Thanks to all our bloggers who attended last nights Lost Panel at Comic-Con and who bought us all the live updates. I will try to make a summary of all the spoilers from last night.
- Event starts off with a clip with Michael Emerson calling the Others a "Rebel Sect" - Also on the clip show "By the time you see this I will be dead," says M.C. Gainey). - Voice-over: "The survival of the Island is now at stake." - Footage of the Lost game is shown (You can see this in the DarkUFO Home page) - Carlton says Rachel probably won't be on the Island. - Damon says the benefits of only doing 16 episodes (versus 22) a year is they can do more ancillary "awesome" stuff. - Damon and Carlton say don't get too attached to Richard Alpert, because Nestor Carbonell's on CBS' Cane. - They're writing episode one, but it's still untitled Shooting starts in four weeks.
Q&A Section
Q) Wants to know about season three's violent turn and that the powers that be to promise that the Others aren't the good guys. No promises are forthcoming.
Carlton says they wanted a showdown, and that involved a body count. Damon says our guys are more violent but prettier. "When Sawyer is punching you in the face, you're like, More please, you're so attractive, can you take your shirt off please?" But when Friendly does it, it's relentless violence. Says Damon, "If the violence stays intense, it will at least be perpetrated by catastrophically good-looking people."
Q) Where's Michael? They announce here that Harold is returning as Michael Dawson, but they tell the questioner they're not talking about how or when he returns.
Q) Re: Flashbacks Carlton says flashbacks and flashforwards are both on the show going forward. "How far forward" and "with whom" are the Q's.
Q) Will Jack and Claire find out they are related? Carlton rings the bell on Damon, but Damon nods furiously. The crowd goes wild.
Q) Did Ben get caught by Rousseau on purpose? Did Ben kill the real Henry Gale? Damon says he will answer one of those questions. The asker chooses the capture question. Carlton: "He got caught by accident." Damon volunteers this, regarding Ben vs. Henry Gale: "They had words."
Flashbacks/Flashforwards They were running out of plausible flashback material, so it was time to switch gears into flashfowards. The end date allowed them the certainty necessary to add that element into the show without further antagonizing fans. Carlton: "What you saw with Kate and Jack was not the end of the show." Damon: "The show has never really been about getting off the Island...There's this whole chapter of the story that takes place off the Island." Outstanding!
Michael Carlton, regarding poor crazy Michael, "He took some extreme actions." Michael's story is about the power of the Island to be redemptive. And this won't be a quick pop by Redemption Island; Harold is a series regular. Michael returns early in the fourth season, or so says Damon.
Q) "What questions are fans not asking that we ought to be?" Carlton: "Who's in the coffin?" and rings the bell on himself. D.L. and C.C. ask Harold, "Who do you think is in the coffin?" Harold thinks it's the person with the teenage son...probably Locke! Damon would ask, "Who's on that freighter out there, and what do they want out of the Island?" Carlton would ask, "Okay, Kate and Jack got off the Island? Did anybody else get off the Island?"
Q) Will we get back to Libby and was she part of Dharma Carlton: "It is our intention to get to Libby's story this year, and we think you will be happy when we finish that." Damon: "You're not barking up the wrong tree."
Q_ Will there be a Danielle flashback soon? Damon: "There are important things going on in that story, and they have to sync up." They'll do that syncing in this season or next.
Q) A fan named Aaron asks, "Can I call the monster Cerberus?" Damon says...On the blast-door map, C.V. stood for Cerberus Vents. "That's Dharma's name for it, maybe. Cerberus is one of it's names." Damon: "Aaron, may I call you Cerberus?" Aaron-Cerberus: The monster seems kind of seems like it represents judgment. Why did Eko have to die? Damon: The whole deal with the monster will be definitely answered. Carlton: The monster answer is "not going to be 10 seconds of blank tape."
Dharma Film The Comic-Con exclusive clip was "discovered" in "Narvik, Norway."
The promised clip is one of the station orientation films, hosted by Marvin Candle under an alias. The footage begins with him getting his makeup done and smoothing down his Dharma labcoat. Bunnies! It's about bunnies! Bunny #15, to be specific. Marvin, who calls himself Dr. Edgar Halifax in this film, identifies it as station six, the Orchid. He says the viewer has probably realized by now that he or she is not working at a mere botanical research unit. He apologizes for making him or her lie to friends and family members about the nature of the work. He mentions something that sounds like "Kasimir effect" and mentions the "unique properties of the Island." Then there's one of Jacob's subliminal messages. It may have been some variation on "as Jacob loves you." Then there's a bunny riot. One of the station's alarms blares, Dr. Halifax/Marvin panics. There's an intercut clip of someone riding a bicycle. The clip is inserted upside-down, and the rider appears to be in the village green of Otherville...And then, amid the chaos (perhaps this is the Incident?), the filmstrip slides off the reel. (Film Description thanks to E!Online)
Thanks to our live bloggers who wrote the following Wrap-Up post.
Wrap-up...
What a great time! Other than the waiting part, that was an hour of bliss, especially the last 2 minutes. I want to quickly give you a condensed recap of what happened - thanks to all the bloggers who did a fantastic job recording the events ! There may be a few mistakes, but generally I think this is a picture of what happened.
DVD Season 3 Preview Before the producers even came out, they showed a clip of what appears to be a section on the "Special Features" disc of the DVD coming out in December. It was called "The Life of the Others". Or something like that. The basically had interviews with Tom, Ben, and showed the filming of the action scene where the dynamite in the tent blow some of the Others away (from the S3 finale). HIGHLIGHT: Tom at one point looks to the camera and says "By the time you see this, I will be dead.". Everyone loved that. Otherwise it was good, nothing earth-shattering.
Intro Damon an Carlton came out to a thunderous applause. It quickly turned into a "WTF" scenario though, when they sat down to find that neither of their mics worked. They actually stood up and were prepared to do the whole thing from the podium where the moderator was standing. The moderator said "I think we have a video game clip we could show...?" They agreed and sat down, hoping that would buy them enough time to fix the technical difficulty.
Video Game Preview The clip was only about a minute long, but I can say that the graphics seemed pretty great. Now, I'm not a hardcore gamer by any means, so others may disagree, but my expectations of this game were pretty low, and the clip showed me some serious potential. They showed Jack running through the forest, Locke at the computer, and I remember seeing a red wire leading to a shack?? The game is to be released in February (right on time for the Season 4 premier, I'm guessing).
After the clip, Damon figured out that 2 other mics seemed to work, so they got situated. Damon was a crackup as usual, and told an interesting story. Ubisoft, the creators of the game, is a French-Canadian company. At the time Damon and Carlton saw the first demo of the game, the voiceovers hadn't been recorded. Instead, they had Ubisoft workers as the voices of the characters. Damon mimicked "Hyou need to see Zawyer, hee hahs zee mahp". Everyone laughed. Other than that, I don't remember much being said about the game. Damon also pointed out that he and Carlton both had little hotel-wait bells (?). He said that they tend to get excited and blurt out more info than they should, so as a precaution, the other producer would ding the bell if they were about to go too far. This comes into play later, although it was funny to watch them immediately place their hands over the bell during every single question. This led into the Fan Q&A session.
Fan Q&A Thank goodness for the other live bloggers, they really did a good job posting the questions, because I wasn't quick enough to jot them down.
- The first question asked had to do with the seemingly elevated level of violence in this season, and concluded that this was because of the Others. Damon was quick to point out that there was a LOT of violence in the first 2 seasons, but it's probably dulled when the people doing the violent deeds are gorgeous. Says Damn, "Go on Sawyer, keep beating the hell out of me. And if you want to take your shirt off while you beat me, that'd be ok to." Everyones on the floor laughing.
- Someone asked about Michael, which was clearly a softball pitch because we all already knew he was coming back yesterday. D&C said they had planned to release the info at the ComiCon, but they all got mixed up on timing...blah blah blah, more on that later.
- Will there be flashforwards next season? There will be both flashbacks and flashforwards next season. Damon mentioned that they simply couldn't keep digging up history on the characters without making it a stretch. He used the example of "If Jin had an ex-wife, that would be lame because he's never mentioned it."
- Will Jack and Claire find out about their relation? Damon said in so many words that they want to get to that. Carlton dings the bell, at which point Damon stops talking and makes huge nodding movements. So I think we can expect that in S4.
- There was a question about DHARMA. Carlton mentions that we'll learn more about DHARMA "sooner than you can possibly imagine...as in 5:58pm". Woot!
- Did Benry purposefully get caught or was that a legitimate accident? It was an accident.
- A boisterous girl (that might have been a plant) insists that we know more about Michael and his whereabouts. As D&C try to formulate an answer, a bell rings offstage. People look around, and Harold Perrineau comes onto the stage. Crowd goes wild. He hugs the producers and says to the audience "Man I missed you guys!"
- A guy mentions how awesome Richard Alpert is and asks if he'll be back. D&C discuss that he's been hired onto a CBS show so they don't know what they can do but wait.
- A great question by a girl: what questions SHOULD we be asking that we haven't. Crowd simultaneously give a "oooooooooo" watching D&C squirm in their seats. "Who is in the coffin, who is on the "not-penny" boat, who are Adam and Eve, and if Nicki and Paulo are really dead."
- Will Libby return? They hope they have the opportunity to tell her story - and there is definitely a story to tell.
At that point, they say their goodbyes and thanks the ComiCon crowd profusely. Damon says that LOST was essentially "born from the Con", having aired there before even making it to the TV. They set the stage for the clip they are about to show. It was found in Norway and sent to them. Then they exit stage left and the film rolls.
Orientation Film - Station 6 The film starts with Dr. Marvin Candle introducing himself as "Edward Hourwicks" (or something close to that). He's speaking to the cameraman as if they haven't started rolling film, "I'm a scientist, not an actor". They give him a huge white rabbit with the number 15 on it's back. He then goes into his schpeel "Welcome to Station 6, the Orchid". He was wearing a labcoat, but I couldn't see the DHARMA symbol. He apologizes for having lied to them and their families, but the station is NOT botanical in nature. "As you know, there are unique properties about the Island..." then things start falling, the camera starts shaking, and they pan to another rabbit hanging out by itself on a shelf...? They cut, everything is normal and they're back to the "Welcome to Station 6" part again. In what is sure to be a "TiVo moment", there are what I think is 2 instances where there are flashes of words spliced into the film. One I think said "Jacob loves you". I don't know about the other one.
That's it! Damon and Carlton were hilarious and class-acts, as always.