As fans entered the enormous Hall H at the San Diego Comic-Con, feaurettes from the upcoming “Lost” season four DVD played on the television. In one hilarious segment, Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse discuss the switch to flashforwards which, itself, jumps to the two showrunners looking back on season four from the year 2011. Lindelof wears a “NY Yanks ’10 Champs” shirt and Cuse wears one that says, “Obama: Four More Years.” Cuse also had an eye patch that he claimed was gouged out by an angry fan.
Lindelof and Cuse then introduced “Hans von Eagan,” a representative from the Dharma Initiative who they claimed was sponsoring the panel. He showed off interview footage shot at the con of fans undergoing a “Blade Runner”-esque Dharma Initiative test, featuring the best answers to mysterious questions like “There’s a turtle lying in the sun. You’re not helping it. Why?”
The panel then moved directly into Q and A’s where a number of little hints were dropped:
When asked if Rousseau would get a flashback, the response was, “We will say this: You will see, definitively, Rousseau’s story. But to say ‘flashback’ might be disingenuous,” and, “Danielle Rosseau will be in season five.”
Lindelof went on to explain that, though there will still be flashbacks and flashforwards, there will also be something completely new that starts happening in the structure of the show.
Soon, the showrunners revealed a surprise appearance by Matthew Fox who joined the panel just in time for a little girl ask, “Will Kate ever see Sawyer again?”
Lindelof shouted in an accusatory tone, “Not if Jack has anything to say about it!”
Cuse followed up with, “Yes, Kate will see Sawyer again.”
Other promises included the revelatory, “Jin [and Locke] will still be on the show in some form. You have not seen the last of either of those characters… Dead is a relative term.”
Another question was about Vincent the dog who, “… is alive and well and will appear in season five. [It’s] safe to say that he’ll make it to the end of the show.”
As for Richard Alpert (specifically how many toes he has) the answer was, “You’re gonna see Richard barefoot in the future. That’s pun-intended. The very near future.”
The panel ended with one of the Dharma test-takers running onto the stage and showing off footage that he claimed to have bootlegged from the Dharma booth on the exhibit hall floor. The footage was another message from Francois Chau’s character, split up by static bursts. He tries to tell someone that he has knowledge of the future and proves it by providing facts about the modern world. It ends with, “– violent purge. One that we are apparently powerless to escape,” and a plead to reconstitute the Dharma initiative in the present day.
“Time isn’t just of the essence,” he says, “It is the essence.”
