LOST hints from Damon & Carlton

For those of you still needing closure on the death of Daniel Faraday, Lost’s executive producers Damon Lindelof & Carlton Cuse wrap up the whole affair in an interview with TV Guide. The juiciest excerpt from the interview:

“It was an incredibly painful thing to kill this beloved character,” [Carlton] Cuse adds, “but we feel that’s what this show has to do. His death is kind of the culminating event in the entire season. It really ends one chapter and commences the start of the final chapter of the entire series.”

Take note: the final chapter of the entire series has officially begun.

In other news, this week’s Official Lost Audio Podcast offered some really interesting teases and clarifications for fans wondering about various things from this season — and things yet to come…

• Can the past be changed? This is “the fundamental question of Season [5],” according to Cuse.
• Is Faraday really dead, for good? Damon and Carlton gave a fairly definitive yes to this one. Though they did note that Faraday’s entrance into the Others’ camp was strangely “reckless.” Hrm.
• This week’s episode is title “Follow the Leader.” Who is the “leader” the title refers to? They suggested the most likely candidates: Jack, Sawyer, or Locke.
• Will we ever see Alvar Hanso on the show? (Hanso is the founder of the Hanso Foundation, the company that funded the Dharma Initiative.) We’ll definitely hear the name again, according to Lindelof, but whether or not he’s seen on camera is an open question. “Season 6 is the season of many answers, and Hanso is one of the founders of the Dharma Initiative. So there might be some blanks that get filled in under the ‘Hanso’ name.”
• Why did Ben have to move the island if it is always moving? Ah, finally, a long-pondered question is addressed! “There’s a difference between a slow drift and a significant change,” says Cuse. “It’s like the difference between cruising along in space, and going at warp speed.” Lindelof added that the possibilities are that the island was always moving in space, but wasn’t always moving in time. OR, it was always drifting through time, but turning the wheel caused the island to take a big time-jump. Hopefully, the show itself will address and give a definitive answer on this at some point.
• What were Amy and Paul doing in Hostile territory having a picnic back in 1974, when Sawyer, Juliet, and the others stumbled upon them about to be executed? They were just having a picnic. Lindelof says they were “just slightly over the border” with the Hostiles, which was an accident of sorts on their part. And they paid the price for it.
• Will we ever know in greater detail what the truce is between Dharma and the Hostiles? Is it a verbal agreement, or something written? Lindelof made it sound like one day we will get much more detailed information about the truce.