'Letters from the Flame': Answering your 'Lost' Comic-Con questions

"Lost" fans got their fill of confusing hints about Season 6 at Comic-Con a few weeks ago. I'm here today to try and and answer some of your burning questions.

Let's get right into the queries!

With the Oceanic commercial declaring 30 yrs. of safety beginning in '79, do you think they will all somehow end up in 2009?
DCMeads

I think we shouldn't take the commercial from Comic-Con too literally. Once again, here it is, embedded for your viewing pleasure.

The 2009 just refers to the year in which it was shown at Comic-Con as opposed to where Season 6 will end up. The show's pretty insistent on the "present day" action happening in 2007, even though they technically left the Island in early 2005 and spent three years in the real world before return. I think characters talk about "three years" instead of "two years and more than six months" and we should just roll with it.

In any case, I'll reiterate my insistence on not taking the commercials shown at Comic-Con as canon. They are merely signposts towards a potential mythology.

What if, instead of seeing dead people, Hurley is able to see into an alternate universe, where they are still alive. When Hurley saw Charlie after his death, Charlie said, "I am dead, but I'm also here."
Shaggysteve

The idea of parallel universes leaves too many loopholes for me to feel comfortable embracing this notion. As always, I'm not ruling it out; that way lies the foolish "Lost" viewer. The idea in and of itself has merit, because it lets one on the surface buy that Hurley's visions retroactively all tie into the alternate timeline that potentially started when Juliet detonated Jughead.

But digging further, it falls apart in my eyes. OK, let's assume Hurley can see into a universe where Charlie's alive, Ana Lucia's chillin' with Libby, and Eko's a competitive chess player. What about Dave? Is he a real person in the Jughead Universe, a mental patient with a fondness for "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"-esque behavior? How would such a universe already exist if, in Hurley's frame of reference, it only was created in the finale moment of Season 5? Wouldn't the people in this other universe be surprised to see Original Recipe Hurley? And if "Lost" goes down this road, won't they look simply derivative in light of the "Fringe" finale? (Ed. And as Brian of the North points out in the comments, "Lost" is dealing with alternate time lines, NOT parallel universes. Which are different entities. Oh look, nose bleed!)

My take on "I am dead, but I'm also here," means, "Yes, I am dead, but that doesn't mean my ability to converse with you has ceased." It's a critical way to denote that the people Hurley sees are not mere by-products of his cracked mental state but spirits/ghosts/apparitions/corporal reanimations of those that have passed. Hurley in my mind is not special because he can see into a parallel universe but because he is especially equipped to deal with the remnants of those who died on the Island. Maybe we'll learn that Libby's assignment in Santa Rosa was to find someone with the specific cranial composition to affect such a communication on the Island.

In any case, Hurley's special ability lies in communicating with those who have passed on from our world, not those that still exist in another one. But since we've talked this much about Hurley, maybe we can talk about him a little bit more? I think Arthur would like that.

I don't think I've seen this question before. What is the true significance of the guitar that Jacob left with Hurley. Obviously, it's Charlie's, so does that mean Mr. Pace is all scrunched up in there, or is that a representation of the bloody rock God, which will serve as the portal or whatever for his return? Answers, Ryan, answers.
Arthur Dent

Well, I wasn't going to give you answers, but then you said the word twice. So my hands are pretty much tied at this point. I think it's fair to say that Charlie's ashes are not literally in the guitar at this point. Whatever Eloise's intentions were in recreating the conditions under which Oceanic 815 broke on through to the other side, it seems she wasn't exactly wrong in doing so. After all, Jacob didn't give Hurley the guitar as a mere memento. Innocuous things can take on great meaning in the "Lost" universe.

Take the Numbers, for example. In Season 5, we learn they were just a serial number on a particular piece of siding on the Swan Hatch. And yet, they eventually incur a kind of power unto themselves after The Incident. Not only do they turn into the code for the Swan computer, but either individually or as a group "call out," as it were, to major players in the "Lost" universe. The combination of unique energy under the Swan combined with the excited psychological state around it during the Incident infused the Numbers with a kind of permanent psychic resonance.

I bring this up not to avoid Arthur's question but to try and illuminate it. Something about that guitar is important. The word "portal" is a good one in that it need not be a literal doorway back to Charlie, but a way to tap into whatever part of Charlie didn't truly die in the flooded communication room of The Looking Glass. Jacob bestowing the guitar unto Hurley takes on even more meaning if you remember the "miraculous" discovery of Charlie's guitar in "House of the Rising Sun," seemingly placed there on purpose, not tossed there by happenstance. In lieu of "The Incident," can there really be any doubt that it was Jacob's doing?

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