Lost in Lost

By Bill Keveney, USA TODAY
One theory posits a huge psychological experiment. Another tinkers with numerical analysis. Other schools of thought examine collective consciousness, electromagnetism and theology.
An Ivy League seminar? Hardly. It's speculation about the meaning of Lost, the second-season ABC drama (tonight, 9 ET/PT). Devout online followers slide each episode under the microscope, seeking to answer questions that go far beyond if and when castaways will get off their mysterious island.

Though some fans would seem to be putting in the time necessary to earn a Ph.D. — and numerous Ph.D.s analyze the show — a CliffsNotes may be in order for new students. Lost follows the survivors of a Sydney-to-Los Angeles flight that broke apart and crashed on a tropical island. After encountering an inchoate "monster," a polar bear and other odd doings in the 2004 premiere, junkie rocker Charlie (Dominic Monaghan) asked a question that still consumes fans: "Where are we?"

Some devotees seek a unified theory that explains the mysterious island, why these particular people are there and why no rescuers have arrived more than a month after the crash.

The show's producers say that there is no single explanation and that a simple answer would leave viewers dissatisfied. "We go on record saying, 'Here's what it's not,' " says Damon Lindelof, who created Lost with J.J. Abrams (Alias, Mission: Impossible III).

Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, the executive producers who oversee Lost, say the survivors are not dead and trapped in some kind of purgatory. Nor does Lost take place as a dream or hallucination in one character's mind — a concept they call "the snow-globe theory," after the hospital drama St. Elsewhere, which was revealed in its 1988 finale to have all taken place in the snow globe of an autistic boy.

That doesn't deter cybersleuths who are enamored of those theories. "What's cool about the fan community is that it doesn't seem to care what we say or don't say," Lindelof says.

To encourage extensive analysis, Lindelof, Cuse and the writing staff have seeded Lost with so many clues that they can't fit them all in a TV show. The series has jumped wholeheartedly into multimedia synergy, creating everything from Lost-related websites (such as www.thehansofoundation.org) to spinoff books (Bad Twin, a real novel written by fictional Gary Troup, one of the passengers on Oceanic Flight 815) that may or may not provide helpful hints.

Last week, ABC inserted a faux Hanso Foundation commercial during the show to launch the Lost Experience, a parallel Internet hunt designed to give players additional clues but not affect the viewing experience of those who don't play.

The maturation of Internet communication has led to a level of scrutiny and viewer/writer interaction above and beyond such spellbinding ancestors as Twin Peaks, The X-Files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. With thousands of fans collecting string — or expounding on String Theory — viewers can feast on a thesis's worth of analysis every week at sites such as thefuselage.com, lost-tv.com, lost-forum.com and lost.cubit.net.

"With Lost, there are so many ways to interact ... that there's so much more of a community that gets into more research and more levels of discussion," says Lynnette Porter, an associate professor in humanities at Florida's Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and co-author of Unlocking the Meaning of Lost: An Unauthorized Guide.

Last week, viewers got plenty to ponder when Michael (Harold Perrineau), single-minded in his pursuit of kidnapped son Walt (Malcolm David Kelley), shot fellow survivors Ana Lucia (Michelle Rodriguez) and Libby (Cynthia Watros). Tonight, fans will get more information on the underground hatch that is a remnant of a huge island psychosocial experiment, the Dharma Initiative. Appropriately, the episode is titled "?," named for the question mark in the center of what appears to be an island map.

The season's final episodes also will offer a resolution to the situation of Michael and Walt, who was seen at times as an apparition, and the survivors will prepare to take on The Others, a mysterious group who kidnapped Walt. Desmond, the man discovered in the hatch at the start of the season, will return as well, and viewers will learn why the plane crashed.

The theories

Lindelof and Cuse, speaking from Lost's Hawaii set last week as they wrapped up Season 2 and outlined Season 3, say there are too many questions for a simple explanation. "We know where they're at and what's going on, but that wouldn't qualify as a unifying theory," Lindelof says. Numerous questions yield multiple answers, they say.

"One layer speaks to electromagnetism, another to psychological experimentation, another to why they can see Walt. Coming up with one answer that unifies all those things is next to impossible. Hopefully, every sublayer will be explained" by the end, they say.

Although the theorizers are Lost's most intense and vociferous fan group, the producers say they ultimately have to focus on the much larger audience of casual viewers, developing characters and relationships to retain their interest. (Lost is averaging 15.3 million viewers this season, ranking 15th among prime-time shows.)

For those who want to analyze, however, they welcome speculation. "We don't want to eliminate too many theories," Cuse says. "What people enjoy about the show is being able to theorize."

That they do. From websites to Entertainment Weekly, trying to figure it all outhas become a participatory sport. Prominent theories and areas of investigation:

•Island as laboratory This season's revelation of the Dharma Initiative, a secret organization with a stated goal of human betterment, led many to embrace the theory that Lost is a huge experiment. The Hanso Foundation, which has ties to Dharma and delves into such topics as mental health and life extension, also suggests social-science tinkering. The hatch, which requires a recurring sequence of numbers (4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42) be punched into a computer every 108 minutes, suggests a Skinner Box, named for famed psychologist B.F. Skinner.

•Electromagnetism This was an early favorite after a compass wouldn't work properly in the first season. Theorists note the shadowy Hanso Foundation conducts research in this field, and the hatch was designed for such study. This theory may help explain the malfunction of the plane's instruments.

•Time-space continuum In physics, String Theory suggests other dimensions of space and time, which could help explain why rescuers haven't found the castaways. Shifts in time could help explain why a medical facility where pregnant Claire (Emilie de Ravin) was held looked as if it had been abandoned for years when survivors discovered it just weeks later, Porter says. A website credited to ABC parent Disney (www.oceanicflight815.com) also raises the question of time: A baggage claim ticket for survivor Jack Shephard (Matthew Fox) appears to be dated Sept. 21, 2009.

•The numbers The appearance of the sequence on a winning lottery ticket owned by survivor Hurley (Jorge Garcia) has spawned a cottage industry of number crunchers. One theory says they match up to the retired uniform numbers of New York Yankees. Producers have reacted to fans' interest in the numbers, featuring them on everything from field hockey uniforms to police cars, Porter says.

•Collective consciousness Past connections among survivors — Sawyer drinking with Jack's father, Jack's father hiring Ana Lucia, Locke working for Hurley's company — have led many to surmise that those links are tied to their presence on the island. The psychic aura of the island raises the question of whether characters are insinuating themselves into each other's consciousness in the individual characters' flashbacks that are a Lost signature, says Porter's co-author David Lavery, a professor at Middle Tennessee State University.

With speculation comes disagreement, which may be half the fun. Orson Scott Card, author of the best-selling Ender's Game science-fiction series, says a collective-consciousness theme would turn whatever solid ground viewers can count on into quicksand. "One thing we're counting on is that the back stories are true," says Card, who is editing an upcoming book of essays, Getting Lost: Survival, Baggage and Starting Over in J.J. Abrams' Lost, due in August.

Lost may be teasing viewers at times, too. Producers say it isn't purgatory, but the name Gary Troup is an anagram for that transitional realm, Porter says.

Lost's many literary and philosophical allusions don't provide specific explanations, but they offer a cornucopia of considerations. Characters bear the names of famed philosophers Locke and Rousseau. The novel Watership Down is about rabbits that must flee their warren, and tesseracts, or time ripples, are found in A Wrinkle in Time, two of the many books read on the island.

An Ambrose Bierce story on Lost's reading list, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, toys with the snow-globe theory, telling the story of a man who thinks he has escaped hanging only to find it occurred in his own mind just before he is hanged. But Lavery points to Bierce's The Damned Thing, which is about an invisible monster.

Other essayists cite philosopher Francis Bacon and mathematician René Descartes in their musings. "I think Lost, more than anything else on TV to date, provides a forum for philosophical and critical discussion," says Amy Bauer, an assistant professor of music at the University of California-Irvine who moderates a peer-reviewed online journal, The Society for the Study of Lost (www.loststudies.com).

Everything about Lost is designed for analysis, says Joyce Millman, who wrote one of the Getting Lost essays. She credits the writers with "a rich variety of references: scientific, biblical, pop-cultural, literary, historical, philosophical."

Millman, whose essay is called Game Theory, sees Lost's structure attracting fans via familiarity: She thinks it works like an interactive video game. "The story line and the action develop on multiple levels. There are hidden clues that function like the Easter eggs in gaming," Millman says. "Lost is a big game, and the act of watching it forces you to play along."

The nature of theorizing

Trying to make sense of mystery is human nature. "That's what people like to do. We see all these patterns, and we try to make meaning out of them," Porter says.

Lindelof and Cuse say other Lost writers monitor the fan theories and websites because they don't want to get drawn into just serving that audience. But they learn from and respond to fan concerns. Dissatisfaction with the number of answers in last season's finale has led to more of them in this season's final, two-hour episode May 24.

Some fans are "surprisingly close" with theories, Lindelof says, but don't have "enough information yet to totally get there."

Card enjoyed the first season more and says he's not certain Lost is revealing answers quickly enough. Its future success depends on providing enough answers and making them complicated enough to be worth the fans' commitment.

"Real suspense comes from answers, not questions. Suspense comes not from wondering what's going on but from wondering what happens next," he says. "If you withhold answers, it becomes impossible to satisfy."

Some fans will never be satisfied with the pace or quality of Lost's answers. Others wonder whether the producers can maintain their brilliant balancing act of characters, mystery and allusions. "The producers have ... set the bar very high," Bauer says.

At least one dedicated fan leans more toward Zen than analysis. As in life, not everything in Lost will make sense, nor does it need to, says Charlie Starr, another Getting Lost essayist and a teacher of English and humanities at Kentucky Christian University in Grayson.

"Maybe we're not supposed to be theorizing. Maybe we're supposed to surrender to it. We've got to be people who can handle mystery, to surrender to the text and let it take us where it wants to," says Starr, referencing English poet John Keats. "With Lost, maybe the best thing to do is simply to watch with a sense of wonder and surprise."