TVSquad

Now we'll have even more opportunities to get lost over Lost. ABC announced today that the 2009 and 2010 seasons will be 17 hours each, not 16 as previously planned.

We can thank the WGA strike, which knocked three hours off the current season. The extra hour will be added to Part 2 of the season finale airing May 29.

When all is said and done, the series will wrap with the same number of episodes that producers and ABC negotiated last year. "We were supposed to do 16-16-16, but we ended up doing 14 this season, so we owe two," co-creator Damon Lindelof told The Hollywood Reporter.

But don't get your hopes up for anything beyond the remaining planned 34 episodes. "It's better to retire your number at the top of your game," he said, adding that to try and extend the run would be "a betrayal to everybody involved in the show."

The upcoming season finale will feature a more action-driven cliffhanger, rather than the flash-forward time-shift which, frankly, I've always found annoying. And maybe Lindelof agrees with me: "Hopefully, this year [the season finale] is a little bit more of a straightforward action-adventure narrative. But the ending of the episode will hopefully engage and intrigue people looking forward to the next season of the show."

But (insert whining noise here) will the annoying flash-forwards continue? Lindelof isn't saying, but hinted that we might see the storyline catch up to the flash-forwards on the mainland, especially -- and this is me talking -- given tonight's preview of next week's episode ("They're calling you the Oceanic Six...")

And what about the series finale in 2010? Hmmm, no clues there either, other than Lindelof saying he plans to copy The Sopranos' David Chase and disappear after the series wraps.

"All these people are going to be asking, 'What does it mean? What is it?' " he said. "The fact that there's no one really around to answer that question, it forces people to come up with what they think it means. We can guarantee our show will not end with a cut to black, it will be more clear than that. But whenever anything you love ends ... there's a certain disappointment."

I'll say. I sure hope they don't end the series with a big question mark like The Sopranos. Then they'll have to go into hiding for a completely different reason...if you catch my drift.