It’s been exactly two years since the series finale of “Lost” aired and subsequently snapped the Internet in half like a stale pretzel rod. To commemorate the occasion, “Lost” executive producer — and Uproxx reader — Damon Lindelof (Hi Damon! [waves]) sat down with The Verge for a length interview about the show, during which he said he has “no regrets” about the way the show ended.
It’s been a long time since we all had it out over “Lost.” I vote we take this opportunity to air it all out one more time, especially now that we’ve had two full years to let it marinate. Maybe now that you’re separated from the moment your opinion has changed a little. Maybe you just got caught up on all the DVDs to see what the hubbub was about and have THINGS TO SAY. Or, you know, maybe you still hate it like poison and just want to post a bunch of nasty cusses in the comments. I recommend using “dickfoot.” It’s funny because dicks and foots are different, so if someone had dicks for feet it would be SO ZANY.
Anyway, let’s go to the mattresses. To paraphrase a wise man, these things gotta happen every couple years or so. Helps to get rid of the bad blood.
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Okay, I’ll oblige. The ending was idiotic and watching it made me happy that I hadn’t invested any more time in the show other than what it took to watch the last few episodes.
So, without the context of having watched the show, an ending which built upon the narrative of multiple seasons had no resonance with you.
@Zack
Youre a dickfoot.
Vincent curling up to Jack as he died made me tear up like I was watching Bruce Willis talk to Liv Tyler in Armageddon, so anyone who didn’t like it can go to Hell.
Correct!
I admit Sawyer and Juliet remembering each other made me tear up just a bit. A pretty decent ending, but not a game changer.
Pretty much just like the show.
A shitty, shitty finale with too many unanswered questions. So glad I decided to wait til the final season to start watching the show from the very beginning.
Other than the finale, a great show.
It’s fine. Not great, not terrible, just fine. Sure, it’s sort of a letdown, with all the loose threads and whatnot, but it doesn’t ruin my enjoyment of the rest of the series.
Also, HI, DAMON! I’m excited for Prometheus.
I still say this ending was basically the equivalent of choosing to spend eternity with a bunch of random bros you spent a semester abroad with and never saw again.
Exactly my thoughts. Half the last season was spent watching people awaken memories to enter the afterlife. It ruined everything for me.
My LOST has five seasons.
Dickfoot is what Rob Ryan calls Rex’s wife
HA!!!!
Considering the complete mess they made of everything the final season, the ending was as good as it was going to get. It had a chance to go down as one of the all-time greats, instead of just very good overall – so watching them fumble away the game-winning drive was painful.
My feelings have not changed over time. I still don’t care.
It was not a good ending. I cannot believe the answer to the mystery of the island was “magical buttplug.”
Well, at least it was located in an area that was bereft of sunlight.
I rest my case.
I think that’s why I endured the show even as bad as it got in the end and was (and still am) so passionate about it. While the overall plot became the biggest joke in TV history but damn did the show have some great actors and characters…. Of course it also had Kate who is more evil than Hitler and Stalin’s demonically possessed love-child
I think the reason I really hate this show so much is that even to this day Lindelof and the other writers and producers still run around and insist that there was a grand master plan or internal logic and planning to the show. There wasn’t. The show never had any narrative structure or flow other than have a bunch of people trapse around in the jungle for 39 minutes then BOOM! Nonsensical twist ending that doesn’t make any fucking sense and never will because next week ANOTHER twist ending will negate everything that happened thus far.
They were clearly just making shit as they went along with no idea how to resolve ANY of it which is why season 6 was such an epic clusterfuck. If making shit up as you go it is perfectly fine, but just fucking admit it. Don’t pretentiously sit there and criticize fans more not “getting it” when there was nothing to get.
A perfect contrast to Lost is Battlestar Gallatica. Fanboys hate on both endings because neither made a lick of sense but BS finale never really bugged me. Why? Because Ron Moore and the BS writing staff admitted they were making shit up on fly so of course we were left with convoluted mess at the end. If Lost’s “showrunners hadn’t been lying their asses off to the public about the true nature of the show for the entire run, insisting that it would all work out, I don’t think the backlash would have been as severe. dickfoot
A magical buttplug with Caprica Six? Now that’s a finale I can get behind.
Wordplay.
Didn’t they admit that they didn’t have everything planned out from the start? I thought they believed they were going to get cancelled each season so they never really had an end.
After Season 3 they were renewed for 3 seasons which they knew would be their last. That’s plently of time to devised and execute an half-ass exit strategy. Interestingly enough that’s when the show got super-absurd.
Yea….I mean that’s a legit point, but I feel like they did wrap up in a manner befitting the show they’d been writing for the past 3 years – if you toss in a magic time travel donkey wheel and CJ from The West Wing as Mother Earth, you’re sending a pretty clear message that this isn’t going to conclude scientifically.
dudebro. exactly. at the end of season 3, they knew they had 3 seasons to wrap it. just spend the next 3 seasons answering the first 3 seasons, but they just kept throwing more new shit in while promising they had the whole thing planned out.
if they had said look we’re just going with it, then i wouldnt have become so invested in what was a long drawn out lie. still my fault for putting that kind of faith in tv writers. but btwn the mystery, science, religion and literary references i let myself be tricked into thinking the writers really were that smart and had a plan. ah well.
I think by the time the ending aired I was already checked out, so ultimately I found it to be just OK, and in-keeping with the last season or two of the series.
When this started, I thought of Twin Peaks… a series that seemed to have no roadmap. I didn’t think of it because it seemed like the producers didn’t know where it was going–quite the contrary, as it seemed everything was defined and had direction. No, I thought of Twin Peaks because that was a show that really didn’t seem to consider its ending at all even when they know the end was nigh.
Now of course with time to reflect on Twin Peaks, I realize they ended it probably the way David Lynch intended because he’s one weird@$$ mother-fer.
Lost really lost its way (I tried to avoid that pun, really) and when the end was close they just kept tossing out the questions. Then the wrap-up just seemed to be whatever they felt would be the easiest way to explain away it all.
I sense that in ten or fifteen years when I’m watching the next series that is composed of inexplicable events that Lost will not benefit from a shrugging “Well, in retrospect, that’s just Lindelhoff for ya.”
breezed through them on netflix. If you race through it, you don’t have time to think about all the holes in the storyline or the tit bits left unresolved. I didn’t hate it, I was more relieved that it was finally over and my bucket list was one show less.
Another ringing endorsement for the writing staff!
In my eyes there have only been 2-3 shows that have come along since Lost that I was so invested in, both storyline-wise and character-wise. I didn’t entirely dislike the ending, it was good for the fans who had been watching for the characters.
The extra scene attached to the season 6 DVD which kinda explained Hurley becoming the new protector of the island was better closure for the fans of the storyline. I agree with you Damon!
Lindeloff and Cuse said that if they ever got prematurely cancelled, they could do one episode that could explain everything since they knew the whole story going in. They said they were going to stop the show on “their terms” because they knew the story.
In this case, they are me and I am the runaway at the bus station. Lies and empty promises.
Also, why did I have to sign up with Twitter and then sign up again? Hacker jerks.
It was far from great, and the ending was kinda cop-out-ish; but I still enjoyed season 6, including the finale, and it did nothing to tarnish my love for the series.
Screw him. I’m unable to trust people anymore after getting jerked around by him and Cuse for years. WHERE’S THE PAYOFF?!?!
I like that the people who enjoyed the ending have basically said “it was full of plot holes and didn’t really make that much sense but I still kinda dug it”.
We all have our guilty pleasures.
Dead the whole time.
Heaven is a storm drain? Fuck you, fuck you with a dickfoot. You’ve got license to do WHATEVER, WHAT, THE FUCK, EVER, and that’s what you do, and a goddamn unitarian chapel, blow me with battery acid. Seriously, drop nicolas cage on the island and let him announce he’s going to steal the magna carta and cut to fucking black. Or just have everyone die and pan to a smiling monkey. Anything. Oh god that was miserable.
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The ending was perfect. Lost was a story about stories, a mythology for a post-modern age where no one gets to know the absolute truth about every little thing, as only the community maters. And if you want those little stupid explanations, then just watch the DVD extra where they basically tie up every loose end.
or you know basically none of the loose ends.
That was quite possibly the most fart-sniffing explanation of Lost I’ve ever read.
“It’s a story about…stories, man!”
Remember when everyone on the internet had the theory that the island was purgatory? Then Lindelof and Cuse were like no, the island is not purgatory. Then it was? That sucked.
I do just have to point out, in all nerdish shame, that the island was not purgatory. The only thing that could be described as a pergatory-type place were the flash-sideways of the final season. The island itself, and all the stuff that happened on it, actually happened. Jack died on the island, then went into the flash-sideway-purgatory-funhouse, which ended with everyone at the church when they all “remembered” each other.
Et cetera.
How did I spell purgatory correctly twice, but incorrectly once? That’s an accomplishment I’ll hold dear for quite some time.
The ending of Lost was better than the beginning of this interview. It took two minutes for the guy to actually ask a question. The interviewer is also obviously disappointed he was never cast as a member of the Dharma Initiative.
We are so cynical nowadays, I think it would have been impossible to write a sufficient ending and make everyone happy. It’s almost as if we, as fanboys and critics alike, find solice in our disappointment; it gives us a reason to voice our opinions more freely.
“I would have ended it like this” and “I noticed so many holes! Listen to how observate I am!”
Blah blah blah.
It was show that we all watched, nay, OBSESSED, for six seasons and when it was gone it left us with a vacuum only to be filled by faceless voices of the internerds.
It is what it is.
I have yet to hear ANYONE with a better idea for a solid ending.
so how about you don’t write it so that the ending is impossible to write? Afterall they’re the ones writing it. It’s not like someone else wrote the beginning and middle, and then someone new had to come in and write the end. A story has a beginning, middle, and end. That’s elementary school level writing knowledge. LOST was beginning, middle, ramble off onto a tangent, separate concluding paragraph from the beginning and middle, end. Good writing is half content, half structure.
Either way it’s laziness or just poor writing as a writer to not consider the audience and not conclude storylines you started.
If you submitted LOST as a high school or college paper, your teacher would hand it back and be like so some nice content in there, but in the end it was nonsensical rambling. Here’s your C. Next time consider your audience and what your story you’re trying to tell.
[mus.edu]
I haven’t watched Season 6 since it aired, but I have the DVD boxset and I’m going to start a rewatch sometime this summer. For what it’s worth I really enjoyed the finale even though Season 6 was a wee bit disappointing for me. It’s not even that I hated the mythology stuff on the island, I think I just found the Flash-sideways stuff a bit lacking.
There still hasn’t been a show that I connected with in the way that I connected with Lost though (Community notwithstanding). It’s still the only show that I watched from the very beginning to the very end, week after week, and I think it’ll be a looong time before we see another network show like it.
I counted myself as lucky. When LOST first came on the air. I was comming nearly a decade of Chris Carter not giving me any real answers about the X-Files mythology. About five episodes into the first seaon of LOST, I saw it was gonna be the same kinda circle jerk.
I jumped off that ride and only went back to watch the final episode. After hearing roommates and co-workers rave, cry and fight about this show over the years. I was quite pleased with the final episode and the responses it brought out of the rabid fans of the show.
I wasnt invested in the show like so many other folks and being a little ignorant of most of the mythology. I remember watching the final episode with a bunch of folks that practically worshipped it. When it ended I smiled and said, “Wow! You mean the whole show was one long series of near-death experinces and they all final die and go to Paradise? That’s an ending I like”
The angry villagers practically chased me out of the bar with torches and pitchforks!
The ending (actually the entire last season) blew. Period.
I watched the first two seasons on DVD around the time season 3 began. I was totally hooked by the “Hatch” story line and entering the numbers etc. So hooked that I watched every episode as it aired until the end. I specifically remember being livid with the mysteries piling up by season 5, and I openly complained after each episode.
I went into the last season with an open mind that things would finally get RESOLVED and for the most part they did. The finale? I really liked it. To the point where I was legitimately speechless for about a minute after Jack closed his eye. What can I say, I’m sentimental like that.
No one has mentioned it here yet but the composition of the soundtrack by Michael Giacchino was simply beautiful. I haven’t been moved by music+characters+story like that since…since ever.
It wasn’t that the ending sucked, it was that Damon flat out lied about it when fans called it by Season 2. Also, the ending sucked. Sorry. I was a huge fan and it was an incredible let down.
I thoroughly enjoyed the Finale.
Here’s where I think the break down happened; people are hypocrites. We all profess we want smart entertainment, we are tired of being spoon fed things. Something comes along that does just that, allows for open interpretation of the writing, or leaving open ended topics to allow the audience to close themselves. Then all hell breaks loose because we were never given that satisfaction of closure.
The only things people bitch about are things that don’t answer the questions. Lost, Sopranos, Seinfeld, etc. No one bitches about the Friends finale because the characters were all written off and lines were closed. “YAY! This makes me smart because I said Ross and Rachel would get together for the finale and they did!! YAY me!”
Ultimately we just want to know everything so we can feel better about ourselves, and look creative when in substance we aren’t.
Also side note: the Nikki and Paulo episode is still more cohesive to the story than any arc on goddamn Walking Dead. Bunch of dickfeet writing that show.
So plot holes and unresolved story arcs = smart storytelling? Ok, got it.
TRUTH.
The finale sucked, but it wasn’t monumentally worse than the rest of the final season, which was a complete disaster. The first four seasons of Lost were my favorite show ever. It was enthralling, nail-biting, and full of highly engaging characters with deeply developed stories. Season 5 was when things were starting to get weird, but the show still held some promise. That was officially the point where I started questioning whether the writers really knew the ending when they wrote the Pilot. Then, after five years of learning about our favorite characters through flashbacks and flashforwards, Season 6 comes along with its “flash-sideways” scenes. First of all, finish telling the damned story. I don’t care how it ends in a parallel universe, I want a genuine resolution to the story you’ve been telling for five years. Second, at this point, we did not need any further character development. An outstanding job was done developing Jack, Locke, Kate, Sawyer, Claire, Charlie, and all our favorites. By that time, I felt like we knew these people. And yet the writers kept fleshing out their personalities, which at that point, was a total waste of time. I am now firmly convinced they had no idea where they were going when they started writing the first season.
I don’t have anything negative to say against it. Yes, there were a lot of questions that did not get answered. Some of the answers were pretty lame. The whispers being “souls trapped on the island” was one of them. However, for me, there was more good than bad. I enjoyed it for six seasons, now I’ve moved on.
You didnt like it? Get fucked.
I read that there will eventually be a reboot of Lost. How is this going to be accomplished? Same characters different stories? Hurley and Sawyer protecting the island when new castaways arrive?
I started out enjoying the series. I watched the whole thing (just to see how it ended.) I liked the “emotional” ending with the flash-sideways and Jack dying in the bamboo forest with Vincent. Those moments felt right. But it’s clear Damon and co didn’t have a damn clue what they were doing with the island and its inhabitants. After it was over, I plotted out a streamlined version that ironed out all the useless characters and plot threads. It’s been so long I forget how it went. Also I’m sure nobody wants to hear it anyway.
And for the record, the moment I consciously decided I no longer enjoyed the show and to just watch it out of morbid curiosity was when they did an episode about how Jack got his damn tattoos.
Oh and I really liked the “true” ending with Hurley, Ben and Walt that was on the DVD. (Which is on YouTube somewhere.)
That was the worst. I remember the preview for the that episode where we were told some of the island’s biggest mysteries were to be solved. Jack’s tattoos not a mystery.
What the fuck was the Hurley Bird? I want one that says “Choco Taco!”
If anyone is a dickfoot, it’s the Verge host who didn’t know anything and really showed how to screw up an interview.
Here’s what @DamonLindelof (and most of the viewers) REALLY thought during this interview: [mypals.at]
I think the interview as great in the sense that it was very pleasant to watch Damon L talk about writing and Prometheus and Lost again. He is a charming man and learning about his writing process and the evolution of his career is fascinating. He is also much more confident these days.
That said, watching this interview was almost as heart wrenching as watching the finale. Here was an opportunity for a REAL fan or a human with some smarts to sit down with DL and ask in depth questions about the show, the structure the finale, the process. And what happened? “They were dead the whole time” idiot got the interview. Of course DL pwned him. Of course it was easy to dismiss anything that the man said after that. wildly disappointing. there are literally thousands of people who would have killed for the shot and done a better job to put it nicely.
DL did not really say anything new here. Not much anyway. I did find most interesting the revelation that he did not have warm feelings towards the mythology. in fact, it seemed as if he had at least a mild disdain for it. this explains why there were so many loose threads. These writers were brilliant in many moments. it was always very hard to believe/understand that they could not pull of some decent retcon’s when shows like HIMYM are capable of mastering the art. I think now it was not that they could not do it, it is that they did not want to do it. And, this i do not understand.
I also do not understand why characters and mythology have to be at odds in DL’s mind. Why could not both get a fair and equal treatment in the resolution of the show. This is not so much about the “answers” for me, as it is about the relevance of plot points, ideas and mysteries to the ultimate story line. If you take away the island and the Dharma and the mysterious goings on, then what you have left is love stories and stories of friendship and survival. that is all neat and great. but, what i describe just there, without the island and the mythology also describes any given lifetime movie of the week.
the mythology upon which these characters developed is important. it draws in the audience, the specific audience, one that likely does not watch lifetime, but can and does empathize with the character developments. Point being, truly great stories pay as much attention to the characters as to the backdrop/mythology. And, I cannot agree that all the characters were sensibly and emotionally wrapped up either.
There are so many questions i wish were asked. and i think DL would have answered as best as possible this time. shame.
Season Six of Lost was so fucking shitty that I’m still pissed about it two years later. Season after season, they set up the audience with this grand mythology that included a Smoke Monster randomly killing islanders, Egyptian temples and statues, a “God-like” being in Jacob, time travel, immortals and “lost” refugees on an mysterious island that was nearly impossible to find, only to say “It doesn’t matter – Fuck off”.
It’s like watching the Super Bowl but without a winner. “Who gives a fuck? It was a GREAT game!” “Yeah, but nobody won!” “Who Gives a Fuck?”.
I wish I could get my money back for Seasons 1-5 that I purchased brand new on Amazon.com but I’d gladly exchange them in order to give Lindelof & Cuse each a big fucking cock punch.
And finally, thanks to Lindelof and Cuse for effectively killing the Network Prime Time Sci-Fi/Fantasy serial. No audience will invest their time, for probably a decade if not more, thanks to these fucking dickfooted assclowns.
It annoys me when people still think the island was purgatory….clearly you haven’t watched the entire series, 3 times over.