Think like a "Lost" Writer!

Your name is Damon Lindelof. You kicked off the fourth season of "Lost" with a bombastic plotline hidden as a throwaway line - "Oceanic Six" is this year's "Save the Cheerleader, Save the World," the phrase that steadily pays off with each ensuing episode. In typical fashion, you've managed to make even that precise number a bit confusing - does little baby Aaron count as one of the six? Does Ben? If so, which one? If not, how many more people got off the island who aren't being counted by the public at large? In the flashforward future, is Juliet hunkered down somewhere outside Portland? Has Charles Widmore locked Desmond up and thrown away the key?

But now you've getting down to it. Who is/are the last/rest of the Oceanic Six? More to the point, who, like Sayid, needs to be one of the Six, if only to give them some reason to be on the show? You have to be looking at Jin and Sun, right? Sure, Desmond had a vision of Claire getting on a helicopter... but then why would Kate have Aaron? You could have Sawyer or Locke, but both of those characters want to stay on the island now - everyone else who got off the island (that we know so far) is firmly in Jack's camp of get-the-hell-outta-here. Anyways, it's not like Sawyer and Locke ever suffer for things to do. But Jin and Sin? Shit man, they haven't done ANYTHING since forever.

So which one is it? Well, my money used to be on Sun - it lends a nice gender balance to the Oceanic Six, and it just seemed impossible that Jin would ever leave the island without her. But how weird would it be if BOTH women who get off the island had a baby? Wouldn't that be strange - not the usual "Lost" strange, but just a mundane, under-considered strange? And wouldn't a sad, broken Jin, left adrift without his love, make such a great role, such a huge character shift from the stalwart, proud man we've come to know?

But then again, there is the wild card of Michael. Isn't it funny how pretty much everybody knows that Michael is Ben's man on the boat? Like, this has moved from widely-believed theory to basically accepted fact in greater Lostopia. Wouldn't it be a wild whizbang if Michael's NOT the guy on the boat - but if he is the last of the Six?

Maybe. I'm not buying it. Vote Jin in 2008!