‘Lost’ answers? Nah

And so ends another season of “Lost,” in an unusually action-packed and sanguinary spring cleaning that Wednesday night left a host of minor characters and one major character dead.

Jack led his people away from attack, up the mountain to the radio tower. Locke, well on his way to Col. Kurtz-hood, climbed out of his death pit (encouraged by a vision of Walt -- remember Walt?) to throw a knife into helicopter girl Naomi. Sayid, Jin and Bernard blew up a few marauding Others, were captured and seemingly executed by other Others, then rescued by Hurley in that old VW van.

Charlie, who has been going around with a safe dangling over his head much of the season, kept his watery date with destiny in the Looking Glass station, after being knocked around for a while by a couple of fine-looking female Others -- they really should just call this show “The Island of Hot Babes.” They also get shot by Mikhail, who was in turn shot by Desmond but lived to blow up the station and drown Charlie. Jack told Kate he loved her and punched out Ben.

The episode’s spook moment was reserved for the flashback, however, which turned out not to be a flashback but a flash-forward: a clever, if not wholly unpredictable, conceptual shift that short-circuited the obvious objection that our castaways would of course not get off the island, as imminent as that possibility seemed, or the show would be over. Apparently, they did get off, and it was a disaster, at least for a suspiciously distraught Jack -- actor Matthew Fox in emotive overdrive. Now they have to get back to where they once thought they didn’t belong in order to set fate straight.

Something like that. Apparently.

And so, if anything, we seem to know less than before, though that’s hardly in itself a surprise. That anyone should expect answers from any season finale -- that they should expect a finale, in other words -- seems whimsical at best nowadays. And that anyone should expect answers from a show whose entire modus operandi is to hand you another enigma to wrap your mysteries in seems downright foolish.

One important question regarding “Lost” was nevertheless answered earlier this month when it was announced that, after Wednesday, the series would run exactly 48 more episodes, spread out over three years: That is how long you’ll have to wait to learn just what is going on there, in the hatch-behind-the-hatch sense. Alternatively, you can consider it a three-year reprieve from the moment that you will have to deal with the series’ conclusion, be it anticlimactic “explanation” or just another damn door.

On a good night, “Lost” can make you forget about the fact that, in the end, the numbers will only add up to 108, that you are being taken for a six-year ride; on good nights, when mood overrides mythology, you just enjoy the ride. When it doesn’t work, “Lost” can seem like the most tedious show in the world -- a series in which little happens and what does happen takes forever. The new chronological orientation suggested by the season finale may remedy that, or possibly it will fatally complicate the show’s ability to tell a story that already seems too complicated by half. It also may help with the fact that many of the original characters have become, well, tiresome, by giving them some new notes to play.

And any or all of this may be rendered moot by the first episode of Season 4, which is liable to begin anywhere at all. While viewers require a certain level of consistency -- though taking it upon oneself to resolve inconsistencies is, for many, a kind of recreational bonus of fantasy fandom -- the producers, having set their series on a magic island on which anything can happen, can do pretty much whatever they want. Just as long as they can keep those balls spinning.

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robert.lloyd@latimes.com