For the past few weeks, we have received a ton of spoilers from a variety of sources.  Some of these appear to be casting sheets for “Lost” itself and now… should we question all that we have been told?

Yesterday, Gregg Nations (script supervisor for “Lost”) posted something very interesting on a message board here:

 “Let me tell you a little story. Once upon a time spoilers were leaked on the net that included episode titles, writers, directors, shoot dates and roles for upcoming episodes. Fans were very smart and perceptive, and they were able to guess weeks in advance what the episodes were about. Much like a cop show, we were able to work backwards and figure out where the leaked information originated. There is a service that helps distribute casting breakdown information, and we realized the information leaked was the information released in breakdowns. So if we changed the information in the breakdowns, maybe the foiler information would be leaked. And lo and behold it was.

So what do you think the moral of this story is? One guess could be that in three weeks a lot of fans who think they know what's going to happen will find themselves... lost.”

 All right, what does this mean?  Is Mr. Nations actually saying that The Powers That Be in “Lost” world faked some information on casting breakdowns?  Or is he bluffing because so many spoilers about the first six episodes are getting out?

 On one hand, a few years ago a man named Joss Whedon pulled something similar because he disliked spoilers getting out for his show… but it was a bluff.  On the other, “Lost” has had lied and used misdirection on their casting breakdowns before (to hide that “Inman” and “Kelvin” were one and the same, and false names were used to cast the Widmores).  Plus, we’ve seen Pictures of a Jack flashback, but according to what the information that we’ve received there are no Jack flashbacks in the works yet.

 If I were in charge of a television show I’d put out spoilers… I’d film three endings to finales (money schmoney, the network would survive) and put a fake one on YouTube.  But that’s just me, I’m mean.  The question is… are the creators of “Lost”?

So, which is it?  Hoax… or hoax?  Foilers or bluff?  Sneaky, intelligent sleight-of-hand or diversionist mind game?  Only time will tell…

(I didn’t think that “diversionist” was a real word, but spell-check only dinged me for “schmoney”, so whatever…)