Where “Lost” is Found
“Lost” show runner Damon Lindelof was quoted as saying he thought the 1986 graphic novel, “Watchmen” was the greatest piece of popular fiction ever written.
Which, of course, made me want to track it down.
Then another producer, whom I could name but then he would have to kill me, kept telling me the key to everything was in an episode titled “Special.”
That’s the episode in which Walt is reading a Spanish language comic book that shows a polar bear and a glass dome sitting over what looks like an arctic area.
On the “Lost” season ender, men sitting at an ice station record a disturbance on their tracking device. They say they missed it the first time (When Flight 815 went down?) but they think they have found “him.”
They call their employer, who happens to be the girlfriend of Desmond. The men tracking Desmond are in a polar region.
Where polar bears live.
So again we ask, “Does this explain the polar bear in the first
season?”
“Well, the Arctic is the only place where polar bears live,” producer Carleton Cuse said in our interview last July. “And polar bears will be back this season.”
Which brings us back to that season-one episode titled “Special.”
Before dad Michael tosses it into the fire, Walt’s turning the pages and we see a polar bear and, later, a dome-like structure with electro-magnetic symbols around it. The dome is surrounded by snow.
The illustration style bears an uncanny resemblance to the ones in the Hugo Award (Hugo. Get it? Hurley???) winning “Watchmen.”
There are scenes in “Watchmen” that involve sharks circling a raft much like a scene on “Lost,” the 1980s computer screens looking for input with the blinking cursor, and a bank of TV screens monitoring people’s movements.
In “Watchmen,” one of the main characters is Ozymandias. Think of
the stone foot in the “Lost” season finale and consider Shelley’s
poem “Ozymandias” and the poem’s description of “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone.”
The comic book character Ozymandias thinks he needs to change the world by whatever means necessary.
(The Others always refer to themselves as the good guys.)
Ozymandias believes he knows what’s best for the world. He’s willing to do experiments on people (think about the injections on “Lost” and what it has done to some people), or even commit murder (Oh, where do we start on “Lost’?), for the greater good.
Namaste that, baby.
He also happens to have a getaway in the Antarctic: a dome with a tropical world inside.
And the graphic novel centers on good and bad, belief in your own
potential and using psychic powers to achieve the ultimate goal (Think about Walt’s psychic powers and what The Others said when they let him go: They got more out of him than they could have ever imagined.)
There’s also a lot of talk in “Watchmen” about mankind destroying the world either by damaging the environment or through nuclear war.
Could this be what “Lost” has in store?
Ah, so many layers.
Or just a lot more chain yanking.
To read the entire article on “Lost,” check out Sunday’s centerpiece in the Oakland Tribune/BANG Newspapers Bay Area Living section.
Kim said,
September 29, 2006 at 2:21 pm
So…is the magnet what’s creating the “dome” around the island? When the numbers aren’t entered, does the magnetic field falter and this is how planes, boats, etc. are able to get there? This “Watchmen” development explains much. Now I’m thinking back to when Locke and Desmond turned the key and there was a blinding light. Does this mean the forcefield was destroyed and now our Losties will perhaps start experiencing an Arctic environment? (They DID say the polar bears are coming back this season…) And what about Michael and Walt, who were told to follow a certain directional bearing to find “rescue?” Hmm.
Good stuff, Sue.
Will Smith said,
October 1, 2006 at 7:29 pm
Great stuff, who knew a polar bear would hold the answers. What about the horse that Kate saw and Sawyer also saw?? The thing about the polar bear is it seems so innocuous much like the horse but it holds the key?
Back in a bit, I gotta get my copy of Watchmen…
Will
We_are_the_801 said,
October 2, 2006 at 4:40 pm
Your “Watchmen” angle is cool stuff. Now I’ll HAVE to read the copy a friend (a non-Lostie but I working on him) forced on me a few months ago.
The hospital connection is interesting tough a bit tenuous IMHO. Seven of the original 14 characters have had hospital scenes featured in their flashbacks — if you count Claire’s visit to the Dharma Initiative’s medical station. You could really stretch it and call Sun and Jin’s visit to the fertility specialist a “hospital visit.”
As for the theory of Jack/Kate/Sawyer being captured because they were the ones who have “seen things,” I must take geek-boy umbrage. Hurley’s “friend” Dave turned out to be pretty unreal. Sayid and Shannon saw Walt somewhere “he wasn’t supposed to be,” as Bea Klugh would say. Boone had a vivid hallucination thanks to Locke. Charlie had vivid waking dreams about Aaron and Claire. Who knows what Locke saw when he encountered the “monster” in season one — I just don’t see him calling a noisy cloud of smoke “beautiful.” Consider all the whispers as auditory hallucinations, voices of the dead or psychic chatter and you have even more sensory encounters with the potentially unworldly.
Getting back to the “Watchmen,” the idea Lost sharing the theme of “doing questionable things for the greater good” is utterly reinforced by the revelations of the Lost Experience Alternate Reality Game from this summer. Without encroaching directly on events on the Island the game does provide answers to what the Hanso Foundation, the Dharma Initiative’s funders, were and are up to (not to mention the possible meaning behind The Numbers). All of it points to the question of how far is too far to go when “saving humanity from itself.” Enquiring minds may want to view the Lost Experience’s climactic “Sri Lanka video” (here http://www.youtube.com/timdorr or here http://www.hansoexposed.com/player/d967feda2504097042c7d0a7de34096b).
Well, until Wednesday keep asking “who will watch the watchmen?”
Kim said,
October 4, 2006 at 4:12 pm
We_are_the_801: Well said! I’ll be checking out your links.