'LOST' (2004-2010): Unraveling The Enigma Of The Most Polarizing Show In Television History • The Daily Fandom

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LOST (Jeffrey Lieber, J. J. Abrams, & Damon Lindelof; 2004-2010)¹ was a cultural phenomenon in the mid-2000s. For its first few seasons, it was considered a must-watch television and everyone was talking about it. ² However, as its run continued, audiences slowly fell out of love with the haunted castaways and the mysterious island on which they lived. ³ When most people talk about this show, they can agree that it had a solid start, but eventually, it became clear that the writers had no direction for the show, leading to convoluted and unsatisfying plot lines that lead nowhere.

LOST. 2004-2010. ABC. From left to right, Hurley, Jack, Leslie, Kate, Danielle, and John in the jungle. — *LOST*. 2004-2010. ABC.

Despite the later criticisms, LOST paved the way for a new era of television. Now, it is common for television shows to have impressive ensemble casts, huge budgets, and feel like short movies (think Stranger Things (2016-)⁴ and Game of Thrones (2011-2019).⁵ LOST aired on ABC in the early 2000s when most other primetime dramas were formulaic, filmed on cheap sets, and easy to tune in and out each week.

LOST was different; it was heavily serialized and rewarded its viewers for paying attention each week with Easter eggs and references to past plot lines. However, ABC stretched it out well past its shelf life, leading to character and plot inconsistencies that hurt the show’s reputation. It pushed the boundaries of what was on television at the time, while also serving as a warning to other shows for what happens when a show outlives its welcome.

How was LOST Was Ahead Of Its Time

LOST was unlike anything else on network television at the time the pilot episode premiered; tt was intense and fast-paced with a huge and diverse cast. The mysteries of the island were made even more intriguing by the characters and how their mysterious pasts intertwined with their new relationships with one another.

The Castaways Who Got Us Hooked

LOST follows the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815, a plane that crashed on a (seemingly) deserted island in the South Pacific while flying from Sydney, Australia, to Los Angeles, California. As the survivors work together to stay alive, they discover that there is much more to the mysterious island. While LOST works as a thriller/mystery/science fiction/adventure story, it does not forget to introduce dozens of fully fleshed-out characters whose lives before the plane crash are as shrouded in mystery as the island itself.

LOST. 2004-2010. ABC. — *LOST*. 2004-2010. ABC.

Character development might have been what LOST did best; the pilot episode has a wordless, almost two-minute-long scene on the beach by the plane wreckage, introducing eight main characters. Instead of overloading the exposition, this scene (and many other scenes throughout the first season) makes the audience hungry to know more. ⁶

Each episode focuses on a different character and shows both their experience on the island and a flashback to a thematically similar scenario in their life before the crash. The reveal of each character’s backstory was even more gripping than the mysteries of the island.

Financial Risks

The pilot episode cost $14 million to make, and the executive who approved that decision was subsequently fired by the network for approving that big of a budget. ⁷ Part of this budget went to shipping an actual commercial airplane to Oahu (the filming location) as the wreckage of Oceanic Flight 815.

This immediately added to the show; the crashed plane is shown onscreen within the first minute of the episode and negates the need for CGI (which in 2004 was not great). Another part of the budget went to shooting the episode on 35-millimeter film. While this option is considerably more expensive than filming digitally, film can be endlessly upscaled and looks much more visually appealing than digital, which was only in 480p at the time. ⁸

This financial risk paid off as the first season had on average over 15 million viewers per episode and won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series in 2005, as well as many other awards and hundreds more nominations. ⁹ ¹⁰

Rising Stars

Another reason this show was so successful was that, for the most part, the cast was made up of relatively unknown actors. While it didn’t have big names to draw in audience members, having an unknown cast worked in LOST’s favor.

It was easy to get caught up in the story and believe these characters were really on an island, rather than being distracted by seeing a famous movie star and only thinking of them as the actor, not the character.

Online Presence

While it’s common today for fanbases to gather online on Twitter, TikTok, or Reddit, LOST came before these platforms. As it first aired in 2004, it was one of the first shows to have a true online presence. Facebook had just started and Twitter didn’t even exist yet, so fans created online forums to discuss their theories. They went online each episode night to discuss their theories in real-time. Lostpedia was (and still is) the place to go for all things LOST and The Fuselage, a message board run by JJ Abrams, hosted Q&As with the cast. ¹¹

LOST: “The Show That Flew Too Close To The Sun”

As LOST progressed, it became clear to viewers that the writers didn’t seem to have a plan for how to end the show or have any satisfying answers to the countless questions introduced throughout its six-season run. In the early seasons, when answering one question led to a dozen more, it fueled fan interest and the desire to keep watching.

But by season four, this grew tiresome and fans were demanding answers, not more wacky convoluted plot lines.

Network Demands

Lindelof and Cuse have both said they wanted the show to end after three seasons and had planned when and how to answer the remaining questions.

However, ABC thought it was absurd to end such a successful show so early in its run and wanted to stretch it out for as long as possible to bring in more revenue for the network. (Grey’s Anatomy (2005-), ¹² another ABC show that started around the same time as LOST, is currently on season twenty.) Following the first season’s success, ABC wanted at least ten seasons of LOST. ¹³

Trying to keep up with network demands brought about many of the issues fans had with the show. Since the writers had to keep the story going, there were more filler episodes where they introduced bizarre storylines and characters (Nikki and Paolo) and had an episode devoted entirely to the backstory of a character’s tattoos.

This episode in particular, “Stranger In A Strange Land” is still regarded by fans and critics as the worst episode of the entire series. ¹⁴ Even the show’s writers disliked “Stranger In A Strange Land.” They showed the episode to ABC and used it as proof that LOST was not meant to go on forever; it needed to end to preserve the legacy of the show and its characters. ¹⁵

Despite ABC demanding more episodes, overall the writers were able to add new likable and important characters and plot lines while continuing to develop the existing ones and not neglecting characters. Each season has a distinct theme and answers some questions without losing forward momentum.

Striking Out

LOST was further impacted by the writer’s strike in 2007. This threw another wrench in the planned pacing of the show, as season four was shortened from twenty-three episodes down to just fourteen episodes. ¹⁶

Did The LOST Finale Crash and Burn?

You can’t talk about LOST without bringing up the ending. Despite its strong start, it suffered through a series of setbacks that left fans feeling bitter before the series finale even aired. Even today, over thirteen years after the ending, it consistently pops up on lists of the worst series finales of all time. ¹⁷ It is easy to feel disappointed by LOST‘s ending, especially when watching for the first time. The resolutions for all the mysteries were unsatisfying and far-fetched, even by the standards of a Syfy-fantasy-time travel-island-mystery. However, rewatching the series allows for a more positive outlook on the ending.

The aspect of the finale that people seemed to hate most was based on a misunderstanding. Many people thought that the ambiguous ending meant that all the characters died in the plane crash and all the subsequent events on the island were a sort of purgatory. If this were the actual ending, the backlash would be extremely warranted.

It would mean that nothing that happened throughout the six seasons mattered; there were no stakes, nothing was real, and it was all a shared fantasy. But it is explained (pretty explicitly) in the finale that this is not the case. The characters were not dead the whole time and everything that took place on the island really happened.

Unsatisfying Answers

Another thing working against the finale was that it was heavily marketed as the “answer season.” Contrary to popular belief, most of the mysteries in the show were resolved, they just weren’t resolved satisfyingly, leaving many viewers disappointed. An example of this would be “the numbers.”

The numbers 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, and 42 appeared throughout the show as Easter Eggs. They originated from a character who used them to buy a winning lottery ticket, but popped up as the flight number, Oceanic Flight 815, a character sitting in seat 23B on the plane, and countless other times, whether a number appeared as a birthdate, address or phone number.

Fans had many theories on the significance behind these numbers and were excited to finally learn the answer- so when it was revealed that the numbers came from a character that was introduced in the last season as a part of a magic plan to save the island, fans were more than a little disappointed.

Unforgettable Characters

Even though LOST was a mystery filled with plot twists, its real strengths were the characters, their growth, and the relationships they formed with one another. Each person arrived on the island more than a little broken and was able to heal through the plane crash and the events that followed.

If you watch the LOST finale thinking more about the characters and less about the plot, it is an emotionally satisfying ending. Viewers see even the most despicable characters redeem themselves, broken relationships heal, and lonely people find a new chosen family.

A Show Made For Binging

With streaming services, you can now binge-watch LOST in a few months instead of waiting six years to finish it. You can pause and rewind episodes to get all the details, don’t have to wait months between seasons and enjoy the character development more while stressing about the answers to the mounting questions less.

Binging the show makes the ending more enjoyable as well; a lackluster ending with ambiguous resolutions to the mysteries is much less disappointing after watching the series in a few months than watching it for six years. Think about the success LOST might have had if it had come out on Netflix or HBO. These platforms allow more creative freedom for shows. The seasons could have been more concise and the creators could have had more flexibility to end the show when they thought was right, rather than keeping up with network demands.

The LOST Legacy

So what can we learn from LOST? It started strong and continues to be ranked as one of the best television shows of all time. Yet its decline in its later seasons and the abysmally rated finale have since stained its reputation. LOST showed television networks that serialized dramas can be incredibly successful. In fact, with all the serialized dramas today, it is hard to remember a time when they didn’t exist.

That being said, successful dramas learned from LOST‘s mistakes. Most of the most popular drama series since, like Game of Thrones (2011-2019), Breaking Bad (2008-2013), ¹⁸ Ozark (2017-2022), ¹⁹ and Better Call Saul (2015-2022) ²⁰ all had shorter seasons with about 8-13 episodes each, and have (except Game of Thrones) six seasons or less.

We can appreciate LOST more now that we have taken a step back from its original airing. Despite some disappointing character arcs, annoying conflicts and troupes, and all of the aforementioned issues, LOST was unlike anything that had ever been on television before and paved the way for more big-budget, high-quality television shows, and the online subculture and discourse for shows that is common today.

References

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LOST. 2004-2010. ABC.
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“The best show that no one talks about anymore“. YouTube, uploaded by Drew Gooden. 1 October 2021. Accessed 20 December 2023.
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“Damon Lindelof on Watchmen, the Tulsa Race Massacre, Prometheus, Lost, and More – Collider Connected.” YouTube, uploaded by Collider Extras. 5 July 2020. Accessed 20 December 2023.
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LOST. Season 3, Episode 9: “Stranger in a Strange Land. (2004-2010. ABC.
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McGee, Ryan. “The Last Great ‘Lost’ Debate: Falling Sideways.” 30 May 2010. Accessed 20 December 2023.
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Goldman, Eric. “Writers Strike: Should Lost Air This Season?” November 7, 2007. Accessed 20 December 2023.
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Breaking Bad. 2008-2013. AMC.
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Ozark. 2017-2022. Netflix.
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‘LOST’ (2004-2010): Unraveling The Enigma Of The Most Polarizing Show In Television History