Lost: Destiny Calls
As far as recaps go, this was pretty entertaining. I don’t know if that’s because the Lost drought has finally been broken, or because it was cleverly put together.
If you have never seen the show before, it certainly won’t put you in a position to start watching Season 5 and know what’s going on though. Let’s face it – we’ve been watching since Season 1 and we still don’t know what’s going on. What it does, however, is give a very brief outline of what has happened over the past four seasons.
What I found interesting is that there was absolutely no mention of Charlie, Eko, Ana-Lucia or any of the characters that died in previous seasons. I would have said that there was not even a clip of any of the dead people, but we did get a glimpse of Danielle and Alex and Ghost-Charlie scaring Hurley.
We got a brief introduction to our Losties – Jackass, Kate, Sayid, Sawyer, Hurley, Claire, Sun and Jin and Locke. Of the Others, Ben, Juliet and Richard were given screen time. Interesting. Charles Widmore and Desmond and Penny also got a mention. Daniel, Frank, Charlotte and Miles get mentioned so fleetingly that you could almost miss it. Oh yes, also mentioned is Christian Shepard.
Interesting. Some part of me wants to say that characters like Walt, Rose and Bernard are now secondary and that their role in this story is not very important or even over. But I won’t. I’ve been proven wrong far too many times before to make such a bold statement. I think, however, that Cuse and Lindehof have put to bed any thoughts we could have had about any dead character (or character not mentioned) having a larger role in Lost this season. All our theories about Libby, for instance, I don’t see materializing.
Redemption seems to be a key factor in this whole thing. I lost count of how many times they said the word redemption. We already know that characters like Charlie looked inside and faced their ghosts and found redemption. Even Michael found some sort of redemption.
D.Lindelhof: The Island is like the worst A.A meeting you could ever imagine, as it forces you to relive your past, over and over again, so if you were a torturer, the island is going to present a situation for you where you get to choose whether or not you’re going to torture again…
C.Cuse: that idea of redemption is really the central thematic of the show.
Anyway. Redemption is the big thing on the island. Got it.
Moving on.
Also very important is the “Big White Flash” – made mention of twice, if I counted correctly – first mentioned when Des turned the failsafe key and then when they moved the island. But we also know that the first time we encountered this flash was the day that the plane crashed.
Cuse and Lindelof touched briefly on the island and its invisibility and the fact that dead people appear at random. They also mention the island’s violent past and its violent future. The Black Rock and Four-Toes (the statue) are thrown in the mix to make us even more excited. I think we can be sure that we will, at some stage in the next two seasons, learn why these two things are there and why they are important.
No recap would be complete without the Dharma Initiative. What exactly where they doing on the island?
Lindelof: All we really know about DHARMA is what we see in these films. The Dharma Initiative says they came to the island to kinda make the world a better place, but when you look a little closer at these hatches, it feels like they were into psychological experiments, every one of these hatches is loaded with guns, so they seem to have been a little more militaristic than we originally surmised.
Basically, it’s just more of the same thing, isn’t it? More questions, more affirmation that we need to know what Dharma was up to.
The relationship between Ben and Charles Widmore is also a huge thing. I think I remember saying in one of my previous articles, that this was key. And I stand by that. I think that once we understand this relationship between the two… once we know how it all came about, we will know practically everything.
Cuse and Lindelhof do promise that they will start answering questions. Cuse says “this season, the show is answering more questions than it’s asking.” That’s great news because I honestly don’t know if I can handle any more big mysteries.
Anyway, I am just so happy to have Lost back. It seems like we’ve been waiting an eternity for it to get back! Hurry up next week!
Some interesting Quotes
Lindelof: "Richard Alpert is the guy behind the guy"
Lindelof (about Sawyer): “he’s a rogue, he’s a scallywag, he’s dangerous, he’s charming”
Cuse: “there is this sort of weave-of-life in that these characters who are brought together on this island all are linked to each other”