Lost Reaches Its 100th Episode

Island Secrets To Be Revealed On ABC TV Show

Apr 24, 2009

With "Lost" now in its fifth season, exec producers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof recently spoke to journalists about the direction of TV's hit series.

Ever since their plane – Oceanic Flight 815 - crashed on an island - located somewhere in the South Pacific - in 2004, the characters of the ABC TV show Lost have encountered some bizarre and unusual thingies on their adopted homefront. They include a spooky smoke creature, a group of people known as “The Others”, and a 19th century sailing ship.

With time travel also in the mix, survivors and viewers are learning a tad more about the island’s turbulent history. They’ve also found signs of those who inhabited the island before them, including a team of scientific researchers called The Dharma Initiative.

In addition, they’ll discover a slew of new secrets from Daniel Faraday (Jeremy Davies) – a member of a search team sent to the island – on April 29, when Lost reaches its 100th episode.

Spilling the Beans

In the episode, entitled “The Variable,” Faraday comes clean regarding what he knows about the island. Chat rooms may be buzzing with fans’ speculation, but nothing’s gonna be revealed until next Wednesday.

Amid all the secrets and guessing games, Lost executive producer Carlton Cuse said that action and excitement is the name of the game this season.

“We need exciting storylines – even though it’s challenging and difficult to achieve that goal. But, we’ve worked really hard and we’re really happy with the season’s episodes.”

Season Five of the hit TV show, created by J.J. Abrams, started with Jack (Matthew Fox), Kate (Evangeline Lilly), Hurley (Jorge Garcia), Sayid (Naveen Andrews), Sun (Yunjin Kim) and Aaron - son of fellow survivor Claire (Emilie de Ravin) - having been rescued and returned to the world.

But some people have been left behind, and for them to be saved, this small group of survivors must return to the island.

“You really do have to sit forward to watch Lost,” said co-creator and executive producer Damon Lindelof. “People seem to love the complicated storylines. That goes against the initial assumption that television caters towards the lowest common denominator. Well, as evidenced by our series, we completely reject that school of thought.”

With so much going on each week, it is perhaps inevitable that certain plot points are leaked onto the internet.

“Obviously, we don’t like it,” said Cuse. “People who visited spoiler sites and learned that the end of season three was a flash forward were gravely disappointed, I think, in the journey of that episode. It kinda wrecked it for them.”

Keeping the audience on edge and guessing is the key to Lost’s success, according to Cuse.

“When you watch a Lost episode, you don’t know what’s going to happen. Certain spoiler sitesare completely mercenary. They’re just trying to make money for themselves. It’s hard tohave any respect for that. Some people want information in advance, but we honestly believe that most viewers don’t want to know.”

New Blood on the Block

Meanwhile, the producers hope that the show – slated to end in 2010 - will draw new viewers, as well as maintain its database of die-hard fans.

“We love hearing stories about people who suddenly fall in love with Lost after going back and watching Lost 1 on DVD,” commented Cuse. “I heard about the Harry Potter series when the third Potter book was coming out. So I read the early Potter novels. That’s what happens with Lost. People jump on board for the ride.”

The copyright of the article Lost Reaches Its 100th Episode in Prime Time TV is owned by Simon Bacal. Permission to republish Lost Reaches Its 100th Episode in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.