DEJA VU: SEASON 6 PREVIEW

To further clean out the archives of LOST notes and blog posts, the following are random theories, speculations and possible outcomes as the show was just about to start its final, climatic season:


This would have been a mind-blowing ending to the show, based upon the strange passage of time on the island and past events:

Tale of Two Cities, S3E1

The fake Henry Gale tells Ethan Rom and Goodwin to each go to one of the crash sites, that Goodwin can make the shore in an hour. They are both instructed to act as survivors in shock. They must come up with an adequate story if they are asked, but stay quiet if they aren't. He tells them: "Listen, learn. Don't get involved." They also must provide him with "a list" in three days. They both run.

My speculated end of show:

Mid air plane crash over island. Locke peers up to the sky.  Then he yells, “Jack and Sawyer, there may be survivors.” He then instructs them to go to each crash site and fit in.  Listen. Learn. Don’t get involved.  “I want a list in three days.”  Then Jack and Sawyer run into the jungle. 

I was one in the minority of viewers who believed the whole LOST island construct had to be about the after life. In trying to put together the elements, I proposed a complex solution.

Nexus-Buffer Theory:

D.O.C. = Dead on Crash

The passengers are not in purgatory but Hell. Ben, a minion for the Devil, needs to create “new life” in Hell to form an army to go back through the Gates of Earth to battle Angels  from Heaven on Judgment Day.  He uses grim reapers like Alpert and Ethan to collect the scientific  talent he needs to create his Hellspawn army. However, good and righteous people that have core values rebel against him.  In the end, those who  sacrifice and battle for good would be rewarded in the end by god (like a new life).  The idea of the characters being dead has been reinforced by new characters coming to the island and saying that the 815ers were killed, or they themselves had been killed (Locke’s father was in a car crash.)

Naomi's statement to Hurley is too big to be a red herring. It makes sense that all the passengers died in the crash. But then what happened to them? Many cultures believe that when you die on earth you are re-materialized in either Heaven or Hell. Some cultures believe that you are re-materialized with the possessions around you when you die. Just before a person dies, it is said that that their life "flashes" before their eyes. This could be data collection from a person's memories for the re-materialization in the next realm.

What if the 815ers landed in Hell but don't know it? Hell is supposed to be fire and brimstone. But what if it is an island of psychological fears and tedious eternity is one's penance? (punching in numbers every 108 minutes, staring a TV monitors, watching patients die in OR, running away from Smokey).

In hell, a pregnant woman who dies can come to term; but a woman in hell can't come to term to create a "new" life. 

But this little corner of Hell is special because Satan's minions (Ben's business card) are on a special mission: to create new life to go back through the Gate to Earth as the Devil's Hell Spawn army for the Rapture/Judgement Day. Juliet's research is all about creating new life where it should not occur naturally. That is why Ben will never allow her to leave.

So once the 815ers realize that they are "dead," and the evil purpose of the island Others, the epic battle between Good and Evil will occur.

(During the season, I speculated that when Jacob was confronted by Dead Locke at the Tarawet statue, to answer the plea, "they are coming," the cliffs would suddenly be filled with black winged devils ready to begin battle for control of the Island, which was the portal to heaven's gate).

And with various mythologies about the after life, and the LOST characters seemingly in endless missions, quests or tests, more background reasons for this theory:

Hell has seven Lodges, matching the seven Levels of Heaven. Medieval scholars worked out the different kinds sinners allocated to each Lodge, and each sub-section of each Lodge. Satan, naturally, is at the very bottom.

Although many parts of Hell are ablaze with fire, Satan himself dwells in a frozen lake of ice -- at least, according to the poet Dante.

Holy angels may also be found in Hell, dealing out punishments, controlling operations and keeping Satan and his minions in check. One such angel is Abaddon, known as the Angel of the Abyss, who keeps the keys of Hell. 

In Season 3, Sayid and Kate ascended to the upper level of the Flame with Beatrice as a hostage. They came upon Mikhail, who was holding Locke as a hostage and during the confrontation, Beatrice and Mikhail began shouting to each other in Russian.

(Lostpedia Translation from Russian)

--Beatrice: "We can't risk it, you know the rules."

--Mikhail: "There's still a way out."

--Beatrice: "We won't let them into the territory. You know what to do. It is an order."

--Beatrice: "(English) Just do it, Mikhail!"

(Mikhail takes aim at Beatrice)

--Mikhail: "(English) Forgive me"

(Mikhail shoots Beatrice)

Since nothing in Hollywood is never truly unique, I thought the premise of LOST could be a modern adaptation of Paradise Lost (with elements of Dante's Inferno): 

In Milton’s world view, the universe was represented just like the mobile above Aaron’s crib.  The universe of planets, sun and stars was encapsulated by waters which fed the Earth and kept the raging forces of Chaos at bay.  Outside the Universe sphere are the separate spheres of Heaven and Hell.  In Dante’s work, after the rebellion in heaven, Satan and his devils were cast into Hell in the midst of Chaos.  God then created a new universe which housed a new creature, Man, on Earth.  Satan built a bridge to Earth through Chaos and brought evil to mankind, which lead to the banishment of man from Eden to the mortality of Earth.

In religion context, man has both a body and soul.  Upon death on earth, one’s soul travels to another plane of existence.  Some religions base that upon the sins of the past; others various stages of enlightenment and reincarnation; hell (punishment), purgatory (penance), limbo (pagan paradise) or heaven (resurrection, eternal paradise). In the afterlife, souls have new bodies (vessels).  Various stages of the afterlife may be present in the ether of the after world, as the soul is cleansed of its mortal sins toward a path of enlightenment on final judgment.  The mind would control afterlife matter.

What was left in Milton and Dante’s works was the revenge of Satan against God.  There is an inference that Satan at some time would rise up to fight another battle for heaven.  As Satan had found a path to invade his spiritual form to Earth, it would probably be much harder to breach the gates of heaven.

Thus, we get to the island.  The island is a way station, a nexus  point between the gates of heaven and the afterlife universe.  The Hatch and the Numbers were the mechanism to maintain an electromagnetic barrier between the nexus bridge and the gates of heaven so Satan’s minions could not invade.  When the numbers were not imputed to vent the EM, an alarm would sound, an internal barrier would drop and symbols would appear.  I translated those Egyptian symbols to say “He escapes place of death.”  Once the EM force field was down, the nexus point (island) was exposed - - and other souls (devils) could arrive through either Chaos or through a gate to Earth to take control of this strategic place.  

The passengers on 815 were already in their afterlives.  In the flashbacks, there are clues that these characters died: examples -- Hurley: deck collapse; Kate: car accidents; Sayid: Iraq war casualty; Rose: terminal cancer; Rousseau: shipwreck; Desmond: lost at sea in small boat.  How everyone got on the plane is like the comment from Defending Your Life, how one imagines their demise is how they are transported to the next level of existence.

Three characters are special.  They were either stillborn, or died shortly after birth.  This would mean that they had no mortal sins.  Ben (premature and born on roadside), Locke (mother hit by car, premature), and Alex (mother shipwrecked or died of the sickness).  When Ben stated that he was born on the island, it was a reference that he was actually arrived in the afterlife as a rarity, a human soul without mortal sin. This would imply that he would have angelic powers.  But those powers could be corrupted by other, fallen angels or Satan’s minions.

Stranger in Strange Land,

Thai Jack

The tattoo that Achara designed on Jack's arm translates to "He walks among us, but is not one of us." 

I was still struck by this unexplained clue. Was Jack to become a religious symbol in the grand final battle between Heaven and Hell, as the "son of Christian?"  In the end, some believe it was a much simpler statement: that Jack was the only one who truly "sacrificed" himself so that his friends could "live," i.e. leave their island prison. But there is no context for this explanation, even today, as we don't know if any of the survivors truly had a post-Island life.

DEJA VU: SEASON 5 PREVIEW

Some critics believe that Season 6 was so off-the-beaten-story-path that the entire sideways world arc and The Ending should be erased from LOST memory. They believe that the show basically ended in Season 5.  It harks back to the paramount of theory speculation of trying to fit the conflicting puzzle pieces (clues) into some kind of rational, workable solution to the LOST world(s).


Prior to the Season 5 opener, I posted on a fan blog the following comments as my view of what could be happening in the future:

Pondering such a mud puddle existence, a flash of irrational thought hit me that makes sense: Richard Alpert, Mr. Eyeliner, is Egyptian! An ancient Egyptian. Painting on a pyramid wall looking Egyptian. We made fun of his appearance, but never asked why he looked that way.

Add to that image the fact that ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs are seen at the two great island mystery places, it made we wonder whether these are the big clues.

We have debated whether there are clones, body doubles, multiple lives, duplicates, ghosts, or zombies as part of the story line. I found this interesting:

In Ancient Egypt, they believed you would use your body in the afterlife. When you died your soul or ba would fly out of your body and spark your double (ka) which would then travel to the otherworld. However, it would need to return to your body, since without the physical body, the ka would die. People would be buried with possession that they would need in the afterlife.

If you were a pharaoh, destined to join the other gods -- not only would you need your body, but all the other accoutrements of status, from gold to slaves. Pyramids served to house this paraphernalia of eternity.

What if the show is not about earth science but the ritual beliefs of a LOST ancient religion? While not purgatory as the TPTB infer, it could be an Egyptian "otherworld" were your spirit body, ka, needs to prepare itself in a spiritual world (that does not follow the rules of time, space, science and physics we know of) to return to the human body it left on Earth. 

93 mph island moving away from freighter in Faraday 31 minute time lapse experiment.

Polar Bears in Tunisia, to plane crash site near Bali, to the island vanishing off Fiji, to the launch point in Portland . . .  the mechanism is a large CLOCK: the pendulum  the island is actually anchored by magnetic center of earth and the island is the end weight so to speak; and the pendulum arch runs from Tunisia to Portland, crossing the equator in such a fashion that the rotation of the earth (our 24 hour earth clock) is different on the island.  The Hatch release every 108 minutes is the EM “tension” on the normal tethered string of the pendulum.  The monkey wheel is the chain or distance of the tether.  Changing the tether’s space coordinate would make it appear to vanish.  Focal point at the bottom of a grandfather clock, you only see the disc when it reaches the bottom arch.  If you suddenly move the chain up, on the next pass the disc would be “gone.”

Now for the island to criss cross the earth’s Time rotation means the island has its own time and space dimensions.

Ancient technology may have been as advanced as modern technology (but merely “lost”).  All the elements of the industrial revolution were in the great library in Alexandria before it was sacked and burned.  What if the ancient Egyptians used advanced science and created a mechanical representation of their king’s afterlife?  Or if the Egyptian afterlife is the truth, and the island is the temple where the Pharaohs must prove themselves in order for their soul to be reincarnated with their body in the next life span.

SECOND YEAR

LOST concluded its television run two years ago today.

After the debate of whether the two-part finale crashed and burned like Flight 815 in the pilot episode, the LOST communities and commentators quickly faded from mainstream memory. No more weekly back and forth in the blogs and message boards about alleged clues, plot twists or personal theories. In the end, those outside-the-show interactions between other LOST fans were more important and enjoyable than the actual show's conclusion.

There was no cliffhanger. Either you were satisfied with the ending or you were severely disappointed. but wrapped around that gut level reaction was the gauze of what the heck really happened?

There were more misdirection, deception, lies, red herrings, dead ends, dropped story arcs, continuity errors, big question-no answer elements than anyone could have kept track of, let alone try to piece together in some reasonable form. Despite the loud cries from TPTB that LOST was not a show about hell, limbo purgatory or the after life, the End ended in a wait station in the after life, devoid of the science of time (linear or otherwise) or real reflection (if the island was real and so important, why did they not remember it when they created the sideways world?).

But you could stretch for the answer that was hidden in plain view from Season 1. Kate, the fugitive, has a dark secret to share. She wants Jack to know why the Marshal was after her.

“I want to tell you what I did—why he was [chasing] after me.”

Jack just shook his head. “I don’t want to know. It doesn’t matter, Kate, who we were—what we did before this, before the crash. … Three days ago we all died. We should all be able to start over.”

The answer was exactly as Jack told Kate: they all died in the crash.  And the entire hidden in plain view was each character's personal journey to start over again. Not in an underworld sense of repentance or redemption by a series of painful trials in order to purify one's soul. But in the sense of over-writing one's hard drive of human emotions, errs, flaws and torments, not in a religious purification ritual, but like erasing then rebooting a computer hard drive.

For some reason, the survivors of Flight 815 did not die in a traditional, religious sense. They did die in a human sense, but were granted an opportunity to find their "true character" in the spiritual island realm.  Their new "lives" and final report card was solely based on island events in order to meet Christian's definition that all the church participants' most important aspect of their (new) lives was with each other on the island purgatory.

Just as the wreckage of the airplane on the beach symbolized the wreckage of their past lives, the survivors who were willing to put themselves to the test of becoming lost then found in true friendship would survive to live in the End.

And that may be the final lesson of LOST. The friendships of the community that bounced wit, humor, facts, theories, arguments, puzzles, Easter eggs and frustration for six years.  

REVOLT

JJ Abrams has a new pilot series set for the fall. It is called REVOLUTION. From the press release:


Our entire way of life depends on electricity. So what would happen if it just stopped working? Well, one day, like a switch turned off, the world is suddenly thrust back into the dark ages. Planes fall from the sky, hospitals shut down, and communication is impossible. And without any modern technology, who can tell us why? Now, 15 years later, life is back to what it once was long before the industrial revolution: families living in quiet cul-de-sacs, and when the sun goes down lanterns and candles are lit. Life is slower and sweeter. Or is it? On the fringes of small farming communities, danger lurks. And a young woman’s life is dramatically changed when a local militia arrives and kills her father, who mysteriously – and unbeknownst to her – had something to do with the blackout. This brutal encounter sets her and two unlikely companions off on a daring coming-of-age journey to find answers about the past in the hopes of reclaiming the future.


I saw the trailer on G4 last evening.  My initial impression was that I had seen this show before hand, in various composite elements.  First, there was a 3D graphics landscape inspired series about what would happen if man was suddenly eliminated from Earth. What would happen to the buildings left alone in nature? The show depicted the elements taking over cities and towns in one, five, ten, hundred or more years without man's involvement. Of course, buildings were taken over my vines, animals took over the landscape, and then infrastructure collapsed into rubble. Second, several years ago there was a web novella that was updated weekly with crude 3D animation figures telling the story of a tech salesman in NYC on business when he woke up and most of the Earth's population had vanished in an electromagnetic spike. I cannot remember the name of the series or its bookmark on an old discarded laptop, but the story involved the main character traveling, mostly by foot, back to home in Seattle. When he leaves NYC, he finds bands of confused people, trying to live off the remains of stores. As he gets closer to the goal, he begins picking up pieces of mystery of what happened to everyone. There are bands of war lords on horse back inflicting their own brand of justice on strangers. There is also a mysterious shadow government organization trying to suppress the truth. He learns from underground groups to avoid that organization by avoiding urban settings, camping in the wild, and living on the edge. He slowly learns that there may have been a large electromagnetic burst of some kind which had an adverse affect on the United States, making some people disappear or vanish in their sleep. One of the tell tale signs when he reaches his home is whether his wife's bed had an indentation; that meant she was gone - - - out of phase with his existence. He also learned that one of his clients may have been part of the secret organization who knows all the answers to the mysteries of the Event. The story line began to point to some government weapons program. But before the story concluded, the author's web site stopped updating material. After no updates, I forgot about it, including its title.


The Abrams pilot story has a mish-mash premise.  A large, global electricity black out could happen. But the premise that man would not have the technology to create any sort of power afterward, including simple batteries, does not make much sense. Also, in the trailer, one of the characters when the Event is happening, downloads information into a decorative flash drive. Somehow this drive has its own power source that can be used to boot up patched up computer components to communicate with other people in secret. It sounds a little Hatch-like with the terminal to input the Numbers to "save the world."


If there was a huge electromagnetic disturbance that knocks out all of the electricity on the planet, why would it continue to prohibit engineers from rebuilding the grid by coal, steam, geothermal or wind generators? And if this EM event was so grand, why is the Earth's core not affected, as the series show people still living subsistence lives farming suburbia throughout the seasons. The Earth itself is a giant electromagnetic generator, whose polar fields create upper atmospheric shell that creates a protective ozone layer from the sun's deadly forms of radiation. 


So before the pilot is shown, there are concerns about the Big Premise of REVOLUTION. If you are going to set down a huge mystery, there has to be a science fiction plausibility answer otherwise viewers won't care.

FENCED IN

Jorge Garcia, who played Hurley, was probably the most beloved character on LOST. As the symbol for the average viewer, the jolly survivor was the counter-weight to the violent drama of many story arcs. But even in the LOST world, Hurley's character made an out-of-character move by mowing down the Others with his VW van in a beach rescue. No one thought that Hurley could be homicidal.

Also, no one thought Garcia would have trouble finding new work after LOST. He had the personality to be a character actor with a long career. He got a co-starring role on Alcatraz, a sci-fi mystery with the same plot elements of LOST: an island and time travel. But this mid-season replacement just got canceled due to falling ratings. It's sister sic-fi show, Terra Nova, also met its demise. Terra Nova had a big problem with its premise: if you were going to save mankind, why go back in time where you are not the top species in the food chain? To the era of dinosaurs, who are known to be extinct by a massive event, would find man a mere appetizer. So the big budget, big cast show fizzled from the start.

Garcia's show had another problem. It tried to be LOST but not LOST and got lost in the process. It started to raise the mystery questions and answer some of them within the same show. But the series suddenly turned into cookie-cutter hide and seek episodes of a new prisoner appearing in the present time, and Garcia's team had to track them down.

And that may be part of the LOST after-effect in Hollywood. Cast members may not be blacklisted, but stereotyped into a genre which audiences are not willing to invest great time in understanding a layered story line. Good science fiction can yield great franchises like Star Trek. But poor ones are lost to the annals of historical footnotes. Instead of being a ground breaking exercise, LOST may have actually fenced in creative types who want to take risks in television.

And the networks, with dwindling audience base, are not willing to guarantee a big cast, expensive, mystery show several years to develop a web of mysteries and back stories. Networks are not big risk takers today; they are recyclers of past successful, simple formula shows.

Even newer cable channels, who have 24 hours to fill, have not embraced the six seasons of LOST for syndicated reruns. There is a definite chill surrounding the LOST franchise.

TRAPPED IN A FLASHBACK

Several news reports allege that Matthew Fox was arrested last Friday in Oregon for driving under the influence.

This is the second alcohol related arrest in less than a year. Last September, Fox had an alleged drunken encounter with when a Cleveland bus driver who charged him with assault, battery and infliction of emotional distress. Fox was attempting to board a party bus reserved for a private bachelor party after a night on the town.   Fox was in Cleveland at the time filming a movie. Prosecutors declined to press charges, but a civil suit was filed by the bus driver.


It is somewhat ironic that Fox's real life post-LOST is starting to mirror his LOST character, Jack.


In a major plot shift, Jack gets off the island and returns to Los Angeles as a hero.  A hero with a dark secret. His personal and professional life begins a downward spiral of alcohol and drug abuse to the point where he is unable to function. He becomes obsessed with the Island and the people he left behind. He turns into a bearded mad man, inches away from committing suicide on a bridge when an intervening car accident stops him. He has to go "fix" people but he cannot fix himself. In the dramatic flashback cliffhanger, Jack is at the airport screaming at Kate "we have to go back!"


It is unclear whether the fame associated with 6 years of LOST has taken a bitter toil on Fox. Like most cast members, their post-LOST careers have been anything but moderate to a jungle whisper. The public likes to hop on a rising actor or rock star's bandwagon and ride along to the top only to jump off to watch the wreck in progress when the star eventually falls back to earth. It is the cruel cycle of celebrity.


The idea of ABC-Disney re-booting the series can only add pain to the situation. Fox was cast as the doctor in the pilot, but the original idea was that the viewers would identify with him (since he had been a television star on Party of Five). And then, in the pilot, Fox's character would die in order to emphasize the cruel danger of the Island and the true plight of the survivors. However, ABC and the creators needed a likable actor to hold the ensemble cast together, so the Jack story became the foundation of the series, for good or ill.


You cannot go back to the Island. You can't go back to the celebrity status and fame of Season 1. 

A SECOND CHANCE?

Variety had a recent article on Damon Lindelof, one of the creative forces behind LOST. Lindelof was commenting about how social media was changing the way producers of content got immediate feed back from viewers.

And for content creators, it's key to let audiences know producers are listening to them, he said.

The article stated that Lindelof began posting his first tweets after the finale of LOST paying more attention to the platform while on vacation in Italy. He would retweet negative posts about the finale and comment on them to let viewers know, "I hear you," he said. "It started becoming therapeutic for me. The idea of acknowledging that sentiment" can be a powerful tool to connect with audiences, he added.

After LOST ended its run, there was a bitter feud between die-hard fans and TPTB over the direction of Season 6 and the sudden purgatory ending. TPTB dismissed the charges that they owed the fans answers to all the questions they raised in the various story arcs. TPTB said that LOST was a "character driven" show and they wrote the finale to give the characters their final reward. The negative comments led to show runners going into retreat mode, and the series quickly faded from mainstream consciousness. But at least Lindelof now admits that he understands the bitterness of a lot of fans on how "their" series ended. Time can heal some wounds.

However, the article also made a strange relevation. Lindelof said he has no interest in revisiting "Lost" anytime soon.

"It's been two years (since the series wrapped) and we told the story we wanted to tell," Lindelof said. But he admits ABC might look for ways to bring back LOST in some form. "I do feel like the world has not seen the end of 'Lost,' but I'm not going to have any involvement," he said.

Lindelof isn't bitter about the idea, however. "It would be hypocritical for me to say I'm going to do 'Star Trek' but I don't want anyone to touch 'Lost,' " he said.

A new LOST show?  It is like selling a salvaged automobile as a quality used car at an auto auction. As the backlash cooled enough to have some other writers "re-boot" the series (as a franchise as Disney likes to have in its inventory)?

The difference between LOST and the Star Trek franchise is that Roddenberry's vision of his universe was complete and had the sci-fiction continuity that made the premise of deep space exploration work. LOST fumbled the ball on created a coherent Big Premise of the island, sci-fi physics properties or explanations of the mysteries to capture the imagination of the disappointed die-hard fans. 

It is also easy to see why a re-boot could happen: most of the LOST cast have not gone on to bigger and better projects. Most are available for re-casting in a new series. Except, re-shooting the program with a better plot analysis is like trying to put the toothpaste back into the tube. 

A LOST sequel or prequel would have major obstacles to overcome. A prequel would have to deal with the transition from the military rule of the island to the Dharma period. One would then have to really explain the science properties of the Island and why it is so important. This is something TPTB refused to grasp in the original series. A sequel could involve the Hurley-Ben "rule" of the Island realm, but does that really matter anymore?


Besides, the Numbers (viewers) don't add up; there was a steady decline in viewership after Season 1 and a fall off during the uneven Season 6. There is no pent-up demand for a return to the Island.


To re-boot LOST today, you would have to overwrite a brand new set of characters and concepts over the existing Island structures and mysteries. And you would have to come out of the gate with clear explanations of the hieroglyphs, the Smoke Monster, and the Island's special properties and how they all tie together "to save the world." You would have to re-create the show in a manner that had the hooks in the die-hard viewers, who were blogging, commenting and screaming about their own magical theories, speculations and desires for the show. But that fan passion is gone. With franchises like Star Trek, that passion never went away, even when the producers stumbled with offerings like Star Trek the Movie or Deep Space 9.


I don't know if a nostalgic "what if" things were done differently could successfully re-boot LOST.

NEW CONFLICTS IN LOST

Entertainment Weekly announced the following:

"Disney has tapped Brad Bird to direct 1952, a sci-fi project written by Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof and Entertainment Weekly writer Jeff “Doc” Jensen. Bird (The Incredibles, Ratatouille) is coming off the huge success of last year’s Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol, his first live-action film, which grossed nearly $700 million worldwide.

The plot for 1952 is being kept under wraps. The movie is understood to be a major tentpole for Disney.

Doc Jensen, EW’s point person on all things Lost, began his relationship with Lindelof after the series ended in May 2010.

Per Time Inc. policy, Jensen continues to report and write about TV series and films, excluding those produced by Disney and its affiliates."

What struck me as odd was the fact that EW's LOST guru, Jensen, is now in partnership with TPTB from LOST to create a new movie franchise. Disney's business model is not to make one-off movies; let the independent filmmaker do the art films. Disney wants to build "franchises," movies that are big enough to spin off sequels, television shows and money making merchandise. The idea that Jensen began his relationship with Lindelof "after" the series is as unbelievable as The Ending.

Jensen had enormous access as the TV writer to lost, its creators, writers and cast. Jensen was once called the "Cheerleader in Chief" for his wild devotion to the series. He got caught up in all the mysteries, the tangents, the literary references like many of us. For years he wanted Answers like the rest of us; and he was willing to go on the line with his predictions and ideas. But in the end, his final muted columns did not care about Answers but the acceptance of the show's writers to give the characters their happy ending.
Never mind that conclusion puts the entire series story arcs in total irrational chaos.

This latest news may explain why Jensen was less harsh with his final reviews than his fellow critics. It takes years of development before a movie idea is scripted, edited and then green lit for production. Was Jensen in discussions with Lindelof for 1952 prior to the End of LOST? We will never truly know. But if true, and it was undisclosed, that is conflict of interest to his readership.

Also, it is odd that EW did not put Jensen on a sabbatical to write or develop a screenplay in Hollywood. Instead, he continues to cover the industry that he is now an active participant. That is also a potential conflict of interest.

Now, no one in today's economy and media doomsday predictions would fault anyone from trying to score some extra income through their intellectual property, ideas or work. So long is it is fair and square.

As for 1952, a closely guarded plot secret? That year appears to be a possible run off point for various script ideas. First, it is post World War II where a huge male labor force re-enters an exploding manufacturing sector. It was also the early age of commercial aviation builders in California. Second, you had the emergence of celebrity tycoons like Howard Hughes, who flew between business and Hollywood. Third, you had the beginning of the explosion of suburbia, the Happy Days of a nice house, a white picket fence and two cars in every garage. Fourth, you had the Korean conflict and the frigid relations at the start of the Cold War. As a result of American forces taking German scientists after the European conflict ended, great advancements in nuclear technology and space technology happened in the U.S.

If this new project is going to be a franchise for Disney, is this first film part of a series? Star Wars is the classic model for how to build a mega-successful franchise. Will this project throw in the elements that writers appear locked in in the past: science fiction mysteries?  And more importantly, will the plot have a better sci-fi platform for believability and actual answers to any mysteries?

1952 could be a combination of Happy Days meets Mad Men, with a mysterious Howard Hughes type tycoon making huge leaps in technology for no apparent reason, leading to X-Files type investigations, cover-ups and conflicts among the main character.