Belated SDCC: The Lost Panel

I’m poaching big sis Nikki Finke’s coverage of the Lost panel from SDCC, mostly because it sounds so damn entertaining. While no huge surprises were announced and no mysteries were solved, there were the following items of note:

? Jin and Locke may or may not be dead, but they’re still on the show. Says Cuse/Lindelof: “Death is a relative term. They’ll still be on the show in some form.”

? Rousseau (although dead) will get some Season 5 love. “You will see definitively this year Rousseau’s story, but to call it a flashback would be disingenuous.”

? On lovably scatter-brained Faraday, who was on a boat with some castaway red shirts when the island moved: “Things are looking up for Faraday, but not so good for the characters who’ve never spoken a line.” Hee hee!

? Remember that fucking four-toed statue, which, for me, is still the freakiest part of the whole damn mythology? Seems like it all has to do with the natives, including Richard Alpert?the guy who’s seemingly not aged for the last 40 years (played by Nestor Carbonell, who was also the mayor in The Dark Knight. Good for him). Richard Alpert is, according to the pair, “quite old.” How many toes does he have? “You’re gonna see him barefoot in the very near future.” If Alpert has four toes?and Cuse/Lindelof are clearly inferring he does?my brain is going to shoot out the back of my head.

? Speaking of Alpert, some fan asked an Alpert question at the panel and received an “I asked a Richard Alpert question and all I got was this lousy T-shirt” shirt. I would kill a man or small animal for such a shirt.

? Last but not least, you might have heard that the “Dharma Initiative” was doing testing for “recruits” throughout the con, which culminated at a show at the panel. After bringing four winners back stage at the beginning of the panel, one of the “recruits” rushed out with a video right at the end:

Cuse and Lindelof feign surprise, but then let the kid show a secret video of the Asian doctor from the Dharma orientation videos, saying his real name is Pierre Chang, and he’s sending this message from 30 years in the past. To prove it, he says that he knows the president is George W. Bush, and “you share information on something called the Internet.” He mentions that Dharma has been purged, but it is imperative that it be reconstituted. “Time isn’t just of the essence. It IS the essence. Change the past…” The footage ends.

MovieWeb has an audio file of the entire panel, which is mighty entertaining. If you’re any kind of Lost fan, check it out.