Season 4 of Lost was as much an act of retroactive brain washing as it was a continuation of a coherent story.  Coherent?  Lost?  Yes, I realize the two words do not work well in the same sentence, yet I can’t help but be bowled over by the sharp turn in Lost’s trajectory that happened this season, let alone the seeming direction that it is going in as it winds towards its conclusion.  Let me explain this in a little more detail.

The show, in the beginning, seemed a slow moving survivalist drama built around the “Robinson Crusoe” structure with an ever present subtext of redemption and ‘finding’ yourself.  It was easy to look around the bizarre occurrences and make lofty assessments like “What is ‘Lost’ is not the people themselves, but their sense of selves.”   The show proved it, week after week.  The subtle connections between characters and events seemed to really just punctuate that introspective aspect but making the complimentary observation that in our clumsy self-seeking, our actions often impact others.  A sort of social “Butterfly Effect.”

Season two hardened much of the mythology hinted at in season one.  Suddenly many of the nebulous elements seemed to become clearer.  We knew that the specialness of the island had been known about for some time, and at one point was investigated on an academic level by a well organized and well financed collective, “The Dharma Initiative.”  The characters continued their introspective journeys, new characters were introduced to lament their own past misdeeds, and the over-all sense of the story of the island became less a back drop for the richly constructed character dramas  as the notion that an explanation for ‘everything’ lurked somewhere under the surface.

Season three seemed to attempt to mesh seasons one and two combining sprawling character arcs with a break-neck advancement of the island mythology.  Suddenly the momentum of the story seemed to have reach escape velocity.  An ‘end’ to the saga seemed palpable, but when?  The answer,  as we all remember, came late in the season.  Lost would ‘end’ 48 episodes after the season three finale.  In 2010.

Which brings us back to the long strange trip of season four. The announcement of an ending for the show got this writer bristling with possibilities.  Would they drop the sort of twist-o-rama cock-fighting that had become the signature of the show and relax into a more suspense/action adventure conventional story.  Let’s face it, the twists need to stop at some point.  Regardless, season four leaves us in a more perplexing spot than ever before.

In many ways, the season felt much like the end of the series. The fact that the story does not end with them “getting off the island” has been around since season one, but what that meant has always been a mystery.   If there is one disappointment from season four is that there was still little to no indication as to what that post escape story would be like.

The boldest move, even in the wake of the “we have to go back” reveal of season three, was to begin the season by reveal which of the survivors actually got off the island.  Granted, in true Lost fashion, the information was told in an anachronistic fashion.  The apocalypse that awaited those who did not ‘get off the island’ seemed to linger throughout the season. The dark forces of the freighter would come to the island to kill everyone.  Underneath both of these new sagas was the mysterious rivalry between Ben Linus and Charles Widmore.

The science fiction trappings of the show were no longer deniable.  Time travel continued to be a factor with new rules being introduced (constants), and with the huge punctuation of ‘moving the island’ in the finale.

We found out that Jack eventually learned of his half sister Claire.  We were introduced to four new characters, Daniel, Miles, Charlotte, and Frank, who seemed to fit in the Lost-verse as if they were there all along – penance for the Ana Lucias and Nikkis and Paulos of the past.  But there is still that nagging question.

When Damon Lindelof insinuated in an interview that audiences would be left wondering how the series could proceed, he wasn’t kidding.  How,  indeed.   The final revelation, that Locke somehow came to visit doom and gloom upon the Oceanic 6, and that news drove Jack to want to return, seems oddly disconnected.  For the first time we are looking at a big hole in the plot that exists squarely in the middle of everything we know.

Carlton Cuse commonly describes the story as a mosaic.  This image of a picture broken into tiles and pieced together works very well if you think of the show coming together with adjacent pieces.  With the end of season four all we know is that something terrible happened and it is all the fault of the Oceanic 6.  As a cliff hanger, it leaves us feeling a little flat.  We care about the characters that were left behind, of course, but without a sense of what threat may have menaced them it is hard to feel compelled that there is actually any more story ahead.

Season four was Lost in its most perfect form,  but still an apples to oranges comparison to season one.  A satisfactory continuation for those in it for the long haul, but a wildly removed work on all of the aspects that the series functions in:  suspense, drama, romance, and action.  At times, there were very apparent ‘course corrections’ in the writing that seemed forced and unfulfilling.  The Jack/Juliet romance for instance.  After a smooch that had the heat of two squids being pressed together, Juliet quickly pulled out leaving room for a Jack/Kate union.  Perhaps the biggest rip of the season was the return of Michael, who essentially came back just to get blown up.  If there was a larger arc planned for him, it was clearly jettisoned in the compressing process of season four’s  shortened second half.

The one nagging factor of Season Four that continues to float to the surface is its enigmatic ending.  Suddenly, we have no idea what the story is that will take us to the end of the series.  The lingering questions seem mostly rooted where they always have been:  what is the island, who are the others “really”, what is the so special about John Locke, and will Jack and Kate ever get to shag without the emotional baggage.  

Still, looking at that gaping hole in the ‘mosaic’ where whatever happened after the Oceanic 6 left the island took place is a bit like gazing into the flickering beam of a mind-wipe device.   We’re so intrigued by what we do know, and so anxious to see that resolved, that it is difficult to imagine that the best selling point for the remaining seasons is that there is an entire chunk of time  so transcendently interesting that we have absolutely no concept of.

Fixing the tease and denial and keeping the story moving forward:  A

Adding compelling new characters that actually fit the story: A

Ending the season on a coherent high note: C-

Essentially, season 4’s failing comes down to this.  The story of the island, and the escape from the island has advanced considerably.  We know of John Locke’s potentially ancient connection to the island, the Ben and Widmore ‘game’, the presence of off-island manipulators working to cover up the existence of the island.  A group of characters with abilities and knowledge that seem requisite to providing exposition on the island’s weirdness are in place, and it all looks like this baby could be tied up in the next couple of seasons very nicely.  The glaring problem is, in the end the finale – as expertly crafted and acted as it is – leaves us in the exact same spot as the season three finale.  Having answered at least part of the question left by the “We have to go back” moment of season three,  “How did they get off the island?”, an even more key question lingers on:  Why do they have to go back?  In this case, the only new question is what happened to John Locke, and the total lack of information to tease at what that may look like leaves it feeling like an increasingly heavy pit in my stomach.

Jon "DocArzt" Lachonis is the creator of the Lost destination "TheTailsection.com," and is currently focusing on an independent Lost blog at "DocArzt.com".  Along with Amy "Hijinx" Johnston, Lachonis is the author of the upcoming "Lost Ate My Life", a book about the show, the fandom, and the fans featuring dozens of cast and crew interviews and exclusive on location photos.