Lost Epilogue: The New Man in Charge
During the course of its first five seasons, the ABC drama Lost raised a number of mysteries and unanswered questions within its narrative. Viewers expecting a rapid fire sixth season that tied all those dangling strings into a coherent tapestry, however, were no doubt disappointed when that final season progressed at its own deliberate pace and placed the emphasis on the characters of the series instead, as well as an epic battle of good versus evil. This is not to suggest that the last volume in the Lost saga was any sort of letdown—the fate of the remaining survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 was effectively brought to resolution through triumph, tragedy, tears and heroism while granting a sense of genuine and heartfelt closure for fans of the series.
The sixth season of Lost also offered a fair number of answers, especially within the episode “Across the Sea.” The narrative in that particular installment was different from anything the show had done before, including a lack of regular cast members and a plot that took place thousands of years in the past. In many ways, “Across the Sea” was both a mythical fable and Biblical parable; even the only character’s name mentioned in the episode, that of future island god Jacob, carried a certain religious connotation to it. Still, Lost was able to effectively trace the root of the show’s sprawling mythology through the simple story of a lonely woman who raised two sons that were not her own—by murdering their actual mother, no less—and how her deception led to rivalry, betrayal, conflicting viewpoints on the essence of humanity and an ultimate light versus dark, good versus evil undertone to the island.
But this is Lost, of course, and the amount of questions that have amassed through the years center on more than the origin of the island and would take longer than one episode to answer. In order to satisfy viewers hoping for a resolution that extended further than a mere ending to the show, the producers of the series concocted a minisode of sorts, a twelve minute epilogue that deals exclusively with answers, and added it as a special feature to the Lost DVD collection. Entitled “The New Man in Charge,” the short video consists of two simple scenes and sheds light on many of the mysteries that ensnared the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815.
While “Across the Sea” was mythical in nature, the first part of “The New Man in Charge” is more methodical. Using the pallet of food and supplies that was parachuted onto the island during season two as catalyst, the minisode begins with Benjamin Linus—last seen as the appointed “number two” of the new island protector Hugo “Hurley” Reyes, the “new man in charge” of the title—visiting a secret Dharma Initiative base located in Guam. A two person team has apparently been charged for the past few decades of preparing supply packages and having them delivered to coordinates provided by an old dot-matrix printer. Ben explains to them that both the pallets and their jobs are no longer needed, that the Dharma Initiative hasn’t existed in over twenty years and that their instructions are automatically generated by the Lamp Post Station last seen in season five. With a quick delivery of two envelopes filled with hundred dollar bills as severance, Ben then turns to leave.
“You can’t just walk out of here, we deserve answers,” one of the Dharma members protests, no doubt matching the reaction of many hardcore Lost fans in regards to the actual show. Under the pretext of answering one question from each of them, Ben pulls out a DVD transfer of an old Dharma Initiative orientation film for the Hydra Station and from there the answers start to roll out in rapid succession—including the reason Dr. Pierre Chang uses aliases, the origination of the “Hurley bird” and the purpose of Room 23.
Of particular interest is a brief comment made by Chang in regards to the polar bears brought to the island and ultimately deployed to the Orchid Station. “Be sure to confirm that the female bears have not been impregnated before transport,” he cautions, “as the electro-magnetic levels at the Orchid has extremely harmful effects on early term gestation.”
Children and pregnancy were central to Lost early on in the narrative—the island inhabitants known as the Others kidnapped the pregnant Claire Littleton during the first season, for instance, while it was revealed during the second that the Others had also taken the children from the tail section of Oceanic Flight 815. Juliet Burke was then introduced the following year as a fertility specialist attempting to figure out why women who became pregnant on the island inevitably died by the end of their first trimester. Juliet was never able to solve the problem but when she time-traveled to 1977 during season five, she was able to successfully deliver future Other Ethan Rom.
Dr. Chang’s comment about the polar bears, however, directly connects the death of pregnant women to the electro-magnetic energy of the island. The fact that there apparently had not been any difficulties as late as 1977, meanwhile, further suggests that some “event” in the island’s more recent history somehow made the energy more potent. And logic dictates that the event in question was the infamous Incident.
It has been known as early as season two that there was an accident at the Swan Station which necessitated that a button be pushed every 108 minutes in order to release built up electro-magnetic energy at the site. In 1977, the time-traveling Lostaways detonated a hydrogen bomb at the Swan in an attempt to prevent the Incident, as it was called, and their own fates as well but in reality caused the event they were trying to avert—and in effect contaminated the island’s atmosphere, making human impregnation a virtual death sentence from that point onward.
While the first half of “The New Man in Charge” was direct in regards to its litany of answers, the second part of the minisode is murkier. Although the emphasis is on Walt—the ten year old son of Michael Dawson from season one who has grown into young adulthood since—the importance of the character during the show’s early years is glossed over for a more “what happened to Walt afterwards” emphasis.
That post-Lost life has apparently not gone well for Walt, as he now goes by the name Keith Johnson and is a resident at the Santa Rosa Mental Health Institute. Hurley, however, assures him that there is nothing so wrong that a quick trip overseas can’t cure. “You just need to get back to the island, that’s all,” the New Man in Charge tells his future protégé. “It’s where you belong, it’s where you’ve always belonged.”
On the linear notes of the classic 1974 Bob Dylan album Blood on the Tracks, journalist Pete Hamill wrote, “Dylan sings a more fugitive song: allusive, symbolic, full of imagery and ellipses, and by leaving things out, he allows us the grand privilege of creating along with him. His song becomes our song because we live in the spaces.” In many ways, this commentary translates to Lost as well. Over the course of six season, the series raised more than its fair share of questions and challenged fans of the show to analyze, discuss and debate the answers on their own and in turn made for personal discover as well as a uniquely individual interpretation of Lost. While “The New Man in Charge” does indeed provide answers to many of the lingering questions surrounding the series, they are centered more on those already deduced by astute viewers of the show rather than containing any Earth-shattering revelations.
Which is the way it should be. After all, Lost was not so much a traditional television show but a journey of self discovery for its characters—it only makes sense that the same holds true for fans of the series as well.
Anthony Letizia (August 30, 2010)
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