The Mysteries Deepen in LOST's Third Season

It's been a long wait between the season three finale of LOST back in May and tonight's season four opener. Eight months, during which we learned that the already short sixteen-episode season would probably be cut down to eight courtesy of the Writers' Strike. In November, we finally got a little something to tide us over with the mobisodes, brilliant little scenes first sent to cell phones and then posted on ABC.com a week later. Each of these nuggets has been pure gold to me, whetting my appetite for the excitement to come. I'm especially intrigued by the revelation in the 13th mobisode, though my favorite probably remains King of the Castle, in which Jack squares off against Ben in a game of chess and shrugs off suggestions that he might not really want to leave this island for good.

This month, we got the fantastic www.find815.com, an interactive website whose contents I still have not fully explored. It allows fans to follow the journey of Sam Thomas, former Oceanic employee and longtime boyfriend of an 815 stewardess named Sonya, who decides to conduct his own search after Oceanic gives up on finding the fallen airplane. Filled to the brim with fascinating tidbits, it no doubt offers some hints about the upcoming season.

But there's nothing like the show itself, so I was eager to pick up season three, which came out in mid-December, though I waited until January to buy it. I've heard and read a lot of complaints about its unevenness; most reviewers seemed to agree that the last few episodes had saved a substandard season. Maybe it made a difference that I saw the first six episodes close together, so I didn't have to wait such a long time to see what had happened to everyone after the season two finale, but I had few of those frustrations with the season.

Oh, sure, it was aggravating to see Kate and Sawyer stuck in bear cages and Jack in a shark tank, unable to roam freely and being manipulated by the Others. I worried that they might not make their way back to the beach, but in my heart of hearts, I figured they would. I think the writers could have given one of the second season's key characters a more graceful exit, and two of the third season's most superfluous characters a more natural entrance. But for the most past, I found the season absolutely riveting, and I was thrilled to be able to watch it in real time at last.

Season three is very focused on the Others, who are mostly hinted at in the first season and still shadowy in the second. We get to know the deliciously creepy Ben, formerly known as the sniveling Henry. Michael Emerson's exceptional Emmy-nominated performance kept me hanging on Ben's every word and gesture. Ben is especially compelling in conjunction with Jack (Matthew Fox), who gets intimately acquainted with the Others this season, and John (Terry O'Quinn), who despite long absences manages three centric episodes, the intensity of which were enough to score O'Quinn the Emmy.

Our castaways are very fragmented, particularly at the beginning, with Jack, Kate (Evangeline Lilly) and Sawyer (Josh Holloway) in captivity; Sayid (Naveen Andrews), Jin (Daniel Dae Kim) and Sun (Yunjin Kim) in decoy Otherville; Hurley (Jorge Garcia) wandering through the jungle; Eko (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), John and Desmond (Henry Ian Cusick) unaccounted for and the rest of the gang back at the beach - save Michael (Harold Perrineau) and Walt (Malcolm David Kelley), of course, who have skipped the island in the Others' motorboat. As the season progresses, the fragmentation continues as the characters shuffle around, but in the entire season, we never see all of the castaways together in the same place - though we come close at one point, with only John off on his own, becoming more embroiled in the mysteries of the island and demanding answers from Ben.

Because the Others are now a prominent faction, there are many scenes, especially toward the end of the season, that don't involve the castaways at all. Much of the action hinges on the loyalties of Juliet (Elizabeth Mitchell), a fertility specialist brought to the island because every pregnancy in recent memory has ended with the death of both mother and baby. Controlled by Ben for three years, all she wants is to get home to her sister and the nephew she's never met, and she's willing to do anything to facilitate that escape. She seems to have bonded with Jack, but is it all an act?

Richard (Nestor Carbonell), a soft-spoken man with heavy eyeliner who "looks fair but feels foul," recruited Juliet with some wheedling words and a little help from the dearly departed Ethan (William Mapother), who, like Christian (John Terry), has a habit of popping up frequently even though he died in the first season. Richard seems to be Ben's advisor, and quite possibly a scheming one at that, while Tom (M. C. Gainey), hitherto known as Mr. Friendly, is his lackey who is not nearly as intimidating without his beard. My favorite of the secondary Others, Tom is known for his congeniality, and in this season he generally comes across as a regular guy without as many sinister underpinnings as his cohorts.

Cohorts like Mikhail (Andrew Divoff), affectionately known as Patchy. This one-eyed Ukrainian first pops up on a television screen in the surveillance hatch. A loose cannon, he lives reclusively on a farm equipped with communication devices and shoots at anyone who comes to visit. He's surly and unpredictable, and he's much more important to the season than it at first appears. And then there is Jacob, the enigmatic leader of the Others who no one but Ben seems to have seen. Supposedly he calls all the shots, but does he even exist, or is he just another way for Ben to exert control over others?

The mysteries pile up in this season, but some compelling questions are answered, among them What is the Dharma Initiative, and how does it relate to the Others? Who is the original Sawyer? How is it that polar bears are wandering around on a tropical island? How did Locke get in the wheelchair? Some less intriguing questions receive an unwarranted degree of attention, most notably What's the deal with Jack's tattoos? But I'll forgive that debacle of a back story because the episode also focuses on the teenaged Karl (Blake Bashoff), who may be Luke to Sawyer's Han Solo and who shares a gorgeous Somewhere Out There moment with Alex (Tonya Raymonde), unhinged island resident Rousseau's (Mira Furlan) long-lost daughter, as the episode closes.

Sawyer certainly is one of the most riveting characters of the season. Though he hasn't grown any less snarky, he seems to be advancing steadily in his maturation process, and Jack's absence is doing him some good as it gives him the opportunity to step up and take some responsibility, with a little help from the wise Hurley. But this is Sawyer we're talking about here; can it be long before he backslides? All of the characters face new challenges this season, but the one I couldn't keep my eyes off of was Desmond, who we only really got to know during the season two finale. Now he's a regular part of the gang, though all that time in a hatch didn't do much for his social skills. He's a loner, but as he spends the season haunted by disturbing visions foretelling the death of Charlie (Dom Monaghan), the pair remain predominantly in one another's company, which is lovely for me, since they are two of my four favorite characters.

Charlie's supposed doom comes to light in Flashes Before Your Eyes, an episode whose format is unique among all those we've seen so far. Framed in the present, the bulk of it takes place at a key moment in Desmond's past - or is it? With its mind-bending premise and epic overtones - not to mention a terribly romantic storyline for a show that aired on Valentine's Day - it firmly establishes Desmond as a key player in the third season and makes the question of Charlie's survival a principal concern. Expose, on the other hand, disposes of two much-maligned characters and is widely regarded as a wasted episode, but the light-hearted tone and alternative perspectives actually made it one of my favorites of the season - though I am cross when I realize that while we are putting up with Nikki (Kiele Sanchez) and Paolo's (Rodrigo Santoro) pointless shenanigans, we could be getting some more time in with the fantastic Rose (L. Scott Caldwell) and Bernard (Sam Anderson), who are missing in action for the vast majority of the season.

LOST just keeps getting more and more complex, and it's nice to know that the writers now know exactly how much longer they have to wrap up the series. Presumably, this provides assurance that we're actually going to unlock most of the show's mysteries - though no doubt some will be left for us to discuss long after LOST has ended. I wish I could say that the show seems to be building toward the optimistic conclusion indicated by the first season, which was largely an idealistic study in how flawed people from disparate backgrounds can learn to live together peaceably. If you discount those killed upon impact in the plane crash, there are about twice as many deaths in the third season as in the first two combined. I certainly hope that trend doesn't continue. But whatever the case may be, I know exactly where I will be on Thursday night at 9 p.m., even if it is only for the next eight weeks. LOST has lost none of its appeal for me. I can't wait to see what Damon and Carlton have in store for us next!