Seriously how cool is it that I am in San Diego at Comic-Con and I just got to be in the same room as two superstars (no, I’m not talking about that talentless skank Jessica Alba or the dimbulb Dane Cook that I saw yesterday in the exhibit hall at the Lionsgate booth but…) the writing and producing superstars Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse from LOST.

photo: Seat42fLOST Season 4 doesn’t premiere until February 2008 but the crew has already been cracking away at our newest island (plus pre and post island) adventures. Season 4 begins shooting in just a mere 4 weeks! Episode one has been written but sadly, according to Damon there is no title yet (and he swears that’s not brushing us off). Sorry fans, no Challah yet.

So the panel began at 5pm. I went into the con hall at 3pm after picking up my badge and goodies and met up with Daniel from TheTVAddict.com and his friend Lauren. GMMR was stuck in San Fran because someone rear ended her as she was returning her rental car and she missed her flight (WHAT? I’d have Sylar’d that person). Rae and her friend Just Jody from Canada were still stuck in traffic from LA so what the hell? Are Daniel and I the only ones here to cover this of our little blogger circle? Nope, Seat42f is in Row 5 dead front and center. You go with your bad self Seat, he got here at 1pm to get that amazing post.

Damon and Carlton walked out to a jampacked room of 4,500 and were greeted like rockstars, cause they are! Damon who I’ve always found to be uber-nerd cute was wearing a tight t-shirt and jacket, when the jacket came off the cat-calls began and I promise you they were not from me!

The panel began with a video which I’m assuming consisted of cast and crew interviews for the Season 3 DVD’s being released December 11th. The main portion of the video was learning that of The Others, Isabel and Mikhail are both dead! What? No more wire hangers? I’m hoping they’re talking about the assumption that in the battle most of the Others perished. There was a hysterical moment of silence for not only the fallen Others we knew, but the ones in the background that said one word all season (like what’s his face from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia). Big laughs!

After Damon and Carlton came out, we saw the LOST Video Game preview. It looks fun, the effects are great and it looks as if you get to be a person on the island. Not Jack or Locke or Sawyer (though they were all there), it appeared to me as if your mission is to survive the island and get home. A little different from the show’s mission but still a great thing to wet the appetitie of hungry fans already salivating at the thought of waiting until Feb.

Then it was time for the hot seat! Fan Questions!

If you ever listen to the Lost Podcast, Damon and Carlton can talk and talk and sometimes give away too much information. With spoilers under somewhat tight wraps, they each brought a bell with them to ring if someone started saying too much, indicating that the other needed to SHUT IT! The bells were mostly used for comic effect. I’ll give you the Ducky version of the questions and answers that intrigued me or made me laugh.

The some-what juicy stuff after the jump…

Question: Season 3 was very violent, where are you going brutality wise in Season 4?
Answer: Damon basically said that if you go back, the Losties we know and love were just as brutal as the Others but we accepted it more because they were pretty! Sawyers good to look at so you don’t mind him punching you in the face! Bascially Pretty Violence will continue in Season 4. Hopefully so will shirtless violence and wet violence on the man on man kind!

Question: Where the hell did Michael go? (is this person a plant or living in a bubble, did you not see the TCA spoiler that Harold Perrinneau is coming back?)
Answer: A bell off stage starts ringing as Damon and Carlton say that yes he is coming back. Offstage bell owner? Harold as he walks out ringy-dingy away! The place goes nuts! Kelly Kapoor was in my head: “It’s Bananas, B-A-N-A-N-A-S!” They talked about the disappointment when Stephen McPherson told the critics that Michael would be back in Season 4. They wanted to save it for us!

Here’s what we know. Harold P. is coming back. When, they won’t say but this season. When he returns he will be a full-time series regular again. Harold’s beyond excited to go back to Hawaii and chill. So are the fans, they’re eating him up! Me, eh, I could give or take.

Question: Flash-forwards, what the hell and where are we going?
Answer: Yes, the show will continue with Flashbacks, Island-time, and Flashforwards from now on. That will be fun to keep track of! I’m psyched to hear that. Love the timelines they’ve created. The forward was always talked about in the writers room but they didn’t want to intro it to the audience until they knew ABC was behind setting a finale date. So when they knew that they had 48 eps left, they sprung it on us!

The future we saw is not the end all be all future. Jack and Kate at the airport is not the off-island endgame. The show will go beyond that point into the future. The question Damon said is WHY and WITH WHICH CHARACTERS! Who cares, I’m all about it and getting sad that there are only 48 of these puppies to go.

Question: Jack and Claire are brother and sister?
Answer: BELL RINGS

Question: Will we learn more about Dharma?
Answer: Yes we will, at those of us at the Convention will learn more about it at 5:58pm. HELLS YES!

Question: Will Rich be back with his non-aging hot self?
Answer: Hopefully, with Nestor being on the new CBS show Cane, it could make things difficult but they are not done with Rich at all.

Question: What questions are we not asking you that we should be? Brilliant!
Answer: Who’s in the Coffin? Who’s on the freighter and what do they want? Who else gets off the island? Who were the skeletons back in Season 1? And finally, are Niki and Paolo really dead?

Question: What’s the dilly with bringing back Libby?
Answer: We have every intention of exploring Libby’s story further in the very near future and don’t be surprised if some online rumors are true that she has Dharma connections! I’m freaking out and think I wet myself a little.

Question: Will we ever get a Rousseau flashback?
Answer: Yes, hopefully before Season 5.

Other goodies:

• ABC does not plan on airing any repeats of Lost Season 3 before the show airs in February.
• In Season 4 we’ll learn how Ben came to be trapped in Rousseau’s net. Damon and Carlton said he did not plan on being caught so learning what he was doing out there is still to come and we just might learn if Ben actually killed Henry Gale.
• General fan reaction to them possibly missing a step and making it up as they go along is in part due to them holding out until they had an end date for the show but they are glad we all stuck with it!
• LOST to Damon and Carlton is NOT about them getting off the island!
• No LOST EXPERIENCE this summer to hold us over, in part I think that’s why the game is coming. They’re working on other media outlets for our Lost fix in the downtime between now and us getting Season 4 in 2008.
• Neither can think of life post-Lost. Everything else in back burnered until the show is over! Great to hear, side projects always kill their creativity!
• Damon and Carlton are signed on contractually until the series ends in 2010 which is a huge relief!
• The Monster will have answers before the season is over. There will be definitive information about the monster before the show ends and that’s all they’ll say.
• When LOST does end in 2010, it will be a kick ass ending, not 10 seconds of blackness like on The Sopranos (the place goes wild).
• When the show airs in February, they’ll already be done with up to episode 13 or 14 so if we all hate it, they’re screwed.
• Damon hinted that somehow for the spoiler lovers, the first 10 episode spoilers would be online somewhere somehow but that’s all they’d say. They love that people want info but they want to ensure not everyone gets it if they don’t want it. Amen!

Finally, it was 5:58 and the Dharma info we were promised begins after Damon and Carlton and Harold give a huge thanks and show of gratitude. These guys really do love the fans and you can tell this is like the coolest thing ever for them. Comic-Con is Lost’s home. Looks it from the people in this place. One or two could use a shower like some of those Losties but that’s all I’m sayin’.

The lights dim and a video begins playing. The video is footage found in NORVICK, NORWAY and spliced together by the Lost editors for Comic-Con. It’s a Dharma Hatch Orientation Video for Station 6, The Orchid. There’s what’s his face. What’s his face tells us that the Orchid is not a botanical station. There’s a bunny with the number 15 painted on it. There’s another bunny in the background with the same. There are some crazy jump cuts and missing audio. Then all hell breaks loose, the place starts shaking, stuffs breaking, and our favorite asian man is swearing up a storm. Pretty funny to see him scream F*CK once or twice! It was basically an outtakes orientation video that had the place howling. I’m sure there’s some good stuff in there, like the upside down boy on the bike or the words that flashed so fast I couldn’t see dick. Search online, you’ll find them.

That’s it for me for LOST. It was so much fun to attend and see Damon and Carlton! I’m beyond sad we have to wait until February 2008 but my birthday is that month and I’m hoping someone brings me heaping helpings of Benry and Juliet with some Cake on the side!

Keep checking back as I post more updates from Comic-Con nightly. Today, Friday it’s MOONLIGHT, CHUCK, REAPER and more…

Questions from the fans!

This entry was posted on Friday, July 27th, 2007 at 8:25 am and is filed under Comic-Con, Spoilers, Lost, Ducky Does TV. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.