‘Lost’: Keep on guessing

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Recently I’ve found myself having the same conversation about ‘Lost’ with people over and over again. I’ll approach my fellow ‘Lost’ fans with the latest theories and questions I’ve accumulated in the hours since the latest episode only to be met with a serene smile and the phrase, ‘I’ve stopped trying to figure it all out. I just want to experience the ride.’

Given the frequency with which I’ve heard that phrase and the look of utter calm I see on their faces, I can’t help but think of it as a cult. But it’s really an anti-cult, one that requires dropping out rather than getting involved. It’s a mistake, I feel. It may free brain space up to consider other matters, but at the loss of truly engaging in one of the most complex television series ever made.

However, after the mind-twisting, time-traveling revelations of the latest episode, it’s easy to see the appeal of this stance. For one thing, I’d be able to go to sleep soon after and get a decent rest, instead of lying awake, puzzling over the mutterings of Daniel Faraday, or the identity of Ben’s spy on the boat.

The latest episode was Desmond’s all the way, from his initial mind-scrambling on the helicopter to his tearful phone reunion with Penny. (By the way, was there anyone who didn’t get just a little choked up watching that scene?)

After getting knocked just slightly off their course leaving the island, it appears Desmond became slightly unstuck in time. If that phrase sounds familiar, it’s probably because at some point you’ve read Kurt Vonnegut’s ‘Slaughterhouse-Five.’ If you haven’t, add another title to your ‘Lost’ reading list. (Currently, I’m working through ‘Watership Down.’)

As we’ve already learned, time behaves in funny ways on the island and not everyone can travel near it unaffected. Desmond’s sudden mind-wipe, and the erratic behavior of boat-rescuer Minkowski -- behavior that eventually results in his fatal brain aneurysm -- are the main side effects. And if we cast our minds back to the first season, we can see that the sickness that island castaway Rousseau claimed drove her crew to death was probably the result of mental time travel incurred by their passage to the island. One more ‘Lost’ mystery solved.

Meanwhile, we got a chance to see Faraday in his past role as a professor at Oxford, conducting primitive time travel experiments with rats. Luckily, time-traveling Desmond is able to find past Faraday and deliver to him the information necessary to make the time traveling device work. It turns out, the thing requires 1.21 gigawatts of ... No, of course not. This being ‘Lost,’ the necessary setting is 2.342, which is reminiscent of the last two numbers in that mysterious number sequence from back in the first season. More connections.

Yes, the time traveling was certainly thrilling, but I keep thinking about a throw-away line spoken in the auction scene that takes place in 1996. We saw Penny’s father, the evil businessman Charles Widmore, bidding on the logbook of the Black Rock, that slave ship that wrecked on the island. The name of that ship’s captain, it turns out, was Tovar Hanso. What is his connection to Dharma Initiative founder Alvor Hanso? And what is their connection to Charles Widmore? I hope we find out soon, though it’s beginning to look likely that Ben’s real arch-nemesis is Desmond’s as well: Penny’s father.

But this is all pure speculation. Just wild guesses and theories. Obviously, ‘Lost’ has more secrets to reveal to me and I don’t have nearly enough information to make a decent guess as to what the real story is, but that doesn’t matter. As long as the ‘Lost’ ride is on the air, I’m going to keep riding, yes. But I’m also going to keep watching the clues and figure out where the drivers are taking us. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

-- Patrick Day