I am – Hercules!! ABC says of tonight’s “Lost” series finale, titled “The End”:

An excerpt from maybe the very first in-depth interview with Damon Lindelof ever regarding “Lost”:

AICN: I’m guessing the crash, and the location of the crash, was dictated by something more than happenstance. Moreover, I theorize the plan is to make another airliner crash into the island before season four. Am I nuts? DAMON: Neither the crash, nor anything else, is dictated by happenstance. As to ANOTHER major crash before season four? Hmmmm. Well, probably not another AIRLINER... but certainly something...

Ajira 316 crash-landed in 5.6, so I was off by at least a season and a half. But I wonder if Damon remembers what he had in mind when he said “certainly something.” Note also that the spec script that helped Damon land the “Lost” job was a time-travel tale titled "Ollie Klublershturf vs. The Nazis." That Aug. 21, 2004 interview garnered a whopping 36 talkback posts, some predicting how quickly “Lost” would die because I picked it as the season’s best new series. (I had in earlier seasons picked the very short-lived “Firefly” and “Wonderfalls” for “best new”; talkbackers were willfully ignoring however that I had also by that point picked “24” and “Gilmore Girls” as “best new” as well.) My expectations for tonight’s installment are all over the place. Other episodes I thought would be huge – this season’s Alpert- and Smokezilla-centric installments – were perhaps too much about “how” and not enough about “why.” (Remember when fans were speculating that young Jacob and his brother might somehow be spying on prehistoric versions of John, Jack and Sayid? SO much more interesting than what we got.) On the other hand, I’m quite excited that Hurley and Desmond are herding everyone toward what I’m guessing is a Drive Shaft concert featuring special guests Daniel Faraday and Christian Shephard’s grandson. Plus? Shannon Rutherford, fearer of rape caves, back for the first time since season three! Interesting that Hurley asked if Ana Lucia was coming to the concert. I guess he now remembers everything from his island life? Still so many questions. * Ben Linus killed everybody in the Dharma Initiative in 1992, 12 years before Oceanic 815 went down. Is there a giant “Raiders”-size warehouse full of Dharma groceries, or were palettes coming down near the barracks as well? Is someone still manufacturing these Dharma groceries, and why were those groceries still getting delivered to Swan Station in 2004? Who is doing the delivering? What became of Dharma founders Gerald and Karen DeGroot? What became of Dharma financier Alvar Hanso, ancestor of Black Rock captain Magnus Hanso? Was Dharma’s Ann Arbor HQ demolished, or is it now an Ikea? * Of all the many, many identities Ben Linus could assume when he met the 815 survivors, why did he choose Henry Gale, a dead black man with a photo ID that could prove Linus a liar? * Did Jacob keep Michael from killing himself back in New York? Did the island? Did Jacob and/or the island want Michael to die in a freighter explosion? If so, why? * Why is the island so anti-baby? Is it important that all of Jacob’s followers be imports? Does the island even like Jacob having followers hanging around? How come the island healed Rose and John but not Jacob’s follower Ben? * Why did Jacob and/or the island send some of the Ajira passengers back to 1977 but not others? * Why did Mom speak Latin? Was she from Ancient Italy? The text commentary on the pilot aired Saturday night indicated Jacob was born more than 2,000 years ago. How might she (or some other speaker of Latin) have found her way to a South Pacific island more than a thousand years before the birth of Marco Polo? * Why a giant statue of an Egyptian goddess? * How did Ben know the Frozen Donkey wheel wouldn’t deposit him in the middle of the Arctic Ocean? Did Richard Alpert tell him? If so, when did Richard find out? Has the wheel been used to move people on the island through time and space before? * Did Jacob lure the Black Rock to the island? Why didn’t he just pick Richard to take his place 150 years ago? Why wasn’t Ilana a good choice to take over? * With so much at stake, why didn’t Jacob run away when Ben showed up with a giant knife at the end of last season? Wouldn’t it make more sense for Jacob to try to hold Ben off until he could name a replacement?

TV Guide reports ABC is producing new question-answering footage that won’t be broadcast Sunday but WILL appear on the season-six DVD and Blu-ray sets coming in August. An ABC press release says we can also expect this on the Jimmy Kimmel special airing just after midnight:

… an exclusive look at THREE ALTERNATIVE FINAL SCENES from the minds of executive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse.

The promos don’t make the three scenes sound like joke versions. Yes, like Mr. Richard Feder from Fort Lee, N.J., I ask a lot of questions – but don’t for a minute think these questions mean I don’t like “Lost.” I LOVE “Lost.” It’s made my top-ten hourlong list six years in a row, and I’ve every confidence it will find its way onto a seventh. I loved when Smokezilla poured into the temple. I loved when Jack pushed Smokezilla into the water. I love that Crazy Libby’s kisses can bridge two universes. I loved when Desmond drove into old, crippled Locke and I loved more when Desmond started smacking Ben around. For all its flaws I think of “Lost” as a feat, one of the most fascinating, original, engrossing tales ever forged, an enterprise well worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as “The Prisoner” and “Twin Peaks.” And I am pulling for a finale that will bring honor to us all. Find my five-star July 24, 2004 review of the “Lost” pilot here. “Lost” retrospective: 7 p.m. Sunday. ABC. “Lost” final episode: 9 p.m. Sunday. ABC. “Jimmy Kimmel Live” “Lost” special: 12:05 a.m. Early Monday. ABC. Follow Herc on Twitter!! Follow Evil Herc on Twitter!!

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