Who, what, where, why, when and about a million other questions cross your mind when you watch what has sprung out of J.J. Abrams mystery box today.
With the basic 99% focus on Abrams work with Star Wars, this has given him the opportunity to spring something completely unrelated on us, without anyone knowing what the hell is going on.
Enter ‘The Stranger’, a teaser that gives us the classic Abrams feel of ‘What in God’s name is this?’
I actually felt like a little kid again seeing this tease for whatever the hell it is. The short clip, submitted to EW by Abrams features a man washed up on a dark rainy beach with his wrists bound with a broken rope.
A narrator in the background informs us that he doesn’t know anything more than we do right now.
And then the camera pans to a rather creepy face of a man whose mouth is sealed shut with stitches.
Then a caption appears saying ‘Soon he will know’, which then disappears in the order ‘Know’, ‘he’, ‘will’, soon.
And we are all left wondering what the hell did I just see?
Well EW later released some interesting theories on the content of this very perplexing teaser. Which, might I add, seems to have a total lack of any easter eggs which Abrams is famous for in his teasers, that could lead us to some kind of possible hint of what this is.
So here they are, it is teasing the new J.J. Abrams show Believe, premiering on NBC next year, it is a tease for Doug Dourst and Abrams collaborative novel S., it is a tease for a show Abrams might be working on with the CW for DC Comic’s Phantom Stranger (although Phantom Stranger is reported to be in Guillermo Del Toro’s DC film Justice League Dark, so I don’t see that happening), and it is a tease for a spin-off series based on Lost.
Now the last one is interesting to me, because when I watched this I had some uncanny sense that the man who has no memories looked suspiciously like Sayid.
Also there was some very Lost-esque music playing in the background, and of course the who being on a beach thing.
Now, having said that I know there are many a Lost hater out there who thinks that the entire last season was garbage (yeah they were all in purgatory, get over it).
But if this is true it could answer some of the questions left hanging by the series when it was so quickly wrapped up because, let’s face it, Abrams had better things to do by that time than keep coming up with new ideas of how to keep an island full of plane crash survivors interesting.
So what do you guys think? Movie, TV series or for some reason a teaser for a book (I swear the internet would rage quit if that were the case).
One thing is for sure on this video, Abrams is still the master of suspense and surprise.
Check out the video.
Let us know in the comments below, and drop some of your own theories on what you think this might be teasing as well.
Twitter: @journalistjim