of the six numbers that keep appearing will be disappointed. 'How would you ever answer the question of what something means?' Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof says. 'What we do know is the story of the numbers and why those specific numbers.'
Well, up to a point. A transmission from the island 'is heard by a man at a listening post in Australia and that man ends up in a mental institution and downloads the number to Hurley, and then those same numbers end up on the hatch, which we now know originated from a project called the Darma Initiative. We have that story.' All clear?
'But when somebody says, 'What do the numbers mean?', we just don't know how to answer that question,' Lindelof says. 'It's sort of like saying, 'What does this room mean?' or 'What do my shoes mean?''
