Lost ready to find its way for a final season

Lost's Evangeline Lilly: Buy at AllPosters.com

PASADENA, Calif. -- Rarely will a TV producer acknowledge that his series has "jumped the shark," a term generally associated with running out of viable ideas and over-staying its welcome.

Especially when that series is Lost.

But as ABC's magical mystery tour nears the Feb. 2 start of its sixth and final season, co-creator/executive producer Damon Lindelof said the shark has been jumped not once, not twice, but numerous times. Queried by locatetv.com after a packed Lost interview session Tuesday morning, Lindelof was asked about duplicitous Ben Linus (Michael Emerson) and his "moving" of the island at the end of Season 4. He did so by descending into a subterranean secret place and laboriously turning a frost-laden wheel. Might that have been a bonafide "jump the shark" moment for some Lost loyalists?

"Sure," Lindelof agreed. "I think that the show has probably jumped the shark at least a dozen times now. Fortunately for us as storytellers, but unfortunately for a mainstream audience. Yes, absolutely. There was a time when there were 23 million people watching Lost. And that time has passed.

"Everytime this show takes a risk and declares itself more overtly, there are going to be people who say, 'I wasn't watching a show about time travel. I don't like that show. I don't want to watch this anymore.' But we have to tell the story that we're committed to. We can't really compromise that."

Lindelof, who earlier joined seven Lost cast members and executive producer Carlton Cuse on a hotel ballroom stage, said that his favorite series finales include those of The Shield and Newhart. But his all-time fave is M*A*S*H's closer, he said. "It's really sort of the pinnacle of what we're trying to achieve. That being said, M*A*S*H wasn't a mystery show. We've got to kind of answer all our mysteries and give the audience a satisfying character conclusion, too. So I'd like to say for the record that our degree of difficulty is very high."

Season 6 of Lost will both begin and end with two-hour episodes. Emilie de Ravin, whose Claire will be returning, said she had to read the new season's opening script "about three times before it actually made sense. Totally does, but just getting my mind wrapped back into it."

"Get ready to scratch your heads, America," Lindelof rejoined.

De Ravin was joined onstage by Emerson, Josh Holloway (Sawyer); Evangeline Lilly (Kate); Terry O'Quinn (Locke); Jorge Garcia (Hurley) and Daniel Dae Kim (Jin). Notably missing was Matthew Fox (Jack), whom the producers said had a work conflict.

Although studiously secretive about what course Lost will take this season, the producers did reveal that both Harold Perrineau (Michael) and Cynthia Watros (Libby) will at least briefly return.

Lindelof later said that Elizabeth Mitchell (Juliet), currently starring in ABC's V, also will be back for a least a couple of episodes. Last season ended with Juliet's hand on a bomb before a white flash took hold.

Filming is completed on all but the last seven episodes, with 18 hours airing in total over 16 consecutive weeks. A clip montage, but no new footage, preceded the actors and producers onstage.

"I was whispering to my cast members, 'I am going to cry like a baby when this show ends,' Lilly said. "It's become so nostalgic for us to look back over six years and have grown up together and grown up in front of all of you. It's been so intense that for it to come to an end is going to be life-changing."

Down the homestretch, "there's a lot of camaraderie on the set," Holloway said. "And it's just been fabulous."

Of course the end will only be the beginning of the debate on whether Lost delivered on both its premise and its promise.

"Obviously not every question's going to be answered, so some people are going to be upset," Cuse said. "We really embrace this notion that there's a fundamental sense of mystery that we all have in our lives . . . And to sort of de-mystify that by trying to literally explain everything would be a mistake in our view. So I think there will be, hopefully, a kind of healthy cocktail of answers, mystery, good character resolutions and some surprises."

There also will be a lifetime supply of future Lost conventions, to which all of the actors onstage will be repeatedly invited. Can they envision being happy to be there -- 10, 20 or 30 years from now?

"We all hope we have something else to do," O'Quinn said.

Not necessarily so, said Holloway.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he told O'Quinn. "I'm retiring. I'm only doing conventions."

He then feigned signing autographs. There are worse things.