Hurley (Jorge Garcia, left), Sawyer (Josh Holloway, centre) and Kate (Evangeline Lilly) are core members of the TV drama Lost. (Mario Perez/ABC/Associated Press)

Following a soap opera never used to be this hard. The popular primetime drama Lost has shown us that following a motley group of castaways on a tropical island requires more than the usual passivity, sofa and bowl of chips. For many, it involves homework. A quick search of the internet yields endless speculation on the show, including discussions of hidden messages (or Easter Eggs), fan-produced podcasts and long analyses of specific scenes, sometimes frame by frame.

After the season four finale on May 29, the blogs were aflutter. “Well, that was a mind blower,” was one representative response. Someone else posted a homespun, reversed audio of the midnight caller that figured prominently in the episode. Fans are also discussing a new viral distraction with a flurry of questions: “What is Sun’s agenda with Widmore? Why is Locke back in L.A.? Sawyer? Juliet?”

Indeed, Lost offers much to dissect. Created by J.J. Abrams (Felicity, Alias), the show began with the spectacular crash of Oceanic flight 815 (Sydney to Los Angeles), and could have continued as a sun-kissed romp on the beach. Instead, it has evolved into a dystopian scenario of government brainwashing, conspiracies, murderous tribes, a vaporous monster and more.

Diehard “Losties” blog like mad, trying to make sense of the many mysteries, and the show’s producers have only stoked the fervour. Much of Lost’s story exists outside the confines of a one-hour TV drama, with “mobisodes” and “hotlines” and made-for-internet “outtakes.” For a passive viewer like myself, dipping into that parallel world makes my head hurt. But this rabid fascination is a testament to Lost’s high level of intrigue.

Viewership numbers have climbed in recent months thanks to a renewed sense of direction. Indeed, this last season has demonstrated that while Lost has plenty of compelling characters — including dewy-faced Kate (Evangeline Lilly), handsome hero Jack (Matthew Fox), island autocrat Ben (Michael Emerson) — the real star of the show doesn’t have an IMDb entry. That’s because the best aspect of Lost has always been its masterful storytelling.

Jack (Matthew Fox, right) and Mr. Eko (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) in a scene from Lost. (Mario Perez/ABC/Associated Press)

From the very beginning, the show was an ambitious undertaking. The pilot was one of the most expensive in television history. (ABC executive Lloyd Braun was canned for greenlighting the $13-million shoot.) However, it was after the fire and glory of the initial plane crash that the real risk-taking began — namely, the narrative’s scope and global storylines. Each character had a complicated reason for being on flight 815. Jack is a surgeon with a saviour complex who was bringing his father’s body back from Australia; Kate was being escorted back to the U.S. for killing her abusive father; Sawyer (Josh Holloway) is a con man who was running from his past; Hurley (Jorge Garcia) spent time in a mental hospital, and then won $156 million in the lottery with what he believes are cursed numbers; Jin (Daniel Dae Kim) and Sun (Yunjin Kim) are a pair of star-crossed lovers who were trying to leave their marital problems behind in Korea. And these only represent a fraction of the cast.

The ensemble that was on board the flight is a cross-section of international passengers, and while it’s still unclear how they are all connected, they reflect more of the real-world population than most shows. Rose and Bernard (L. Scott Caldwell and Sam Anderson), for example, are an elderly interracial couple; John Locke (Terry O’Quinn) was initially in a wheelchair; Hurley is obese; and Jin doesn’t even speak English. (It’s amazing to think that an American primetime show chose to tell some of its story with subtitles.)

The first season focused on the crash survivors and slowly unspooled their secrets, along with those of the island. In the second season, the survivors banded together against greater forces lurking in the island’s jungle — namely, a group called “the Others,” led by the inscrutable Ben. Prisoners were taken on both sides. While the first and second seasons maintained a balance of questions and answers, the third season only intensified the confusion, largely by dwelling too much on the Others. The show’s audience became frustrated with what the writers admit was “stalling.” The deliberate three-month hiatus midway through season three didn’t help, either. A viewership addicted to thrilling highs responded by tuning out; ratings dropped from a peak of 23 million for the season two premiere to an average of 14.6 million per episode in season three.

The Lost phenomenon has shown that viewers will follow any narrative — even one involving an inexplicable smoke monster and seemingly dead characters becoming, well, undead — so long as it seems like there’s someone in the driver’s seat. With so many dramatic, heart-thumping moments, there has to be a payoff.

Just before the airdate of the third season finale, ABC declared that Lost’s writers had a blueprint for the rest of the series, which would end in 2010 at the conclusion of its sixth season. The move put the integrity of the story above the potential longevity of a TV cash cow. (The recent writers’ strike truncated season four, so it is now ending on only its 14^th episode; seasons five and six will have 17 episodes each.) While trampling through the jungle with John Locke this past season, Ben seemed to be making a cheeky meta-commentary on the show’s plotting woes: “Believe me, your people are going to be so angry when they realize you still don’t have a plan.”

Korean lovers Jin (Daniel Dae Kim, right) and Sun (Yunjin Kim) are part of the original cast of Lost. (ABC/CTV)

With an ending announced, the plotlines have accelerated. The aimlessness of the third season gave way to the brisk pace of the fourth. It put a spring in Ben’s shackled step; the love quadrangle between Sawyer, Kate, Jack and Juliet smouldered. We even welcomed an entirely new group of characters: the Freighters. The story, Lost’s biggest draw, was back.

The end of season three also marked another exciting development – the first flash-forward. While the show’s many flashbacks had been instrumental in fleshing out the lives of characters who essentially spend their days stuck on a beach, the flash-forwards have created even more elasticity in the storyline, opening the door to time travel, a theme that has only been hinted at thus far. The main focus this season has been the “Oceanic 6,” the characters who actually managed to escape the island, albeit under murky circumstances. Only a program that so creatively messes with time (and our minds) would begin with the stranding of plane crash survivors and have their rescue occur, not at the end of the series, but in the middle.

While the season four finale had its share of outlandish thrills — an exploding freighter, an island that moves — it also featured our favourite characters performing their most essential functions.Fallen hero Jack is still trying to do the right thing; Locke is the ascendant leader finally rewarded for his unshakeable faith; Ben continues to be psychopathic and omniscient; Sayid is a reluctant assassin; and Hurley still sees dead people. You need sea legs to appreciate Lost — not because there’s so much water involved in escaping an island, but because the narrative undercurrents are so strong. But as this last season showed, the rewards are great.

Lost’s writers have said that the season four finale marks the beginning of a self-imposed moratorium on media interviews, which they intend to keep until the beginning of season five (in February 2009). As for the story behind the smoke monster, they’ve declared that a secret until the very end of the series — which means you have until 2010 to discuss it online.

The season finale of Lost airs on May 29.

Hannah Sung writes about the arts for CBCNews.ca.