Although the hatch is gone—really, really gone, as the set has been completely dismantled—the mysterious island somewhere between Australia and Los Angeles still has more than its share of buried secrets. And as the return of Lost launches its third mystery-dense season, Hollywood.com headed straight to the island itself for an inside look at what the new season hold, straight from the cast and crew.
Executive producer Carlton Cuse told Hollywood.com that the new season will pick up precisely where the last one left off. “We left Jack and Kate and Sawyer in captivity with The Others. The hatch blew up and we don’t know what happened to the characters that were there. Jin and Sun and Sayid were off on the sailboat and waiting to set a trap,” said Cuse. “So there are all these things that were in the works, and those all get resolved and dealt with in the first six episodes. But then of course the series continues and there are new questions and new drama and new cliffhangers.”
“The first episode is going to be amazing to people, because the turn that it takes is very sci-fi, but very well done and not inexplicable,” enthused Terry O’Quinn. “It’s fair and I think that it’ll make people happy.”
There are also several new faces on the island, including Elizabeth Mitchell (ER) as the alluring possible Other Juliet (who may provide temptation to Jack), and Kiele Sanchez (Related) and Rodrigo Santoro (Love Actually) as two romantically connected recurring characters. “It’s getting crowded on there,” said Josh Holloway. “We better start staking out real-estate. I have beach property that someone is going to buy off of me in no time.”
The End of the Jack/Kate/Sawyer Love Triangle
The producers have indicated that Season Three will definitively resolve the will-they-or-won’t-they romantic tension simmering between Kate and her two potential paramours—and do it early on. “I can’t confirm or deny these suspicions,” giggled Evangeline Lilly when we cornered her about the subject. “I think that I will probably get pulled aside by the producers tonight and they’ll slap my wrist.”
Lilly was willing to speculate what things would be like without the prospect of romance with one of her on-screen partners. “I like the twist [but] I have to say that losing a portion of my working relationship with either of them would honestly be very difficult for me,” she said. “I think to lose Matthew [Fox] or Josh on the other end would be really hard on Kate as a character, and on me as an actress.”
The actress also shared her feelings about exactly which guy Kate should go for. “I used to feel that Sawyer was better for Kate because they were on the level with each other,” she said. “They were really compatible in the way that they mutually understood and respected each other, and Jack was always a little above Kate, a little high-and-mighty for Kate. But I feel like Kate has grown enough that she’s kind of on a level with both of them now. I feel like it could split either way and Kate will be fine.”
Holloway told Hollywood.com he was excited about the possibilities of either seeing Sawyer in a real relationship, or even moving on from Kate to make time with one of the other ladies on the island. “I love working with Evangeline, but come on,” he said. “Sawyer is still a free agent and they should bring as many as they can bring. He’s game. He has a lot of love to spare!”
All About The Others
Bryan Burk, another of the series’ executive producers, says there is one storyline that forms the basis of the season as a whole. “If there is one big thing that you’re looking for this season, it’s that you’re going to know everything that there is to know about The Others and their world,” he explained. “By the end of Season Three all those questions that we had will be gone.”
“I think that some of that information will surprise you,” added his cohort Cuse. “It’s our characters interacting with The Others, sort of the ‘Us vs. Them,’ but who is ‘Us’ and who is ‘Them’ become very sort of a debatable question over the course of the season.”
“Like everything on Lost, your initial expectations are often confounded on the show,” agreed co-creator Damon Lindelof, “and so whatever you’re thinking about The Others right now, I’m pretty sure that you won’t be thinking the same thing by the end of the season.”
We asked Michael Emerson—who brought such menace to his role as the mysterious apparent leader of The Others, his take on “Henry Gale’s” true intentions. “I’m not quite clear what the whole villainous level or quality of Henry Gale is,” said Emerson, now a series regular. “I don’t know if you’ll ever get to the sort of secret and mysterious core of the character, but yeah, he’s going to get re-contextualized a little bit, and I think that some dimensions of the role are going to get opened up a little bit more. We’ll see more facets.”
So could Henry really be—or at least think he is—on the side of the angels? “This has always been my assumption,” said Emerson. “When Henry Gale said to Michael in the finale ‘We’re the good guys,’ I think that he meant that. I think that he spoke in earnest. So we will see. I mean, for them to see themselves as the good guys doesn’t mean that our ‘Lost-aways’ are going to be gently handled by them or anything like that. I think that we’re going to learn that they have a set of problems that, if anything, is larger and scarier than the predicament of the Lost-aways.”
Unlocking Locke
None of the characters had their faith tested in as extreme as way as John Locke last season, and—assuming he made it out of the destruction of the hatch in one piece—the contemplative castaway will be looking at life a little differently this season.
“I think that he gets a little more focused this season and that we end up liking the man and caring about the fellow,” O’Quinn told Hollywood.com, noting that the second episode of the season is Locke-centric. “I hope that he gets a little bit more careful in his choices and considers things before he leaves and stands back and watches. I think that he’s looking for a place in the family, a place in this group, and I think that he does what he does so that someone will approve of him. I think that he’s looking for an identity and he wants someone else to give it to him.”
It’s also expected that a flashback episode will finally reveal how Locke originally ended up in a wheelchair, and his hatchmate Henry Ian Cusick not only return, he’s been upgraded to series regular.
Who’s the Daddy?
There’s also been rampant speculation surrounding Sun’s miraculous pregnancy—is it an effect of the mysterious island, similar to the healing of Locke’s paralysis and Rose’s cancer, or is the infertile Jin not the actual father? Yunjin Kim told Hollywood.com that the third episode of the new season focuses on the Korean couple, and “then hopefully we will find out the secret about who the baby’s father is, and I’m sure that we’ll find conflict among the two of them. I’m sure that we will be fighting and screaming and crying all over again. We seem to do that a lot.”
Kim is excited about peeling away a surface layer of her character to reveal a possibly darker side underneath. “She’s too good, and all of the other characters are terrible,” she laughed. “They’ve either killed or someone or they’re drug addicts, and it’s like Sun has to be bad in some way, right?”
Daniel Dae Kim said he’s looking forward to the writers fulfilling their promise that Jin will finally learn more English—but how? “John Locke learned to walk on the island, and so maybe Jin magically learns English,” he laughed. “Who knows?”
Six Degrees of Separation
One thing that there will be no shortage of this season is the trademark surprise reveals that link characters that are part of one Lost-away’s unexpectedly to another’s. “The interconnectedness of these characters is part of the overall mythology of the show,” said producer Carlton Cuse. “And you haven’t’ seen all of it yet. There are more connections that will be coming out this year.”
Viewers can be virtually assured that the late, lamented Libby (Cynthia Watros) will reappear at least in flashback and her connection to Hurley’s mental hospital stay will be revealed, and while the obsessed Michael (Harold Perrineau) and victimized Walt (Malcolm David Kelley) are no longer series regulars they may return as guest stars, as the producers have promised that Walt’s extreme growth over the 60 days of the first two seasons will be explained (as the actor Kelley actually aged three years). Another ex-regular, the dearly departed Boone (Ian Somerhalder) will resurface in the Locke episode, though it remains to be seen if it’s a flashback, fantasy or something even more intriguing.
With the focus on The Others, Mr. Friendly (M.C. Gainey) and Alex Rousseau (Tania Raymonde) will be back, but so will two presumably dead members of the mysterious group: Ethan (William Mapother) and Goodwin (Brett Cullen), most likely in a flashback—but who’s? Jack’s father Christian Shepherd (John Terry) and his ex-wife Sarah (Julie Bowen) will also be seen in the past, along with Sun’s friend and possible lover Jae Lee (Tony Lee). We’ll also eventually find out exactly what happened to flight attendant Cindy (Kimberly Joseph) after she was abducted from the “Tailies” group, and learn more about the efforts of Penelope Widmore (Sonya Walger) to track down her beloved Desmond.
No More Rerun Runaround
After viewer complaints that the second season’s abundance of reruns made it hard for the fans to know just when to expect a fresh episode, ABC has agreed to let the producers kick off the season with six uninterrupted weeks of new episodes that cover a unified story arc and culminate in a major cliffhanger. Then, after a 13-week hiatus, the show will return in the spring for another uninterrupted run of fresh episodes, all the way through to the season finale.
“For us it’s really exciting to not deal with repeats and the audiences frustration,” said producer Carlton Cuse. “Once we knew that this was going to be how we were going to do it we started kind of planning the details of the shoot. We really designed the show around this six episode block in the fall and the cliffhanger, and then we’ll come back in the spring and we’ll run straight through there.”
The initial six-episode stint launches with a Jack-centric show, while episode two focuses on Locke and the third installment spotlights Sun and Jin. Episode four is centered on Sawyer, the fifth outing explores Mr. Eko and the sixth episode cliffhanger features Kate.
And that, given Lost’s supreme emphasis on secrecy and surprise, is all Hollywood.com could get out of the islanders. Oh, and one more bit of wishful thinking: we asked Jorge Garcia if, with Libby now out of the picture, if there was ever a chance that Hurley might still get the girl—any girl? “Let’s hope so!” Garcia enthused. “I mean, he only got a kiss, for God’s sake, and this is supposed to be like the ‘Season of Love’ on the island.”
