Lost - Major Spoilers - from the creative Team

[wickedfan2]

Posted: 11/16/05 at 10:15am

Huge spoilers - Do not scroll down unless you want to know some secrets..












From the creative team.....looks like now they are saying Anna L did kill
shannon (what happened to the Who Shot JR mystery?)...no idea. Interesting
stuff.

Ask Ausiello supersized 11/16 Lost article

Complete Ask Ausiello
<http://www.tvguide.com/News/AskAusiello/default.htm?rmDate=11162005> here -
the following is abbreviated due to post size restrictions:

Question: Shannon?! Sorry, I didn't read any of the spoilers! What the
[bleep]! Why Shannon?! What were TPTB thinking?! - Tammi

Ausiello: You'll find out when you read my exclusive Q&A with Lost's main
men, executive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse. It's coming up in
just a few seconds!

Question: Will we ever find out why Ethan abducted Claire and Charlie? -
Evey

Ausiello: I got them to answer that one, too! Sit tight! Hey, did I mention
that this is the first ever Ask Ausiello devoted entirely primarily to one
single TV show? Well, it is!

Question: What do the numbers (4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42) mean? - Alex

Ausiello: You won't believe what they said about that! Seriously.

Question: When is that b*tch Ana-Lucia going to die? - Katie

Ausiello: Brace yourself - that question will be answered just as soon as...
OK, enough with all the teasing. It's time for the main event. In lieu of
peppering the entire interview with SPOILER ALERTS, I present you with this
one and only warning: Avoid the following Q&A if you'd prefer to remain in
the dark about some of Lost's biggest mysteries, including scoopy stuff
about those pesky digits, Shannon's death, the mysterious Mr. Eko and that
creepy monster. For everyone else, dig in!

First off, I have a bone to pick with you, Damon. Last July, I asked you if
a female character was getting killed this season on Lost, and you said -
and I quote: "I think it would be fairly silly for us to kill a woman -
there are only three or four of them on the show. And they're all really
hot." So, I guess my question is, how can I ever trust you again?
Damon Lindelof: I never said we weren't going to kill a woman. I said it
would be silly. And you know, Carlton and I are pretty silly guys. You
should see the hat that he's wearing right now.
Carlton Cuse: That's all I'm wearing.
Damon: And also a sock, but that's another story.

Did it bug you that Maggie Grace's people leaked that tidbit about her
possibly joining the cast of X-Men 3 over the summer? It was a pretty major
tip-off that she might be leaving the show.
Carlton: There's no incentive for them to preserve the creative sanctity of
Lost. You have an agency full of people whose job it is to get Maggie Grace
other work. And how could we begrudge her that? We can't prevent her from
going out and earning a livelihood, you know?

There's the perception that Maggie had to turn down X-Men 3 because of Lost.
Carlton: I don't think that was the circumstance. We would have been
accommodating had she been offered that job.
Damon: Carlton and I would have bent over backwards to see if there was a
way to make it work.

Why was Shannon marked for death?
Damon: It was by no means a result of Maggie's abilities as an actress,
which, we felt were gaining ground every time we saw her on the screen. But
Shannon is a 22- or 23-year-old character, and the flashback stories and
limitations in terms of her life experience.... The younger the character is
on the show, the more limited you are in terms of stories you can tell. So,
before we started running Shannon into the ground and doing the same stories
over and over again, it felt like it was a very natural time to kill [her]
off. And the idea that was appealing to us, and certainly to Maggie, was
that we would finally show Shannon in this different light. Make her
incredibly sympathetic and then she would die.

Will Shannon be back, like, say, in one of Jack's flashbacks?
Carlton: It's always possible she could pop up in someone's backstory. But
she is definitely dead. When a character dies on the island, they stay dead.

Are you concerned that Ana-Lucia is beyond redemption? I can't tell you how
many e-mails I got from AA readers asking, "When is that vincent going to
die?!" Actually, I can tell you: 124.
Carlton: At the beginning of last season, people didn't like Josh Holloway's
character either. And by the end of the season, he was one of the most-liked
characters on the show. It'll be really interesting to see, as we tell more
about Ana-Lucia, whether that changes the audience's perception of her. We
think it will.
Damon: In the same moment that we decided Shannon would die, [we also
decided that] Ana-Lucia would be responsible for that death. It would be the
first time one castaway was responsible for killing another, and it would
give so much inherent conflict and trauma [heading to] the merge. We're
walking a very tenuous tightrope with her, but we feel that over the course
of the next two episodes the audience will hopefully get a better
understanding for that character and what she's been through.

Can you confirm that Shannon was, in fact, shot? Fans have been speculating
that she looked like she had a stab wound.
Carlton: She was shot.
Damon: People are getting a little too...

They're reaching a little too much?
Carlton: They totally are. And she did not have a Dharma Initiative stamp on
her.

Let's talk about Malcolm David Kelley and Walt. Why was his role reduced
this season? Were you concerned about him aging faster than the time line on
the show?
Carlton: That's a legitimate issue. We've only gone 50 days on the island,
and he's a kid in puberty. But Walt's disappearance and, ultimately,
Michael's efforts to reunite with him were part of a grander plan. There are
also financial considerations. Since Walt wasn't going to be around for a
lot of episodes, we had to make an arrangement to have his role be a more
reduced role.

Whether you use him once or twice a year or every week, the aging thing will
still be an issue, no? Might you recast?
Damon: To answer that question is sort of to reveal what the plan is for
Walt, and there is a plan. I always feel like recasting is the nuclear
option. You do not do it unless it is absolutely, 100 percent necessary. But
obviously, we have a story that we want to tell about Walt and about Michael
and Walt.

Last week Shannon and Sayid gave us our first big Lost sex scene....
Carlton: It was the second big sex scene. Boone and Shannon had sex together
[last season]. So, if you have sex on the show, you're pretty much going to
end up dead.

So, who's having sex next?
Carlton: (Laughs) As we move into the middle run of episodes, we're
definitely emphasizing the Jack-Kate-Sawyer romantic triangle. The level of
sexual tension between those three characters is definitely being ramped up.

How will Ana-Lucia figure into it?
Damon: As the respective leaders of their respective units, Ana-Lucia and
Jack have a great deal in common with each other, and that's definitely
something we're going to be exploring. But [the fact that] Ana-Lucia
inadvertently murdered one of the members of the tribe doesn't exactly [lend
itself] to candlelight dinners and walks on the beach. She is a woman; she
will have romantic entanglements. But I think the one that will begin to
emerge over the season will be the one that you least expect.

What about Charlie and Claire?
Carlton: We're definitely going to be paying attention to their
relationship, but it's not going to turn in ways the audience expects.

Will we get any clarification about the numbers this season?
Damon: Carlton might want to punch me for actually going on record and
saying this, but I think that that question will never, ever be answered. I
couldn't possibly imagine [how we would answer that question]. We will see
more ramifications of the numbers and more usage of the numbers, but it
boggles my mind when people ask me, "What do the numbers mean?"

Will we find out why Ethan abducted Claire?
Damon: Yes.
Carlton: You'll learn more about it this season.

Will Claire get some of her memory back?
Damon: The loss of her memory happened so long ago that it requires a sort
of deft touch in order to reintroduce the concept. Once we start assuming
that everybody is intimately familiar with everything that has ever happened
on the island, I think the show risks becoming slightly confused. But all of
that stuff is in play. It's just a matter of when and how we reactivate it.

Are you still planning to reveal why the plane crashed this season?
Carlton: Yes.

Are you saving that little doozy for the finale?
Carlton: We're saving it until later. We consider that on the ground of
fairly major revelations.
Damon: We don't want to stick that one in the middle of March.

ABC billed last week's episode as the one "everyone will be talking about."
What'll be the next one "everyone will be talking about"?
Carlton: Ironically, it's the next episode [airing tonight]. We think for
us, it's even more of a water-cooler episode than the death episode. This is
really a very special episode in that it's kind of a concept episode. It
deviates from the form and style of our other episodes.

On Nov. 30 we'll finally learn what Kate's precrash crime was that landed
her in so much hot water. Any other big flashback revelations this season?
Damon: In the next string of episodes, one of the really compelling
backstory elements is what happened to Jack's marriage. We think Julie Bowen
is amazing and she and Matthew Fox are so great in scenes together, and I
think the audience is really curious as to what went wrong there.
Carlton: And you should pay attention to Mr. Eko's stick.

Seriously?
Carlton: Yeah.
Damon: Keep your eyes on Mr. Eko's stick.
Carlton: That stick is an important ongoing clue.

Will we learn more about Monster this season?
Carlton: Definitely.
Damon: Absolutely.

Has Disney approached you about doing a Lost feature film?
Carlton: No.