Season 5/spoilers

• "Season 5 is about why [the people in the outside world] need to get back [to the Island]."

• The show will break her usual template. "You think the show is, 'Okay, they're on the Island, and then — whoosh — you're in the past or the future.' I think the audience is going to go, 'How can the show continue to be that?' And they are absolutely right."

• The start of Season 5 is planned for last week of January

• It's entirely possible that the notion of what's the past and what is the present and what is the future could change."

• The Season 4 finale has been written as a pilot for Season 5.

Desmond

• "We want to explore what happened to Desmond in prison; how he ended up there, and why they want him back."

Ben

• Ben was caught accidentally by Danielle's trap and we will find out why.
• We will learn why Ben was traveling across the island and why he ended up in Danielle's trap.
• Ben and the real Henry Gale "had words".

• Daniel may end up to be a series regular.

• Frazzled physicist Daniel Faraday won't be getting his spotlights until Season 5.

• Charlotte has a recurring arc with a possible option for series regular for 5th season.

Claire Littleton

• A major story line will continue for Claire. "Mysterious things happening to Claire [in "There's No Place Like Home, Part 1"] set up the next few years."

• "Miles isn't here to make friends. He's here for something else. And it ain't what he told us at the end of "Confirmed Dead" (Ben.)"

• Ghost-whispering hustler Miles Straume won't be getting his spotlights until Season 5.

• We'll find out what happened to Candle's hand and Montand's arm. Probably along with Rousseau's flashbacks.

• Rousseau will get a flashback at some point in season 5 but it needs to synchronize with the rest of the story

• We'll get Danielle's backstory.

• Rousseau may pop up in another character's flashback.

• We haven't seen last of the Rousseau yet.

• Chau was told unofficially that "Dr. Candle" will feature more prominently.

• "We will return to Penny and Desmond but Sonya Walger is in high demand in her current show on HBO. We will use her again when she is available."

• Desmond and Penny are an incredibly important part of the show, and one of our favorite romances and relationship to write on the show. There's a lot more to tell about that story, but hopefully you will have a better sense of that over the summer.

• Richard Alpert is going to become more prominent.

• "Obviously, we have a couple more beats of Libby’s story to tell to fill in the missing pieces, and the way we would tell that story is in the flashbacks of another character. But that character can’t be a character that we already know and love, otherwise they would recognize Libby. We know who those characters are and what those story beats are, but it might be a while before we get to their flashbacks."

• Given everything else we have to tell, Libby’s story is going to be a mystery that's going to have to get answered.

• There's really one significant missing piece to Libby's story. How did she get from A to B — from Desmond to the mental institution? We know the answer to that question, but the only way to tell that story is through another character's flashback, and that character would have to be another character on the show who is not among the beach dwellers.

• The theory that Libby was DHARMA is NOT "barking up the wrong tree"

• "We will find out more back story as to why the late Libby was in the same mental hospital with Hurley, prior to the plane crash, and presumably after she gave her boat to Desmond for the race."

• Andrea Roth has a recurring role.

• We will see Harper again. She is an other, we did not kill her and she is still on the island.

• "Jacob? The answer lies further downstream in the ongoing story. Character names on the show are not assigned without a reason. And yes, that is a clue."

• "What happened to Annie is another chapter of Ben's story that will be seen at some point."

• "Annie is an extremely important part of the island's backstory, and it is a planned chapter to come."

• "You will be seeing Ms. Hawking again."

• We will find out why she was with that monk. We will see her again.

• Claire's psychic and his visions for Claire and her baby's future will be revisited.

• Horace and Olivia are important to the DHARMA story, and we can expect to see more of them in the future.

• "Will we at some point catch up with [them]."

• To the question of whether we'll ever see Helen again, Darlton indicated that they "hoped so."

• To the question of whether the DeGroots are still alive, Cuse and Lindelof pressed for more specificity on the time frame of the question. As of the time line of "The Shape of Things to Come", they said: "One of them is."

• Adam and Eve will be addressed, in the fifth or sixth season.

• We have not seen Ben's motivation for his role in the purge, but we will.

• The larger mythos, like The Purge — that's more season 5.

• The Orchid Station may be a major set going into fifth season.

• Because they got shortchanged in 2008, the writers plan to explore the Freighter Folk's back-story in depth in the fifth season.

• You will see bits and pieces of all the time off the Island. There are many interesting stories left to be had for all of the Oceanic Six."

• We will learn much more about the DHARMA Initiative in Season 5.

• Dharma will return in Season 5 and is a "huge" part of show