“In the rules of Lost…is anyone really dead?”

Dominic Monaghan just asked this quintessential Lost Q as I chatted him up on the Chuck set (he’s guest starring in February), and I know you many of you fans are dying to know:

Will any of the “dead” Losties be back for season five?

A recent promo sure seemed to show Jack’s creepy daddy Christian (John Terry) mingling among the Left Behinders. So…will we see him again? What about Claire (Emilie de Ravin)? And fan favorite Charlie (Dominic)?

I’ve got the word from Lost boss Damon Lindelof himself on the status of Christian, as well as exclusive insight from Dom and inside sources on Claire and Charlie’s whereabouts…

In case you missed the chat, there is much discussion about the figure visible at the 2:10 mark. Is that dead Dr. Christian Shephard in the ABC promo video? Check out the screengrab to see for yourself.

Could Christian really be in the Island camp, running from flaming arrows with the Left Behinders? I was so curious about this wild possibility that I emailed Damon Lindelof to find out, and he tells me exclusively, “No. It’s not Christian. John Terry is gonna be in the show this season, but he was definitely nowhere near Hawaii when we shot that stuff.”

(Note to Damon: That really does look like John Terry in the promo…You might want to make sure the guy isn’t haunting your set in his free time! Maybe he digs the craft services?)

So…you heard it. Christian (Jacob?) will be back for season five. But if Christian’s not in the camp, where the bloody Beelzebub is he? Still hanging out with his daughter Claire at the haunted cabin?

I just chatted up Dominic on the set of Chuck (he guest stars in the big 3-D episode) and asked if he could shed any light on Claire’s whereabouts. (He is her Wonderwall, after all!) Is she dead? Alive? Floating in some weird Island netherworld?

“I have been keeping up on her,” he says, “and I wonder if the world of Lost allows dead people to come back easier than it would be here. I think to a certain extent they wanted to find something for Claire to do outside of grieving over Charlie, and I think they thought, well if we take her away and essentially if we were to bring her back, there would be some drive to her story.”

Inside sources connected to the show tell me that Emilie de Ravin is not slated as a series regular for the upcoming fifth season, but we will see her again.

As for Charlie Pace himself, could he return, definitely dead though he is?

Dom tells me he recently had lunch with Damon and they talked about just that. He tells me, “As we were paying the bill, I said, ‘Let’s talk about Charlie.’ And we had a five-minute, very accelerated conversation where I said, this is how I would feel about coming back. These are the things that I really like about Charlie and ideas for Charlie. And Damon said, ‘OK, that’s great. I’ll go away and I’ll chew on that.’ Damon has to deal with not only the arc in the story for the entire show but also all the characters. He might not have space for me to come back, but if there is space, then we talked about how it would work.”

Who wouldn’t want more of rock-god ghost Charlie?

Besides killer aviator sunglasses, what would Dom like to see happen in Charlie’s return? He says of Charlie’s legendary death scene, “I’d always been very complimentary toward Damon’s writing in that moment, in the sense that he really gave Charlie a great preciousness and dealt with him with dignity, you know. I think other people have died in ways that maybe weren’t quite as dignified. Charlie was really taken care of and I really appreciated that…But really, if [the return were] not something as precious as Charlie’s arc in his death, then I might not do it. I wouldn’t come back for just a little hello in the background. It would have to be an interesting story, an interesting arc. Something that really moves the story.”

Fair enough, right? In case you haven’t heard, Lost returns to ABC for season five on Wed., Jan. 21.

Where do you think Claire and Christian are slumming these days? What should ghost Charlie do next? How awesome is Damon Lindelof? Testify in the comments!

And this just in: The latest Lost promo with some new shots:

Source: E! Online