Confessions of a Lost Fan

(Note: There will be spoilers for the sixth season premiere of Lost. If you haven't watched it yet, and don't want to be spoiled, don't read this entry!)

As many of you know, I am a huge Lost fan. I have been since the second episode, which I watched after hearing so many good things about the pilot episode. I was 14 years old, and I'd never encountered a television show that was so complex, and with such intriguing and fascinating characters.

Much has changed in my life in the past six years. But one of the "constants" in my life has been Lost (if you're a fan, you'll see what I did there...). Every night it was on (or the night after, if I was working), I'd sit down, and watch it, and more often than not, I was left confused, but that didn't matter. I knew I'd get the "answers" one day. Slowly, we've been finding out more about the world that has been created.

The final season premiered on Tuesday. It felt very bittersweet for me, because this is the very last one. There are only a handful of episodes in which to reveal the answers we've been desperately looking for. What's with Jacob and the man in black? Is Ben the 'villain' or is Charles Widmore...or are they both 'good' characters with a dark side? What was with Libby being at the mental institution with Hurley, giving the boat to Desmond, and whatever else she did? Will our survivors create the alternate world where the plane never crashed? Why does Richard never age, and just how old is he? These are just a few of the many questions that need to be answered.

I am not expecting everything to be answered, of course. I doubt we'll ever know why Aaron "has" to be raised by Claire...a question that goes as far back as the first season. But it would be nice to know the answers to some of the big questions, especially after so many years of loyal viewing.

What am I going to do after the show ends? I have no idea, really. It has been a rough two years on the television front, since many of the show I watched (ER, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Pushing Daisies) either ended or were cancelled. I don't watch a whole lot of television, and I suppose that is a good thing as a CreComm student, but it would be nice to have a new show to get really invested in. A show like Lost, where the mere thought of missing an episode fills me with anxiety. Before I got into Lost, I was never passionately into a television show. It helps that Lost devotes itself well to discussion. I've spent countless hours online, and in person, throwing around theories, discussing character motivations, and wondering where the show could possibly go next. However, since everything good seems to get cancelled nowadays, I am really careful about what I get invested in.

I figure, we have a good three months of Lost to enjoy before it ends. The episode on Tuesday really left me scratching my head. With so few episodes left, they sure introduced a whole lot of new things to ponder. I trust the writers, and I'm sure they will tie it all together, but I was left wondering at certain parts whether what they were doing was a "good idea". Most notably were the scenes of the "alternate universe". Someone referred to them somewhere as "flash sideways" and I kind of like that. But my big fear is that the world on the island will cease to exist because the bomb did something, and the show will end with the survivors going about their lives as they would have if the plane hadn't crashed. That would upset me, because it would almost render the entire series moot. I don't think that will be what ends up happening, but I have to wonder when I see them all getting off the plane.

We did get an interesting insight into what their lives would be like if the plane hadn't crashed, and I have to say...for many of them, their life on the island was a huge improvement. Some days I think I'd like to live on Lost-island. Running away from the smoke monster (now known to be the man in black), pressing a button every 108 minutes, and good old fashioned time travel seems like it would be an interesting change of pace. Or maybe that's just the heavy work week talking!

I remember sitting down to watch it for the first time, and thinking that it was going to be like "Godzilla, but on an island". I was expecting a horror/thriller type of television show, instead of a character driven science fiction drama. I think we all won when my assumption was proven to be incorrect, because how long could a "Godzilla, but on an island" show last?