It's no real secret that the show runners of Lost, Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, were more than a little peeved when spoilers concerning the game-changing Season 3 finale, "Through the Looking Glass", leaked out weeks before its airing. The duo essentially went radio silent, rendering themselves as out of touch as the Others after the sky went purple at the end of Season 2.

While I understand their anger and desire to let the show unfold for the audience as unspoiled as possible, their reticence to spill even the tiniest of details about Season 4 leaves many of us, including yours truly, chomping at the bit, shaking in the corner like a druggie trying to go cold turkey. The only real bit of speculation we can truly make about the upcoming season comes from casting announcements.

And these cast announcements, while cryptic, seem to shed a little bit of light on where Season 4 might take us.

After the Nikki/Paolo debacle (one of the only lowlights of Season 3), it's safe to say that none of the new cast will be members of the Lostaways. That's a good thing: we've spent three seasons with the established, Tier One-type Lostaways, and I don't need any more in the mix, thank you kindly. But what's interesting about the new cast is that many of them seem to be cast as mathematicians, psychologists, and freight workers.

Hmmm.

The freight worker casting makes sense, what with a giant freighter just off the coast of Smokey Island. It's not clear if we'll meet people such as Minkowksi on the island or on the ship itself, but clearly these people will be major additions to the Lost universe this season. The psychologists and mathematicians, however, are what really pique my interest, and may help identify the nature of the freighter itself.

Let's take Ken Leung's character, theorized to be a braniac mathematician. I love this bit of casting. Not because I love the actor (I remember him killing Beroooooooz's mom in "X-Men 3", but that's about it), but because the fact they are casting him as a "braniac mathematician" means they are going full throttle on the Valenzetti Equation, which means my long-held theory about The Lost Experience being a key to the entire show looks ever more plausible.

According to the Lost mythology, the Hanso Foundation ran several branches of research, seemingly unrelated (weather projects, life extension, zoology), until you realize that every branch related to a specific part of the Valenzetti Equation. In short, Valenzetti came up with six factors that, when compiled, led to the End of Days for humanity. The work of the Hanso Foundation became to change one element of that equation, and with The Island, first discovered by Hanso's ancestor Magnus, the Foundation had the perfect place to conduct their research. (Click here if you've never seen this orientation film. It's a doozy.)

In The Lost Experience, Alvar Hanso himself has been missing for years, and the protagonist of the online game, Rachel Blake (the girl filming the previous video), eventually realizes that other, more sinister men have been running the Foundation in his absence. By the end of the Experience, we learn that Hanso has been kept prisoner while Thomas Mittlewerk, the man at the end of the video above, and others have been taking his initial attempts to change the core values of the Equation to darker, murkier places.

One of these newer techniques involved the Vik Institute, a wing of the "Mental Health Appeal" arm of Hanso's research that was in fact a cover for its true purpose: housing a secret, underground floor in which Rain Man-like savants running the Valenzetti Equation over...and over...and over. Turns out the work done by these savants led to the end-game of The Lost Experience for Mittlewerk: engineering a virus to kill thirty percent of a tribe in Sri Lanka. (Check the link above for this and a lot more.)

At the time, this all seemed creepy and weird and cool but disconnected from the Lost we knew and (sorta) loved at the end of Season 2. (OK, I loved it, but many didn't.) But with the end of Season 3, and the possibility of the Helgus Antonius offshore of the Island, it's worth postulating that this new "braniac mathematician" could in fact be one of the savants from the Vik Institute. Toss in the other casting news, and you have the strong possibility that a Mittlewerk-led Hanso Foundation, backed by the power of the Widmore Corporation and Heavy Paik Industries (the company, run by Sun's father, that helped build the Helgus), will be the "bad guys" going forth. They will experiment on the Lostaways and Others, ravage the Island, and buy off/kill everyone when they are done. This is why Jack needs to "go back" to the island: to undo the awful things the Hanso Foundation did in the name of "saving the world.")

This endeth the inaugural Theory Thursday. Be sure to come back next week, when I fill you in on the Lost movie you didn't even know was currently filming even as we speak...

Now it's your turn! Does any of this sound plausible? Am I simply "Lost"-starved, leaping upon any scrap of information with the glee of a pre-teen girl realizing "High-School Music 2" is about to air for the four hundredth time this month? Drop your thoughts below.

Ryan also posts every 108 minutes over at Boob Tube Dude.

Comments

Yeah I agree I still Wish Kristian Bell joined the cast since I loved her on Veronica Mars it would be prefect if she came onto Lost since I love Lost

Tyson | Oct 18, 2007 4:47:00 PM | #

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keep the posts coming. I know I'll continue reading (even if I don't always post comments).

Rishi | Oct 18, 2007 11:00:07 PM | #

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i'm the same pre-teen girl as you about this stuff. Valenzetti on, my friend. this is my Lost patch.

mri | Oct 19, 2007 7:04:43 AM | #

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Thank you, thank you, thank you, Zap2it, for creating a special place for the many Lostaholics to go, so they can stop clogging up all the other blogs!

Victoria | Oct 19, 2007 1:30:12 PM | #

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Okay I love LOST. Seriously. It is my favorite show on television. But reading conspiarcy theories and articles like this just confuses me...

Melody | Oct 21, 2007 7:58:27 PM | #

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mcgee, youre still a genius at writing.

glad youre a lost-a-holic too.

-m

melanie | Nov 7, 2007 12:01:06 PM | #

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