Lost: I Want Some Freakin' Answers!

On May 17, 2007, ABC aired an episode of Lost titled "The Answers." The official description of the episode read "Executive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse explore the mysteries of the island and recap some of the revelations made this season as well as those yet to come."

Well, that's one way of putting it. But I think maybe Hurley said it better: "Okay, that thing in the woods...maybe it's a monster, maybe it's a pissed-off giraffe. I don't know. The fact that no one is even looking for us, yeah, that's weird. But I just go along with it. 'Cause I'm along for the ride. Good old fun-time Hurley! Well, guess what? Now I want some freakin' answers!"

Lost gained a fiercely loyal fan base its first season, as it enthralled viewers with heart-stopping danger and ever more intriguing mysteries. But over the next two seasons, viewership declined to the point where new episodes of Lost were sometimes losing to reruns of CSI: NY. What happened?

The most common complaint is the lack of answers. It seems that every time one question is answered, two new ones pop up. Some fans feel they're being strung along by the promise of big answers that seem to always be just one episode away.

Let me say right now that this doesn't bother me. Has the show lost the pace from season one? Certainly. Should the previews stop promising shocking answers that don't materialize? Definitely. But what's happening to Lost is nothing new. It couldn't have kept delivering edge-of-your-seat entertainment forever, and the pace has simply slowed to more sustainable levels.

As far as I'm concerned, it's perfectly fine for there to be lots of unanswered questions. If we ran out of questions, we'd no longer be lost. Damon Lindelof put it well: "Sometimes you answer a question but another questions crops up as a result of it...the show never becomes completely vacant of mystery because it's a mystery show. That's part of the DNA of Lost, and we embrace it."

Keep in mind that the writers had no idea how long the show was going to last. It's got to be awfully hard to come up with a storyline that moves along at a consistently fast pace and then wraps everything up exactly on time, when that time hasn't been determined yet. Now that we know there will be 48 more episodes over the next 3 seasons, maybe we'll start to see a tighter plot that seems to have an end game in mind. But for now, let's take a look at some of the questions that have been answered, and some whose answers we'll have to look forward to between now and 2010.

Answered questions:

Q: Why has no one found them?

A: The plane lost radio contact six hours after takeoff, and the pilot turned towards Fiji. By the time the plane crashed, it was a thousand miles off course, so rescue parties would be looking in the wrong place. Although this is a satisfactory answer, there have also been hints that the island itself is somehow hard to find.

Q: Why did no one hear the distress signal that had been playing on a loop for 16 years?

A: Ben was using the Looking Glass station to jam all transmissions.

Q: Who do the handcuffs belong to, i.e., who did the U.S. Marshal have in custody?

A: Kate. Her original crime was using a gas leak to blow up her house to kill her abusive father.

Q: What's in the hatch?

A: This was part of the big cliffhanger in season one. The hatch, also known as Station 3 (the Swan), is one of several research stations used by the DHARMA Initiative. This particular station contains some kind of electromagnetic anomaly, and is manned by Desmond Hume.

Q: What happens if the button in the hatch is not pushed every 108 minutes?

A: Desmond only partially believed they were "saving the world," as Kelvin put it. Locke first believed it was important to push the button, but changed his mind when he discovered another hatch (the Pearl) with a film that claimed that the Swan was simply a psychological experiment. Mr. Eko was certain that if the button weren't pushed, everyone on the island would die.

Eko appears to have been right. We learned that pushing the button released the electromagnetic charge before it could get too big. When Locke enlists Desmond to lock out Eko and let the clock run down to zero, we see the beginning of what appears to be a cataclysmic event. We're led to believe that everyone would have died if Desmond hadn't turned the fail-safe key, destroying the hatch and releasing the charge in a relatively innocuous way.

Q: Why did the plane crash?

A: Desmond was late pushing the button, doing it just after the 108 minutes were up. The electromagnetic leak fried the plane's instrumentation before Desmond could push the button to release the charge.

Q: Who is Desmond?

A: The first time we saw him, he was pointing a gun at Locke. But he turned out to be harmless. Desmond was in a round-the-world sailing race when his boat was hit by a strong storm that knocked him overboard and washed him ashore. He's been on the island for three years, living in the Swan and pushing the button.

Q: Who is Juliet?

A: Yes, she's one of the Others, but doesn't want to be. She's a fertility research doctor who was lured to the island by a promising job. Since her pregnant patients keep dying and she misses her sister, she just wants to go home.

Q: Is Juliet still in cahoots with Ben after the Others leave her behind and she joins the Losties?

A: No. Ben told her to find out who's pregnant and mark their tents so the Others can take them, and she secretly leaves tapes behind to give status reports to Ben, but she's just playing along. She and Jack plan to lead the Others into a trap by marking some tents and rigging them with dynamite.

Q: Who is Tom?

A: In the season one cliffhanger, a fake-bearded Tom (also known as "Mr. Friendly") first appeared to be an ordinary guy with some friends on a boat who stumbled across Michael, Sawyer, Jin, and Walt on their raft. But the prospect of rescue quickly fades when Tom and his friends kidnap Walt, shoot Sawyer, and destroy the raft with a Molotov cocktail.

Based on this and a few more interactions the Losties have with Tom, he appears to be the leader of the Others. But after Michael frees Ben (then known as Henry) from the hatch and lets him return to his people, we immediately see that Tom answers to Ben.

Q: Who is Ben?

A: Danielle Rousseau captured someone who she believed to be an Other. He identified himself as Henry Gale from Minnesota, who crashed on the island in a hot-air balloon with his wife, who subsequently became ill and died. Sayid interrogated Henry, then tortured him when he didn't believe his story.

Sayid's suspicions were correct. The prisoner turned out to be Benjamin Linus, a former member of the DHARMA Initiative who led a mass extermination of his own people (including his father) to emerge as leader of the Others.

Q: Who is the leader of the Others?

A: At first we thought it was Tom, but he clearly answers to Ben. Then for a while we thought it was Ben, and didn't question that until Isabel ("the sheriff") showed up. However, Ben ordered her to take execution off the table in Juliet's sentencing, and she complied (and whatever happened to her since then?). Near the end of season three, it was revealed that Ben answers to Jacob, about whom we know very little at this point. However, for most intents and purposes, Ben can be considered the leader of the Others, since they all obey his every whim, whereas they've never even seen Jacob.

Q: Who was Roger?

A: A season three episode titled "Tricia Tanaka Is Dead" was heavily criticized for allegedly having absolutely no plot. This was the one where Hurley discovered the DHARMA Volkswagen van in the jungle, and yes, I was surprised to see an episode where so little happened. However, the van had greater significance than was first apparent.

The body they found inside, belonging to a "Roger Work Man" (Work Man being his position, not his last name as Hurley thought), was later revealed to be Roger Linus, Ben's father. Roger made no secret of the fact that he hated Ben, always blaming him for killing his mother during childbirth. One day when Ben and Roger were in a van, Ben killed his father with a canister of poison gas, at the same time the Others were gassing the rest of the DHARMA Initiative in what they called "The Purge." Ben asked that Roger's body be left where it was.

Q: What is the DHARMA Initiative?

A: DHARMA stands for Department of Heuristics And Research on Material Applications, and it was founded in 1970. During the 70s and 80s, the DHARMA Initiative conducted research on the island in the fields of meteorology, psychology, parapsychology, zoology, electromagnetism, and Utopian Social Engineering.

The big question surrounding DHARMA was whether they were the same group of people as the Others, and if not, what their relationship was. We now know that the Others were generally not members of the DHARMA Initiative (Ben Linus being the only known exception), and the Others wiped out almost all of the DHARMA members by the late 80s.

Q: Why are there polar bears on the island?

A: They were brought there by the DHARMA Initiative for their research. They were presumably released from their cages either when DHARMA abandoned their research or after the Others took over.

Q: Who are the people who attack Sawyer, Michael, and Jin when they make it to shore after their raft is destroyed?

A: Jin called them "Others," but they turned out not to be the ones we call the Others. They're the Tailies, the survivors from the tail section of Oceanic flight 815.

Q: Who is Danielle Rousseau?

A: She captured and tortured Sayid, but that was understandable. After all, she mistook him for one of the Others who had kidnapped her baby girl and terrorized her for 16 years. Rousseau is the last surviving member of a six-person science expedition whose ship crashed on the island. She has some sanity issues but is no threat to the Losties. In the season three finale, Alex meets Rousseau, her biological mother, for the first time since she was kidnapped as a baby.

Q: How did Locke get in the wheelchair?

A: When Locke threatened to expose his father as a con man, he pushed him out the window of his 8-story apartment.

Q: Who knocked out Sayid when he tried to use the plane's transceiver to triangulate Rousseau's distress signal?

A: Locke did it, claiming that he didn't want the people to be led to the source of a transmission that said "it killed them...it killed them all." Also, Locke does not want to leave the island because of the deep connection he feels to it (starting with the fact that he no longer needs a wheelchair).

Q: Who set fire to the first raft that Michael built?

A: Walt did it, because he didn't want to leave the island. He later told Locke "I don't want to move anymore. I've been moving places my whole life. I like it here."

Q: Who is the father of Sun's baby?

A: Since Sun's husband Jin was infertile, there were two possibilities. Sun's baby was either conceived before arriving on the island when she had an affair with Jae Lee, or after arriving on the island thanks to the island's ability to increase a man's sperm count by a factor of five. This was a no-win situation for Sun, because either the baby isn't Jin's, or she's doomed to die like everyone else who got pregnant on the island.

Juliet was able to determine the age of the baby with a sonogram, and since Sun got pregnant on the island, the baby is Jin's.

Q: Who was the original Sawyer?

A: James Ford, the character we know as Sawyer, took his name from the man who seduced his mother and conned her out of $38,000, resulting in his father killing his mother and then himself. The original Sawyer was revealed to be Anthony Cooper, Locke's father. Locke wanted his father dead, so he arranged an introduction between the two Sawyers, and James Ford killed Anthony Cooper.

Q: What does the cable on the beach lead to?

A: One end leads to Rousseau's hideout, the other end leads to the Looking Glass.

Q: Why does Jack have tattoos, and what do they mean?

A: I didn't realize this was ever considered a mystery, until the preview for the season three episode "Stranger in a Strange Land" called it one of three of the island's biggest mysteries that would be revealed (don't ask me what the other two were; I couldn't figure it out).

Jack got the tattoos in Thailand from his girlfriend Achara. She says she has the power to see who people are, and that Jack is a leader, but that being one makes him lonely, frightened, and angry. The tattoos signify this. When Jack meets Isabel, she says his tattoos say "He walks amongst us, but he is not one of us." Jack says "That's what they say. That's not what they mean."

The show doesn't mention this, but in reality, the symbols come from a poem by Chairman Mao and translate to "Eagles high, cleaving sky." Remember that Jack flew a kite in the beginning of the episode.

Q: Are the Losties dead or in purgatory?

A: No, producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse have said that the Losties are alive somewhere in the space-time continuum.

Q: Why were the critically important characters Mr. Eko, Ana-Lucia, and Michael not mentioned or seen in "The Answers?"

A: Officially, "The Answers" was a recap of the revelations made in season 3. Ana-Lucia died in season 2, Michael left the island in season 2, and Eko died early in season 3. However, this seems to be an unlikely explanation, since the recap included some revelations made in seasons 1 and 2, while ignoring the significance of Eko's stick in season 3.

We can be fairly certain that the real reason is that the producers didn't want to pay residuals or royalties to these particular actors. We don't know the real story, but in addition to their reputations of being difficult actors to work with, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje (Eko) did jail time for driving without a license and disobeying an officer, and Michelle Rodriguez (Ana-Lucia) did jail time for DUI. However, both of them reportedly asked to be written off the show. It's far from clear why Harold Perrineau (Michael) might have been written off, and there are actually rumors that he will return in season 4 (although probably not to be welcomed back by Jack, Kate, and Sawyer with open arms).

So that's quite a few mysteries that have been solved, right? I bet if you watch season one on DVD, you'll find it a lot less suspenseful now because so much has been answered. But as Lindelof said, the show never becomes completely vacant of mystery because it's a mystery show. Let's look at some things that still need answers, which we'll hopefully get before the series ends.

Unanswered questions:

Q: How well can Charlie swim?

In season one, when Boone and Joanna are in danger of drowning, Charlie says to Jack "I don't swim." In season three, when they need someone to swim down to the underwater Looking Glass station, Charlie says he was Junior Swim Champion of Northern England and can hold his breath for four minutes.

Was Charlie lying in season one because he thought saving Boone and Joanna wasn't worth getting wet? That seems unlikely, even for the punk heroin addict Charlie was at the time. Was he lying in season three because he didn't want anyone to interfere with his destiny of sacrificing himself to turn off the jamming equipment and get everyone rescued? Maybe, but somehow it just doesn't seem like Charlie to make up such detailed lies. Could the writers have just forgotten that Charlie said he didn't swim, or hoped that everyone else had forgotten?

Q: Is Kate pregnant?

Ben wanted Juliet to check if Kate is pregnant from her fling with Sawyer. A very real possibility, since men on the island have five times the normal sperm count.

Q: Why is Driveshaft's song called "You All Everybody?"

Yes, their British accents disguise it, but Charlie's grammar teacher would be deeply saddened to know that the song is in fact titled "You All Everybody," not "You Are Everybody." If it had a comma, "You All, Everybody" would merely be redundant. Without a comma, it's completely nonsensical. In the season one DVD extras, Damon Lindelof said it was an inside joke, based on a woman on The Phil Donahue Show who said something along the lines of "You all everybody, is acting like the stupid people wearing expensive clothes." But what does it mean to Driveshaft?

Q: Why are the characters' ethnicities inconsistent?

In Hurley's flashback in "Tricia Tanaka Is Dead," his skin was so much darker that past Hurley and present Hurley couldn't possibly have been the same person. Naveen Andrews (Sayid) is a British man of Indian descent, who is somehow supposed to pass for an Iraqi. I'm guessing that we're just supposed to ignore this.

Q: Why is Locke's father only eight years older than he is?

That's right, Kevin Tighe, who plays Anthony Cooper, is only eight years older than Terry O'Quinn, who plays John Locke. This made sense in the flashbacks when the younger Locke had not only hair, but brown hair. But when Anthony Cooper came to the island in the present day, he still appeared to be the same age. This could be a simple oversight, or it could be that the island has age-defying properties (as Richard Alpert doesn't appear to have aged much since Ben was a young boy). Another age issue exists for Walt, who is supposed to be 10 years old, but is played by 15 year-old Malcolm David Kelley, who has grown a lot since season one. Will they ignore that detail, or work it into the story?

Q: Why does Desmond forget what happened when he didn't push the button in time?

Jack doesn't believe that the button in the hatch does anything. He says to Desmond "Do you ever think that maybe they put you down here to push a button every 100 minutes just to see if you would? That all of this, the computer, the button, is just a mind game? An experiment?" Desmond replies "Every...single...day. And for all our sakes, I hope it's not real."

Does Desmond really forget that he already knows it's real? When he didn't push the button in time after returning from his confrontation with Kelvin, the whole place was shaking and "system failure" was all over the computer screen and coming out of the PA system. He seems to totally forget about this until the end of season two, when he suddenly realizes that this is what caused the plane to crash.

Q: When Jack stops Locke from pushing the button in time, why doesn't the same thing happen?

The numbers in the clock turned to hieroglyphics, but it didn't appear that the world was about to end. Why was the result different from what Desmond experienced?

Later, there was a preview that made a big deal about us getting to find out what happens when the timer goes down to zero. But we already knew! Did they forget? At least we knew what happened when Locke did it accidentally. For some reason, something different happened when he did it on purpose.

Q: Why does Ben pretend that the button doesn't do anything?

When Ben is held in captivity by the Losties, he tells Locke that he didn't actually push the button like he previously said he did, and that the timer just reset itself. Ben presumably knew what the button did since he worked for the DHARMA Initiative, so why would he encourage Locke not to push it, knowing what would happen? Furthermore, why didn't Ben have some of his people stationed there to push the button (and why does the button have to be pushed by hand anyway)? Or did he not know what the button did, and was just messing with John?

Q: Why were Desmond and Kelvin trained to ask all new people "Are you him?"

This question was followed by a riddle to determine if the person was in fact "him." The riddle was "What did one snowman say to the other snowman?" The answer was "Smells like carrots." So far, no one has answered the riddle correctly and proven themselves to be "him." Jacob has been referred to as "him," but he doesn't seem like the type to be interested in snowman jokes.

Q: What's the deal with Desmond's flashes?

After the hatch imploded, Desmond began having precognitive flashes, most of them showing Charlie's death by lightning, drowning, drowning in another location, an arrow to the throat, and then drowning in yet another location. He also went back in time to relive parts of his life with the knowledge of what happened in the future. Why did the implosion of the hatch bestow these abilities on him? Why are so many of his flashes about Charlie?

Q: When Desmond has a flash of Charlie drowning in the ocean while trying to save Claire, why does he jump in?

Does Desmond have any reason to believe that his odds of survival would be higher? After all, Charlie was the Junior Swim Champion of Northern England, despite not knowing how to swim.

Q: How did Eko's stick tell Locke where Jack was?

Locke intended to use the stick as a marker for Eko's grave. As he was pounding it into the ground, he noticed something on the stick that seemed to be significant. Later, Locke and Sayid told Kate that they knew how to find Jack by the way the sunlight hit Eko's stick when they were burying him. Um, what?

Some say that Sayid was being sarcastic. I don't know. I do know that this point deserved more than the two seconds of attention it got.

But later, it seems that the way the sunlight hit the stick was irrelevant, and what mattered was the carvings on the stick, which said "LIFT UP YOUR EYES AND LOOK NORTH" and "JOHN 3:05." Some theories are that John 3:05 meant that north was actually at heading 305 (since their compasses weren't working properly on the island), that it referred to the locations of stations 3 (The Swan) and 5 (The Pearl), or that it meant nothing. Seeing as how Eko couldn't have known more than Locke about the geography of the island, I'm inclined to think it meant nothing.

At any rate, how this clearly indicated Jack's whereabouts is beyond me. It ended up leading them to the Flame station and Mikhail.

Q: Did Michael and Walt make it back?

At the end of season two, Ben set them free on a boat in return for Michael's freeing Ben and leading Jack, Kate, Sawyer, and Hurley into a trap. Michael is told that if they follow a compass bearing of 325, they'd be rescued. Were they? Walt has been seen several times since then, but was it really Walt, or just a mirage?

Q: Why did the Others make Kate and Sawyer break rocks?

Sawyer asked Juliet, and she said it was to make a runway for the aliens. Then she laughed and said she didn't know because they don't tell her everything. It could have been for an actual purpose, or maybe it was just random punishment.

Q: Why were those people in the snow hut monitoring the electromagnetic activity in the South Pacific?

OK, Penny has plenty of resources, fine. But how did she know that Desmond was on an island with an electromagnetic anomaly? How did she know it had a chance of leaking, and that they'd be able to detect it if it did? It seems odd that she was putting her resources into this three years after Desmond disappeared, as opposed to traditional search and rescue.

Q: Is Mikhail dead?

When Locke pushed him into the sonic fence, Mikhail foamed at the mouth, blood spurt from his ears, and he collapsed. He appeared to be dead, but it turns out that the pylons were not set to a lethal level. He next appeared to be dead after Desmond shot him in the chest with a speargun in the Looking Glass. But a few minutes later, he was alive and well, taunting Charlie with a grenade that would flood the station. Did Mikhail survive the grenade that practically went off in his face? I'd like to think he didn't, but I don't think we can be sure yet.

Q: Why is the statue missing everything except the foot, and why does it have four toes?

Sayid wondered this at the end of season two as he, Jin, and Sun sailed ahead of the other Losties on a scouting expedition, but the statue hasn't been mentioned since.

Q: What do the numbers mean?

The numbers 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, and 42 obviously have some great significance to the show. Leonard Simms and Sam Toomey heard a transmission consisting of the numbers repeating on a loop. After Sam used the numbers to win $50,000 at a fair, they were both subjected to bouts of extraordinarily bad luck that led them to believe they were cursed. Sam killed himself and Leonard went insane. Hurley met Leonard in a mental hospital and, not being aware of the curse, used the numbers to win $114 million in the lottery. Now Hurley believes he's cursed, based on events such as his grandfather's heart attack, the priest at his grandfather's funeral being struck by lightning, the house he bought for his mom burning down, and his Mr. Cluck's Chicken Shack franchise being hit by a meteorite. The transmission Leonard and Sam heard also led Rousseau and her team to the island, where they shipwrecked and have now all died except for Rousseau, who had her baby girl taken.

The numbers are engraved on the Swan hatch, they're the numbers that must be entered into the computer every 108 minutes (4 + 8 + 15 + 16 + 23 + 42 = 108), Hurley sees the numbers (in order) on the uniforms of six girl soccer players he passes in a flashback, and when Hurley's car breaks down the odometer says 42 km, the thermometer says 23 degrees Celsius, and we see the speedometer go from 16 km/h to 15 to 8 to 4. The references go on and on. But what do the numbers mean?

Q: Why can Locke walk again on the island?

The island seems to have magical healing properties, and Locke in particular seems to have a special connection to the island. But we don't know how the island heals people, or why Locke is special.

Q: Why does Locke's paralysis disappear almost immediately after the crash, while Ben took much longer to recover from his spinal operation?

Yes, Locke is special, but we thought Ben was special too. We know Ben considers Locke to be a great threat to his power on the island, because he could hear Jacob when Ben couldn't (although Ben could hear most of what Jacob said when Locke couldn't). It may be that injuries sustained on the island don't heal as fast as those sustained off the island.

Q: What is the history of the island, and why has it been drawing people to it all this time?

This question was posed by the producers in "The Answers." Yet Carlton Cuse said Desmond's failure to push the button in time was the definitive answer as to why the plane crashed. Perhaps the island caused Desmond to be late in pushing the button, or it caused the pilot to turn towards Fiji, or it caused these particular people to be on the plane.

Q: What's the deal with all the hallucinations?

Jack saw his dead father, Eko saw his dead brother, Kate saw a horse from her past, Hurley saw his imaginary friend Dave, and several people saw Walt after he left the island. These hallucinations seem to effect everyone consistently, in that Shannon and Sayid both saw Walt in the same place at the same time, and they seem to be very real, in that Hurley felt pain when Dave threw coconuts at him. Are they created based on memories that were read by the smoke monster? What is the physical explanation for how they happen? Are they controlled by someone, and if so, why?

Q: What's the deal with the "magic box?"

You know, the metaphorical magic box on the island, where whatever you imagined, whatever you wanted to be in it, when you opened that box, there it would be? In Locke's case, his father came out of the box. But was it really his father, or one of the ultra-realistic hallucinations produced by the island? Locke's father didn't seem so natural in his conversation with Sawyer.

What's the relationship between the magic box and the smoke monster? Are they the same, or can they both produce hallucinations? Does Ben or Jacob control the magic box? Does it control them? Can anyone control the magic box? How do you use it?

Q: What's the deal with the smoke monster?

Is it alive? Why does the sonic fence hurt it, and why can't it go over the fence? Why does it sound like a T-Rex at some times and a chipmunk at others? Can it read people's memories? How does it judge people, deciding who to kill and who to leave alone? What interaction has it had with the Others? Is it a manifestation of the island?

Q: Who are the Others?

Here's how Ana-Lucia described them to us: "They came the first night that we got here. They took three of us. Nothing happened for two weeks, then they came back. They took NINE MORE. They're smart, and they're animals, and they could be anywhere at any time. Now we're moving through the jungle. Their jungle. Just so you can save your little hick friend over here. And if you think that one gun and one bullet is going to stop them, think again."

Their reputation as heartless invincible supergods has since been severely tarnished, what with their book clubs and backyards and Tom's football throwing ability. But they're still certainly the biggest threat to the Losties' getting off the island. They've got their stealth and their kidnapping prowess and their lists and their jamming equipment and their Jacob, and they remain shrouded in mystery. Why don't they want people to find them? Why are they unmatched in combat? Why do they take kids? How do they give them a "better life?" Why did they wipe out the DHARMA Initiative? Why does Ben say they're not killers in spite of this? How did they get so many details on the Oceanic flight 815 passengers? Why do they call themselves "the good guys?"

Q: Who is Jacob?

He's the one who tells Ben what to do, and no one else even knows where he is. He can cure cancer, he maintains the naughty and nice lists, and he's invisible and silent to most people. That's about all we know at this point. Is he alive? Is he human? Why is Ben afraid of him? Why didn't he cure Ben's cancer? Why did he say "help me" to Locke? Why could Locke hear him when Ben couldn't? More details will surely be coming in later seasons.

Q: Who is Naomi?

She came to the island in search of Desmond, claiming to work for a company hired by Penelope Widmore. This appears to be the best chance of rescue for the Losties so far—all they have to do is use her satellite phone to contact her boat after turning off the jamming equipment and Rousseau's signal. But in the Looking Glass, an incoming transmission from Penny tells us that she doesn't know of Naomi or any boat. Ben warns Jack that Naomi isn't who she says she is, that she's one of "the bad guys." Just as she gets a signal on her sat phone, Locke throws a knife into her back, and threatens to shoot Jack if he takes the call. Jack does anyway, and Locke lowers his gun, saying "Jack, you're not supposed to do this." Who are the good guys, who are the bad guys, and what do good and bad mean?

Q: Who were Adam and Eve?

Adam and Eve are the names Locke gave to two dead bodies discovered in the caves by Jack in season one. One white stone and one black stone were found on them. Damon Lindelof said that from the very beginning, they knew what the end would be, and Adam and Eve were their way of setting up the ending from season one. But right now we really have no idea what the significance of Adam and Eve may be.

What the future holds for Lost

Has Lost been slow-moving at times? Sure. They could have kept it moving at a fast pace if Desmond had turned out to be an Other, if they had tortured him and found out everything about DHARMA and the Others by the end of season two, then defeated the Others, the smoke monster, and the island itself in season three. But then it would already be over, and we'd have missed out on so much good stuff, like Desmond's flashes, Charlie's redemption, Juliet's conflict with Ben, Kate and Sawyer and Jack on the other island, Locke destroying every means of escape from the island, Jack's conflict with Ben and Locke, the whole Jacob thing, and plenty of flashbacks showing who the characters are and how they were connected before coming to the island. But now that we know there are a fixed number of episodes remaining (only 48), and still plenty of questions left to answer, I think we'll be seeing fewer characters like Nikki and Paulo, fewer diversions like ping-pong tournaments, and fewer personal triumphs like Hurley starting the Volkswagen van.

In "The Answers," Damon Lindelof said that going forward, they'll be very focused on answering questions such as where are they, what is this island, why can't anybody find it, why were all these people brought together, and what were they doing on the plane. Carlton Cuse said that the show is like a giant mosaic—past, present, and future—and by the end of the series, this picture will form the complete story of Lost.