‘Lost’ fans are no doubt all aware of the news that the upcoming Blu-ray and DVD releases for the show’s final season will include a new 12-minute epilogue scene featuring Ben and Hurley, called ‘The New Man in Charge’. To see the whole thing, you’ll of course need to buy one of those box sets. In the meantime, however, ABC has released a brief clip from it. Yes, it has answers. (Well, an answer.) For real. Take a look after the break.
In the clip, Ben visits a DHARMA “Logistics Warehouse” in Guam to “tie up a few loose ends.” In this case, that loose end concerns the mysterious DHARMA air drops.
One of the writers at TV Overmind has apparently seen the whole thing somehow (perhaps through illicit means), and provides a mostly spoiler-safe review. He describes the complete epilogue as an “answer-fest” and says, “A lot of fans’ burning questions are answered, and we got some answers to questions we didn’t even know we had. It is a little chopped-together, though, and that half of the video seems like a checklist of questions being rapidly marked off.”
This sounds like the producers of the series are using the epilogue as a way to appease those viewers who were upset that the finale episode didn’t wrap up enough of the show’s lingering mysteries. While I was personally satisfied with the finale, this sounds like a pretty good idea to me.
In related news, the latest (August 13) issue of ‘Entertainment Weekly’ has a new interview with Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse in which the Executive Producers talk specifically about fan reaction to the finale.
When asked, “How do you feel about those fans who really hated the finale?”, Lindelof responds: “To be clear, we are not indifferent to fan reaction. We care about what they think. A lot. And the hardest part for me about the end of Lost has been the people who are so angry at the show. To read that I personally wasted the last six years of your life, or to read that people think we lied to them – it’s very hurtful. It sucks to hear that.”
Cuse is a little more diplomatic in saying, “It was never going to be possible for us to fulfill everyone’s expectations or desires for the show. But the fact that there seems to be a significant amount of people for whom the finale was very meaningful is very gratifying.”
You can find this excerpt and a description of the interview on the magazine’s web site, but you’ll need to actually buy the issue to read the whole thing.
Rob Q
I am one of the devoted Lost followers who was satisfied with the ending, at least after I had time to digest it, and to me it was definitely six years well spent.
However, I have to say I was disappointed many of the questions were not answered, much like everyone else. I am salivating over the upcoming 12 minutes, just to get the final closure.
The scene above, despite answering one question, to me raises another. If Dharma has been defunct for 20 years, where has the food been coming from? We now know how and why the drops occurred, but not how the food ended up in the warehouse to begin with.
Also, the video was a bit fuzzy, but were those coordinates which printed out or something else?
I guess Lost is a show that will never end.
Josh Zyber
AuthorI think we have to assume that DHARMA set up some kind of trust account to perptually fund the operations at this “Logistics Warehouse,” even after the organization itself went defunct. What little we know about DHARMA is that its founder Alvar Hanso was a very wealthy man.
besch64
I’ve seen the entire thing. Let me tell you, the explanation for the palette drops is entirely unsatisfying.
SPOILERS:
Essentially, these two bums have just been hanging around in Guam sending food once every couples months to different coordinates around the world. They receive the coordinates via fax machine. That seems pretty simple. Just two guys who are unaware of the fact that DHARMA had dissolved. I guess it makes sense that the coordinates are sent by an automated system in the Lamp Post station. I’ll buy all this.
But wait a second… I’m remembering something… didn’t Penny say something about money, and how having enough of it can help you find anything? That’s how she was able t find Desmond and the island. And wasn’t there some super-rich guy trying to find the island too?
So wait. They’re asking us to believe that Widmore, one of the richest men in the world who is desperate to find the island, was unable to find this operational DHARMA station in Guam that literally has the coordinates of the island faxed to them all the time? I call bullshit. I call so much bullshit.
END OF SPOILERS
Here, check this out. You want a creative and logical answer to the palette drop? Here it is:
Remember how the island is surrounded by a bubble of disrupted space/time or whatever? That’s why it takes the helicopter a day to fly a mile and how the doctor’s body washes up on shore before he even died. And that’s why you need to enter the “bubble” at the exact right entry point or else you get seriously fucked up. So DHARMA sent the palettes through this entry point. But one day, something went wrong and the drone flew into the bubble in the wrong spot. Due to the disruption in space/time, it didn’t arrive until 20 years later.
Bam. The end. I just solved a Lost mystery better than the writers.
Josh Zyber
AuthorI haven’t seen the full 12-minute epilogue yet, but I think there’s one point you’re missing. The Guam facility was continuing to receive coordinates from the Lamp Post station. The Lamp Post was where Eloise had that giant pendulum thing that predicted where and when the island would appear. So Eloise knew all along how to get to the island. She was actively hiding this from Widmore and working to prevent him from learning it due to their falling out.
So it’s not like Widmore just overlooked this Logistics Warehouse in his search. Eloise had taken steps to make sure he wouldn’t find it, and thus wouldn’t find the island.