It makes complete sense that the writers of the show would view the creative process as iterative. If something works spectacularly, like Fenry did (er Michael Emerson), then why not boost up his prominence. It looked like originally Mr. Beardy was the leader of the Others, after all he's the one who negotiated Jack's surrender. I like a site that is growing for clues, news, blog feeds and forum at http://www.lostexposed.com/ .

Will,

Read up some on how Stephen King wrote The Gunslinger.

It took him nearly 30 years to craft the whole story, and the only thing he had to keep that story straight was a beginning and an end.

JK Rowling's always admitted to writing the Potter books in much the same way. All she ever had was an ending.

Sorry, I have to agree that the writers have a general idea about some of the story, but are making up a lot of it as they go along. This is further evidenced by this article, in which Michael Emerson says of his character's similarities to "The Wizard of Oz": "What does all that mean? Is it fun or is it just a clue?" Well, exactly. They throw in lots of stuff that may or may not ever have any meaning in regard to the overall mysteries of the show, just for the heck of it. And they clearly have no overarching idea of how it will all someday come together.

Will, how exactly does this "confirm" anything? The Others obviously have a leader, and they liked the way this guy played his role. It's just a minor tweak to make it turn out that this particular character winds up being the leader, I don't see how that changes anything in the overall picture. They've said over and over that there is an overarching story that they want to tell, with specific points A, B, Y, Z etc. but the in-between stuff is subject to change.

It amuses me just how much people completely ignore statements from the writers and producers themselves.

This confirms for me what I have always suspected about lost the writers: they have no idea what is going on and they are never going to explain most of the mysteries because they just don't know. If they can just decide that a character can go from a 3-eipsode-arc-nobody to the most inmportant person on the island, they clearly do not have a master plan that will explain everything someday.

He was awesome in The Practice too playing a sociopath serial killer that eventually got his head cut off. Come to think of it The Practice was a great show right up to when he got his head cut off and that started the whole "the lawyers are on trial for murder" thing which killed it.