An ocean of new mysteries on ‘Lost’

[WARNING: The following story contains spoilers, obsessive detail and random speculation. Don't read on if you want to be surprised, or if you want to get any work done today.]

We thought the new season of “Lost” might answer a few lingering questions. Instead, it opened several dozen new cans of worms.

Since we only scraped the surface in our weekly recaps, now seemed like a good time to review all the other little tidbits we've been gathering in our endless string of Thursday-morning e-mails across the newsroom. (Don't tell our bosses.)

Here's hoping we'll get a few insights this week. Doubtful, but you never know.

(1) Inside the hatch. The hatch turns out to be the back door to research station No. 3 ("The Swan"), or so we learned in the orientation film Locke and Jack watched in last week's episode.

But the film posed a ton of new questions.  We finally understand the mysterious logo seen on nearly everything in the hatch, which represents the Dharma Initiative, a privately funded "large scale communo-research compound," says the film's narrator, Dr. Marvin Candle — created by University of Michigan doctoral candidates Gerald and Karen DeGroot in 1970. (We're guessing on spellings.)

As for the logo, it's clearly derived from the "ba gua" octagon used in feng shui: the eight elements arranged in the same manner, with the yin-yang replaced by a stylized swan drawing.

And it's on everything, including the '80s-era Apple II computer used to reset the 108-minute countdown that freaks out Desmond and Locke, and even on the food Kate found in the storeroom. (The food appears to play big in this week's Hurley-themed episode. And what of the "Apollo" candy bars Kate grabbed?) The logo was pretty clearly on the shark (or whatever it was) that menaced Sawyer and Michael on the raft in the Sept. 28 episode.

But what about the "quarantine" marking on the door? Locke tried to convince Desmond it was placed there simply to keep him from leaving, but it's clearly got Desmond scared (though not scared enough to avoid running into the jungle). And what of the medicine Desmond injected himself with, the vials with that had the mystery numbers (4-8-15-16-23-42) on them?

The mural painted on the station wall also has us mystified, too. But we're in enormous debt to the impressive (if geeky) work of several astute fans who've created maps of the Swan station's layout and posted them online. (You can find a couple here and here.)

2) Light that Candle. We remain as puzzled as Jack by Marvin Candle's instructions to enter the numbers "into the microcomputer processor," especially because the film then skips directly to Candle saying "induction into the program." It skips again in the midst of Candle's big warning: "Do not attempt to use the computer ... [spliced edit] ... for anything."

"Lost" creator J.J. Abrams is having a good chuckle right now. And we got a big tip-off from E! Online, which got co-creator Damon Lindelof to tell everyone to "check out Marvin Candle's left hand. Weird, huh?"  We did, and found that Candle's left arm and hand never moves throughout the entire orientation film. In fact it looks a bit fake, like a bad prosthetic. Or it could be one of those "Twin Peaks" things — "I am the arm" and such — though we sorta hope not.

(E! also hints a female character will be killed off soon. Just saying.)

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