Analyzing the newest 'Lost' teaser poster

I'm a week or more late to the game, "Lost" fans, but I did want to make sure you all saw the newest teaser poster for Season 6. Because while it's not terribly revealing, it's awfully sexy.

I found out about the poster thanks to a little Zap2it synergy, with Marisa Roffman of Korbi TV making sure I was in the know. Because while I'm many things, "in the know" isn't usually one of them. Take a peek here. Don't worry, I'll be here when you come back.

The top half isn't anything new: it's a wide shot of the show's major characters. Much like Bon Jovi, they're wanted dead or alive come the final season. Will they be resurrected? Seen in flashbacks? Seen as visions? Will they teach the world to sing while consuming carbonated beverages? All I know is that I love that Locke is dead center and the only one not facing directly forward. It not only cements his central importance this season, it also gives me both the heebies AND the jeebies. Works for me.

More intriguing are the hieroglyphics behind "The Final Season" in the bottom half of the poster. To me, these hieroglyphics confirm that Season 6's theme will be "The Island." Let's take a quick look back in a simplified way at the overall arc of each season:

Season 1: The Survivors
Season 2: The Hatch
Season 3: The Others
Season 4: The Freighter
Season 5: The Dharma Initiative (or, The Systematic Dismantling of the Audience's Collective Brain)

So what bigger, better topic around which to center the show's final season than the mysterious land that has housed the majority of the show's action? Looking at those symbols on the posters indicates to me that if Season 6 is where this particular story ends, those hieroglyphics show where it all began.

It's less important to me to try and analyze each individual symbol and try to derive a cohesive meaning from the poster. Rather, these hieroglyphics indicate we'll finally learn the context in which Oceanic 815 unwittingly delivered the newest actors onto its unusual stage. We've seen hints of the Island's history but never truly received a coherent version of it. What's that old saying about those who don't know their history being doomed to repeat it? Well, it's high time the survivors from Season 1 start learning their place in the Island's history.

One can look at the symbols in the Swan hatch when the counter reached zero as The Dharma Initiative's own ode to the Island's history. However, they put the hieroglyphics at the zero mark either 1) as a tacky, almost sarcastic reference to the ruins they found while building the Barracks, or 2) as an almost reverential move, as if to pacify the energy/spirits awoken in the Incident. Men and women of science, The Dharma Initiative. But something like The Incident certainly might have awoken their faith as well.

In either case, I'm encouraged to see hieroglyphics on the teaser poster for Season 6. While I don't expect every aspect of the Island's mysteries to be fully fleshed out in a way satisfactory to all, there are plenty of mysteries that can be explored by the show's characters to illuminate their understanding, as well as our own, of just why they ended up on The Island in the first place.

What do you make of the poster? Does it have you excited, or does it make the already long wait that much worse?

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