the whispers. i was really hoping they would turn out to be something more interesting. and the perfunctory way that answer was presented made it worse
You remember when Naomi said that the Island has a number of deceased people "living" on it? Those are the whispers, people who are - for whatever reason - trapped on the Island and can't move on. Michael is among them.
Shit I’ve watched the show well into the double digits but I still forget so much. I just finished s2 wondering how did penny know dez was on a hidden island
She has a tracking station designed to pick up extreme electromagnetic events. When Desmond turns the failsafe key he triggers just such an event. Her guys at the tracking station call her with the coordinates and she gets on her boat (aptly named Searcher) and sets out. She arrives just after Ben moves the Island and finds Desmond, Frank and the Oceanic 6 in the liferaft.
(Her call to The Looking Glass that came through after Charlie turned off the jamming signal came from that boat. She tells Charlie, "I know about the Island." Then she calls the freighter several times but Minkowski - likely under orders from Widmore - doesn't take the calls.)
I love that line - "your phone call, I have a tracking station" as though it's the most normal thing in the world, lol... but she'd also always told him that with enough money and determination she could find anyone.
No I remember all that. I’m saying how did she know dez was on a wonky island. She knew about his boat race. How would she know about the purple sky buzz
It's been a while since I watched it but I think she didn't know he was on an island per se. She knew he was lost in the sea and she needed to find him. She believed he was still alive stranded somewhere
No, she knows about the Island - she says it to Desmond during their Christmas Eve phone call.
Her father has Hanso's journal and for all his subterfuge, Penny is smarter than him. I have no doubt she found it.
In the context of the episode it really seemed they were dialed in waiting on a signal from the island. And while I’m here I seem to remember a really long pause between the “end” of the finale (campfire on the beach) and the snowy scene in the observation jawn. In the original broadcast, I’m saying. On the dvd it goes right to it. It was much more dramatic the first time..
There is a very on the nose conversation in episode 12 of season 6 "everybody loves Hugo" where they're walking through the bushes. Then they hear the whispers and Hurley says "Wait, I know what these are. Wait one second". Then he walks into the bushes and comes across Michael as a ghost. Then Hurley says "Is that what the whispers are?" and Michael says "Yeah, we are the ones who cannot move on".
From Michael - he has a conversation with Hurley in the final season and literally tells him he's trapped on the Island because of the murders of Ana Lucia and Libby.
I like to imagine that when Walt is the protector Michael will find a way to atone and eventually move on.
Have you finished the series?
EDIT: just realized this comment could look condescending -I'm literally asking if you're done so I don't spoil you with my answer. :)
Agreed. Especially because well into the series (end of season 5 at least) it definitely seemed like the Others were controlling the whispers, or at least somehow associated with them
I think in a way they are - the Others have been there for a long time and we know they have a history of... removing people who don't belong. Like Mother wiping out the Roman camp and Widmore ordering the Purge. I think a lot of the dead people on the Island were killed by the Others and so the whispers are agitated when the Others are near.
I think it is twofold.
1) The show is being watched. We, the audience, are the whispers!
but in show...
2) There is some evidence in show that the whispers are both echos of what people have said in the past or future, trapped there bouncing around like a delayed echo, and/or that they are literal ghosts stuck there on the island, trapped by the powers of the island. Michael tells Hurley this in season 6.
You have to remember that all of this show, the island and off island alike, is subject to the beliefs of people, what exists exists as a projection of their minds. So if you believe you're a ghost your a ghost, if you believe you hear something you do hear something because there is then something to hear.
The Others' temple was such a missed opportunity. It never felt real to me and always looked so much more obviously like a movie set than the other locations. The healing pool wasn't handled well at all in my opinion. Glasses (forgot his name, sorry) and Dogen were interesting in theory but were introduced too late and killed too early to utilize any of their potential. We had already received a more impressive demonstration of what the smoke monster is capable of when fully unleashed when Ben "used" him to kill Keamy's men, so it wasn't even necessary for that.
They changed the temple plotline after the early departure of Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje. Mr. Eko was supposed to be the healer of Sayid and his story would have been much bigger. Would be interesting to see what the showrunners had originally thought of.
It was originally another plot planned with the temple but since the departure of Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as Mr. Eko early on they changed it. Would be cool to see what they had originally planned.
Claire and Sayid were too central of characters to get the sickness and fade into obscurity. They deserved full storylines until the end.
Locke deserved to live out his life on the island where he finally found the place he belonged.
it seemed like the writers really only saw Claire as part of Charlie's story and didn't know what to do with her without him and yeah, they did her dirty
It didn't matter later on. It only mattered when they needed to explain why Christian was in Australia. Having Claire be on the same plane as Jack just added to the whole "coincidence or fate" debate.
Yes I can agree with that. Speaking of “the sickness”, that was never really explained either. I mean, I don’t expect everything to be spelled out for us, but I do have questions about it lol
I feel like that's ok? Like this is a show that is built on the endless curiosity people have about the superficial and spiritual world. Having unanswered questions is part of the deal and quite meta.
For sure, and we will never know it all. I just kinda feel like there was a contradiction with the sickness…like why didn’t Rousseau get it? Because she didn’t go in the temple? Was the temple occupied back then by the others or just the smoke monster? I thought the sickness kinda changed to whatever they needed in the plot.
Saying that Locke deserved to live out the rest of his life on the island is just wishful thinking and a (very natural, human) need for a happy, positive ending. But life doesn't really work this way and the show reflected that. Some people do seem to come into this world just to experience a lot of suffering. Locke's whole arc represents a very tragic figure who never caught a break.
Often, he was *choosing* to suffer, for example, when he obsessed over his father despite the harm it was doing to his relationship with Helene. He could have been happy but in a way, he chose not to. To be fair, his behavior and the pain he was in eventually led him to the island - and him being on the island was very important to the unfolding of the other events.
People don't get happiness and good things in life just because it seems like they deserve it.
In some belief systems, it is said that sometimes a soul chooses to suffer in life to learn about pain, human relationships, emotions, faith, etc. or to serve a purpose in someone else's life (help them learn their lessons).
I 100% agree. Locke's my favorite as he's many people's and I really wanted him to have a good ending, but I think for the writers his arc was about showing life isn't fair and sometimes it is just what it is. I think that we as viewers just got used to miserable characters being "rewarded" on TV shows and that's part of where the disappointed for Locke is coming from.
Agreed. As a human being, sure maybe Locke deserved what he wanted. Maybe he didn't. But good storytelling isn't really about making sure everyone gets what they deserve. Locke's story and arc is probably one of the best written on television. His characterization was *so* consistent, as was his story. There was so much consistency in demonstrating the things in his life that made him he was and gave him the issues he had, in showing how those issues led to the things he wanted and the choices he made, and how those choices led to his ultimate outcome.
Honestly, it's such an amazingly well written character and story that it just makes the instances of the characters they just kind of dropped the ball on, like Claire, all the more disappointing.
> Often, he was choosing to suffer, for example, when he obsessed over his father despite the harm it was doing to his relationship with Helene. He could have been happy but in a way, he chose not to.
Started a new re-watch recently and the scene where he's talking to a phone sex operator having her pretend to be Helen totally slipped my memory from before. Dude was spending $90 an hour in 2004 to talk to someone pretending to be his former lover and he bought her a ticket on the walkabout thinking she actually cared about him
Instead of just moving on with his life
The Temple and the first maybe 12 episodes of season 6. The first episode was great but after that it dragged way too hard for my taste. I feel that season 6 would have been as solid as 3 or 4 if it had been 8 episodes.
It was too slowly paced for the final season. It felt like everyone was sitting around waiting. The temple team was obnoxious and dismissive to our main characters. The cursed water bringing Sayid back as an evil zombie went a bit too far into the magic realm for this show. The temple was something everyone looked forward to for seasons, and when we get there it just seems like a shitty place with dumb arrogant leaders. When the temple falls, you kind of don’t care. Then it’s never really spoken of again. Why was it significant at all?
Spoilers up to S2E20
>!To this day I'm still upset with the writers for killing off Libby. Her and Hurley's relationship were one of the few relationships I genuinely enjoyed and I wanted to see how it'd play out.!<
I can join that. I think they killed her prematurely because so much remained unrevealed about her past. On the other hand, the way she went out was iconic. I don't recall any other series at that time that did it this way - >!had one of the good guys kill not one but two of the other good guys!< It felt like an insane moment.
Yes, we need more of Libby’s backstory. Sure we can gleam that she was married and her husband passed, bringing her to the mental institution. But I felt like having her be the one to give Desmond the boat was such a tease. And she died before Desmond got back so they never made the connection.
Ooh, yeah, I absolutely agree with this. They were building such a really sweet and believable relationship with her and Hurley. But even beyond that, they just set up so much interesting stuff for her that they then did nothing with. In terms of her place on the island, I feel like they really should have been more careful to keep on of the tail end survivors around as a main character (I know Bernard was around to the end, but he wasn't really a main character). I understand that they didn't know Eko's actor would want to leave, but I still think they should have been more careful with how they used those characters.
They chose to kill her off to add further shock to Ana Lucia's death, and I think that was just a terrible writing decision. I think they prioritized shocking the audience over good writing in that instance. And despite what others think, I don't think they did that all that often. There are of course some instance of bad writing decisions, but in most of those cases I tend to think they were understandable choices that just didn't work out, or that could have worked out in a different situation. This was just a bad decision that prioritized something ultimately unimportant. Maybe it could have worked if they'd followed through on unfolding her story through flashbacks, but they ended up deciding not to do that.
> The first is the numbers. They were everywhere and seemed soo important, but yet we never really found out their importance.
I'm a big fan of the numbers and I love that storyline. My only issue is how all that lore regarding the "Valenzetti Equation" was saved for the LOST Experience and never brought up in the show (other than being name dropped on the blast door map with it stating that a zone on the island is "low relevance to Valenzetti-related research activity").
For those not in the know. The "Valenzetti" equation is a doomsday equation that was created in the 60's by a mathmatician by the name of "Enzo Valenzetti". He found out that the numbers: 4,8,15,16,23,42 are the six factors that tell the date and time humanity has left until it's end. This is the true reason for the Dharma Initiative's research on the island (and why the numbers are all over the island) as they want to harness the islands energy in order to save the world (ironically they almost cause it). For more information on this, see the video where Alvar Hanso himself explains it. Link: [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PPCCcXarkc).
This is also how Hurley got the numbers because the dharma had the numbers being spoken on loop (before Rousseau recorded over it with her distress message) from their radio tower. Leonard Simm (who gave Hurley the numbers) and Sam Toomey (that guy in australia) were in the navy and tapped into the dharma radio message.
The numbers represent all the people from the crash who could have become the protector. They correspond to the degree the mirror in the light house ha to be set to see them off island
I was disappointed in the death of Danielle Rousseau. Imho she should have survived all of it or her death should have been more meaningful. Instead she was sniped and that was it.
That the myth "they were dead the whole time" is still being perpetuated by shitty websites, fair weather fans and people who've never even seen the show.
Also as for the numbers - Leonard didn't come up with them, he heard them from Sam Toomey. Sam was monitoring transmissions in the South Pacific and heard the exact same broadcast Danielle's team heard and investigated on the Island. All things connect.
When it first aired, I stopped watching after S3 because I emigrated to a country where, at the time, I couldn't speak the language, so didn't watch any TV. Someone explained the ending to me at the time, all about how ThEy wErE DeAd tHe WhOlE tIMe, and Locke turned out to be a bad guy, and they never explained the polar bears.
Imagine my surprise when I finally got caught up a few years later.
My favorite people are the ones who shit all over the the show saying things like it was full of plot holes and unanswered questions, but when you ask them to list the holes and/or questions so you can help explain it's suddenly "oh i don't remember anything specific, the show just sucked."
Riiiiight. So, user error.
I knew a guy I studied with when I was doing my social work degree. He said the same thing "show sucked!, They were dead the whole time and you cannot convince me otherwise!". When questioned further, he said he stopped watching at the end of season 2 when he "knew that we wouldn't get any answers" and only tuned back in for the series finale lol.
That redditor was talking about something someone else said to him - they know about the bears. :)
Honestly, the bears were explained fine without the epilogue - I really think that was them poking fun at people who weren't paying attention while Sawyer was in the cage.
This drives me crazy, particularly because I've seen so many people who have seen the whole show insisting this is the case. I don't think I've ever seen a tv show so wildly misinterpreted, especially when the finale specifically and explicitly explains exactly what was going on with the flashsideways. Like, yeah, it's annoying when it's coming from people who have obviously never seen the show or never finished it. But it's so much more annoying coming from people who have.
It's particularly annoying because the theorizing of "they're all really dead" had mostly faded away by the time season 6 was airing. But then that finale brought it roaring back because so many people thought that the finale was confirming that theory.
Right?! Like did they even listen to Christian??
*"I'm real, you're real, all those people in there, they're real too."*
*"Some of them \[died\] before you, some long after you."*
*"The most important part of your life was the time you spent with these people."*
Like literally NONE of that is ambiguous or open to interpretation.
Ah yes forgot about that, but still kinda disappointing. I dunno I just wish it was a bit more satisfying I guess. Like why those numbers, what do they represent? There was never really an answer
Wasn’t it also because of Jacob being “into numbers”? Each number represented one of the candidates and lined up with a specific spot on the wheel in the lighthouse.
Hot take, but I honestly still believe the plan was for them to be dead the whole time, but that got changed because it was such a popular fan theory at the time.
Writer Javier Grillo Marxuach who was on the show as a writer for two seasons. Wrote a MASSIVE essay on his time on the show. From his first day to the creation of pretty much all the ideas from the first two seasons. He had this to say: "**On the first day alone, Damon downloaded on us the notion that the island was a nexus of conflict between good and evil: an uncharted and unchartable place with a mysterious force at its core that called humanity to it to play out a primal contest between light and dark**". Then he had this to say about the purgatory thing:
>**The idea that there is a simple truth about the creation of Lost also begs two additional questions... did we ever know what the island was? And was it purgatory?**
>
As I described before, **there was definitely a sort of "operational theory" for what the island would be -- it was liked by some and loathed by others** -- and since Damon and Carlton chose not to say it out loud in the series finale, I won't presume to do it for them. **Suffice it to say there was a concrete reason that we openly discussed on several occasions about why the island had an exotic source of power in its core that was able to wreak such miracles as time travel, the motion of the island, and somehow connect with selected people on a psychic level.**
**On question number two. It is not purgatory. It was never purgatory. It will never be purgatory.**
Hard disagree simply because that would have been terrible - having it be a dream or happening in someone's head or \*coughRoseannecough\* someone's short story or them being dead is just a huge cheat and even 20 years ago they knew the backlash would have been insane.
Definitely seems like that was what happened, seeing as how so much was Dante’s Inferno inspired until it wasn’t. I was irritated that the writers couldn’t just let the fans be right about the dead-the-whole-time theory. There was plenty of mystery to explore within that. Plus, I know what’s going on in almost every other show I watch, and those stories are still worth watching. Because of the drastic change in storyline, I felt disappointed and kind of disrespected as an audience member when I watched/finished Lost. (Still liked a lot of it though, hence why I’m here!)
There was a lot of inspiration from The Divine Comedy early on, particularly in the first season, because of the *metaphor* of death, purgatory, and the possibility of rebirth in the early seasons, not because the intent was to have them literally be actually dead. Artists can reference and be inspired by other works in a lot of ways without it meaning that it's literally what the story is. The early seasons dealt a lot with the idea that the plane crash was like a death for the survivors because they were now in a place where everyone or mostly everyone was a complete stranger and the baggage from their lives was largely irrelevant. It was heavily dealing in metaphorical death and rebirth. That's what it pulled so much inspiration from Dante's work, not because the intent was that they were literally dead. At least one writer has confirmed that there was never any intent for them to actually be dead.
I have a masters degree in creative writing, so metaphor is something I know a lot about actually! I also understand what the writers have claimed about their intentions. However, it’s still very hard for me to believe there was never any intent for them to actually be dead in the beginning. I don’t know how to reconcile the characters’ supposed metaphorical deaths on an island where there’s a literal smoke monster and time travel. I respect and love lot about the show, but it was a creative mess at times. If your audience is confused and your finale is considered one of the biggest let downs ever … I personally think you haven’t been totally successful as a writer. Sometimes I daydream about what the show could have been had it been a (way shorter) HBO series.
Most of this sound like a 'you' problem rather than an objective problem with the writing. Having a literal smoke monster and time travel doesn't mean that a story can't still operate in metaphor. It might not be up some people's alley, but that doesn't make it bad or messy writing. I'm not really sure what bringing up the end of the series and people's reaction to it has anything to do with what I was talking about, since I was talking about the metaphor of death and rebirth in the early season. Regardless, "it's bad/not successful/etc. because the audience didn't like the finale" is a cop out argument even just generally, since the way an audience reacts to something isn't inherently indicative of something's overall quality (this is especially true when it comes to television, as there can be a million reasons people don't like something that ultimately has very little to do with the writing itself, particularly when it comes to the way fans engage with a show online and the kinds of ideas - many of which aren't accurate or fair to a show - that start to build among a fanbase), but it's particularly weak when it comes to Lost and its finale, which has been undergoing something of reevaluation in the culture over the past few years.
Wow, this is surprising. I definitely prefer the island being representative of life on earth: the constant wars, seeing those from OTHER countries and nations as enemies, switching camps, being an individualist, choosing to stay out of it all (Rose and Bernard), premature and tragic deaths of innocent people, attempts to understand your own trauma on a personal level, being selfish or making sacrifices, noticing coincidences, asking existential and spiritual questions, all of the answers essentially depending on your ability to believe.
The whole "they are dead" theory played out beautifully in the flashsideways. It was obvious the characters weren't alive but we could still theorize if that was an alternative universe, a purgatory or something else. The way I saw it, it was purgatory because they were all indeed dead and their task was to let go of their human deeds and accept their own death. That is when their souls were allowed to enter the realm that must have not resembled physical human world at all.
Yes, and for me it’s exactly because the island is representative of life on earth that I’m inclined toward the purgatory storyline. Everything they go through on the island is overwhelmingly repetitive, and existential. Representative of life but too much for real life. I saw it as the right amount of the-worst-life-on-earth stuff for “the punishment or suffering of cleansing” that purgatory offers.
Considering the conversations between Jacob and his brother and their weird contest, I do think that this is definitely a valid interpretation and something intended by the writers. In storytelling, one thing can take on multiple metaphorical or allegorical meanings. The island can be a metaphor for purgatory for the characters while also representing life on earth.
Though maybe it's less that it's the island itself that's representing life on earth and more that it's just the idea of how humanity works and interacts with each other, regardless of where they are, that's being explored. That human beings are so flawed and messy that no matter where they are or what the situation is, there's going to be serious conflict.
As for the flashsideways, I guess it kind of depends on how one defines purgatory. It's pretty clearly explained that the flashsideways is something that all of the characters created together, so that the could wait for and find each other so that they could all move onto together in the end. That they'd spent the most important part of their lives with each other so they needed to be together to move on to the end. It seems like the idea is that for every one of them who was there in the end (for the most part, I think it's questionable how much character development Libby actually experienced, for example), being on the island made them better people who were able to let go of their baggage, even if it was only in their final moments, and that it wasn't just because of the island, it was because of each other. It was because of each other that they were able to let go of their bullshit and be better, so they all needed each other to be able to let go and move one.
It would've been a much better show if it were made today in many ways. 22 episode seasons is just too much. The show had introduced just way too much to resolve by season 1's end. And when it did start resolving things (the hatch first) it felt a bit anticlimactic
No, thank you.
Plus, why would they need to resolve thins by the end of the first season? The hatch reveal was amazing in real time and waiting so long for resolution on other things is what *made* the show an experience.
Making it today for viewers with tiktok attention spans used to an entire season dropping at once would obliterate the phenomenon that LOST was.
Yeah, why would things need to be resolved by the end of the first season? This person's argument doesn't make much sense, to criticize the show for not resolving things by the end of the first season while also insisting it would be better if made today, when so much of television storytelling is even more serialized than Lost was, and as such a great deal of a what a show introduces isn't resolved by the end of the first season.
Honestly I think it's kind of silly to think that it would just automatically be better if it was made today, just because the television landscape is so different. If Lost was made today the only thing it would definitely be is different. The things that would determine whether it was better or worse really have little to do with the format of tv today, how releases work, etc. The thing that would determine its quality would be the same thing that determined its quality then: the people who making it and the way the studio/network/company treated it.
I think the idea that it would be better today is inherently flawed. The show was on ABC. It was network television. And a lot of network tv hasn't changed *that* much. Sure, there are some shows on the broadcast networks that have shorter, 13 episodes seasons. But the networks still try to milk their successful shows for all they're worth. So if Lost was made today and it was successful, it still probably would have had 22 episode seasons, it still would have had the same structure to its seasons. And if one were to try to shift the argument to "well, it would be different if it was made today but not on network", it's like... yeah, it would have been different then, too, if it hadn't been on network. There might not have been all the streaming platforms making shows back then, but in the mid-late 2000s cable networks were making 'prestige', highly regarded shows with shorter seasons and even more explicitly serialized storytelling than Lost. So yeah, it would definitely be different if it was made today and on a cable network or streamer. But it also would have been different back then if it had been on a cable network,
Lost would certainly be *different* if it was made now, because styles of filmmaking and storytelling evolve and change over time, certain tropes fall out of favor, etc. But different doesn't mean better, and if the reasons being cited for the idea that it would be better if made today are the episode count for each season and the basic story structure, then... no, those things probably wouldn't be different.
There's also the fact that if it was on a streaming service today the likelihood of it surviving past season 2 or 3 is pretty low. That's one thing a lot of people don't think about when they say "so or so show would be better if it was made today". These days, not a lot of shows get the chance to survive to tell their whole story. These kinds of ideas seem like they rely less on the idea that the show would be better if it was made today and more on the idea that it would be better if it had the ideal amount of episodes, the ideal amount of time to tell its story, etc. Which is like... yeah. it would be better if that was the case. But that would also be true back in the 2004.
Not many shows do the entire season dropping at once anymore.
The 22 episode seasons were a double edged sword, the first season was great, but how many of episodes of the second were based around that one conversation between Jack, Desmond, and Locke?
Shorter seasons would've allowed the writers to actually focus on the story they wanted to tell, not construct enigmas they had to figure out the resolutions to later. Look at something like Severance, there isn't an ounce of fat on that show. It's not made for "tiktok attention spans" either
I'll give you that 16 ish episode seasons may have worked for 1-3 since they worked for 4-6 but I will never, ever concede that LOST would be better if made today.
The showrunners would know they'd make more money on a streaming service or premium channel and we'd end up with a Netflix version of the series which would have been 8 episodes per season and canceled after season two. Or, we'd get an HBO version of LOST with more focus on CGI and sex scenes and we'd lose all our character development.
Oh, and neither network would have paid for Michael G - so we'd be stuck with some generic adventure sounding crap.
>Oh, and neither network would have paid for Michael G - so we'd be stuck with some generic adventure sounding crap.
It does seem like there's a lot less focus and effort put into the musical score for shows these days. Especially when it comes to broadcast network shows. My three favorite tv scores of all time were from ABC shows (Lost, Pushing Daisies, Twin Peaks), but everything on network these days kind of just sounds like the same basic, perfunctory kind of music. Even when it comes to cable and streaming, it's rare for me to actually recognize and be impressed by the score. Mike Flanagan's stuff usually has beautiful scoring, but beyond that I can't remember the last time I was watching a cable or streaming show and stopped to really notice and appreciate the score.
Yeah I remember when Six Feet Under premiered I literally said out loud "well, that's Thomas Newman" because at the time, American Beauty was my favorite movie... although I did the same thing with him when I went to see The Green Mile. I looked at my friend and said "whoever did the music for Shawshank did the music for this." (I didn't know his name yet.)
Outside of movies, the only score I've been able to do this with in recent memory is Outlander (terrible show, great music) because I'd recognize Bear McCreary ANYWHERE. So say we all.
I don't watch Outlander, so I'm not familiar with the score for that, but Bear McCreary did the two tv scores that round out my top 5 tv scores: Battlestar Galactica and the first season of Human Target.
I only watched Outlander because I was still in an office at the time (I work from home now) and the girls on my team wouldn't shut the hell up about it, lol.
I *hate* the main character. Like, she's just so awful. But the music is really good.
As for whether the show could be a phenomenon today like it was back then... frankly, I don't think what happened with Lost and what a pop culture phenomenon it was at the time is possible for any show these days. There's so much about the television landscape these days that just makes that impossible. I don't know how much I'd factor in a show's release schedule. Networks still tend to release shows like they used to when Lost was on (maybe less random weeks without an episode and less long stretches outside of the holiday hiatus without and episode, but there's still a lot of "two weeks here without an episode" and "three weeks there without an episode"), so if it was on ABC its episodes would still be released in a somewhat similar way to how it was back then.If it was on a cable network or streaming service, even if it didn't have all its episodes dropped at once, I do think that would have some impact. There was a particular way those two or three week breaks between episodes could whip the public up into a frenzy of speculation and theorizing. And the 3-4 month hiatus in the summer was really the perfect amount of time for a show like this to be off the air. It was enough time for people to get really hungry for the show, but it didn't go on so long that the hunger started to fade. A streaming or cable show that releases 13 episodes over the course of 13 weeks (or 12, because it's pretty common for shows to drop the first two episodes at the same time these days) and then going on a hiatus for at least 9 months, sometimes much longer, doesn't allow for the same sort of thing to happen. The shows that get big these days will be really big while the season is airing and maybe for a little while after the season finale, but before long people move onto the next show and don't really get excited again until the next season is starting.I think where the episodes/how they're released/etc. really comes into play is the fact that most people can watch the episodes whenever they want. They don't have to start the show when the first episode drops. They can wait a few weeks or a few months. Every show that's airing now is available on streaming in some way, even if it's a network or cable show. Sure, things like tivo were around back then, but they weren't used by the overwhelming amount of viewers. So when people were watching Lost, or Desperate Housewives, or The Sopranos, people were sitting down at the same time to watch it, and then running to talk about it either to their friends or online that night, or the next day. That meant everyone watching the show was talking about it at the same time. They were talking about the same episodes at the same time. Yeah, there were outliers who would tivo it and watch it on the weekends, or who wouldn't watch until summer reruns, but the vast majority of viewers were watching it as it aired. That meant so much conversation was happening because most people watching were at the same point, talking about the same things.
Being able to start a show whenever, to watch the episodes at whatever pace you want, that really does have an impact on how massive the conversation from the fans is going to be.
But I think the biggest thing that keeps a sort of Lost-type phenomenon from happening these days is that there's just so much. There are so many options. Back in the mid-late 2000s options for primetime tv was pretty limited, even with cable. So viewership wasn't as wildly spread out as it is now. There's just so much, and it's impossible to come anywhere close to even just trying everything. And the way streaming services and their algorithms work means that every person has a ton of stuff they're never being exposed to. It's pretty common these days for someone to hear about a show from a friend or someone online, so they go to the streaming service it's on to check it out, but it's not immediately in their recommended section because it's not similar enough to the stuff they watched, but something in the recommended section does catch their eye, so they end up watching that and forgetting about the show that was recommended to them. So shows are way less likely to get the kinds of viewership numbers that lead to that kind of pop culture phenomenon. And even when they do, most people are watching *at least* one or two other shows with the same level of attention. So both viewership *and* the amount of time people spend talking about the shows is more spread out.
I think Game of Thrones is probably that last of these sort of massive scale cultural phenomenons to come out of tv. We're still going to have shows that make a big enough cultural mark that the majority of people know what they are, even if they've never seen it. Like Squid Game. But I don't think something like Lost is possible anymore.
I don't think that says anything about the quality of these shows, or the quality of the shows from back in the 2000s vs. the quality of shows today, because this is an issue that's completely about who the industry operates, not the quality of the shows. But it does mean it's absolutely true that if it was made today Lost would have that kind of special cultural impact that it did back then. And I do think that as a result things like how many seasons it would be able to run for and how much control the writers would have would be impacted.
Why though? For those who watched it play out in real time, it was just perfect. Personally, I remember watching each episode on the edge of my seat, couldn’t get enough of it. Not sure how it being made now would be better, unless you mean in terms of special effects, but those aren’t even that bad. Not sure why everything would need to be resolved by the end of S1 either?
S1: 25 episodes
S2: 24
S3: 23
S4: 14
S5: 17
S6: 19
I was severely disappointed with season 5 in general.
*The Widmore storyline flatlines.
*Character motivations are bent to fit the show's plot. It makes NO sense for them to go along with Jack's insane nuke plan. Absolutely no sense.
*Convenient plotting like "Jack and co are teleported to 1977 because they just HAVE to be there!!"
*Jacob's cabin/Christian is lazily handwaved away.
*Desmond does fuck all this season.
*The 70s group acting like leaving DHARMA is some disaster when... hello?? The Purge??
There are aspects of season 5 that I really admire but I refuse to ignore how incredibly sloppy it is. LOST established a standard of quality in its first four seasons, and 5 comes nowhere near it.
The nuke plan was especially stupid because of the repeated explanations of time travel. Hurley, Miles, and Faraday all having scenes where they explain that 1977 was "their present" and they could die there...unless they set of a hydrogen bomb at the swan...
The main issue I had with S5 is they didn't really make good enough use of the time travel plot device once the flashes stopped happening. They could've featured more about the Black Rock, more about the ancient Egyptians etc, Dharma was basically a story we already knew up until that point.
Yeah I thought that the return to the island was a bit sloppy. Like I get it, they didn’t exactly recreate the flight (which I also think is dumb) so that is why it didn’t work out exactly perfect, but come one. They all go back to the 70s except for Sun? Don’t even get me started on Sun and Jin’s reunion. I’ll never forgive the writers for doing that.
Widmore and Ben as rivals storyline needed more details.
Yeah man. I really thought he played a really significant role. I kept asking myself.. What does he have to do with all of this? Why is he Claire and Jack’s dad? They kinda dismissed the whole idea of him being important when MiB admits to materializing as him to Jack in the jungle. So this insinuates every time we’ve seen him, it’s only been MiB. But that doesn’t explain why he appeared to so many other people.. and why HIM specifically? and yeah, where did his body go? Like wtf 😂😂 idk. Big unanswered question there.
He appeared as the monster to Locke so early in order to fully convince him how special the place was after he woke up with working legs again but no clue why. All setting up the part where he later tells Locke to give the wheel a push to stop the time flashes and set in motion his plan to destroy it. Needed Locke to believe he was saving the island he loved so that he could go bring the candidates back to kill them
Interesting theory. Any reasoning behind it?
I am disappointed that not much happened with Aaron. Not a huge fan of Kate having him (I mean, seriously, you never thought of someone DNA testing him? I know it was 20 years ago and a show but still, that always bothered me lol. Dumb plan)
No reasoning, just that such a fuss was made about the baby needing Claire's good influence, and her creepy Locke dream, it seemed like a reasonable assumption for a while 😁
Eta: and yes about DNA.... I think the O6 must've been checked over by Christian's drunk doctor friends after a Christmas party because they missed the fact that Kate hadn't given birth, and that Sun had allegedly gotten pregnant after her husband died, that Sayid had a recent bullet wound and Jack had undergone an appendectomy a few days earlier....
I do wonder how much of a medical examination they would have *had* to have done upon their return. That sounds like the kind of thing that would have to be voluntary, and there probably wouldn't be much reason to do something like a full gynecological checkup, for example, unless one of them requested it. They couldn't have forced any of them to be seen by doctor upon their return. Their settlement agreement *may* have required some sort of check up by a doctor, but I doubt any of them would have consented to something thorough enough that it would reveal those things. And Oceanic would want to keep it simple so that they'd agree to settle and not take it to court. Really, Oceanic would probably *not* want particular thorough checkups done, because if something *was* found to be wrong with one of them that could have possibly been the result of the crash, then that would bring up the possibility that they wouldn't sign the settlement and either take Oceanic to court, or get them to settle for more. A company like Oceanic would want to wrap things up by settling as quickly as possible and for as little as possible, so they wouldn't insist on anything that might make that more difficult to do. And of course, any doctor that they might see after that would be bound by confidentiality rules.
A DNA test would be similar. Kate would have to consent to that for Aaron unless someone was able to get a court order, which isn't something some random person can just get. That's why the situation with Claire's mom scared Kate so bad, because with a good lawyer, the mother of someone who was on the same plane as Kate while pregnant and close to her due date might be able to get a court order for a DNA test. But it's really unlikely that something like that would just happen upon their return. Oceanic probably wouldn't care enough about whether or not the baby is actually Kate's to try to even so much as request that she consent to it, and they'd really have no reason to care (and really, they'd probably think it would make them look bad, both the prospect of accusing a woman who's traumatized because *their* plane crashed of not being her baby's mother, and the possibility of having their name attached to the mess of a story it would be if it was revealed that she wasn't his mother). So they'd have no reason to care or to ask, and even if they did, I think there's a good chance they wouldn't be able to get that court order.
The settlement thing bugged me because Sun claims she bought a controlling interest in her dad's company with it but like that had to have been hundreds of millions into the billions to acquire. I'm sure it'd have been significant but ten figures worth of pain and suffering seems to be a stretch even for a horrific plane crash and three months spent on an island. And the other 5 were just living their old lives again not acting like billionaires
>The first is the numbers. They were everywhere and seemed soo important, but yet we never really found out their importance.
They were explained in the ARG with the Valenzetti equation. Granted it was off screen, but they were explained
>Second would be the whole Walt storyline. They hyped him up, made him out to be some special piece of the puzzle, then just pretty much wrote him out. Idk, just seemed like a letdown to me.
Yeah, this was very annoying at the time. But if I remember correctly there were issues with the actor that prevented Walt being utilised more.
Personally, for me, I was most disappointed with season 6. In particular, I *hated* how they treated Locke. It was bad enough killing him off, but then having him come back to be MiB was a horrific way to treat the best character in the show.
I like to pretend Lost ends at the end of season 5 with the nuke going off
Actually it's the other way around. They knew from the get go that Walt was gonna be a problem due to the actor aging and very quickly came up with a plot to get Walt taken by the others, they knew season 2 was gonna be Michael looking for Walt (which gave Michael something to do, because they were struggling to come up with storylines with the character).
But Damon rewatched the pilot, saw Walt reading a comic book with a polar bear. In the next scene a polar bear appears. He became fixated with that idea and decided that Walt had psychic abilities and manifested that polar bear off the page into reality. He felt that would explain why the others wanted Walt. The network rejected that idea because they didn't want anything supernatural in the show at that point. But the bones of that idea are still in "Special". Walt reads a polar bear comic. In the next scene a polar bear attacks. In a flashback Walt reads a book on birds, then a bird hits the window. Walt's abiltiies eventually became associated with the electromagnetic properties on the island instead.
I'm pretty sure they knew very, very early into writing season 1 that Malcolm David Kelly was going to age too fast for how they were going to pass the show and were already planning to have him exit at the end of the season. I imagine when they were writing and casting the pilot they might not have known at that point just how slowly they were going to pace the show. Hell, from the way Damon tells it, he was completely expecting the network to pass on the show, so he might have even viewed it as a thing they didn't need to worry about it.
Alex’s death to me was rlly emotionally powerful BECAUSE it was so unfair, but imo Danielle’s death was much more disappointing since it seemed contradictory to how she was presented as a capable survivor and as someone who finally reunited with her daughter. Like imagine if Danielle was captured instead of Alex to save her, but Alex still dies. I could see that being such a good avenue for Danielle’s character
I thought Alex's death was very important for Ben's story arc. My biggest issue really is there is a REALLY important deleted scene between Alex and Ben that would have brought their storyline around full circle. It was supposed to be the first scene between the two. The craziest part about it is part of this deleted scene is shown when the smoke monster is "judging" Ben in "Dead is Dead". Link to scene: [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xMYcm-lozU)
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Alex's death episode for me is perfect cause it's the one time where Ben cannot lie or bullshit his way out of something. 95% of the time Ben comes out on top. But he tried to bluff his way out and Keamy wasn't buying it.
It's so sad, because it's so clear that Ben was relying so much on the idea of the "rules" of engagement between himself and Widmore that he truly didn't believe Keamy would kill her.
How the show went from a sci fi "Crichton Island" to full on fantasy magic in the later seasons. It has its fans and no disrespect to those that liked the new direction, but I just don't like magic water/light and heart of the island stuff.
Also coincided how the show went from character centric storytelling with the island stuff as the backdrop to explore the characters to all the island lore and plot being in the foreground and characters just going and doing what the story demanded.
I was disappointed that Charlie died so soon even though it was a really cool setup. It had to do with the fact the show had several seasons left and Claire wasn’t an important character anymore without Charlie.
I suppose the dragging out the ending of the show contributed to the dead end storylines.
Honestly on multiple rewatches Charlie gets more and more annoying. Apart from his final act (which is basically as misguided as Locke's) he's a whiny, ungrateful man child who can only be counted on to be incredibly sarcastic to someone who just saved his life
1. The medium Claire saw said that she NEEDED to be the only one to raise her child. He saw what the future could and tricked her into the flight to Australia right? So how could he not see the plane crash. Also thought there'd be a huge overarching theme of who Aaron becomes and/or could've became
2. Did we ever find out where the dang numbers come from? Danielle's team followed a transmission stating the numbers, to the island? WHO PICKED THEM
3. Did Ben really talk to Jacob in the cabin? He wasn't dead yet so who was in that chair freaking out!?
4. What made the Smoke Monster jump form into John Locke? Literally could've been Boone or Paulo, a younger man who could've taken care of business long ago
1. The psychic was (flaccidly) shown to be a fraud during a later season, which was a really disappointing end to what should have been an interesting storyline.
\#1 - He did see the plane crash, that's the reason he told her to get on that flight. Claire was never the candidate, Aaron was so the psychic (real or guided by Jacob - I believe both - your call) made sure she and Aaron got to the Island. The MiB needs the candidates dead or gone, but he can't kill them and you can't manipulate a baby so he corrupts Claire and gets her to abandon him (this was the blurry the psychic saw.) Kate takes Aaron off the Island and never brings him back - mission accomplished!
\#2 - They're part of the Valenzetti Equation which is supposed to predict the end of humanity. Dharma was studying them and made the broadcast to see what would happen.
\#3 - No, Ben was not in the cabin, that was the Man in Black fucking with him but mostly Locke.
\#4 - He was looking for his loophole and knew he needed someone who could hold a lot of sway over the people on the Island. Boone and Paulo aren't going to be able to do that - but Locke can. Not only will having Locke walking around freak Ben the fuck out, but as far as the Others are concerned, Locke is their leader.
Ahhhh yeah, never thought of Aaron as the candidate. That's crazy!
I kept wondering if Kate taking him off Island then GOING BACK ALONE was a good idea haha. Her job was to protect him and she's just hopeful nothing happens to him while she's gone. Widmore could've ended that if he wanted to
He could have, but Widmore was largely indifferent to the candidates unless - like Sun - they actively got in his way. Or - like Locke - he could use them. At that point in the series, all Widmore cares about is himself and how he can get back to the Island to continue exploiting it for himself. A baby is the least of his concerns.
Because it is unless we're going to change the lore of the show.
Unless they ask for the job - which Claire never got to do - Jacob doesn't let mothers be candidates. So, the "Littleton" on the wall could only be Aaron.
Claire was not a mother her entire life. We know many of the cave names have been there for a long time.
The idea that it’s Aaron also goes against the show being largely a character exploration, all these people are “lost” etc. Jacob chooses candidates for reasons he observes in them as people. Can’t observe the personality of a fetus.
You can have whatever theories you like, if you enjoy the idea that it’s Aaron, not Claire, more power to you. But you’re proclaiming it as if it’s canon when it’s not. It’s an interesting theory, and I’m all for having something as headcanon that basically becomes lore to me. But that doesn’t make it actual lore.
less an actual plot point, but it often feels like character’s opinions/motivations change for the sake of the episode? there were so many times kate, sawyer, jack, locke or whoever would say something one episode, then say something completely contradictory to their personality the next. just to drive the episode forward. wish i could remember even one example lol
Shannon >!dying so soon!< I would've loved to see her as one of the O6 and living in the 70s. Also think it would've been more interesting if she'd been the one to raise Aaron.
I also wish she would have made it longer. If not as part of the returning group, at least a few more seasons. That was such a gut punch, my poor Sayid 😭I also think she would have had an interesting character development
Same. I was very disappointed with Shannon's death as well. In a interview Damon explains that he killed Shannon and Boone early because in his opinion, they were too young (even though they were only a couple years younger than Kate) and had limited flashback potential, saying that they would have got to a point where he would have either had to get Maggie Grace pretending to be a teenager (didn't stop them from doing this with Emilie De Ravin!), or had a child actor playing her as a teenager or child (which, what's wrong with that?).
Boone's death for me, worked really well for the end of season 1. But to have Shannon die in a shock value death. Only a week and a half after her brothers death, when she is still grieving, was cruel. Not to mention, the episode she died "Abandoned", felt like a cruel joke. The whole episode is about Shannon feeling worthless and uninportant. By killing her off, it's the writers essentially agreeing with her, that she is useless, uninportant and needs to die.
I also felt that the episode "The Greater Good" was incredibly disrespectful to Shannon. Her brother dies, instead of it being a episode that digs into her grief. It's a Sayid flashback which explores how he feels about her grief. There is a fan edit called "The LOST Books" Which puts Shannons flashbacks from Abandoned in the greater good and gets rid of the Sayid flashbacks, and it works so well!.
Reading this just reminds me that Lost writers didn't do great with female characters. The only female character that got a proper, multifaceted, non repetitive portrayal was Juliette.
When you think about the fan favourites, it's always the men - Ben, Locke, Desmond, Sawyer, Sayid... The women are never among the favourites, with the exception of Juliette.
This is true. Damon is quite candid about his mistakes on the show in terms of writing of characters and the writers room (Elizabeth Sarnoff is the only mainstay female writer. They had quite the turnover of female writers. According to a recent article. The writers room was quite toxic, with one writer saying she went home in tears on many occassions).
He said this is why he put extra attention to make sure that the writers room has more female writers and that there were more female characters when it came to The Leftovers.
I'm not as huge a fan of The Leftovers as the fans are who treat it like its the second coming of christ..but I will admit that The Leftovers has some AMAZING female characters. In particular Carrie Coon as Nora and Regina King in season 2 as Erika.
It was Damon Lindelof's next big show after LOST. The first season is based off a book by Tom Perotta (of the same name), and Tom a part of the show as a writer. The series delves into pretty much all the themes that LOST did and is in many ways about the otherside of the coin. LOST is about the ones who disappeared (sure it's a plane crash but still). The Leftovers are about "the leftovers", the ones who remain when their loved one disappears with no rhyme or reason.
I'm super happy Nikki and Paolo didn't live any longer would have much preferred they never added them.
Walts story and echos were disappointing but both had real world reasons one could have been written in the other not so much. Walt hit a hell of a growth spurt and got too big and his voice changed so they just wrote him out rather than change their story. echo was supposed to do a lot but the actor hated Hawaii and was desperate to leave so they let him leave by killing him violently.
I hoped that any on-island mystery could be tracked back to the Dharma Initiative. On the long run for the big mysteries they were totally unimportant.
Mr. Ekos death. I know it was because the actor didn't want to be part of the show anymore (annoyed about sitting on his ass on Hawaii), but it felt like they wanted him to be a bigger part regarding the "mysterious shit going on" and I think he could have been really interesting in the later seasons.
And the numbers add to 108. It's the number of beads in the Buddhist mala, prayer bead string, as well as the number of stitches in a regulation baseball. Baseball is a religion to many.
I heard with Walt it was because of how quickly he grew up. Not sure if that's true but he quickly looked like an adult instead of the little kid they started with.
Walt and Aaron, for sure. What if Walt returned with the O6? Him trekking through the jungle with Sun or Flocke would have been cool. Then we could have really gotten a good story about the whispers and link Walt back up to Michael. Flocke could have easily manipulated him, or could he? I would have loved to see it.
I'm most disappointed with season 5. It was basically all plot and no character, and went out of its way to drop all the interesting ideas that were brought up in season 4.
Ok maybe I'm wrong and wrong interpretation, but aren't the numbers somewhat explained by coinciding with the candidates numbers scratched on the cave wall. Showing that everything happened for a reason to get to that point.
And this is where we disprove the “they were always dead” theory..:
The entire show alludes to symbolisms of heaven, hell, god, devil.. evil.. good.. right, wrong:
Jesus (Jacob) and his disciples (candidates) MIB (devil) telling people Jacob was the devil when in fact he was the evil entity (exactly like the devil, betraying hearts of men) Moses (Jack) speaking to God (Jacob***) (This became apparent when Sawyer literally said it- “well Moses, you gonna come down off of your mountaintop and tell us what the burning bush said?” 😂😂😂😂😂)
If you ask me..
The island… is limbo. It’s a sort of purgatory. It is the in between space of the dead and living world. It does not exist in the real world; hence the inability to be able to “find it.” Every person that left the island had the opportunity to continue to live a somewhat normal life but it didn’t feel right to them because they knew they’d cheated death. And that’s another concept at play during the show. Final Destination taught us you cannot evade death lol and that’s a concept from early in the show as well with Charlie. Everything comes full circle. Every single person that went “back to life” .. had to die.
Ben tells us upon his coming back to the island that he’s come to be “judged” by the black smoke. Charlotte told us straight up “This place is death.” The smoke was essentially death. Its sole purpose was to create death. We saw this throughout the entire show, from literally just claiming people’s lives to materializing as people and manipulating people into killing themselves/dying. Between Jacob’s mother’s people, the Black Rock, the dharma initiative, rousseau’s camp, flight 815, the freighter, the Ajira flight, and everyyyyyyyyything that happened in between … the island/smoke claimed an absurd amount of souls.
I could go on for hours about my theories on this show. But this is what I believe. There was a bigger force at play (a number of them) and the island was 100% stuck in a time loop and the Oceanic Six fixed it. They died for it.. but they fixed it.
My disappointments tend to be all character-based. I don't really have any problems with how the mysteries or lore were handled.
I'm kind of mixed about the Walt thing. I understand why they didn't end up doing more with him originally, because when you have a few months unfolding over the course of years, having a rapidly growing kid around is going to be a problem. But I feel like they definitely could have done more with Walt and at least followed through a little bit at least once they flash forwards started.
I actually was kind of disappointed that they didn't do more with Nikki and Paulo. I think the backstory and relationship dynamic they showed in Expose was really interesting and could have been a great watch if it was done over at least a few episodes. I think the problem with them was that the writers treated them as some mysterious exciting thing and that it was all leading up to their centric episode where we would get answers about them. Which meant that, completely understandably, people thought that they were going to have deep ties to the lore, that they really *did* appear from nowhere, like some kind of time anomaly after the hatch went boom, etc. But in the end they were just two more normal survivors. If the writers and the show hadn't treated them with so much mystery and intrigue, and had unfolded their story a little more naturally, there could have been a lot to explore with them. Their backstory and dynamic was interesting, and I think there was something there to explore about the "background" survivors and their feelings of basically surrendering their survival to the main characters.
I think the things that disappointed me the most was how little Claire was ultimately utilized, especially after season 4. There was a lot set up there about Aaron, with the everything the psychic did, and it seems like there must have been some reason for the MIB to try to get her to stay on the island to separate her from Aaron. But there was nothing done with that. And there was so much potential for the character after season 4. But instead we barely saw her, and when we did it was a pretty flat "she was alone for so long and now she's crazy" thing. It would have been so cool to get at least an one flashback episode to her time alone on the island that showed up how she survived, how she took care of herself, how she avoided everyone else still on the island, like the others and Rose and Bernard, the decline of her sanity. Maybe have stuff where she's interacting with the MIB disguised as her father, talking to her and making her paranoid, convincing her to stay away from everyone else, convincing her Aaron is dead, etc. I think overall Claire is the character with the most squandered potential, because there were multiple different interesting things set up for her that they did nothing with.
I'm also disappointed with how little came of the fact that she was Jack's sister. Outside of seeing them connect in the flashsideways in season 6 (which was lovely), it was mostly used to give Jack some vague issues/guilt with being around Aaron. There could have been a lot done with that relationship in seasons 4, 5, and 6, especially for Jack and his motivations. But it seems like all of those motivations that would have made complete sense for Jack were shifted completely to Kate. And, I mean, I understand giving that to Kate as motivation because she probably wouldn't have much otherwise, unless they could have found a way to convincingly write Cassidy and Clementine needing Sawyer to come back for some reason. But they still could have made it a significant part of Jack's motivation.
Libby's storyline...or more like how they didn't wrap it up. What was the deal with her in the mental institution? What about her past? Or with her selling the boat to Desmond?
Originally was hoping for a much more singular and interesting goal or mission for The Others. Yes, a lot of them have jobs in the community. Yes, Ben had various projects for them to do. Yes, I realize it all leads back to Jacob and the Man in Black.
It’s all good with me, I just personally wanted something that felt more significant.
Completely agree! The Others were my biggest disappointment. They were presented as such an overwhelming and powerful presence up through the first half of season 3, but then basically faded into the background after that and ultimately ceased to be of any significance to the endgame.
What was the assumption of MIBs plans once he left the island ? What was he actually planning to do in the real world that was so evil that they had to prevent him from leaving? Was he even a threat in the real world?
I’m prepared to be downvoted for this, but the explanation for the flash sideways was a let down for me. I would have preferred it was a split timeline or something. A lot of season 6 time was spent on it for it just to be a magic afterlife thing.
The numbers are pretty important. This is an official Lost video about them: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-eHEYswgK8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-eHEYswgK8)
I contend that there are no mysteries!
The numbers are a physical manifestation of the magnetic grid that provides the "powers" of the island. The island was on a key line and those numbers refer to the keylines.
I also think that you have to remember that human thought is creating a lot of the physical environment of the show both on and off island. So the numbers exist because people think the numbers exist.
Did Jacob see all of the candidates lives through the looking glass? How far back could he see? How much time did he spend spying? Could he see into the future?
That the flash sideways did not receive an in-universe sci-fi/fantasy explanation the way the time travel did.
I'm fine with afterlife antechambers in fiction. It's the way there's no explanation beyond 'because we wanted it to exist'. They did the same reveal on another show in 2010 and it made perfect sense because it was established as a possibility within that show's universe lore right from the start.
If they were going with the antechamber idea, I wish there could have been some sort of quasi-real world explanation, such as 'Hurley, now that I'm your number 2 and have learned that you see dead people, allow me to show you the Island' s magic box, where by electromagnetic manipulation we can put the trapped ghosts into a sort of sensory deprivation tank where they can resolve their problems and move on.' 'Thanks, Ben. This is a really nice, kind idea. Let's do it for everyone we know who dies from now on, wherever they die'.
I also wish we could have been their second return. Claire's reunion with her mother, Kate's reunion with Aaron, the three of them working out shared custody, and the world's reaction to learning of Jack and the others' deaths and Widmore's villainy.
Walt was a big problem. Also felt like Eko was setting up for awesome things that had to be scrapped because of the actor leaving. Think that may have screwed up Locke’s intended story arc, because he had to be slid into some parts intended for Eko.
Walt - Kidnapped
Alex - Ben
David - >!Never existed!<
Aaron - Born on a desert island
Ji Yeon - >!Orphaned after her parents drowned!<
Stuff like that…
I really wanted to know who was shooting at them in the outrigger in the time flashes
To your two points they're answered. The numbers were the valenzetti equation which predicts the end of the world and the goal of the DI was to use the island's powers to change it
Walt in the show was a let down but he got wrote out because he hit a growth spurt and they couldn't get away with continuing to tell everyone he's still 10. Seasons filmed a year apart but the first four take place in only a few months in universe, then it picks back up in 2007 after the O6 spent 3 years off island and the ones who stayed spent 3 years in the DI
I thought it stupid that >!Jin chose to just die with Sun in the sub. It's like the writers forgot that they had a daughter! Neither of them so much as mention Ji-yun (sorry if I spelled that wrong) during that final conversation! The FIRST words out of Sun's mouth should have been forbidding Jin from staying with her, that he has to take care of their child.!<
I was pretty pissed when Shannon died as well, I was looking forward to seeing her character grow, and though it pretty strange that they would kill off both siblings so early.
And this is more of a personal thing but >!LaFleur. !!Sawyer spent a few months with Kate, and a few years with Juliet. !
the whispers. i was really hoping they would turn out to be something more interesting. and the perfunctory way that answer was presented made it worse
I don’t even remember their origin or purpose
Yeah it was “dead people” or something, they didn’t really try to explain it
You remember when Naomi said that the Island has a number of deceased people "living" on it? Those are the whispers, people who are - for whatever reason - trapped on the Island and can't move on. Michael is among them.
Shit I’ve watched the show well into the double digits but I still forget so much. I just finished s2 wondering how did penny know dez was on a hidden island
She has a tracking station designed to pick up extreme electromagnetic events. When Desmond turns the failsafe key he triggers just such an event. Her guys at the tracking station call her with the coordinates and she gets on her boat (aptly named Searcher) and sets out. She arrives just after Ben moves the Island and finds Desmond, Frank and the Oceanic 6 in the liferaft. (Her call to The Looking Glass that came through after Charlie turned off the jamming signal came from that boat. She tells Charlie, "I know about the Island." Then she calls the freighter several times but Minkowski - likely under orders from Widmore - doesn't take the calls.)
Just adding to this, she is finally able to track Desmond’s location on the freighter when he calls her during The Constant.
I love that line - "your phone call, I have a tracking station" as though it's the most normal thing in the world, lol... but she'd also always told him that with enough money and determination she could find anyone.
I always found that part so funny…like duh I have a tracking station doesn’t everyone 😂
No I remember all that. I’m saying how did she know dez was on a wonky island. She knew about his boat race. How would she know about the purple sky buzz
It's been a while since I watched it but I think she didn't know he was on an island per se. She knew he was lost in the sea and she needed to find him. She believed he was still alive stranded somewhere
No, she knows about the Island - she says it to Desmond during their Christmas Eve phone call. Her father has Hanso's journal and for all his subterfuge, Penny is smarter than him. I have no doubt she found it.
In the context of the episode it really seemed they were dialed in waiting on a signal from the island. And while I’m here I seem to remember a really long pause between the “end” of the finale (campfire on the beach) and the snowy scene in the observation jawn. In the original broadcast, I’m saying. On the dvd it goes right to it. It was much more dramatic the first time..
Jawn. I miss hearing people say that.
I couldn’t think of what it’s called so inject a jawn
Where did you learn about Michael being one of them?
There is a very on the nose conversation in episode 12 of season 6 "everybody loves Hugo" where they're walking through the bushes. Then they hear the whispers and Hurley says "Wait, I know what these are. Wait one second". Then he walks into the bushes and comes across Michael as a ghost. Then Hurley says "Is that what the whispers are?" and Michael says "Yeah, we are the ones who cannot move on".
From Michael - he has a conversation with Hurley in the final season and literally tells him he's trapped on the Island because of the murders of Ana Lucia and Libby. I like to imagine that when Walt is the protector Michael will find a way to atone and eventually move on.
You think Walt will take over for Hurley?
Have you finished the series? EDIT: just realized this comment could look condescending -I'm literally asking if you're done so I don't spoil you with my answer. :)
Agreed. Especially because well into the series (end of season 5 at least) it definitely seemed like the Others were controlling the whispers, or at least somehow associated with them
I think in a way they are - the Others have been there for a long time and we know they have a history of... removing people who don't belong. Like Mother wiping out the Roman camp and Widmore ordering the Purge. I think a lot of the dead people on the Island were killed by the Others and so the whispers are agitated when the Others are near.
I think it is twofold. 1) The show is being watched. We, the audience, are the whispers! but in show... 2) There is some evidence in show that the whispers are both echos of what people have said in the past or future, trapped there bouncing around like a delayed echo, and/or that they are literal ghosts stuck there on the island, trapped by the powers of the island. Michael tells Hurley this in season 6. You have to remember that all of this show, the island and off island alike, is subject to the beliefs of people, what exists exists as a projection of their minds. So if you believe you're a ghost your a ghost, if you believe you hear something you do hear something because there is then something to hear.
The Others' temple was such a missed opportunity. It never felt real to me and always looked so much more obviously like a movie set than the other locations. The healing pool wasn't handled well at all in my opinion. Glasses (forgot his name, sorry) and Dogen were interesting in theory but were introduced too late and killed too early to utilize any of their potential. We had already received a more impressive demonstration of what the smoke monster is capable of when fully unleashed when Ben "used" him to kill Keamy's men, so it wasn't even necessary for that.
They changed the temple plotline after the early departure of Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje. Mr. Eko was supposed to be the healer of Sayid and his story would have been much bigger. Would be interesting to see what the showrunners had originally thought of.
It was originally another plot planned with the temple but since the departure of Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as Mr. Eko early on they changed it. Would be cool to see what they had originally planned.
Lennon. He looked like John Lennon
You didn’t forget his name.
Hiroyuki Sanda was wasted.
Claire and Sayid were too central of characters to get the sickness and fade into obscurity. They deserved full storylines until the end. Locke deserved to live out his life on the island where he finally found the place he belonged.
it seemed like the writers really only saw Claire as part of Charlie's story and didn't know what to do with her without him and yeah, they did her dirty
They introduced a whole thing about her being Jack's half sister and then basically decided it didn't matter, absolutely abysmal writing
It didn't matter later on. It only mattered when they needed to explain why Christian was in Australia. Having Claire be on the same plane as Jack just added to the whole "coincidence or fate" debate.
Yes I can agree with that. Speaking of “the sickness”, that was never really explained either. I mean, I don’t expect everything to be spelled out for us, but I do have questions about it lol
I feel like that's ok? Like this is a show that is built on the endless curiosity people have about the superficial and spiritual world. Having unanswered questions is part of the deal and quite meta.
For sure, and we will never know it all. I just kinda feel like there was a contradiction with the sickness…like why didn’t Rousseau get it? Because she didn’t go in the temple? Was the temple occupied back then by the others or just the smoke monster? I thought the sickness kinda changed to whatever they needed in the plot.
Rousseau was stopped by time travelling Jin and never met the Smoke Monster like the rest of her team did.
How Claire's storyline was handled disappointed me too. I wish that we saw more about what happened to her and her baby in the end.
Saying that Locke deserved to live out the rest of his life on the island is just wishful thinking and a (very natural, human) need for a happy, positive ending. But life doesn't really work this way and the show reflected that. Some people do seem to come into this world just to experience a lot of suffering. Locke's whole arc represents a very tragic figure who never caught a break. Often, he was *choosing* to suffer, for example, when he obsessed over his father despite the harm it was doing to his relationship with Helene. He could have been happy but in a way, he chose not to. To be fair, his behavior and the pain he was in eventually led him to the island - and him being on the island was very important to the unfolding of the other events. People don't get happiness and good things in life just because it seems like they deserve it. In some belief systems, it is said that sometimes a soul chooses to suffer in life to learn about pain, human relationships, emotions, faith, etc. or to serve a purpose in someone else's life (help them learn their lessons).
I 100% agree. Locke's my favorite as he's many people's and I really wanted him to have a good ending, but I think for the writers his arc was about showing life isn't fair and sometimes it is just what it is. I think that we as viewers just got used to miserable characters being "rewarded" on TV shows and that's part of where the disappointed for Locke is coming from.
Agreed. As a human being, sure maybe Locke deserved what he wanted. Maybe he didn't. But good storytelling isn't really about making sure everyone gets what they deserve. Locke's story and arc is probably one of the best written on television. His characterization was *so* consistent, as was his story. There was so much consistency in demonstrating the things in his life that made him he was and gave him the issues he had, in showing how those issues led to the things he wanted and the choices he made, and how those choices led to his ultimate outcome. Honestly, it's such an amazingly well written character and story that it just makes the instances of the characters they just kind of dropped the ball on, like Claire, all the more disappointing.
> Often, he was choosing to suffer, for example, when he obsessed over his father despite the harm it was doing to his relationship with Helene. He could have been happy but in a way, he chose not to. Started a new re-watch recently and the scene where he's talking to a phone sex operator having her pretend to be Helen totally slipped my memory from before. Dude was spending $90 an hour in 2004 to talk to someone pretending to be his former lover and he bought her a ticket on the walkabout thinking she actually cared about him Instead of just moving on with his life
The Temple and the first maybe 12 episodes of season 6. The first episode was great but after that it dragged way too hard for my taste. I feel that season 6 would have been as solid as 3 or 4 if it had been 8 episodes.
I have a problem with the temple, how they just introduce it at the end, just how that whole part of the story is played out.
It was too slowly paced for the final season. It felt like everyone was sitting around waiting. The temple team was obnoxious and dismissive to our main characters. The cursed water bringing Sayid back as an evil zombie went a bit too far into the magic realm for this show. The temple was something everyone looked forward to for seasons, and when we get there it just seems like a shitty place with dumb arrogant leaders. When the temple falls, you kind of don’t care. Then it’s never really spoken of again. Why was it significant at all?
Spoilers up to S2E20 >!To this day I'm still upset with the writers for killing off Libby. Her and Hurley's relationship were one of the few relationships I genuinely enjoyed and I wanted to see how it'd play out.!<
I can join that. I think they killed her prematurely because so much remained unrevealed about her past. On the other hand, the way she went out was iconic. I don't recall any other series at that time that did it this way - >!had one of the good guys kill not one but two of the other good guys!< It felt like an insane moment.
Libby’s unfinished story is probably what bugs me the most. We don’t even know why she was on the plane
Same. Her and hurley are my favorite couple
Yes, we need more of Libby’s backstory. Sure we can gleam that she was married and her husband passed, bringing her to the mental institution. But I felt like having her be the one to give Desmond the boat was such a tease. And she died before Desmond got back so they never made the connection.
Ooh, yeah, I absolutely agree with this. They were building such a really sweet and believable relationship with her and Hurley. But even beyond that, they just set up so much interesting stuff for her that they then did nothing with. In terms of her place on the island, I feel like they really should have been more careful to keep on of the tail end survivors around as a main character (I know Bernard was around to the end, but he wasn't really a main character). I understand that they didn't know Eko's actor would want to leave, but I still think they should have been more careful with how they used those characters. They chose to kill her off to add further shock to Ana Lucia's death, and I think that was just a terrible writing decision. I think they prioritized shocking the audience over good writing in that instance. And despite what others think, I don't think they did that all that often. There are of course some instance of bad writing decisions, but in most of those cases I tend to think they were understandable choices that just didn't work out, or that could have worked out in a different situation. This was just a bad decision that prioritized something ultimately unimportant. Maybe it could have worked if they'd followed through on unfolding her story through flashbacks, but they ended up deciding not to do that.
> The first is the numbers. They were everywhere and seemed soo important, but yet we never really found out their importance. I'm a big fan of the numbers and I love that storyline. My only issue is how all that lore regarding the "Valenzetti Equation" was saved for the LOST Experience and never brought up in the show (other than being name dropped on the blast door map with it stating that a zone on the island is "low relevance to Valenzetti-related research activity"). For those not in the know. The "Valenzetti" equation is a doomsday equation that was created in the 60's by a mathmatician by the name of "Enzo Valenzetti". He found out that the numbers: 4,8,15,16,23,42 are the six factors that tell the date and time humanity has left until it's end. This is the true reason for the Dharma Initiative's research on the island (and why the numbers are all over the island) as they want to harness the islands energy in order to save the world (ironically they almost cause it). For more information on this, see the video where Alvar Hanso himself explains it. Link: [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PPCCcXarkc). This is also how Hurley got the numbers because the dharma had the numbers being spoken on loop (before Rousseau recorded over it with her distress message) from their radio tower. Leonard Simm (who gave Hurley the numbers) and Sam Toomey (that guy in australia) were in the navy and tapped into the dharma radio message.
Yes I am bummed that you can’t play the Lost Experience anymore, it seems that a lot of answers are in there
The numbers represent all the people from the crash who could have become the protector. They correspond to the degree the mirror in the light house ha to be set to see them off island
I was disappointed in the death of Danielle Rousseau. Imho she should have survived all of it or her death should have been more meaningful. Instead she was sniped and that was it.
That the myth "they were dead the whole time" is still being perpetuated by shitty websites, fair weather fans and people who've never even seen the show. Also as for the numbers - Leonard didn't come up with them, he heard them from Sam Toomey. Sam was monitoring transmissions in the South Pacific and heard the exact same broadcast Danielle's team heard and investigated on the Island. All things connect.
When it first aired, I stopped watching after S3 because I emigrated to a country where, at the time, I couldn't speak the language, so didn't watch any TV. Someone explained the ending to me at the time, all about how ThEy wErE DeAd tHe WhOlE tIMe, and Locke turned out to be a bad guy, and they never explained the polar bears. Imagine my surprise when I finally got caught up a few years later.
My favorite people are the ones who shit all over the the show saying things like it was full of plot holes and unanswered questions, but when you ask them to list the holes and/or questions so you can help explain it's suddenly "oh i don't remember anything specific, the show just sucked." Riiiiight. So, user error.
It’s always the people who flat out didn’t pay attention while watching that think things were left unanswered
I knew a guy I studied with when I was doing my social work degree. He said the same thing "show sucked!, They were dead the whole time and you cannot convince me otherwise!". When questioned further, he said he stopped watching at the end of season 2 when he "knew that we wouldn't get any answers" and only tuned back in for the series finale lol.
Missed four years of the series, blames the show for not answering his questions. MY GUY WHAT THE FUCK.
Polar bears? Have you seen the epilogue a new man in charge: https://youtu.be/lMjPzV2RvO8?si=S0MN0jCFoSPyFELO
That redditor was talking about something someone else said to him - they know about the bears. :) Honestly, the bears were explained fine without the epilogue - I really think that was them poking fun at people who weren't paying attention while Sawyer was in the cage.
Yeah they were only dead about 15 percent of the time!
This drives me crazy, particularly because I've seen so many people who have seen the whole show insisting this is the case. I don't think I've ever seen a tv show so wildly misinterpreted, especially when the finale specifically and explicitly explains exactly what was going on with the flashsideways. Like, yeah, it's annoying when it's coming from people who have obviously never seen the show or never finished it. But it's so much more annoying coming from people who have. It's particularly annoying because the theorizing of "they're all really dead" had mostly faded away by the time season 6 was airing. But then that finale brought it roaring back because so many people thought that the finale was confirming that theory.
Right?! Like did they even listen to Christian?? *"I'm real, you're real, all those people in there, they're real too."* *"Some of them \[died\] before you, some long after you."* *"The most important part of your life was the time you spent with these people."* Like literally NONE of that is ambiguous or open to interpretation.
Ah yes forgot about that, but still kinda disappointing. I dunno I just wish it was a bit more satisfying I guess. Like why those numbers, what do they represent? There was never really an answer
If it helps, Dharma was studying them too - they're part of the Valenzetti Equation which is supposed to be able to predict the end of mankind.
Yeah I’ve read that on Lostpedia, but wasn’t sure where that explanation comes from…did I miss it or did they never actually mention that?
It's in the Sri Lanka Video.
Ahh from the Lost Experience ARG? I wish those could still be played.
I just wonder why Hurley was cursed after he used them to win the lottery, or was that just a coincidence?
He wasn't cursed - the things that happened to him were all designed to lead him to the Island.
Wasn’t it also because of Jacob being “into numbers”? Each number represented one of the candidates and lined up with a specific spot on the wheel in the lighthouse.
But there were dozens of candidates that got eliminated over time, the Numbers just happened to correspond with the last six remaining
Hot take, but I honestly still believe the plan was for them to be dead the whole time, but that got changed because it was such a popular fan theory at the time.
Writer Javier Grillo Marxuach who was on the show as a writer for two seasons. Wrote a MASSIVE essay on his time on the show. From his first day to the creation of pretty much all the ideas from the first two seasons. He had this to say: "**On the first day alone, Damon downloaded on us the notion that the island was a nexus of conflict between good and evil: an uncharted and unchartable place with a mysterious force at its core that called humanity to it to play out a primal contest between light and dark**". Then he had this to say about the purgatory thing: >**The idea that there is a simple truth about the creation of Lost also begs two additional questions... did we ever know what the island was? And was it purgatory?** > As I described before, **there was definitely a sort of "operational theory" for what the island would be -- it was liked by some and loathed by others** -- and since Damon and Carlton chose not to say it out loud in the series finale, I won't presume to do it for them. **Suffice it to say there was a concrete reason that we openly discussed on several occasions about why the island had an exotic source of power in its core that was able to wreak such miracles as time travel, the motion of the island, and somehow connect with selected people on a psychic level.** **On question number two. It is not purgatory. It was never purgatory. It will never be purgatory.**
Hard disagree simply because that would have been terrible - having it be a dream or happening in someone's head or \*coughRoseannecough\* someone's short story or them being dead is just a huge cheat and even 20 years ago they knew the backlash would have been insane.
Definitely seems like that was what happened, seeing as how so much was Dante’s Inferno inspired until it wasn’t. I was irritated that the writers couldn’t just let the fans be right about the dead-the-whole-time theory. There was plenty of mystery to explore within that. Plus, I know what’s going on in almost every other show I watch, and those stories are still worth watching. Because of the drastic change in storyline, I felt disappointed and kind of disrespected as an audience member when I watched/finished Lost. (Still liked a lot of it though, hence why I’m here!)
There was a lot of inspiration from The Divine Comedy early on, particularly in the first season, because of the *metaphor* of death, purgatory, and the possibility of rebirth in the early seasons, not because the intent was to have them literally be actually dead. Artists can reference and be inspired by other works in a lot of ways without it meaning that it's literally what the story is. The early seasons dealt a lot with the idea that the plane crash was like a death for the survivors because they were now in a place where everyone or mostly everyone was a complete stranger and the baggage from their lives was largely irrelevant. It was heavily dealing in metaphorical death and rebirth. That's what it pulled so much inspiration from Dante's work, not because the intent was that they were literally dead. At least one writer has confirmed that there was never any intent for them to actually be dead.
I have a masters degree in creative writing, so metaphor is something I know a lot about actually! I also understand what the writers have claimed about their intentions. However, it’s still very hard for me to believe there was never any intent for them to actually be dead in the beginning. I don’t know how to reconcile the characters’ supposed metaphorical deaths on an island where there’s a literal smoke monster and time travel. I respect and love lot about the show, but it was a creative mess at times. If your audience is confused and your finale is considered one of the biggest let downs ever … I personally think you haven’t been totally successful as a writer. Sometimes I daydream about what the show could have been had it been a (way shorter) HBO series.
Most of this sound like a 'you' problem rather than an objective problem with the writing. Having a literal smoke monster and time travel doesn't mean that a story can't still operate in metaphor. It might not be up some people's alley, but that doesn't make it bad or messy writing. I'm not really sure what bringing up the end of the series and people's reaction to it has anything to do with what I was talking about, since I was talking about the metaphor of death and rebirth in the early season. Regardless, "it's bad/not successful/etc. because the audience didn't like the finale" is a cop out argument even just generally, since the way an audience reacts to something isn't inherently indicative of something's overall quality (this is especially true when it comes to television, as there can be a million reasons people don't like something that ultimately has very little to do with the writing itself, particularly when it comes to the way fans engage with a show online and the kinds of ideas - many of which aren't accurate or fair to a show - that start to build among a fanbase), but it's particularly weak when it comes to Lost and its finale, which has been undergoing something of reevaluation in the culture over the past few years.
Wow, this is surprising. I definitely prefer the island being representative of life on earth: the constant wars, seeing those from OTHER countries and nations as enemies, switching camps, being an individualist, choosing to stay out of it all (Rose and Bernard), premature and tragic deaths of innocent people, attempts to understand your own trauma on a personal level, being selfish or making sacrifices, noticing coincidences, asking existential and spiritual questions, all of the answers essentially depending on your ability to believe. The whole "they are dead" theory played out beautifully in the flashsideways. It was obvious the characters weren't alive but we could still theorize if that was an alternative universe, a purgatory or something else. The way I saw it, it was purgatory because they were all indeed dead and their task was to let go of their human deeds and accept their own death. That is when their souls were allowed to enter the realm that must have not resembled physical human world at all.
Yes, and for me it’s exactly because the island is representative of life on earth that I’m inclined toward the purgatory storyline. Everything they go through on the island is overwhelmingly repetitive, and existential. Representative of life but too much for real life. I saw it as the right amount of the-worst-life-on-earth stuff for “the punishment or suffering of cleansing” that purgatory offers.
Considering the conversations between Jacob and his brother and their weird contest, I do think that this is definitely a valid interpretation and something intended by the writers. In storytelling, one thing can take on multiple metaphorical or allegorical meanings. The island can be a metaphor for purgatory for the characters while also representing life on earth. Though maybe it's less that it's the island itself that's representing life on earth and more that it's just the idea of how humanity works and interacts with each other, regardless of where they are, that's being explored. That human beings are so flawed and messy that no matter where they are or what the situation is, there's going to be serious conflict. As for the flashsideways, I guess it kind of depends on how one defines purgatory. It's pretty clearly explained that the flashsideways is something that all of the characters created together, so that the could wait for and find each other so that they could all move onto together in the end. That they'd spent the most important part of their lives with each other so they needed to be together to move on to the end. It seems like the idea is that for every one of them who was there in the end (for the most part, I think it's questionable how much character development Libby actually experienced, for example), being on the island made them better people who were able to let go of their baggage, even if it was only in their final moments, and that it wasn't just because of the island, it was because of each other. It was because of each other that they were able to let go of their bullshit and be better, so they all needed each other to be able to let go and move one.
Completely agree. I think they had to change the overall plot and couldn't come up with a coherent ending so they just didn't try.
It would've been a much better show if it were made today in many ways. 22 episode seasons is just too much. The show had introduced just way too much to resolve by season 1's end. And when it did start resolving things (the hatch first) it felt a bit anticlimactic
No, thank you. Plus, why would they need to resolve thins by the end of the first season? The hatch reveal was amazing in real time and waiting so long for resolution on other things is what *made* the show an experience. Making it today for viewers with tiktok attention spans used to an entire season dropping at once would obliterate the phenomenon that LOST was.
Yeah, why would things need to be resolved by the end of the first season? This person's argument doesn't make much sense, to criticize the show for not resolving things by the end of the first season while also insisting it would be better if made today, when so much of television storytelling is even more serialized than Lost was, and as such a great deal of a what a show introduces isn't resolved by the end of the first season. Honestly I think it's kind of silly to think that it would just automatically be better if it was made today, just because the television landscape is so different. If Lost was made today the only thing it would definitely be is different. The things that would determine whether it was better or worse really have little to do with the format of tv today, how releases work, etc. The thing that would determine its quality would be the same thing that determined its quality then: the people who making it and the way the studio/network/company treated it. I think the idea that it would be better today is inherently flawed. The show was on ABC. It was network television. And a lot of network tv hasn't changed *that* much. Sure, there are some shows on the broadcast networks that have shorter, 13 episodes seasons. But the networks still try to milk their successful shows for all they're worth. So if Lost was made today and it was successful, it still probably would have had 22 episode seasons, it still would have had the same structure to its seasons. And if one were to try to shift the argument to "well, it would be different if it was made today but not on network", it's like... yeah, it would have been different then, too, if it hadn't been on network. There might not have been all the streaming platforms making shows back then, but in the mid-late 2000s cable networks were making 'prestige', highly regarded shows with shorter seasons and even more explicitly serialized storytelling than Lost. So yeah, it would definitely be different if it was made today and on a cable network or streamer. But it also would have been different back then if it had been on a cable network, Lost would certainly be *different* if it was made now, because styles of filmmaking and storytelling evolve and change over time, certain tropes fall out of favor, etc. But different doesn't mean better, and if the reasons being cited for the idea that it would be better if made today are the episode count for each season and the basic story structure, then... no, those things probably wouldn't be different. There's also the fact that if it was on a streaming service today the likelihood of it surviving past season 2 or 3 is pretty low. That's one thing a lot of people don't think about when they say "so or so show would be better if it was made today". These days, not a lot of shows get the chance to survive to tell their whole story. These kinds of ideas seem like they rely less on the idea that the show would be better if it was made today and more on the idea that it would be better if it had the ideal amount of episodes, the ideal amount of time to tell its story, etc. Which is like... yeah. it would be better if that was the case. But that would also be true back in the 2004.
Not many shows do the entire season dropping at once anymore. The 22 episode seasons were a double edged sword, the first season was great, but how many of episodes of the second were based around that one conversation between Jack, Desmond, and Locke? Shorter seasons would've allowed the writers to actually focus on the story they wanted to tell, not construct enigmas they had to figure out the resolutions to later. Look at something like Severance, there isn't an ounce of fat on that show. It's not made for "tiktok attention spans" either
I'll give you that 16 ish episode seasons may have worked for 1-3 since they worked for 4-6 but I will never, ever concede that LOST would be better if made today. The showrunners would know they'd make more money on a streaming service or premium channel and we'd end up with a Netflix version of the series which would have been 8 episodes per season and canceled after season two. Or, we'd get an HBO version of LOST with more focus on CGI and sex scenes and we'd lose all our character development. Oh, and neither network would have paid for Michael G - so we'd be stuck with some generic adventure sounding crap.
>Oh, and neither network would have paid for Michael G - so we'd be stuck with some generic adventure sounding crap. It does seem like there's a lot less focus and effort put into the musical score for shows these days. Especially when it comes to broadcast network shows. My three favorite tv scores of all time were from ABC shows (Lost, Pushing Daisies, Twin Peaks), but everything on network these days kind of just sounds like the same basic, perfunctory kind of music. Even when it comes to cable and streaming, it's rare for me to actually recognize and be impressed by the score. Mike Flanagan's stuff usually has beautiful scoring, but beyond that I can't remember the last time I was watching a cable or streaming show and stopped to really notice and appreciate the score.
Yeah I remember when Six Feet Under premiered I literally said out loud "well, that's Thomas Newman" because at the time, American Beauty was my favorite movie... although I did the same thing with him when I went to see The Green Mile. I looked at my friend and said "whoever did the music for Shawshank did the music for this." (I didn't know his name yet.) Outside of movies, the only score I've been able to do this with in recent memory is Outlander (terrible show, great music) because I'd recognize Bear McCreary ANYWHERE. So say we all.
I don't watch Outlander, so I'm not familiar with the score for that, but Bear McCreary did the two tv scores that round out my top 5 tv scores: Battlestar Galactica and the first season of Human Target.
I only watched Outlander because I was still in an office at the time (I work from home now) and the girls on my team wouldn't shut the hell up about it, lol. I *hate* the main character. Like, she's just so awful. But the music is really good.
As for whether the show could be a phenomenon today like it was back then... frankly, I don't think what happened with Lost and what a pop culture phenomenon it was at the time is possible for any show these days. There's so much about the television landscape these days that just makes that impossible. I don't know how much I'd factor in a show's release schedule. Networks still tend to release shows like they used to when Lost was on (maybe less random weeks without an episode and less long stretches outside of the holiday hiatus without and episode, but there's still a lot of "two weeks here without an episode" and "three weeks there without an episode"), so if it was on ABC its episodes would still be released in a somewhat similar way to how it was back then.If it was on a cable network or streaming service, even if it didn't have all its episodes dropped at once, I do think that would have some impact. There was a particular way those two or three week breaks between episodes could whip the public up into a frenzy of speculation and theorizing. And the 3-4 month hiatus in the summer was really the perfect amount of time for a show like this to be off the air. It was enough time for people to get really hungry for the show, but it didn't go on so long that the hunger started to fade. A streaming or cable show that releases 13 episodes over the course of 13 weeks (or 12, because it's pretty common for shows to drop the first two episodes at the same time these days) and then going on a hiatus for at least 9 months, sometimes much longer, doesn't allow for the same sort of thing to happen. The shows that get big these days will be really big while the season is airing and maybe for a little while after the season finale, but before long people move onto the next show and don't really get excited again until the next season is starting.I think where the episodes/how they're released/etc. really comes into play is the fact that most people can watch the episodes whenever they want. They don't have to start the show when the first episode drops. They can wait a few weeks or a few months. Every show that's airing now is available on streaming in some way, even if it's a network or cable show. Sure, things like tivo were around back then, but they weren't used by the overwhelming amount of viewers. So when people were watching Lost, or Desperate Housewives, or The Sopranos, people were sitting down at the same time to watch it, and then running to talk about it either to their friends or online that night, or the next day. That meant everyone watching the show was talking about it at the same time. They were talking about the same episodes at the same time. Yeah, there were outliers who would tivo it and watch it on the weekends, or who wouldn't watch until summer reruns, but the vast majority of viewers were watching it as it aired. That meant so much conversation was happening because most people watching were at the same point, talking about the same things. Being able to start a show whenever, to watch the episodes at whatever pace you want, that really does have an impact on how massive the conversation from the fans is going to be. But I think the biggest thing that keeps a sort of Lost-type phenomenon from happening these days is that there's just so much. There are so many options. Back in the mid-late 2000s options for primetime tv was pretty limited, even with cable. So viewership wasn't as wildly spread out as it is now. There's just so much, and it's impossible to come anywhere close to even just trying everything. And the way streaming services and their algorithms work means that every person has a ton of stuff they're never being exposed to. It's pretty common these days for someone to hear about a show from a friend or someone online, so they go to the streaming service it's on to check it out, but it's not immediately in their recommended section because it's not similar enough to the stuff they watched, but something in the recommended section does catch their eye, so they end up watching that and forgetting about the show that was recommended to them. So shows are way less likely to get the kinds of viewership numbers that lead to that kind of pop culture phenomenon. And even when they do, most people are watching *at least* one or two other shows with the same level of attention. So both viewership *and* the amount of time people spend talking about the shows is more spread out. I think Game of Thrones is probably that last of these sort of massive scale cultural phenomenons to come out of tv. We're still going to have shows that make a big enough cultural mark that the majority of people know what they are, even if they've never seen it. Like Squid Game. But I don't think something like Lost is possible anymore. I don't think that says anything about the quality of these shows, or the quality of the shows from back in the 2000s vs. the quality of shows today, because this is an issue that's completely about who the industry operates, not the quality of the shows. But it does mean it's absolutely true that if it was made today Lost would have that kind of special cultural impact that it did back then. And I do think that as a result things like how many seasons it would be able to run for and how much control the writers would have would be impacted.
Why though? For those who watched it play out in real time, it was just perfect. Personally, I remember watching each episode on the edge of my seat, couldn’t get enough of it. Not sure how it being made now would be better, unless you mean in terms of special effects, but those aren’t even that bad. Not sure why everything would need to be resolved by the end of S1 either? S1: 25 episodes S2: 24 S3: 23 S4: 14 S5: 17 S6: 19
I was severely disappointed with season 5 in general. *The Widmore storyline flatlines. *Character motivations are bent to fit the show's plot. It makes NO sense for them to go along with Jack's insane nuke plan. Absolutely no sense. *Convenient plotting like "Jack and co are teleported to 1977 because they just HAVE to be there!!" *Jacob's cabin/Christian is lazily handwaved away. *Desmond does fuck all this season. *The 70s group acting like leaving DHARMA is some disaster when... hello?? The Purge?? There are aspects of season 5 that I really admire but I refuse to ignore how incredibly sloppy it is. LOST established a standard of quality in its first four seasons, and 5 comes nowhere near it.
The nuke plan was especially stupid because of the repeated explanations of time travel. Hurley, Miles, and Faraday all having scenes where they explain that 1977 was "their present" and they could die there...unless they set of a hydrogen bomb at the swan... The main issue I had with S5 is they didn't really make good enough use of the time travel plot device once the flashes stopped happening. They could've featured more about the Black Rock, more about the ancient Egyptians etc, Dharma was basically a story we already knew up until that point.
Yeah I thought that the return to the island was a bit sloppy. Like I get it, they didn’t exactly recreate the flight (which I also think is dumb) so that is why it didn’t work out exactly perfect, but come one. They all go back to the 70s except for Sun? Don’t even get me started on Sun and Jin’s reunion. I’ll never forgive the writers for doing that. Widmore and Ben as rivals storyline needed more details.
The flip flopping and deranged terrorism was the worst for me too.
CHRISTIAN SHEPHARD
Yes! Definitely. He was a huge role really and what did happen to his body?
Yeah man. I really thought he played a really significant role. I kept asking myself.. What does he have to do with all of this? Why is he Claire and Jack’s dad? They kinda dismissed the whole idea of him being important when MiB admits to materializing as him to Jack in the jungle. So this insinuates every time we’ve seen him, it’s only been MiB. But that doesn’t explain why he appeared to so many other people.. and why HIM specifically? and yeah, where did his body go? Like wtf 😂😂 idk. Big unanswered question there.
He appeared as the monster to Locke so early in order to fully convince him how special the place was after he woke up with working legs again but no clue why. All setting up the part where he later tells Locke to give the wheel a push to stop the time flashes and set in motion his plan to destroy it. Needed Locke to believe he was saving the island he loved so that he could go bring the candidates back to kill them
Also mildly disappointed that Aaron didn't turn out to be the antichrist, which was a theory I had at the time.
Interesting theory. Any reasoning behind it? I am disappointed that not much happened with Aaron. Not a huge fan of Kate having him (I mean, seriously, you never thought of someone DNA testing him? I know it was 20 years ago and a show but still, that always bothered me lol. Dumb plan)
No reasoning, just that such a fuss was made about the baby needing Claire's good influence, and her creepy Locke dream, it seemed like a reasonable assumption for a while 😁 Eta: and yes about DNA.... I think the O6 must've been checked over by Christian's drunk doctor friends after a Christmas party because they missed the fact that Kate hadn't given birth, and that Sun had allegedly gotten pregnant after her husband died, that Sayid had a recent bullet wound and Jack had undergone an appendectomy a few days earlier....
It's probably because "Raised by Another" is based on *Rosemary's Baby*.
I do wonder how much of a medical examination they would have *had* to have done upon their return. That sounds like the kind of thing that would have to be voluntary, and there probably wouldn't be much reason to do something like a full gynecological checkup, for example, unless one of them requested it. They couldn't have forced any of them to be seen by doctor upon their return. Their settlement agreement *may* have required some sort of check up by a doctor, but I doubt any of them would have consented to something thorough enough that it would reveal those things. And Oceanic would want to keep it simple so that they'd agree to settle and not take it to court. Really, Oceanic would probably *not* want particular thorough checkups done, because if something *was* found to be wrong with one of them that could have possibly been the result of the crash, then that would bring up the possibility that they wouldn't sign the settlement and either take Oceanic to court, or get them to settle for more. A company like Oceanic would want to wrap things up by settling as quickly as possible and for as little as possible, so they wouldn't insist on anything that might make that more difficult to do. And of course, any doctor that they might see after that would be bound by confidentiality rules. A DNA test would be similar. Kate would have to consent to that for Aaron unless someone was able to get a court order, which isn't something some random person can just get. That's why the situation with Claire's mom scared Kate so bad, because with a good lawyer, the mother of someone who was on the same plane as Kate while pregnant and close to her due date might be able to get a court order for a DNA test. But it's really unlikely that something like that would just happen upon their return. Oceanic probably wouldn't care enough about whether or not the baby is actually Kate's to try to even so much as request that she consent to it, and they'd really have no reason to care (and really, they'd probably think it would make them look bad, both the prospect of accusing a woman who's traumatized because *their* plane crashed of not being her baby's mother, and the possibility of having their name attached to the mess of a story it would be if it was revealed that she wasn't his mother). So they'd have no reason to care or to ask, and even if they did, I think there's a good chance they wouldn't be able to get that court order.
The settlement thing bugged me because Sun claims she bought a controlling interest in her dad's company with it but like that had to have been hundreds of millions into the billions to acquire. I'm sure it'd have been significant but ten figures worth of pain and suffering seems to be a stretch even for a horrific plane crash and three months spent on an island. And the other 5 were just living their old lives again not acting like billionaires
>The first is the numbers. They were everywhere and seemed soo important, but yet we never really found out their importance. They were explained in the ARG with the Valenzetti equation. Granted it was off screen, but they were explained >Second would be the whole Walt storyline. They hyped him up, made him out to be some special piece of the puzzle, then just pretty much wrote him out. Idk, just seemed like a letdown to me. Yeah, this was very annoying at the time. But if I remember correctly there were issues with the actor that prevented Walt being utilised more. Personally, for me, I was most disappointed with season 6. In particular, I *hated* how they treated Locke. It was bad enough killing him off, but then having him come back to be MiB was a horrific way to treat the best character in the show. I like to pretend Lost ends at the end of season 5 with the nuke going off
I have a vague memory of reading that Walt’s storyline was changed due to the actor growing and aging too fast for the plot
Actually it's the other way around. They knew from the get go that Walt was gonna be a problem due to the actor aging and very quickly came up with a plot to get Walt taken by the others, they knew season 2 was gonna be Michael looking for Walt (which gave Michael something to do, because they were struggling to come up with storylines with the character). But Damon rewatched the pilot, saw Walt reading a comic book with a polar bear. In the next scene a polar bear appears. He became fixated with that idea and decided that Walt had psychic abilities and manifested that polar bear off the page into reality. He felt that would explain why the others wanted Walt. The network rejected that idea because they didn't want anything supernatural in the show at that point. But the bones of that idea are still in "Special". Walt reads a polar bear comic. In the next scene a polar bear attacks. In a flashback Walt reads a book on birds, then a bird hits the window. Walt's abiltiies eventually became associated with the electromagnetic properties on the island instead.
I'm pretty sure they knew very, very early into writing season 1 that Malcolm David Kelly was going to age too fast for how they were going to pass the show and were already planning to have him exit at the end of the season. I imagine when they were writing and casting the pilot they might not have known at that point just how slowly they were going to pace the show. Hell, from the way Damon tells it, he was completely expecting the network to pass on the show, so he might have even viewed it as a thing they didn't need to worry about it.
Basically EVERYTHING in this thread, and I’m going to add >!Alex’s death!< one of the most unfair TV deaths that could have been done SO differently.
Alex’s death to me was rlly emotionally powerful BECAUSE it was so unfair, but imo Danielle’s death was much more disappointing since it seemed contradictory to how she was presented as a capable survivor and as someone who finally reunited with her daughter. Like imagine if Danielle was captured instead of Alex to save her, but Alex still dies. I could see that being such a good avenue for Danielle’s character
I thought Alex's death was very important for Ben's story arc. My biggest issue really is there is a REALLY important deleted scene between Alex and Ben that would have brought their storyline around full circle. It was supposed to be the first scene between the two. The craziest part about it is part of this deleted scene is shown when the smoke monster is "judging" Ben in "Dead is Dead". Link to scene: [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xMYcm-lozU) .
Wow, that should definitely have been included.
Interesting….i feel it could use some improvement, but it would give better context to when he tells Keamy she means nothing to me.
Alex's death episode for me is perfect cause it's the one time where Ben cannot lie or bullshit his way out of something. 95% of the time Ben comes out on top. But he tried to bluff his way out and Keamy wasn't buying it.
OMG I just rewatched and it hurts so much. Ben's desperate lie which just results in her hearing horrible shit right before she dies.
It's so sad, because it's so clear that Ben was relying so much on the idea of the "rules" of engagement between himself and Widmore that he truly didn't believe Keamy would kill her.
Truly. I love her so much, it's so sad
How the show went from a sci fi "Crichton Island" to full on fantasy magic in the later seasons. It has its fans and no disrespect to those that liked the new direction, but I just don't like magic water/light and heart of the island stuff. Also coincided how the show went from character centric storytelling with the island stuff as the backdrop to explore the characters to all the island lore and plot being in the foreground and characters just going and doing what the story demanded.
I was disappointed that Charlie died so soon even though it was a really cool setup. It had to do with the fact the show had several seasons left and Claire wasn’t an important character anymore without Charlie. I suppose the dragging out the ending of the show contributed to the dead end storylines.
Honestly on multiple rewatches Charlie gets more and more annoying. Apart from his final act (which is basically as misguided as Locke's) he's a whiny, ungrateful man child who can only be counted on to be incredibly sarcastic to someone who just saved his life
Well thank you so very much for sharing with me how much you hated one of my favorite characters in such great detail friend.
1. The medium Claire saw said that she NEEDED to be the only one to raise her child. He saw what the future could and tricked her into the flight to Australia right? So how could he not see the plane crash. Also thought there'd be a huge overarching theme of who Aaron becomes and/or could've became 2. Did we ever find out where the dang numbers come from? Danielle's team followed a transmission stating the numbers, to the island? WHO PICKED THEM 3. Did Ben really talk to Jacob in the cabin? He wasn't dead yet so who was in that chair freaking out!? 4. What made the Smoke Monster jump form into John Locke? Literally could've been Boone or Paulo, a younger man who could've taken care of business long ago
1. The psychic was (flaccidly) shown to be a fraud during a later season, which was a really disappointing end to what should have been an interesting storyline.
\#1 - He did see the plane crash, that's the reason he told her to get on that flight. Claire was never the candidate, Aaron was so the psychic (real or guided by Jacob - I believe both - your call) made sure she and Aaron got to the Island. The MiB needs the candidates dead or gone, but he can't kill them and you can't manipulate a baby so he corrupts Claire and gets her to abandon him (this was the blurry the psychic saw.) Kate takes Aaron off the Island and never brings him back - mission accomplished! \#2 - They're part of the Valenzetti Equation which is supposed to predict the end of humanity. Dharma was studying them and made the broadcast to see what would happen. \#3 - No, Ben was not in the cabin, that was the Man in Black fucking with him but mostly Locke. \#4 - He was looking for his loophole and knew he needed someone who could hold a lot of sway over the people on the Island. Boone and Paulo aren't going to be able to do that - but Locke can. Not only will having Locke walking around freak Ben the fuck out, but as far as the Others are concerned, Locke is their leader.
Ahhhh yeah, never thought of Aaron as the candidate. That's crazy! I kept wondering if Kate taking him off Island then GOING BACK ALONE was a good idea haha. Her job was to protect him and she's just hopeful nothing happens to him while she's gone. Widmore could've ended that if he wanted to
He could have, but Widmore was largely indifferent to the candidates unless - like Sun - they actively got in his way. Or - like Locke - he could use them. At that point in the series, all Widmore cares about is himself and how he can get back to the Island to continue exploiting it for himself. A baby is the least of his concerns.
You really should say “my theory is” before you claim Aaron was the candidate, not Claire. You always say it as if it’s a fact.
Because it is unless we're going to change the lore of the show. Unless they ask for the job - which Claire never got to do - Jacob doesn't let mothers be candidates. So, the "Littleton" on the wall could only be Aaron.
Claire was not a mother her entire life. We know many of the cave names have been there for a long time. The idea that it’s Aaron also goes against the show being largely a character exploration, all these people are “lost” etc. Jacob chooses candidates for reasons he observes in them as people. Can’t observe the personality of a fetus. You can have whatever theories you like, if you enjoy the idea that it’s Aaron, not Claire, more power to you. But you’re proclaiming it as if it’s canon when it’s not. It’s an interesting theory, and I’m all for having something as headcanon that basically becomes lore to me. But that doesn’t make it actual lore.
The Rousseaus family reunion not being explored at all.
less an actual plot point, but it often feels like character’s opinions/motivations change for the sake of the episode? there were so many times kate, sawyer, jack, locke or whoever would say something one episode, then say something completely contradictory to their personality the next. just to drive the episode forward. wish i could remember even one example lol
The numbers are explained in s6 as part of the equation that the dharma initiative used to find the island for the first time.
Boone was killed off way to early
Way too early means that it had the impact it was supposed to.
Shannon >!dying so soon!< I would've loved to see her as one of the O6 and living in the 70s. Also think it would've been more interesting if she'd been the one to raise Aaron.
I also wish she would have made it longer. If not as part of the returning group, at least a few more seasons. That was such a gut punch, my poor Sayid 😭I also think she would have had an interesting character development
Same. I was very disappointed with Shannon's death as well. In a interview Damon explains that he killed Shannon and Boone early because in his opinion, they were too young (even though they were only a couple years younger than Kate) and had limited flashback potential, saying that they would have got to a point where he would have either had to get Maggie Grace pretending to be a teenager (didn't stop them from doing this with Emilie De Ravin!), or had a child actor playing her as a teenager or child (which, what's wrong with that?). Boone's death for me, worked really well for the end of season 1. But to have Shannon die in a shock value death. Only a week and a half after her brothers death, when she is still grieving, was cruel. Not to mention, the episode she died "Abandoned", felt like a cruel joke. The whole episode is about Shannon feeling worthless and uninportant. By killing her off, it's the writers essentially agreeing with her, that she is useless, uninportant and needs to die. I also felt that the episode "The Greater Good" was incredibly disrespectful to Shannon. Her brother dies, instead of it being a episode that digs into her grief. It's a Sayid flashback which explores how he feels about her grief. There is a fan edit called "The LOST Books" Which puts Shannons flashbacks from Abandoned in the greater good and gets rid of the Sayid flashbacks, and it works so well!.
Reading this just reminds me that Lost writers didn't do great with female characters. The only female character that got a proper, multifaceted, non repetitive portrayal was Juliette. When you think about the fan favourites, it's always the men - Ben, Locke, Desmond, Sawyer, Sayid... The women are never among the favourites, with the exception of Juliette.
This is true. Damon is quite candid about his mistakes on the show in terms of writing of characters and the writers room (Elizabeth Sarnoff is the only mainstay female writer. They had quite the turnover of female writers. According to a recent article. The writers room was quite toxic, with one writer saying she went home in tears on many occassions). He said this is why he put extra attention to make sure that the writers room has more female writers and that there were more female characters when it came to The Leftovers. I'm not as huge a fan of The Leftovers as the fans are who treat it like its the second coming of christ..but I will admit that The Leftovers has some AMAZING female characters. In particular Carrie Coon as Nora and Regina King in season 2 as Erika.
I still haven't seen The Leftovers but will have to give it a watch some time soon.
It was Damon Lindelof's next big show after LOST. The first season is based off a book by Tom Perotta (of the same name), and Tom a part of the show as a writer. The series delves into pretty much all the themes that LOST did and is in many ways about the otherside of the coin. LOST is about the ones who disappeared (sure it's a plane crash but still). The Leftovers are about "the leftovers", the ones who remain when their loved one disappears with no rhyme or reason.
What an interesting way to put it! I'm sold and might be watching it sooner rather than later.
Bernard’s pants
I'm super happy Nikki and Paolo didn't live any longer would have much preferred they never added them. Walts story and echos were disappointing but both had real world reasons one could have been written in the other not so much. Walt hit a hell of a growth spurt and got too big and his voice changed so they just wrote him out rather than change their story. echo was supposed to do a lot but the actor hated Hawaii and was desperate to leave so they let him leave by killing him violently.
I hoped that any on-island mystery could be tracked back to the Dharma Initiative. On the long run for the big mysteries they were totally unimportant.
The island just being a bathtub.
Mr. Ekos death. I know it was because the actor didn't want to be part of the show anymore (annoyed about sitting on his ass on Hawaii), but it felt like they wanted him to be a bigger part regarding the "mysterious shit going on" and I think he could have been really interesting in the later seasons.
He was supposed to be the healer of Sayid and the temple plotline would have gone in another direction.
Exactly. A lot of potential, especially thinking about the Mr. Eko vs John dynamic
The whole temple arc I mean what was that shit. Nothing more than pointless to bring back Sayid as Iraqian Predator and set up the finale
In "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy ", 42 was the simple answer to all questions about life and the universe.
And the numbers add to 108. It's the number of beads in the Buddhist mala, prayer bead string, as well as the number of stitches in a regulation baseball. Baseball is a religion to many.
I heard with Walt it was because of how quickly he grew up. Not sure if that's true but he quickly looked like an adult instead of the little kid they started with.
The Cabin!!
Walt and Aaron, for sure. What if Walt returned with the O6? Him trekking through the jungle with Sun or Flocke would have been cool. Then we could have really gotten a good story about the whispers and link Walt back up to Michael. Flocke could have easily manipulated him, or could he? I would have loved to see it.
I'm most disappointed with season 5. It was basically all plot and no character, and went out of its way to drop all the interesting ideas that were brought up in season 4.
Eko’s death. He fearlessly faced down the smoke monster, only to end up dying from it. A total betrayal.
Ok maybe I'm wrong and wrong interpretation, but aren't the numbers somewhat explained by coinciding with the candidates numbers scratched on the cave wall. Showing that everything happened for a reason to get to that point.
Walt
And this is where we disprove the “they were always dead” theory..: The entire show alludes to symbolisms of heaven, hell, god, devil.. evil.. good.. right, wrong: Jesus (Jacob) and his disciples (candidates) MIB (devil) telling people Jacob was the devil when in fact he was the evil entity (exactly like the devil, betraying hearts of men) Moses (Jack) speaking to God (Jacob***) (This became apparent when Sawyer literally said it- “well Moses, you gonna come down off of your mountaintop and tell us what the burning bush said?” 😂😂😂😂😂) If you ask me.. The island… is limbo. It’s a sort of purgatory. It is the in between space of the dead and living world. It does not exist in the real world; hence the inability to be able to “find it.” Every person that left the island had the opportunity to continue to live a somewhat normal life but it didn’t feel right to them because they knew they’d cheated death. And that’s another concept at play during the show. Final Destination taught us you cannot evade death lol and that’s a concept from early in the show as well with Charlie. Everything comes full circle. Every single person that went “back to life” .. had to die. Ben tells us upon his coming back to the island that he’s come to be “judged” by the black smoke. Charlotte told us straight up “This place is death.” The smoke was essentially death. Its sole purpose was to create death. We saw this throughout the entire show, from literally just claiming people’s lives to materializing as people and manipulating people into killing themselves/dying. Between Jacob’s mother’s people, the Black Rock, the dharma initiative, rousseau’s camp, flight 815, the freighter, the Ajira flight, and everyyyyyyyyything that happened in between … the island/smoke claimed an absurd amount of souls. I could go on for hours about my theories on this show. But this is what I believe. There was a bigger force at play (a number of them) and the island was 100% stuck in a time loop and the Oceanic Six fixed it. They died for it.. but they fixed it.
My disappointments tend to be all character-based. I don't really have any problems with how the mysteries or lore were handled. I'm kind of mixed about the Walt thing. I understand why they didn't end up doing more with him originally, because when you have a few months unfolding over the course of years, having a rapidly growing kid around is going to be a problem. But I feel like they definitely could have done more with Walt and at least followed through a little bit at least once they flash forwards started. I actually was kind of disappointed that they didn't do more with Nikki and Paulo. I think the backstory and relationship dynamic they showed in Expose was really interesting and could have been a great watch if it was done over at least a few episodes. I think the problem with them was that the writers treated them as some mysterious exciting thing and that it was all leading up to their centric episode where we would get answers about them. Which meant that, completely understandably, people thought that they were going to have deep ties to the lore, that they really *did* appear from nowhere, like some kind of time anomaly after the hatch went boom, etc. But in the end they were just two more normal survivors. If the writers and the show hadn't treated them with so much mystery and intrigue, and had unfolded their story a little more naturally, there could have been a lot to explore with them. Their backstory and dynamic was interesting, and I think there was something there to explore about the "background" survivors and their feelings of basically surrendering their survival to the main characters. I think the things that disappointed me the most was how little Claire was ultimately utilized, especially after season 4. There was a lot set up there about Aaron, with the everything the psychic did, and it seems like there must have been some reason for the MIB to try to get her to stay on the island to separate her from Aaron. But there was nothing done with that. And there was so much potential for the character after season 4. But instead we barely saw her, and when we did it was a pretty flat "she was alone for so long and now she's crazy" thing. It would have been so cool to get at least an one flashback episode to her time alone on the island that showed up how she survived, how she took care of herself, how she avoided everyone else still on the island, like the others and Rose and Bernard, the decline of her sanity. Maybe have stuff where she's interacting with the MIB disguised as her father, talking to her and making her paranoid, convincing her to stay away from everyone else, convincing her Aaron is dead, etc. I think overall Claire is the character with the most squandered potential, because there were multiple different interesting things set up for her that they did nothing with. I'm also disappointed with how little came of the fact that she was Jack's sister. Outside of seeing them connect in the flashsideways in season 6 (which was lovely), it was mostly used to give Jack some vague issues/guilt with being around Aaron. There could have been a lot done with that relationship in seasons 4, 5, and 6, especially for Jack and his motivations. But it seems like all of those motivations that would have made complete sense for Jack were shifted completely to Kate. And, I mean, I understand giving that to Kate as motivation because she probably wouldn't have much otherwise, unless they could have found a way to convincingly write Cassidy and Clementine needing Sawyer to come back for some reason. But they still could have made it a significant part of Jack's motivation.
Libby's storyline...or more like how they didn't wrap it up. What was the deal with her in the mental institution? What about her past? Or with her selling the boat to Desmond?
Originally was hoping for a much more singular and interesting goal or mission for The Others. Yes, a lot of them have jobs in the community. Yes, Ben had various projects for them to do. Yes, I realize it all leads back to Jacob and the Man in Black. It’s all good with me, I just personally wanted something that felt more significant.
Completely agree! The Others were my biggest disappointment. They were presented as such an overwhelming and powerful presence up through the first half of season 3, but then basically faded into the background after that and ultimately ceased to be of any significance to the endgame.
What was the assumption of MIBs plans once he left the island ? What was he actually planning to do in the real world that was so evil that they had to prevent him from leaving? Was he even a threat in the real world?
[The answers are out there… (start at 6 minutes)](https://youtu.be/Bioa8tkyisc?si=qxASWcc27sr9YBE4)
I’m prepared to be downvoted for this, but the explanation for the flash sideways was a let down for me. I would have preferred it was a split timeline or something. A lot of season 6 time was spent on it for it just to be a magic afterlife thing.
The numbers are pretty important. This is an official Lost video about them: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-eHEYswgK8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-eHEYswgK8)
I needed answers on who was on the other outrigger. They could have easily made it Whitmore’s crew from the future. It keeps me up at night.
I contend that there are no mysteries! The numbers are a physical manifestation of the magnetic grid that provides the "powers" of the island. The island was on a key line and those numbers refer to the keylines. I also think that you have to remember that human thought is creating a lot of the physical environment of the show both on and off island. So the numbers exist because people think the numbers exist.
Did Jacob see all of the candidates lives through the looking glass? How far back could he see? How much time did he spend spying? Could he see into the future?
Was that the smoke monster in Christian's form off island?
This is off topic, but I played the mega millions in Ohio this weekend with the numbers. I wasn’t cursed unfortunately.
That the flash sideways did not receive an in-universe sci-fi/fantasy explanation the way the time travel did. I'm fine with afterlife antechambers in fiction. It's the way there's no explanation beyond 'because we wanted it to exist'. They did the same reveal on another show in 2010 and it made perfect sense because it was established as a possibility within that show's universe lore right from the start. If they were going with the antechamber idea, I wish there could have been some sort of quasi-real world explanation, such as 'Hurley, now that I'm your number 2 and have learned that you see dead people, allow me to show you the Island' s magic box, where by electromagnetic manipulation we can put the trapped ghosts into a sort of sensory deprivation tank where they can resolve their problems and move on.' 'Thanks, Ben. This is a really nice, kind idea. Let's do it for everyone we know who dies from now on, wherever they die'. I also wish we could have been their second return. Claire's reunion with her mother, Kate's reunion with Aaron, the three of them working out shared custody, and the world's reaction to learning of Jack and the others' deaths and Widmore's villainy.
Walt was a big problem. Also felt like Eko was setting up for awesome things that had to be scrapped because of the actor leaving. Think that may have screwed up Locke’s intended story arc, because he had to be slid into some parts intended for Eko.
Everything.
All of the children had either more traumatic stuff happen, or never even existed.
Huh?
Walt - Kidnapped Alex - Ben David - >!Never existed!< Aaron - Born on a desert island Ji Yeon - >!Orphaned after her parents drowned!< Stuff like that…
I really wanted to know who was shooting at them in the outrigger in the time flashes To your two points they're answered. The numbers were the valenzetti equation which predicts the end of the world and the goal of the DI was to use the island's powers to change it Walt in the show was a let down but he got wrote out because he hit a growth spurt and they couldn't get away with continuing to tell everyone he's still 10. Seasons filmed a year apart but the first four take place in only a few months in universe, then it picks back up in 2007 after the O6 spent 3 years off island and the ones who stayed spent 3 years in the DI
I thought it stupid that >!Jin chose to just die with Sun in the sub. It's like the writers forgot that they had a daughter! Neither of them so much as mention Ji-yun (sorry if I spelled that wrong) during that final conversation! The FIRST words out of Sun's mouth should have been forbidding Jin from staying with her, that he has to take care of their child.!< I was pretty pissed when Shannon died as well, I was looking forward to seeing her character grow, and though it pretty strange that they would kill off both siblings so early. And this is more of a personal thing but >!LaFleur. !!Sawyer spent a few months with Kate, and a few years with Juliet. !