Finding Lost: Fans in a dither over final season of wacky hit show

Tuesday at 8 p.m. on ABC, fans of the hit TV series Lost will finally get answers to their questions ... well, some of them, at least.

The series known for its convoluted storylines and elaborate mythology starts its sixth and final season next week, counting down to the series finale in May.

And fans are.getting ready.

To prepare for the new season, Lauren Driggers a veterinary technician from Winston-Salem has been watching all the previous episodes of the series on DVD.

"I've gone through all the seasons and I'm back up to speed now," she said last week.

She isn't alone.

"Everyone I talk to that are into Lost has spent the past months re-watching all of the seasons," said Nancy Ratliff, a fan from Stoneville, in an e-mail interview.

"We have been combing the past looking for some little sign of what was going on with Locke."

For the uninitiated, John Locke is one of the show's more enigmatic characters. One storyline from last season revolved around his apparent death and resurrection, but the season finale revealed that the man who was walking among them now might not be the real Locke.

"Did he change?" Ratliff asked. "When? Is he two different people? We have found that he sure acted strange at times."

But that's just one of many puzzles fans have enjoyed sorting out among themselves, in person and on message boards.

"The entire show has been like a puzzle and we still have many missing pieces," Ratliff said. "We fans want all the pieces to be revealed and we are seriously worried that we will not get it all."

Byron Pfordte (pronounced "FOR-tay") runs the "Triad Losties" fan community at ABC 45's Web site along with Eric Gabriel. They provide weekly podcasts on the site and then load them onto iTunes.

Last year, they got a chance to interview series producers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof about their plans for the finale, and if fans would finally get answers to the questions they've been asking.

"They said all the big questions are going to be addressed," Pfordte said, "but (there are) so many side issues people have questions about, there's no way they're going to be able to answer all of them."

The devotion of Losties led the satiric Web site TheOnion.com to recently create a fake news report on the subject. Cuse and Lindelof joined in on the prank, participating in a tongue-in-cheek interview for the site.

When Pfordte was working at an ABC affiliate in Pensacola, Fla., he did recaps of the previous nights' episodes that were shown during the morning newscasts.

When be became the art director at ABC 45, "not having local news on the station, we decided to do a podcast instead," he said.
The show moves at such a fast pace that fans sometimes have to watch an episode more than once. "When I'm watching the show in real time, there may have been something that I missed," Pfordte said. "As time permits, I'll go back and look through it."

Ratliff said she has been watching the show "since day one, and have tried to bring other people onto the island."

Driggers first discovered the show in its second season. "Then I rented the first season from Blockbuster and kind of got hooked on it," she said. "What I like best about it is that it's more like an ongoing movie than a TV show."

But, she said, she is looking forward to seeing the storylines finally get resolved. "I don't think they can draw it out much longer," she said.

Ratliff also praised the look of the show, along with the writing, the characters and the way the producers have fleshed out the backgrounds of those characters. "This is the best show ever on television," she said. "It surely has been an adventure, and I am so glad I was along for the ride."

Pfordte said he is particularly curious about whether the show will take a more scientific or a more supernatural tone as it draws to a close.

For the final episode, he said, "I'm anticipating a bit of a dark ending, not something where everything ends happily."

Ratliff believes that the answer may be that the characters are in a sort of purgatory.

"I believe that (there's) no way they could survive a plane crash like that," she said. "I lean toward the theory that they have died and may have a chance of redeeming their past sins. I hope this is the way it ends. I want the characters to have a second chance at their lives."

Driggers is counting on the ending to answer enough questions to satisfy fans, such as the riddle of the recurring numbers 4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42, which have appeared throughout the series in radio transmissions, lottery numbers and more.

"I'm hoping they'll let you know what the island is all about," she said. "And I'm dying to know what the numbers are all about. Because if they don't explain it, that'll drive me nuts for the rest of my life."

Tim Clodfelter writes for the Winston-Salem Journal.