Could Lost really be ready to stop the time machine?

In an interview with Lost's mastermind, Damon Lindelof, Entertainment Weekly reports the producer said, "All I will say is that it is time for the time travel craziness to end. And once it does end, something very, very surprising will happen in its wake. It is a little bit of a game-changer."

Which is what usually happens in the fourth quarter with only minutes left on the clock.

"The show's been a time travel show for the last four years," Damon said in a January press conference. "Hopefully, as season five unfolds, you will realize that time travel has been in the DNA of the show for quite some time."

The writers seem to be having fun zinging the whole time travel element, with Hurley and Sawyer constantly bringing up how confusing time travel is.

Minor character Forgurt may have gone up in flames, but before his fiery end he spelled out all our concerns: Why work so hard to build a new camp (or change some point in history) if the time flashes just wipe it all away? While he rants about having no fire, he gets struck by a flaming arrow.

The time travel element has sent many viewers into a tailspin trying to figure it all out, and some have just flung up their hands and walked away. But you can bet all the fans will jump back on board this fateful flight when it goes for final takeoff next year.

In the words of our favorite character Sawyer, "Time travel's a bitch." Here are some top moments that make our noses bleed just thinking about it.

10. The producers say they put down the foundation of time travel right from the beginning. In the first season, you can look back at Sawyer reading A Wrinkle in Time, and Hurley telling an airline employee about not being able to set his clock, remarking, "I really don't get the whole time-change thing." And here I was getting all concerned about those number sequences popping up and trying to ponder what all that meant.

9. Eloise Hawking, who seems to be our guide for time journeys, told Desmond that the universe has a way of course correcting and showed him a man who gets killed despite any attempt to change the inevitable outcome. She's obviously seen this guy get bumped off several times in her loop time. Yet she still tinkers with time, but perhaps always with the same ultimate result.

8. At first, Desmond doesn't believe Eloise about not being able to change things that result in a different outcome. His visions tell him Charlie's going to die. No matter how many times Des saves Charlie, the outcome is always the same: Charlie dies. Dead is dead on Lost -- except when it isn't. Note the dearly-not-quite-departed -- Locke, among others.

7. The whisperers -- are they the time travelers who hang out in the shadows watching their past and future selves? How crazy is it when we see our Losties tramping through the jungle and then stumbling upon the past, or future, versions of themselves?

6. The ageless Richard encountered a time traveling Locke in the 1950s, so did Richard do all those subsequent manipulations -- like encouraging Locke to take over as leader -- because of that encounter, or has something in that timeline shifted? As Richard noted to Locke in the penultimate episode this season, perhaps they've made a mistake.

5. Why is it that Richard never ages? Is it because he's some other species? Or does it all boil down to some time travel juju that allows him to age slower than most? Or it could just be the magic of the island. In any case, Charles Widmore and Eloise Hawking left the island and have aged -- although we must note they have done so gracefully.

4. When Ben turns the donkey wheel, shouldn't everyone on the island become time travelers? Where did the island go? Since it appeared to disappear, why wouldn't everyone go spinning to another time? Why is it that only the survivors seem to be the ones jumping through time like Quantum Leap's Sam Beckett?

3. Sayid shoots young Ben, expecting that death will avoid all the bad things that happened because of Ben's actions. Instead, something about Ben has been transformed. Does that mean that if Sayid hadn't shot Ben, then he wouldn't be the cold-hearted bastard he turned out to be? As Richard says when he agrees to save Ben, he'll never be the same after The Others save his life. So did Sayid make him into the man he is today, or would he always have gone that psycho route?

2. Eloise sends her own son back to the island, present Eliose knowing that she kills him without realizing that the man entering her camp in 1977 is actually her grown son coming back from the future. Talk about a lousy time loop to get stuck in. But the real question is, how does she remember she kills her son?

1. Maybe it's just because Slaughterhouse-Five was required reading in high school, but it always seemed as if Desmond was like Billy Pilgrim, unstuck in time and randomly living in the past, present, and future. To what point? All I know is that the Desmond-centric episode The Constant is one of the best episodes of Lost, and deserves to be on any list of best written TV shows.

I can't let go of something Damon Lindelof said during a conversation when Lost started its second season: That all you need to know about Lost is that it is about redemption. That once a character is redeemed they can move on. So I always thought of the island as purgatory -- something the creators have always denied. But perhaps it still plays into the time theory. Are the people jumping through time the ones who can still be redeemed? So where does that leave Hurley, who doesn't appear to have done anything that needs this level of redemption?

We should have the answers by this time next year, if we don't all die of massive brain aneurisms from over-thinking a TV show.

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