'Lost': Analyzing that Comic Con video

Well, by now, I'm sure the majority of you have heard, but there's a brand-spanking new video out there on Al Gore's interwebs that is tearing through the online Lost community not unlike a certain smoke monster. It debuted at Comic Con yesterday, and thanks to Shaggysteve for linking to it over on the Zap2It's Guide to Lost Facebook group. Well, I said goodbye to sleep last night, as I've been watching it over and over and over again, trying to make sense of it all.

Now, obviously everything below is subject to revision at a later date, but I'd be remiss if I didn't give you my initial impressions of the video. Warning: you're gonna experience the verbal equivalent of the scratches and jumpcuts of the video below, as I try for a sort of stream-of-consciousness approach to it all.

But first up, if you haven't seen it: here's the fan-captured video of the launch of the newest Lost ARG, and the launch of a thousand new theories about the show. Thanks to TapDawg, who took the footage and initially posted it over at Doc Arzt's Lost Blog. I'm going to skip over the initial minute or so, which is amusing enough but not the focus of my interest. I'll time code comments as best I can so you know what I'm talking about.

1:00: Marvin Candle! In a...track suit? Did he just go jogging? That's it! The Dharma Initiative created Wii Fit! I knew it!

1:11: "No point in games anymore, right?" Whoa. What about backgammon, or Risk?

1:18: His real name? Pierre Chang. Funny, he doesn't look French. And who brought a baby to Comic Con OH MY GOD it's coming from the video itself. And he's calling offscreen to someone named...Kara? (Someone help with the audio, please.) Pierre, you sly fox you! Guess he's coming to you live from The Love Hatch, which is where the REAL Dharma magic happens. OK, he's coming to you from New Otherton, looks like, but I like my idea better.

1:31: He's only got "one chance at this." Is he about to engage in a rap battle with B-Rabbit?

1:34: He's a professor of Theoretical Astrophysics, based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Well, there's the Degroots' connection, loud and clear. Looks like they used to go to staff meetings together, but instead of throwing key parties, they decided to go save the world.

1:39: He refers to the Island as "God-forsaken" (Ben would certainly agree) and that he's been there for years. Wait, so where did the baby come from? I thought you couldn't have babies on the Island? Brain hurts. Need Dharma aspirin.

1:43: Frenchy's telling us that he was brought to the Island to conduct experiments on the "curve-metric solution to Einstein's Field Equations." Oh goody, it's not like all that Minkowski space-time stuff from Season 4 didn't make me feel dumb. I can't find anything on "curve-metric solutions" anywhere online, so maybe I'm hearing this wrong. No matter, as what comes next gives me a hint.

1:47: "Keep this pinhole open long enough?" What the...holy moly, this isn't on videotape, it's literally being transmitted from one point in the past to one point in the future, captured somehow by those now trying to reboot the Dharma Initiative. He's sending a message in a bottle, only the bottle traverses across the space-time continuum! That's much, much cooler than trying to one up Eminem.

1:56: "You should be receiving this message roughly 30 years..." OK, so this was filmed in 1978, ostensibly, if we understand that the need to restart the Dharma Initiative is due to receiving this transmission. This is not the type of message one lets sit in committee for a few years. Well, unless you're Microsoft, but that's neither here nor there. We have a date for the video, it's safe to say.

2:15: He knows about the Purge. He knows about the Purge. No amount of Dharma boxed wine is gonna make that knowledge go away.

2:23: "One that we are apparently powerless to escape." OK, two things here, one huge, one merely cool. The idea of powerlessness ties into the notion that the endgame of Lost is not only literally written (i.e., the show knows where it wants to go on a meta level) but is actuality written into the fabric of the universe of the show. It's the narrative that Linus and Widmore know all too well, either because of predestination (unlikely but possible) but because somehow, these events have already happened in some fashion. This is why Linus/Widmore can't kill each other, it's why Pierre can't stop the Purge, and it's why people can't die until the Island says it's time. So that's the big thing. The cool thing? Pierre looks at his hand at 2:29. Dude knows he's gonna lose it. Damn.

(Also, let's take a moment here to put 2 and 2 together and, in Lost fashion, try to make 4. We heard a baby crying earlier. That seemed odd. And now we know that this is pre-Purge. Which begs to me a semi-obvious question: did the Purge (or events related to it) muck up baby-making in some fundamental way? Perhaps so. You could argue that the baby offscreen could be explained by a variety of reasons consistent within the show (wasn't born there, was conceived off the Island, Pierre sent his sperm via Dharma sub to somewhere not in Portland, etc). But the fact that the video makes a point of showing that Pierre's been there long enough to call it "God-forsaken" suggests to me that once upon a time you could make all the Dharma babies you wanted. Pretty cool stuff. Anywho, back to the video!)

2:33: All this info about future events? Provided by someone deemed to be "credible." OK, let's take bets on the source. Actually, let's wait a moment, as the Deep Throat of this world is potentially about to reveal himself.

2:35: "It doesn't matter...none of it matters, just get to it." Oh, hi, Daniel Faraday. WHAT IN THE BLIPPING HELL ARE YOU DOING IN 1978? This calls for an insta-analysis paragraph.

OK, we've been wondering about the fate of Faraday since Season 4 ended. He wasn't on the Island, but he wasn't far enough away from it to escape the effects of that damn donkey wheel. So what happened to him? Looks like he got all Marty McFly'ed, and sent back to this time and place. Now, I don't know if he happens to have his notebook handy with him, but if so, he could provide a lot of insight into the events 30 years in the future and suggest ways to help out the friends (i.e., Charlotte) left behind. Plus, who better to help use a pinhole in the space-time continuum to help the person that in many ways could have been his thesis advisor?

One more thing on this, and I'm hesitant to even bring it up, but this scenario finally explains WTF happened at the end of the much maligned Lost video game Via Domus. The protagonist in that game also happened to be in a motorboat slightly offshore from the Island when Desmond turned the failsafe key, and the effect? He was sent back to shore, IN THE PAST, with events happening slightly differently than they had before.

2:47: Seems like Pierre's not even convinced this transmission will work, in that his work is heavy on the theoretical and light on the practical. Again with the slight Back to the Future vibe here. Let's hope they didn't need a bolt of lightning to open this pinhole.

2:55: And here's the sales pitch for the ARG: the reconstitution of the Dharma Initiative, in order to fulfill the work ended by the Purge.

3:05: "Time isn't just OF the essence...it IS the essence." Time could have been so much more, and time is precious I know. Holy crap, Boy George IS Alvar Hanso! I figured it out!

3:12: "Perhaps you'll be able to find a way to save us, to change the past..." It's incredibly unclear if this is even possible to do within the show's rules. According to "The Constant," you can't change the future. But "the future" is all relativistic. The Oceanic 6 will always and ever get off the Island, but their future actions haven't technically happened yet. So THOSE events can change, as evidenced by Widmore changing the rules with Alex's death. However, nothing Ben can ever do will fix that. Have you noticed I'm avoiding the issue of changing the past? That's because it makes my head hurt terrifically. But there's Faraday, in the past, trying to affect the future. I heart this show so very much.

3:23: "This is useless, they're never gonna see this..." This suggests some sort of depression on behalf of Faraday, since time-traveling back to a time and place in which everyone's destined to die tend to bring one down a notch or two on the Happy-O-Meter. (I know a few of you thought you saw Charlotte's hair at this point, but I think the stakes for Daniel would be infinitely higher were he in the past trying to save the life of the girl he loves.) With that, the video comes back to Comic-Con, with the Jonah Hill lookalike scampering off to show the world what he's found.

So there you have it: the first new Lost content in a few months, and the launch of the newest ARG. Looks like someone saw this video, believed in its validity, and restarted the Dharma Initiative. But who? And to what purpose? And how will/are the Oceanic 6 involved? (Could this be not a Hanso-based project, but a Kwon/Widmore endeavor?)

So many questions to answer, so I'll leave you the space below to offer your initial impressions and post any other questions you have!

Ryan also posts every 108 minutes over at Boob Tube Dude, then peruses Zap2It's Guide to Lost Facebook group.

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