So on Saturday June 24th, the LOST Panel made its final appearance at Comic Con. After 5 glorious seasons, LOST is heading into its final season, and there were to be no more Comic Con panels.

To say that the expectations were high for the LOST Panel would be an understatement. About 40 or so die hard fans camped out the evening before in the Hall H queue to guarantee a good seat for the panel, which would begin more than 14 hours after they set up their makeshift beds. I arrived around 630am only because I wanted to get a good parking spot, and I had missed the window to pick up my Professional Badge to access the event the day before. So I had some shit to do when I got to the convention center. To my surprise, the line was already in full swing, but luckily not to the point where I wasn’t going to get a good seat. In fact, there isn’t a bad seat in the 6,500 seater that is Hall H.

So I did my business, got in line and waited and waited until finally around 10:30am the line started to move. It couldn’t have moved any later for me as I was about to lose my cool with a group of over zealous Twilight junkies who were debating whether or not the New Moon movie would be better than Twilight and if they would bone Edward Cullen over Zac Efron, given the opportunity. Anyhow, the line moved inside and I got my seat… and the Twilight fanatics ended up sitting behind me…

Anyhow, here’s what happened inside Hall H to the best of my memory (some things may be out of order, but fuck it, you’ll get all the parts one way or another):

After running a little bit late (in true Comic-Con fashion) the crowd begin clapping in unison until the lights went bright and the executive producers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof made their entrance to an uproarious applause. As the audience settled down and after the producers thanked us for all of our support, they said that the theme of this final LOST Comic-Con Panel would be “fan appreciation.” They pulled out a wrapped gift and said that the person who says the “magic word” would win the secret contents inside. Before the began they just wanted to address a question they get all the time - do they make the shit up as they go along? They swear that the ending was already written and each guy produced a page from the script of the final scene of LOST. They locked it into a box which would be opened on Kimmel after the final episode aired and everyone would indeed realize that the script would match the ending on TV and forever silence all the doubters.

They begin the LOST panel with a video clip of a show on ABC from the 80’s which help inspired the show. The clip looks straight out of the 80’s with the cheesy voice over, crude film quality and poorly recorded music. Turns out it’s an expose on the Dharma Initiative from an old ABC Believe It or Not type of program. Very cool mocked up video made by the LOST group which explains how Dharma Initiative is a secretive group which is almost like a cult. Then it cuts to some fake commercials, one being an ad for those to attend the Lost University which of course has a Polar Bear mascot. The university teaches subjects that relate to various LOST themes. You can go to lostuniversity.org and check it out for yourself. Then there’s a Clucker’s Chicken commercial with Hurley dressed like Crocodile Dundee talking about his new Outback Chicken meal, inspired from his amazing trip to Australia. Nothing too crazy except he keeps mentioning how lucky he is and how much he loved going to Australia. Is this commercial supposed to come from a world where the bomb from the season 5 finale went off and worked? Because if the bomb went off and prevents the characters from crashing on the island, does that mean that the unlucky numbers now are just lucky? The final commercial is more of a preview of an America’s Most Wanted episode focused on finding Kate, a fugitive on the run wanted for murdering a man who was supposed to be her stepfather. Yes, that’s right, SUPPOSED to be! According to this little commercial, Kate’s stepdad is still alive and she actually killed one of his coworkers who went into his the stepfather’s office. So, these commercials brought up some new questions and not any answers on what may be happening in the final season.

Carlton and Damon begin answering a couple questions, most notably a question regarding how the final season will relate to the previous season. The guys explain that each season has it’s own characteristic, the flashback season, the others season, flash forward season, time traveling season, and the Dharma Initiative season. They will try to give this season it’s own feel, but hopefully be more surprising like season 1 where you didn’t know what the fuck was happening. I thought that was cool because the time traveling season was too much for me to bear.

During the questions Hurley makes a surprise appearance to ask a question. Everyone loses their shit. In total Hurley fashion he wants to know whether or not we’ll ever find out what happened to Shannon’s inhaler from season 1. (Remember how everyone thought Sawyer had it and Sayid has to torture him just to find out he didn’t know where the hell it was?) Anyhow, then out of nowhere Ben (Michael Emerson) shows up and starts talking to shit to Hurley for asking a stupid question. Again, the crowd goes crazy. They two get into a funny squabble and Hurley, errr.. Jorge tells Emerson he’s just jealous of Jorge because he got the part of Hurley and Emerson didn’t. Emerson pretends not to know what Jorge’s talking about and then we see footage of Michael Emerson auditioning for Hurley and doing a rather horrible job. It was pretty funny.

The guys join the producers on stage and then we are treated a video of a bunch of fan made LOST videos. Most of them are funny, but a video spoofing Jack and Sawyer as gay lovers in the vain of Brokeback Mountain gets the most applause. We then see this hilarious video of the producer’s favorite fan submitted “Lost Theme Song” and the guys who made it are there in the audience. It feels very much like an 80’s tv show with the cheesy character freeze frames. It’s not up on the internet yet, but it’s very much like - http://www.hilarious.net/the-lost-opening-theme-song/

During the Q&A, there’s two fake Hurley’s who thank Jorge and the producers of LOST for making a character they could relate with. It’s very touching. Then there are some questions regarding Richard Alpert’s back story and whether he’ll make an appearance. Damon and Carlton say he’s backstage and we see a video of Richard putting on guy liner and acting like a prick to a PA. He then gets embarrassed once he realizes he’s being taped and comes running after the cameraman who leads Richard onstage. It’s very funny and when he shows up everyone freaks out again.

There are some more Q&A answers which reveal pretty much nothing. The producers and cast do an extremely well job of saying a lot with little meaning. There is a hint that we’ll see some previous LOST cast members who died in previous seasons. The cast starts screaming out Mr. Eko’s name and the producers make it seem like we may just see him again. Turns out Eko (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) was killed off because he didn’t want to be on the show at the time that they scripted his death, but now he wants to come back. Maybe he wants to come back because we haven’t seen Adewale do shit in a bit? Anyhow, the producers are surprised no one mentions the magic word and hints that the word is Claire. Two questions later someone finally says Claire and wins a wooden seagull with the original SOS note written by Claire that she tied to a Seagull on the show. I don’t remember this shit happening at all in the series. Anyhow, there are more questions and some Jewish kid asks if the guy who’s hanging out with Jacob (who later becomes Resurrected Island Locke) might be a man named Enoch. Emerson says no, but likes his thinking. I guess it’s some biblical reference to one of the son’s of Cain who lived a very very very long life. I don’t really know the story of Enoch, but that’s what I could get from a quick scan of a wikipedia article.

Anyhow, the LOST producers start talking about how they are running low on time and say they should cut to another video. It’s little video about Sawyer walking around without a shirt, banging chicks, kicking ass and taking names. The girls lose their fucking minds and go bat shit crazy. My eardrums practically explode and I almost had to turn around and punch the screaming Twilight nerd girls in their fucking throats. Anyhow, that video of course signaled the arrival of Sawyer, who tazes Damon in the neck (the taze sound effect was about 3 seconds off, making it laughably horrible) and steals Damon’s key to the lock box for the final scene of the final episode of LOST. He takes Carlton’s key as well after some words and grabs the script from the lockbox. He starts looking at it and has a hard time reading the words which prompts Emerson (Ben) to snag the script away and express his shock that Sawyer is illiterate. Ben begins reading the page out loud to the room and it turns out to be a poorly written Heroes scene between Matt Parkman and Sylar. Ben stops after some time looking up and says, “What the fuck is this shit?!” which gave me and the rest of the audience a big laugh. So does that mean that they make the shit up that they go along? Probably not, but it confirms that they do pull some shit out of the ass every once in a while.

Sawyer takes his seat and we’re almost out of time. Damon and Carlton tell the audience to watch this next special clip which is one of those Oscar style “In Memorandum” videos for all the characters on LOST who have died, set to Boyz II Men’s “How Do I Say Goodbye”. It’s actually kind of sad because you get to see their death scenes again but there are a couple laughs. And then the screen goes dark for a second and the song changes to the really sad LOST song that normally plays in the episodes during those teary dramatic moments, and it’s a whole little segment dedicated to Charlie. The video ends, the lights go up, and what do you know- fuckin’ Charlie is there! Everyone goes nuts on last time and the producers and cast thank everyone, bringing the final LOST Comic Con panel to a close.

The panel was a good time. Lots of funny moments, no real answers, some new cryptic hints. It was definitely alright. One thing is for sure, I’m glad I spent the preceding night in a bed rather than sleeping in a tent.

- Cousin Ryan