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No, They Weren’t Dead the Whole Time
An oral history of Lost’s daring, divisive finale, our last truly communal broadcast-TV experience.
Born from an idea generated by then–ABC chairman Lloyd Braun, crafted into pilot form by co-creators J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof, then fleshed out over six seasons into a character-driven, mythologically rich, Emmy-winning existential adventure, the island-based drama had become one of the biggest pop-cultural obsessions in the world by the end of the aughts. Because Lindelof and co-showrunner Carlton Cuse, along with ABC, announced their plans to end the series in the middle of the third season, and because the show’s mysteries were avidly dissected online like none had been before, the fixation on the final episode was extreme. The two-and-a-half-hour finale, which cost upwards of $15 million to make, wrapped up six seasons of relationship and time-jumping narrative development by having Jack Shephard (Matthew Fox) battle John Locke (Terry O’Quinn) — who at that point had become the human embodiment of the show’s famous Smoke Monster — in an attempt to save the island where the characters crash-landed, while revealing that its parallel, non-island timeline, dubbed the flash-sideways, was really a bardo where all the key figures from the show met to help usher Jack into the next realm.
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