WARNING! Thar Be Spoilers ahead!

At the Emmy’s this weekend two stars from ABC’s “Lost” let a little info about their roles slip out during interviews.

Daniel Dae Kim commented on his character’s apparent death at the end of last season by saying “My character’s fate is up in the air a little bit, but I think if you keep watching, you’ll be rewarded.”

That doesn’t really tell us if Jin is alive, as he could be appearing in flashbacks, but we do know that he has been in Hawaii recently, where the show is filmed, so it is a safe bet that we haven’t seen the last of Jin.

Emily de Ravin has also confirmed Claire’s status. Telling us that no only will she NOT appear in Season 5 – but that she WILL appear in Season 6. So that’s spoilers for two seasons for the price of one!

So, there you have it – some nice juicy “Lost” spoilers for you to sit on until 2009 when we actually get to see the show back on the air!

Michelle Rodriguez, one victim of The Great Lost Drunk Driving Sting of 2006, is scheduled to be returning to the show this season, according to Entertainment Weekly.

Ausiello says that she is set to appear in the second episode only, so it doesn’t take a Lost guru to determine that it will be in some kind of flashback or hallucination. She guest stars alongside Cheech Marin, which makes it appear to be a Hurley-centric episode…and if you’ll remember, in last year’s Hurley-centric kick-off, the cop that busted him was Ana Lucia’s ex-partner. I wonder if there’s a connection there…

Matthew Fox has a lot to smile about this week. He just received a $75,000 per episode pay raise for his work on “Lost”.

Matthew isn’t the only one who has been negotiating a pay raise recently. Evangeline Lilly has also been trying to get a pay bump for her role as “Kate” on the series.

Currently, the remaining series regulars earn $80,000-$90,000 per episode…and chances are they may be a little upset that Fox is worth (basically) 3 of them.

It’s hard to believe that production for Season 5 of Lost is starting in 12 days. With the gear-up of production comes the trickling of casting news. The first Lost news this year regards 2 new characters, Caesar and Ilana.

Caesar is described as “a dangerous, physical and extremely intelligent male between the ages of 35 and 45. Although his intentions are unclear, this much is certain: He’s as skillful at charming people as he is at killing them. He also has a dark past…”

As for Ilanna, she’s “a European female in her late 20s to early 30s who possesses great intelligence, but who’s also dangerous as all get out. She’s alluring and apparently used to getting her own way.”

Jeff Jensen at EW, where the scoop comes from, points out that Caesar was the name of the primate who led the revolt against the humans in Planet of the Apes. Could Lost’s Caesar be Ben’s predecessor as leader of the Others, who ordered the gassing of the Dharma Initiative?

One of my least favorite new characters on Lost is Miles. Why? Well, I just don’t care for the whole “super powers” thing that he has going on. Sure, I can accept the smoke monster, and the Polar bears, and a moving Island….but a dude with esp that can talk to the dead is where I draw the line.

right.

Anyway, I just don’t care for this particular addition to the Lost line-up. So I was glad this scene was cut from “The Economist”. It gives Miles even more powers – this one apparently being sonar or something. There’s no doubt we’ll be seeing more of Miles and is super-skillz in the next season of Lost, and for those of you that are Miles fans (both of you) this deleted scene should be a treat.

Season 4, Episode 13 – There’s No Place Like Home (Part 2)

Think about what you watched last night. Then imagine that taking place in half the time. Thank you, ABC, for granting Lost one more hour.

This season has been, far and away, my favorite season so far of Lost…eclipsing even the first season, I think. The WGA strike actually benefited the show, in that the fat had to be trimmed, and the show was cut down to its rawest form. And the finale was a worthy sendoff.

Let’s look at what was awesome. First, Keamy. I wasn’t crazy about him when he first came around a few weeks ago, but last night he became one of my favorites. To begin with, we had this meeting of the two most able fighters on the island, him and Sayid. Best fight scene I’ve seen on television in a while. And then I thought we were going to have another Mikhail on our hands again…remember how our favorite cycloptic Russian just wouldn’t die last season? The scene in the Orchid station was one of my favorite of the night, kind of playing like a horror movie.

Which brings us to Ben. His murder of Keamy was just another example of why I love Michael Emerson. Ben knew that Keamy’s death would result in the destruction of the freighter…was it genuinely a crime of passion, or was it a part of the plan that Ben always has (as they reminded us in the recap)? Also, the thing with the wheel was kind of strange, but how do you pull off moving an island without making it look funky?

The moment between Desmond and Penny was another of my favorites of the night. It’s amazing how this little story that is almost never touched on can bring a smile to my face. She’s his hero…it’s beautiful.

Oh, and Walt got freaking enormous. They had to get him off the island…there’s no way they could explain away a growth spurt that huge in 100 days.

So, questions. Things were pretty bad in the days leading up to the Oceanic 6 leaving the island…what could have happened after that that was bad enough to make Locke leave the island? And why did he take up an alias? That makes it seem like he was taking up permanent residence back in the real world. And why would none of the survivors call him by John Locke, only by Jeremy Bentham? Here’s what Wikipedia says about the real Bentham:

Jeremy Bentham was an English jurist, philosopher, and legal and social reformer. He was a political radical, and a leading theorist in Anglo-American philosophy of law. He is best known for his advocacy of utilitarianism, for the concept of animal rights, and his opposition to the idea of natural rights, with his oft-quoted statement that the idea of such rights is “nonsense upon stilts.” He also influenced the development of welfarism.

Bentham’s position included arguments in favour of individual and economic freedom, the separation of church and state, freedom of expression, equal rights for women, the end of slavery, the abolition of physical punishment (including that of children), the right to divorce, free trade, usury, and the decriminalization of homosexuality.

So what is next season going to look like? It’s tough to even get my head around it…I’m guessing it will be a mixture…what happens on the island after the Oceanic 6 are gone that spurs Locke to go bring the survivors back, and the story of Jack, Kate, Aaron, Sayid, Hurley and Sun inevitably heading back to the island.

Last season’s finale was nothing short of mindblowing, and had me frothing for what would happen next. While this finale wasn’t that huge, it was still a very worth sendoff to a tremendous season. I’m excited to see what happens next.

Episode grade: A
Season grade: A+

For those of you who will be at Comic Con in San Diego, taking place July 24-27, it appears that the next phase of the Lost Experience will be kicking off then. Check out the details at the Octagon Global Recruiting site, which was advertised during the finale.

Tonight brings the two-hour finale of the fourth and arguably the best season of Lost so far.

ABC has this to say:

The face-off between the survivors and the freighter people continues, and the Oceanic Six find themselves closer to rescue. Guest starring are Jeremy Davies as Daniel Faraday, Ken Leung as Miles Straume, Rebecca Mader as Charlotte Lewis, Jeff Fahey as Frank Lapidus, L. Scott Caldwell as Rose, Malcolm David Kelley as Walt, Nestor Carbonell as Richard Alpert, John Terry as Christian Shephard, Sonya Walger as Penelope “Penny” Widmore, Alan Dale as Charles Widmore, Kevin Durand as Keamy, Francois Chau as Dr. Marvin Candle, Anthony Azizi as Omar, Alex Petrovitch as Henrik and Starletta DuPois as Michael’s mom.

The fun begins tonight at 8/7c on ABC with a repeat of part one of the finale from two weeks ago.

Check back tomorrow for our review.

Season 4, Episode 12 – There’s No Place Like Home

I was reading an interview with Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse the other day, and they were talking about how they were sitting around editing the finale and wondering how they ever thought they were going to fit it into the time they had. Now I feel their pain. There was a TON of stuff going on…so much that it almost felt overloaded at times. Imagine having to shave a whole hour off of what we’ve got now.

So…where to start. We see the Oceanic 6 making their arrival at home, and we finally hear their story in full…they floated on life cushions for days until the eight survivors landed on an uninhabited island. That number fell to six before they were rescued. (Why? Why not just say that they were the only survivors? To add some credibility to the story…or is there more to it?)

Sayid was reunited with his long lost (and soon to be dead) Nadia in a very touching scene. Sun stepped up to her father and put him in his place, taking control of his company with the large settlement she received from the crash. Hurley returns home to his family, only to start to slip back into insane-Hurley-mode when he sees the dreaded numbers on the odometer of his birthday present.

In the best scene of the night, Jack finally has the funeral for his father. After the ceremony, Carole Littleton approaches Jack and tells him that Christian was Claire’s father (though she had no idea that Jack even knew who Claire was). I think that moment was the best acting that we’ve seen out of Matthew Fox yet…I loved how he had to contain his feelings about Claire, who he became close with on the island, but still emote surprise to Carole. Great stuff there.

Island stuff now…first off, let’s talk about the original search party from the freighter. I’m really liking Daniel, especially now that he’s making goo-goo eyes at Charlotte and acting all heroic, going back to the island that he is so obviously terrified of. My biggest complaint is about Miles, though. I loved his character and was really excited to see where he was going to go, but he’s basically faded into the background over the last several episodes. Bring back Miles!

As usual, Ben stole the show last night…especially considering how little he was actually in the episode. Between the 15 year old crackers and “How many times have I told you…I always have a plan” he can take simple, mundane lines and turn them into something wonderful.

I think I’ve got the moving the island thing figured out…as close to figured out as possible when it comes to Lost, that is. Back before the season even started, ABC released an Orchid Station Orientation video (check it out here), which has led many to speculate that this station has some form of time-bending properties…and with all of the time-jumping stuff that’s been going on this season, that theory has gained more and more credibility. I think we’ve been thinking “how do you physically move an island?” The question is not where they’re going to move the island to, but rather when they’re going to move the island to. I could go much deeper, but I’ll let your own imaginations do that for you.

Great setup for a finale! This episode reairs at 8/7c on May 29, followed by the two-hour finale.

Season 4, Episode 11 – Cabin Fever

Destiny, John, is a fickle bitch.

Not a lot of answers in last night’s episode…just more questions.

Apparently the powers that be have been grooming John Locke since his very birth. (Interesting note: the song that Emily Locke was listening to at the beginning – Everyday by Buddy Holly. What happened to Buddy Holly? Died in a plane crash.) Richard Alpert made not one but two trips to visit John over the course of his early life (with all the time travel that we’ve been seeing this season and last, I’m guessing that he travelled back from some point in the future). It seems that the island has many people “in on it”, as it seems that John’s grandmother recognized Alpert, and John’s caregiver when he was young as well as his teacher in high school really seemed to push him in that direction. Then, years later in therapy, Matthew Abbadon shows up to plant the idea of a walkabout in Locke’s head.

On the freighter, we continue with some of the grittiest stuff in Lost’s history. Keamy is ready to kill Michael because of his betrayal, but Mike’s island immunity power kicks in and jacks up Keamy’s gun, so he must resort to a good old-fashioned beat down.

This led to one big question: the second protocol. Keamy and Captain Gault have dual control keys to access a vault that contains…something. In this particular case, it reveals Ben’s new location on the island. Could this be something that was written by someone in the future with some kind of ultimate knowledge of everything that came before? Or is it like the box that Ben has where anything you want will appear?

The death toll rose by two this week, as Captain Gault and the good doctor both fell by Colonel Kurtz’s Keamy’s hand. And, as I’m sure you’ll remember, the doctor’s body has already turned up on the island, so once again we’ve got a time-jumping mindscrew. And so now, the army of mercenaries is again headed to land to wipe out the inhabitants, though this time, our heroes have Sayid on the way to help them.

Meanwhile, in his trek through the jungle, Locke has a vision of Ben’s old buddy Horace Goodspeed building a house for him and his wife. Horace seems to be stuck in some kind of time loop of his own, as he repeats himself several times. He does manage to plant the idea with John to return to the communal pit where the bodies of the DHARMA Initiative are buried, where John finds a map disclosing the location of the cabin.

In the midst of this journey, we get to the crux of the episode. This installment was about being chosen, and all that it entails. John has wanted for all his life to be special, but seems to fall short every time. Ben, on the other hand, feels that he has been chosen, but is rethinking what that means.

Once there, John is the only one willing to enter the cabin. Lo and behold, Christian Shephard is there waiting. I don’t think anyone who follows the show closely would have been really surprised by this…but I was surprised to see Claire there (though I shouldn’t have been…the last time we saw her, she was with Christian. What was surprising, though, was her coolness about the whole thing. Her baby, the one thing that has driven her character since the beginning of the show, is miles away, she knows that there are mercenaries coming to annihilate everyone on the island, and she’s the calmest and most laid back that we’ve ever seen her. Did she get a glimpse of the future and see that all will turn out well? Or, as is being widely speculated, is she dead and Jacob has taken over her earthly coil?

John only has time for one question, and he chose “How can I save the island?” Christian seemed to approve of this question, and in the final moment, we got our answer…he has to move the island.

This brings up ALL KINDS of questions. First, why? My guess is that the island is in some kind of time bending bubble. The comic book shown to young John early in the episode pictured a bubbled island floating in clouds…and way back in the first season, the comic that Walt was reading depicted a similar thing. Second, how? Hook up some cables to the freighter and drag it? Doubtful. Maybe the island has some kind of propulsion system itself. Or maybe it’s something deeper that we just can’t grasp yet. I’ll go with that.

All in all…decent episode. Nothing spectacular, but no real filler. Just an on par Lost episode.

Tonight marks the final episode before the three hour (spread over three weeks) finale of the fourth (and best yet) season of Lost. Here’s what ABC has to say about the episode.

Cabin Fever
Locke discovers the location of Jacob’s cabin, and life aboard the freighter becomes increasingly perilous.

Locke-centric episodes are always great ones, so I’m very excited. Nestor Campbell, who plays the apparently ageless Richard Alpert is listed in the guest stars, as well as Christian Shephard and Matthew Abbadon.

Check back tomorrow for our review!