Getting back to the action

During the third-season finale of ABC’s “Lost,” a flash-forward revealed that Jack, the hunky doctor, and Kate, the equally foxy fugitive, make it off the mysterious island of polar bears, smoke monsters, hidden hatches and secretive people called the Others.

But all is not well. A bearded and clearly distraught Jack was seen pleading, “We have to go back, Kate!”

Back to that crazy place? Viewers know just how he feels.

“Lost” returns with eight new episodes starting Thursday, and anticipation is building among fans who want to get back to the action and finally find some meaningful answers to what’s really going on in the addictively complex drama.

Last season’s stunning flash-forward device was hailed as a genius stroke for a series that was struggling creatively and trying the patience of all but the most devoted watchers.

Ever since Oceanic 815 crashed back in 2004, “Lost” has been an innovative series with a labyrinthine puzzle the likes of which broadcast television hadn’t seen before.

But during the end of the second season and a good chunk of the third, the show strayed perilously close to jumping the shark. Too many unanswered questions piled up. Constant flashbacks to the survivors’ past lives began to feel like padding.

Then came the flash-forward finale that reinvigorated the show and indicated producers knew exactly where the story was headed – right off the island, shockingly enough. It opened the door for future episodes to jump intriguingly back and ahead in time, a wrinkle nobody saw coming.

“It completely changed the face of ‘Lost,’ ” says Jeff Jensen, senior writer for Entertainment Weekly. “We suddenly realized this story is so much bigger than we thought.”

Some “Lost” fans worried there would be years of cooked-up excuses for keeping Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Hurley and the gang in island limbo.

Then last year, ABC agreed to let the show’s executive producers, Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, do what makes the most creative sense: set an end date for the series.

Under the deal, there’ll be 48 more episodes divvied into three seasons of 16 each (at least, that was the plan before the writers’ strike).

With the conclusion looming in 2010, the team behind “Lost” can now attempt to plot out the action better and ensure that every little moment counts toward a strong, artistically satisfying resolution – instead of, as Jensen notes, “the usual m.o. of TV, which is just to feed the beast, keep it on the air, keep it interesting for one more week.”

As “Lost” resumes, there are obvious questions left by the peek into the future: Who else gets off the island? How do they do it? Who’s left behind?

Why is Jack so messed up and eager to return? Who was in the coffin shown in the finale? Who’s the male person that Kate apparently lives with?

But the fate of the island’s present storyline is also a delicious riddle. When last season wrapped, there was hope of imminent rescue by a freighter – something the unreliable Others leader Ben was warning the castaways against.

Jack wants to go. Locke wants to stay. Who’s on that ship and are they dangerous or not?

According to Jensen, at least in the first four episodes, it should be pretty clear what’s happening, which isn’t always the case with “Lost.”

And early on, viewers are likely to meet several new characters. Teeny-tiny spoiler alert: TV Guide says there’ll be a foursome of freighter people introduced, and there also should be more information coming this season about who else leaves the island, with one of them revealed during the premiere.

The Hollywood writers’ strike has intensified interest in “Lost,” since there’s not much else exciting on broadcast TV these days (not even the predictably awful audition rounds of “American Idol”).

There are eight episodes in the can. The original plan was to show 16 new episodes without repeats, according to Variety, to create the sort of event feeling that seasons of “24” do. But that was announced before the strike.

If the conflict is settled by the end of this month and production starts back up, Jensen’s hunch is there’ll be a break of a few weeks after the first eight episodes air, followed by the airing of six or eight more episodes.

But a longer strike could make it difficult to get a full season done in time.