With less than two months to go until the premiere of its sixth season, the TV show Lost has begun ramping up energy and excitement by releasing new promotional content around the world. In order to avoid spoiling the results of season five’s cliffhanger ending, promos for the final season have not revealed any new footage. Not that fans need any incentive to tune in — at this point, you’re either obsessed with the show or you could care less — but half the fun of following Lost is theorizing on every morsel of information, especially in these eight long months between seasons.
First we received an electrifying, original promo from Cuatro, the Spanish carrier of the program. That 45-second spot creatively repackaged old images into a narrative of epic proportions and puts the show’s overarching spiritual themes — of fate vs. free will, good vs. evil — into what seems like a very specifically Christian context:
It’s visually stunning and thematically clever: the chess board! The eyes! The Egyptian statue! A popular Lost blog identified the poem as an adaptation of a verse from the Rubaiyat by Omar Khayyam – see their excellent analysis of the verse and its translations.
Then yesterday ABC released its own extended promo, perhaps less visually creative but just as thematically, and religiously, significant:
Set to Willie Nelson’s cover of “Amazing Grace,” this new spot also seems to suggest a rich payoff on the spiritual themes the show has nurtured over the years. See how many Christian allusions you can spot. My favorite: the image of Jack’s eye opening (the very first shot of the pilot episode) set to the lyrics, “was blind, but now I see.”
Are you excited for the return of Lost? What is your favorite religious “moment” on the show? How do hope to see the religious themes addressed in the final season?
