Holloway: ‘Lost’ premiere feels as big as a finale

PASADENA, Calif. — “Lost” returns for its sixth and final season on Feb. 2, and according to the cast, the show returns with a bang.

“The premiere is definitely like, ‘What? Wait. Let me read that part again. What?’ ” Jorge Garcia, who plays Hurley, said at ABC’s Television Critics Association day on Tuesday. “There’s some head scratchers.”

“Big, though, too,” Josh Holloway, who stars as Sawyer, chimed in. “It felt like a finale. That scale.”

When “Lost” last left off, Ben (Michael Emerson) had killed the island’s mysterious Jacob, producers revealed Locke (Terry O’Quinn) was actually dead and Juliet disappeared into a flash of light after a nuclear warhead exploded. And that’s where things will kick off this time around, according to Executive Producer Carlton Cuse.

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“The season premiere picks up right after the finale, and we really don’t want to say too much about it. We’ve obviously been very circumspect about the sixth season … primarily because there’s this big cliffhanger; Juliet hits this bomb. There’s a white flash. What happened?” Cuse said. “Jack and Faraday were postulating that was going to reset the clock and the Oceanic 815 would fly along and land in Los Angeles. If she taps that bomb and something else happens, maybe they’re still stuck on the island. We don’t really want to kind of give away what the show is going to be this season.”

While the producers did reveal that Cynthia Watros’ character, Libby, and actor Harold Perrinau, who plays Michael, would be back, they couldn’t be drawn in to spilling secrets of the show’s final ending, which will air over two hours later this year.

“All we can do is, basically, put our best foot forward,” Co-Creator and Executive Producer Damon Lindelof said. “We do feel like the worst ending that we could possibly provide everyone who has invested this amount of time and energy into watching the show is the safe ending — you know, the ending that is basically sort of like, ‘What’s going to be the most appealing to the most number of people?’”

Lindelof also hinted the show’s ending is likely to spawn a reaction not unlike that experienced by another famous show that wrapped its run — “The Sopranos.”

Slideshow: Celebrity Sightings “I don’t think it would be ‘Lost’ if there wasn’t sort of an ongoing and active debate amongst the people who watch the show as to whether or not it was a good ending,” Lindelof said. “If I could put on my predicting hat, there would be people over here who say it’s the worst ending in the history of television, and hopefully to balance them out, my mom, who will say it’s the best ending, although she doesn’t understand the show.”

So far, Matthew Fox, who was not present at the panel on Tuesday, is the only castmember to admit knowing the end of the show, which has seven episodes left to shoot.

Last fall, he told British late-night talk show host Jonathan Ross, “It’s going to end with a very specific image … I know what that image is.”

And when asked following Tuesday’s panel if he knew too, Emerson said he doesn’t and he’s not entirely sure that Fox does either.

“People have always thought that Matthew knows the end,” Emerson told Access. “I don’t know what they base that on. I don’t know whether he does or not.

“How would he ever prove that he knew it once the world sees it unless he tape recorded something, dated it and put it in a safe deposit box?” Emerson added.

And Emerson said he wouldn’t be surprised if — in the end — Benjamin Linus turned out to be a good guy.

“I’ve always thought that was completely possible and may yet be,” he said. “We are more than half the way to the end of this season and I have no idea how things work out. I thought surely that when we started work on season six that I would be able to see the path to the end but I’m still trashing around.”

But regardless of how things turn out for the castaways, the stars will all be sad to finally close the hatch on the show.

“I am gonna cry like a baby when this show ends,” Evangeline Lilly, who plays Kate, said. “It’s become so nostalgic for us to look back over six years and having grown up together and grown up in front of all of you together, it’s been so intense that for it to come to an end is going to be life changing.”