Matthew Fox: Lost's Bomb Fallout Will Be Surprising... and Confusing

Matthew Fox is using words such as "amazing," "incredibly satisfying," "very surprising" and "fairly confusing" to describe Lost's sixth and final season, which kicks off sometime in early 2010.

Emerging from the cone of silence lowered onto stars and producers after the Season 5 finale aired, Fox shared with the crowd at the 49th Monte-Carlo Television Festival a glimpse at the final 17 episodes. (CineTVBuzz.com posted video of the event.)

The season will begin with the aftermath of Juliet seemingly detonating the Jughead bomb's explosive core, in a development Fox said will be "very surprising — and probably fairly confusing, initially, to the audience."

About a third of the way into the season, Fox said, the show's two separate timelines — in 1977 and 2007 — "are going to be solidified into one, and we will be operating in a more linear time, to the end of the series." Once the show moves to one timeline, he said, flashbacks will cease, and the series will resolve on the island.

Oh, and about that big finish: "I do know how the show's going to end, I know what the last images will be," said Fox, who only would hint at it all leading to "a final conflict."

Perhaps — or not — on a related note, he mentioned that Jack and Locke "will come head-to-head again." But since the Season 5 finale seemed to indicate the real Locke is very dead, it's unclear if Fox was foretelling a showdown with Locke or the person or entity posing as Locke.

With just 17 hours remaining, can Lost possibly tie together all of its narrative threads and loose ends — from Dharma and the Others to Jacob's seemingly epic feud with the entity known in scripts as "Man No. 2"?

Fox feels confident that the writers "will prove that they did know all along where they were heading with it," he said. "All the pieces will come back into play."

But he also acknowledged: "You're not going to please all the people all the time."

Crave scoop on your favorite TV shows, from this summer or the upcoming fall season? E-mail senior editors Matt, Mickey and Tim at mega_scoop@tvguide.com. Also, follow TV Guide on Twitter.