'Lost': The beginning is the end is the beginning

Send a heartbeat to

The void that cries through you

Relive the pictures that have come to pass

For now we stand alone

The world is lost and blown

And we are flesh and blood disintegrate

With no more to hate



Is it bright where you are

Have the people changed

Does it make you happy you're so strange
And in your darkest hour

I hold secret's flame

We can watch the world devoured in it's pain
Smashing Pumpkins, "The Beginning is the End is the Beginning"

Reader comments here on the "Lost" blog tend to drive a lot of the content that I produce. They are one of the biggest reasons I write a blog and not, say, a journal. Also, this blog actually pays, and my journal had me working the chain like a Southern deputy. So there's that as well.
 
As we enter the last full week before Season 6 starts (just read that again and smile, holler, and do the happy Snoopy dance), a recent reader comment helped me to shape an essay I'd been kicking around in my head but never had the proper place from which to leap. So I'll thank reader Lydia for posting the following comment in my entry about Dave last week. At first, she's playing down the ultimate importance of Annie in the end-game of "Lost" (a point with which I disagree, but it's completely possible), but then she says this:
 

Same with Libby, she may only be important because she is one of the bigger players pawns. Her story isn't as important as the overall conflict between MIB and Jacob.

This is one of those fantastic statements that "Lost" can uniquely produce, in that is it simultaneously completely true and completely, utterly false. If you had to rank the power players of the "Lost" universe, then yes, it would be silly to rank Libby higher than either Jacob or The Man in Black. But we're not ranking relative power here: we're weighing importance. Big difference.
 
When I constructed my "6 questions to ask heading into Season 6" article, I left the following question out. To me, it's the one I've been asking in one form or another for the entire off-season, so it seemed redundant to include it in there. But perhaps I should have included it so we can establish the true stakes of the final leg of the show's journey as well as illuminate the BIGGEST pitfall for the writers to avoid.
 
Why were these particular people brought to the Island?
 
That's it. That's THE question above all others. It supercedes questions about smoke monsters, donkey wheels, four-toed statues, Richard's agelessness, and yes, the struggle between Jacob and The Man in Black. Why? Because "Lost" is the story about how a particular group of individuals stand out in the long history of a place that may or may not represent the liminal point between where mankind has been and mankind is going. The monster, the statue, and the god-like figures that inhabit the Island are inferior to the characters we have followed for five years because those characters are needed to break the stalemate that has plagued both the Island and, by extension, humanity.
 
That makes Libby more powerful than Jacob. That makes Boone more powerful than the Man in Black. That makes Mr. Eko more powerful than the smoke monster, Season 3 beat-down be damned. This is why I hate the use of the word "pawn" to describe anyone on the Island, and why that Cuatro promo had me tearing what little hair I have left out of my head. It's one thing to say that the characters in the show have been unwittingly led down an ever-narrowing path, but it's also true that they chose to go down that path.
 
But above that, you need to take a big step back and realize that these people were specifically chosen to go down those paths. For The Man in Black, he saw ways in which he could push them down Path A. For Jacob, he saw the Path B that the characters themselves could not, showing them the path rather than leading them down it. But in either case, these individuals are unique among all those that have ever landed on the Island. They are the players in the pivotal moment in the Island's history, the moment that "Lost" has been building up to for the past five years.

One more Smashing Pumpkins quote, again from "Beginning," almost seems to be talking directly about the stakes of Season 6.
 
Delivered from the blast

The last of a line of lasts

The pale princess of a palace cracked

And now the kingdom comes

Crashing down undone

And I am a master of a nothing place

Of recoil and grace

It's a moment that has its antecedents in many specific events, but really kicked into high gear September 22, 2004. And for funsies, let's look at that moment in a way you've probably never seen before. While I'm a fan of the way that the show deploys its story, piece by
piece, seeing it this way impressively lays out just how intricate the
storytelling is on the show. Let's check in with the "pale princess of a palace cracked," Juliet Burke, who is burning muffins in the cracked palace of New Otherton.


 
What that clips points out, besides the genius of the show's writers, is just how interconnected and necessary each person is to the fabric of the show. To call them pawns does them a disservice. They are the most important thing about the show, not the mythology in which they find themselves inserted. Mythology's great, don't get me wrong. I'm one of the biggest "Lost" mythology buffs out there. I'm tempted to write an entire essay about The Man in Black's new role as the "master of a nothing place." And how the song itself was a slowed down version of "The End is The Beginning is The End," almost as if the song itself had been blasted into another reality and come out slightly different on the other side. But all mythology, no character leads to a dull show. Or worse: it leads to "Flash Forward." (I know, harsh. But that show is all no story, no heart. So far. Sorry.)
 
The conflict between Jacob and The Man in Black is compelling, but if Season 6 shows that we've been watching the wrong people for five years, I think there's going to be something of a riot among the "Lost" community. "The Incident" provided the final context for the show: we have gradually zoomed out from Jack's eye to the hatch to New Otherton to the Linus/Widmore global battle to the Jacob/Man in Black millennial battle. But it's important to remember where we started, on a small scale that's still the most important.
 
Ultimately, I think this is what Darlton mean when they talk about the importance of Season 1 in terms of laying out the final groundwork for the show. They've spent the last two years throwing ever bigger problems and scope at our characters, largely to make these people feel so small that overcoming the odds seems an impossibility. But that's why the Rose/Bernard scene in the Season 5 finale is so damn important: it re-establishes the importance of interpersonal connection amidst all the chaos and craziness of time travel, hydrogen bombs, and the other assorted madness that has accumulated. Fires big and small swallow things up in the end of "The Incident": what remains are the people that have been with us all along.
 
And their progress to this point will be what brings us to Jacob's prophesied end. They, and only they, can bring this story to a close.
 
Ryan invites you to join the hundreds already in Zap2It's Guide to Lost Facebook group.
 

Photo credit: ABC