'Lost' at Comic Con

With its final season looming, it was a big weekend for hit TV show Lost at Comic Con in San Diego, CA. 

The day kicked off with a morning panel led by creators Damon Lindelof and Calrton Cuse that featured islanders Hurley (Jorge Garcia), Ben (Michael Emerson), Sawyer (Josh Holloway), Richard Alpert (Nestor Carbonell) and, in typical always-keep-you-guessing Lost fashion, the deceased Charlie (Dominic Monaghan). The producers revealed two faux commercials, one for Mr. Clucks and another for Oceanic Airlines, which raised even more questions surrounding the possible time erasure / nuclear explosion of last season's finale. To further add to the mystery, it is reported that a phrase along the lines of "Am I really dead?" was written on Monaghan's hand, possibly usurping the line "not Penny's boat" he wrote in the finale of season three (read more about the main panel here).

Unfortunately, many were left waiting in the San Diego heat after 6,500 filled Hall H to capacity. Luckily, Entertainment Weekly reporters Doc Jensen and Dan Snierson, who run the in-depth blog / video recap 'Totally Lost', held a smaller panel in front of about 200 people later in the afternoon. They recapped for those who missed the larger panel, pinpointing the five main pieces of knowledge the audience learned: 1) we don't know anything (ha-ha) 2) time may have been rebooted which could mean that Flight 815 never crashed 3) the Dharma Initiative is becoming less important 4) Daniel Farady and Juliet are both returning 5) Richard Alpert's story is going to be fully revealed.

Jensen and Snierson, were then joined by frequent writer and script coordinator Greggory Nations, whom they immediately grilled about the secrets of season six. Nations replied to most of their questions with a knowing smile and a "maybe" before Lindelof and Cuse burst into the room and literally bagged Nations "others style" and hauled him out of the room (watch clips from Doc & Dan's panel here).

Then, in a surprise visit, Michael Emerson, fresh off his Emmy nomination, entered the room and took questions from Jensen & Snierson as well as the audience. Emerson gave eloquent and intelligent insight into the show, his character, and even American culture: "In America, we subscribe to emotionalism, we are actually quite sentimental people and we trust characters on TV...so it's disturbing when a character is chillier than the prevailing temperature in the room," he said of his character Ben.

As for the mysteries of season six? "We get told nothing," he related, citing that the actors themselves have little time to wrap their own heads around the twists and turns of the plot. Emerson just hopes Ben will stay alive until the show's finale: "with any luck, I will have to act in it." We hope so too, Michael.