Lost keeps formula for success

[Sydney]

What's in the hatch?

Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof has spent a lot of time pondering the answer because it's the kind of question the producers of last season's breakout drama constantly face. And the challenge is not just in deciding how much of the mystery to give away, but also to what purpose.




"As we began to design the show, the first thing we inevitably realized is there should be no big secret," Mr. Lindelof says. "It had to have rules, but the idea that you come to a scene where we explain the fundamental nature of everything that has happened would be unsatisfying."

If Lost has a defining secret – and the 16 million viewers of the ABC series already know this – it's that the show is about the characters. That might sound like a clich?, but it's as fundamental to Lost's appeal as its sci-fi genre elements.

When Jack (Matthew Fox) and Locke (Terry O'Quinn) decided to open the hatch in the season finale, their opposite reactions were informed by what the audience had already learned about them in the series' signature flashback sequences. The flashbacks, which will again be key this season, establish the characters' backstories before they wind up on this mysterious island.

"Locke is saying, 'I'm a man of faith, and I believe I've been led to this hatch,' and Jack is saying, 'This hatch is an arbitrary thing in the ground that has nothing to do with anything.' "

That's the genius of Lost: There's no separation between character development and the larger questions – they're inextricably linked.

"Before the plane crashed, these people did things in their lives that they were ashamed of or guilty about or feel regret for and now the island offers them an opportunity for redemption," Mr. Lindelof says. "And that's what the stories are always about, even in the context of weird things going on around them."

So whether they're in purgatory or in one character's mind or the subjects of a government experiment or even causing the terrors they encounter with their own imaginations in a kind of karmic game isn't the point. It's fun to guess about the ultimate questions, but the real fascination is in finding out what Kate (Evangeline Lilly) did to deserve jail and how Locke wound up in a wheelchair in their pre-island lives.

Mr. Lindelof says he also wants to show Charlie (Dominic Monaghan) on the road with his band and investigate what happened to Jack's marriage. There are also new characters with backgrounds to be unearthed.

What's in the hatch won't be a pile of maps (too obvious) or so vague (another hatch) as to unduly frustrate viewers, Mr. Lindelof promises. And the fates of the men on the raft also will be resolved shortly. The fact that you could make a hit show walking that line is the lesson of Lost's success.

- By Manuel Mendoza, Dalas Morning News