Rise and Shine

Like a Polar Bear roused out of hibernation only to find himself on a mysterious, electromagnetically-charged island, the LOST side of my mind is wiping the crusties from its eyes and hitting the snooze button. The Season 5 premiere looms large, scheduled for January 21st (that’s a Wednesday!). Who says January is the most depressing month of the year? Pssssh.

The perfect morning coffee to shake the cobwebs from your LOST hibernation is YouTube fan videos and the ever-cryptic official previews from ABC. This weekend, my YouTube scouring found this nugget:



The Fray!? LOST is getting its Grey’s Anatomy/Scrubs/The O.C. on by playing whatever it is the kids are listening to these days. As long as it’s not a no-talent ass clown like Sheryl Crow, I’m fine. But formulaic alt-rock ballads aside, the preview is pretty interesting. While it’s light on new material (instead recycling dramatic scenes from Seasons 1-4), there are a few nice highlights:

• Start with a plane crash. That’s good. You always open with an old favorite.
• New tagline: Destiny Calls. Interesting, as the concept of “destiny” or “fate” is heavily-tilled ground in the LOST universe.
• Mysterious dude in haz-mat suit pops out of a hatch and startles the skittish Daniel Faraday. More Island people!?! Are we sure there’s a procreation problem? Oh, and later there are people pointing arrows at Faraday and Charlotte. Peter Pan?
• Jack and Sayid come to fisticuffs! Put all your money on Sayid in that one.
• Miles the Ghost Whisperer (not Jennifer Love Hewitt the Ghost Whisperer, unfortunately) looking puzzled. Probably something related to that whole Claire the Talking Ghost thing.
• Hurley’s Got a Gun (sing it to the tune of the old Aerosmith jam. You’ll like it). It seems his paranoia is about to get the best of him. Later, we see him peering suspiciously out the window while Sayid is unconscious on the ground. "We shouldn’t have left, Jack. It wants us to come back."
• Was that Juliet discovering another underground hatch?
• Richard Alpert! Woot!
• Jack ends with “Let’s go get ‘em.” Oh. Snap.
• Oh, and random spliced-in cells of a flaming logo for Ajira Airways, no big deal. Wait. What the…?

Ajira Airlines: No Borders. Now Boarding.
Allow me to Google this for you. Ajira Airlines does indeed have a web site. Conveniently, they use the same “Destiny Calls” tagline that LOST is currently toting. And the copy below it:

Let Your Journey Begin
The skies have no limit with our new destinations launching January 21st, 2009. Take an adventure anywhere around the globe and reimagine your world as big as ours. Check back often to discover new ways to get lost in the world. No Borders, Now Boarding - Ajira Airways.

Obviously, the launch date is no coincidence. Neither is the tag line, “Destiny Calls.” And a little Lostpedia-ing reveals that this is, indeed, an official LOST microsite. Lostpedia’s slogan should be “We nerd out so you don’t have to.” Instead of going to all the trouble of searching through the IP addresses that update and register Ajira Airlines' site, the friendly geeks at Lostpedia have done the dirty work for us. It appears that Ajira Airlines was registered, set up and is maintained by ABC Studios. Furthermore, the site is not hosted by Hoodlum, the Australian entertainment company behind LOST ARG’s (Alternate-Reality Games) such as the now-defunct Dharma Initiative Recruiting Project, and, I believe, the Find 815 game from last year.

You can enter your e-mail address on their site for updates (yes, of course I did). Chances are, it'll launch you into a fun little game for the next month, giving you some clues, hints and even exclusive scenes for Season 5. While you wait patiently by your inbox for that, you can chew on a few fun facts (gleaned from, where else, Lostpedia and interpreted by, what else, my crazy head).

Like everything LOST-related, Ajira is not an arbitrarily selected term. In Hindi it means “island” or “isle”; in Islam, “Eternal Life after Death.” Maggie also pointed out that “Ji” is contained in Ajira, a possible allusion to Ji Yeon, the child of Sun and Jin. Additionally, Maggie informs me that Ajira Airways will be based in Seoul, Korea, home of Sun. How she knows that, I’m not sure. I suspect she obtained the information through questionable means.

It all points to a storyline that will be played out by the now-rich, now-powerful Sun: majority shareholder of Paik Industries. Allow me to dust off my tinfoil hat and provide you with my first completely baseless theory of the year:

Sun uses the Paik Industries manufacturing ties to buy (or create) Ajira Airlines. Remember, Oceanic Airlines went bankrupt handing out settlements to the Oceanic Six, so she might be using their supplies or people. She uses the company’s aeronautical and navigational capacities as a means with which to find out what happened to the Island, and possibly find Jin (provided he made it into the wormhole and didn’t die in the explosion). Her persistence in the matter represents a threat to Widmore’s concealment of the Island, and serves to escalate a feud between them. That feud acts as both a catalyst and an impediment to the Oceanic Six’s return to the Island. Because when it’s all said and done, I think Season 5 will be all about Jack’s efforts to rally the O6 – and Locke’s carcass – back to the Island.

Crazy? Yes! Unfounded? You bet! But it’s December, and we’ve got 53 days to wait for the Season Premiere, titled “Because You Left.” Kinda sounds like the title of a Fray song, doesn’t it?

Namaste.
Charlie

PS: Stay tuned for an announcement on how Maggie and I will be preparing you (via the blog, of course) for LOST Season 5. We'll have full details on our plans for the month leading up to the season premiere - including our first-ever video entry. Be afraid.