Darlton spoilers at ABC Live Press Tour

2:08 pm: Damon Lindelof has bad news for the crowd: There will be no Lost spoilers handed out today.

2:26 pm: No spoilers my arse! Cuse hints that "the journey about how those six return to the island" will be a major thrust of Season 5. Adds Lindelof: "You have to break your characters up to create conflict... but you can't play that too long because the audience will get frustrated.... And we have that intensely in mind as we proceed."

2:37 pm: Cuse teases we'll see more of Daniel Dae Kim "in some form" this season despite Jin's apparent death.

ausiello at EW

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Damon Lindelof & Carlton Cuse, Lost

• Over on Lost (which, did I mention, got an Emmy nod today? wheee!), when asked about how they would manage the split casts next season (with some on the Island and some off), Damon said, "We have that [issue] intensely in mind." He said that they find that separating characters geographically and emotionally is a valuable storyline tool for them, but they're aware that they can only do that for so long before audiences get impatient.

Damon and Carlton also were asked about diversity issues, with an implied reference to Harold Perrineau's speculation about how race might have played a role Michael's death, and Damon said, "The show has to be an equal-opportunity murderer...We've killed a lot of white people. And I can almost guarantee we will be killing more white people this season."

• When pressed on their plan for season five of Lost, Damon said, "This is a tricky year for us. This is like The Two Towers [portion of The Lord of the Rings saga]...it links us to the final season...We've known a lot of what we want to do there [in the final season] for a long time, but the challenge is how do we make this season engaging and exciting. The worst thing we could ever do on the show is for the show to be boring...If we're going to be bad, we're going to be spectacularly bad.

kristin at eonline