Great news: LOST got nominated for best drama series, Michael Emerson got nominated, for the third time, for best supporting actor, and Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof got nominated for best writing for the season finale episode, The Incident
Here’s the complete list of all the nominations for LOST:
Outstanding drama series: LOST
Outstanding supporting actor in a drama series: Michael Emerson
Outstanding writing for a drama series: Cuse and Lindelof, for The Incident
Outstanding Single-Camera Picture Editing For A Drama Series: Stephen Semel, Mark Goldman, and Chris Nelson, for The Incident
Outstanding Sound Mixing For A Comedy Or Drama Series (One Hour): Robert Anderson, Ken King, Scott Weber, and Frank Morrone, for The Incident
Titus Welliver played Man # 2, aka The Man in Black, aka Jacob’s Nemesis, aka “Esau,” in the Season 5 finale. In the last minute of this video from TV Guide (via latestlost), Titus talks about his character’s lack of a name. He also says that there is a greater power that he and Jacob answer to — which is something I had suspected earlier.
Claire in Jacob's cabin, in Episode 4x11 "Cabin Fever"
Val asks:
Do we have any idea what really happened to Claire? After she turned up in Jacob’s cabin with Jack’s father, I got really confused about what her role in the whole island mystery is.
I originally thought Claire was killed after she wandered into the jungle, leaving Aaron behind. I had thought if she were alive, she would have come back for her son.
I was surprised to see her show up in Jacob’s cabin and in Kate’s house on the mainland, but I still thought she was dead. She was with Christian in the cabin, and we knew he was dead. As for showing up on the mainland, other dead characters had been doing that as well, and Clair’s appearance could also be explained as being just a dream.
But then while I was watching Destiny Calls, the Season 5 clip/recap show that aired in January 2009, Damon said something in the commentary that surprised me, and made me think that Claire might still be alive:
Damon (at 3:34 on video): And now, essentially, Claire is missing. We don’t know where she is. She saw Christian Shephard in the jungle. She left the baby behind. And that’s it.
At the time I saw the Destiny Calls recap show, I thought, “She’s only missing! So she’s not dead, after all!” But now, on second thought, I believe she could still be dead. Damon didn’t actually say, for sure, that she wasn’t — just that we didn’t know what happened to her.
Forging on, I found an interview that eonline did with Damon and Carlton last year, before the Season 4 finale, where they muddied the waters even more:
Q: “Is Claire dead?” Is that a question you are wanting the fans to be asking at this point?
Carlton: I think we want the fans to ask, “What’s happened to Claire?” I don’t think it’s “Is she dead?” I think it’s like, “Where is she?” and, “What’s going on with her?”
Damon: What’s fascinating with Lost is there’s a scene where Claire is in the cabin, and she is sitting next to a guy who is dead, and nobody is saying “What’s up with that?” They’re all asking “Is she dead?” I think the more operative question is “What is dead?” That’s a good question to ask, and one you will certainly be asking over the long hiatus.
“The operative question is ‘What is dead’?” Okey-dokey. 😉
It sounds like Claire may have joined the ranks of the undead, the quasi-dead, the not-quite-dead — or, as I like to think of them, actors who still have a job even after their characters die.
And, in fact, Emilie de Ravin recently told TV Guide that she would be coming back to LOST in Season 6:
TVGuide.com: Having been involved in all these projects as of late, will it be harder to go back to Lost for its final season?
De Ravin: No, I’m really looking forward to going back. I’ve had a wonderful time being able to express myself creatively in different ways [during this Season 5 absence]. I’m looking forward to seeing everyone again and, being the last season, I’m thinking it’s going to be pretty exciting.
ABC has now confirmed it, very quietly, without any fanfare, just by mentioning it in passing in an Episode Recap on the Official ABC site.
… The Man in Black leaves and addresses the Man in White as Jacob. Yes, this is Jacob. The camera pulls back over the ocean, and we see they were sitting on the base of a giant stone foot. And next to the foot is another foot — and both feet have four toes. And as the camera pulls back, we see what we’ve been waiting to see since we first glimpsed that four-toed foot over three years ago… the towering, majestic statue of the Egyptian goddess Taweret.
So that’s it! All the debate on fan sites about whether the statue is Taweret (the hippo goddess) or Anubis (the jackal-headed god) or Sobek (the crocodile god) has now been resolved, not with a bang, but with … well, not a whimper, but certainly with less fanfare than I had expected.
Two screencaps, and a photo of a real Taweret statue:
The statue as seen in 5x08 LaFleur
Statue as seen in Season 5 Finale, The Incident
A real Taweret statue, in the Rosicrucian Museum of San Jose. Photo by Tom Fowler.
Editing September 22, 2009 to add: There is now additional official ABC confirmation. “Taweret” is the correct answer to the “placement-exam” question “The four-toed statue is believed to represent which of the following gods?” posted today on the ABC promo/ARG site LOST University.
Will there be any more “LOST: Untangled” posted here????
At the time Mandy asked the question, at the end of May, ABC hadn’t yet released the LOST Untangled for the finale episode (5×16-17 The Incident). They did release it soon after that, in early June, calling it the LOST Untangled Finale Event.
It’s good! It’s got music by the fan band Previously on Lost and a cute dancing statue.
If the video doesn’t work, you can see it on the ABC site.
In the first scene of the finale, we heard Esau (the man in the black shirt) say that he wanted to kill Jacob, but he couldn’t. That scene reminded me of an earlier one, from Season 4, where we heard Ben say that he wanted to kill Widmore — but couldn’t:
Widmore: Have you come here to kill me, Benjamin?
Ben: We both know I can’t do that.
Ben told Widmore that he was going to kill Penelope, and that after she was dead
You’ll wish you hadn’t changed the rules
Here, again, is the opening scene from the Season 5 finale:
Esau: Do you have any idea how badly I want to kill you?
Jacob: Yes
Esau: One of these days, sooner or later, I’m going to find a loophole, my friend.
Ben couldn’t kill Widmore, but he could (in theory) kill Penny. Widmore was able to kill Alex, but apparently only by breaking the rules. Esau needed a loophole to kill Jacob. A loophole suggests there is a law — a set of rules — that has to be circumvented.
A law or a rule may be natural: What goes up must come down. It may be written and enforced by an individual or institution that possesses power: a monarch, a warlord, a constitution, a legislature. It may be supernatural: a God or a strange electromagnetic force.
When we saw Ben and Widmore last season, they were the most powerful forces we had seen up to that point, appearing to control, between the two of them, almost everything that happened on the Island.
This season, it was as if a camera had pulled back and given us a wider shot, showing us the forces behind Ben and Widmore, forces even more powerful than they are. Jacob and Esau are now the most powerful people we have ever seen on the show.
But even Jacob and Esau cannot do everything they want. So there is someone or something powerful enough to make and enforce the rules that limit what Jacob and Esau can do. It may be a law of nature, it may be a person or group of people, it may be a supernatural force or being.
Perhaps next season, after we find out who or what it is, we will discover that it’s just another intermediate layer, and the camera will pull back yet again, to reveal the power behind the power behind the power.
