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‘Lost’ time warp have you lost? Just hang in there

As ABC’s “Lost” hits its fifth-season finale, the situation is tense — whether you’re talking past, present or future.

In the show’s present day, John Locke wants to kill the mysterious island’s mystery man, Jacob. Thirty years in the past, Jack Shepherd thinks exploding a hydrogen bomb will let him and his fellow castaways, including Locke, avoid being stranded on the island in the future.

If viewers don’t quite know what time it is, they should have a better sense of where the show is headed — about 90 percent worth — after Wednesday’s two-hour season-ender (9 p.m. ET/PT, with a season recap at 8 p.m.), the executive producers say.

Carlton Cuse poses the finale’s central question: “Can these characters change the future?”

“Or the past?” chimes in Damon Lindelof.

“Depending on your perspective,” Cuse closes, not the first time the producing partners playfully finish each other’s sentences.

Time travel has been a dominant theme in the penultimate season of the adventure drama, as one character’s effort to “move” the island left the castaways skipping through time as if on a broken record. From creating to understanding such rules as “Whatever happened, happened” and the possibility of a current-day character dying in the past, the season has been challenging for writers and viewers.

“We always knew the time-travel storytelling was going to be really difficult and complex and that it was going to probably be the hardest season for fans to digest,” Cuse says. “At the same time, we feel that people seem to like the season even if they don’t fully understand everything that’s going on.”

Time travel has a long history in science-fiction novels and on the screen and has seen a recent revival with such films as “Star Trek,” also produced by Lindelof, and series including “Heroes” and “Flash Forward,” a fall prospect for ABC.

A central appeal of the form is that it touches on a universal desire to go back and change events based on current knowledge, Lindelof says. It also allows for storytelling that accentuates the predicaments of the characters, who the producers have always said are the true core of “Lost.”

“There is drama in meeting Danielle Rousseau as a 20-year-old pregnant woman when you know her fate is to become crazy and her unborn daughter will be killed. Is there any way we can change that from happening?” Lindelof says.

Whether or not the complexity is a factor, “Lost” (11.1 million viewers, No. 29) is down 17 percent from last season. But it’s still in the top 10 among advertiser-coveted young adults and is one of the top five time-shifted shows.

Science-fiction author Kevin Anderson (“The Edge of the World,” due June 2), a fan, says he trusts where the writers are taking him.

“Part of the season reminded me of the last season of ‘The X-Files,’ where I sat there and thought, ‘Do they really have a plan?’ But in just the last couple of episodes, I’ve been sitting up and smiling and going, ‘They have figured it out. They did have a plan from the beginning,’ ” says Anderson, who has written time-travel stories. “As a viewer and as a fan, that’s all I needed to know, that I was going to get a payoff.”

Another author and fan Orson Scott Card (“Ender’s Game”), praises the writers’ ability to draw up rules with which the impossible — time travel — feels possible. “I think they’re handling it superbly.” His one concern: “Lost” may delve too deeply into magical explanations. “As a practical rule, it’s very hard for audiences to accept two completely separate changes from reality.”

Lindelof and Cuse promise more answers about the characters and the mythology. But they don’t plan to answer every single question, nor will they tell viewers how they should interpret the show.

“We’ve never been good at telling people what to think. ... At the risk of frustrating people, we want people debating,” Lindelof says. “That’s why ‘Lost’ is ‘Lost.’”