“There’s a scene in the episode “Cabin Fever” in which Richard Alpert visits a young John Locke and lays out before him a series of mysterious objects — a knife, a compass, an old book, a bottle of sand— from which he’s meant to choose the ones he owns already. What’s happening in this scene? Everything seems fraught with meaning, haunted: the rain dripping outside the window, Alpert’s serious and somehow mystical presence, little Locke’s silence and solemn eyes. Nothing is explained, or not really; it’s a mystery built from bricks of mystery — whispers of reincarnation, strange foreknowledge, the reach of the Island, Alpert’s immortality. But I love this scene so much. It’s a microcosm of what I think is best about Lost, and what I hope outlasts the show — that sense of truth transcending logic, a mystery built from bricks of mystery.”