Barrett Garese

What happened to LOST

I know we’re all past the emotional stage of discussing the finale of LOST, but I just listened to this week’s Totally Rad Show and it reminded me that I never got around to writing down my theory of what happened.

Note: this is just my theory and I have little hard evidence to support it.

1. LOST is pitched as a show about “survivors” who crash on a mysterious island.
2. Internally this island is planned/plotted out to be an inescapable “purgatory,” where, per Wikipedia’s definition of purgatory, “some souls are not sufficiently free from sin and its consequences to enter the state of heaven immediately, nor are they so sinful as to be destined for hell either.” People are healed of their bodily ails (wheelchairs, cancer, etc.) but their souls remain trapped in this purgatory.
3. This inescapable purgatory was counterbalanced (and to a certain degree reinforced) by the flashbacks showing each individual’s life choices before the crash. Each character has very evident flaws and each has regrets for which they need to atone and come to terms.
4. LOST premieres, and is a huge hit.
5. People figure out the purgatory allegory pretty quickly. Too quickly in fact. Within the first few episodes, the theory is already gaining traction.
6. Forced to reckon with a “mystery” show that’s about to lose its mystery, the writers/creators have to publicly deny the purgatory element of the series.
7. This presents three problems: A) almost the entire first season reinforces this purgatory/lost souls premise, B) most of that first season has already been shot (at an incredibly expensive cost) and C) if they abandon the purgatory element they have a hit show without a premise.
8. The decision is made to abandon the purgatory premise under the guise that LOST without mystery is likely no longer a hit series.
9. Frustrated with this new situation, specific writers speak out publicly, mentioning the fact that they’re (now) making it up as they go, and are promptly fired from the show.
10. Season 2 is written to try and pull the show further away from the initial purgatory premise. This is evident by the low quality, wandering narrative of the season. They’re buying time and trying to see what will stick. The mythology becomes unwieldy and cumbersome as questions without answers begin to pile up.
11. Seasons 2-6 have almost nothing to do with the original premise except that they take place on an island and have the same characters.
12. Season 6 ends with them all ascending into heaven (as in the original pitch) but for completely different and much more lame reasons.
13. Having abandoned the original premise, most of the questions from the earlier wandering seasons - as well as any ultimate answers about the nature of the island itself - are relegated to “it’s magic…or God…you know what, it’s really not that important.”

So while the story outside the writer’s room the whole time was “don’t worry we have a plan,” I honestly believe the truth was that they were scrambling to maintain the show’s legs while they figured out WTF to do. Their (excellent) premise was gone, the series didn’t really make sense without it, and they had no idea what to do now. The absurdly well-written pilot episode was a some of the best and most intelligent writing in American television history - but they had to throw it all away and make up new mysteries as they went along because their “mysterious secret” had been blown way too early.

So they lied. They wrote in new mysteries that wouldn’t make sense within that purgatory premise and pointed to them as evidence that the theory was wrong, and hoped they could make up a new theory to fit what they’d already written.

In short, a brilliant first season was actually too popular and fans picked out every little clue that had been placed there as a hint. Fearful that a mystery show with a known underlying premise wasn’t a mystery show at all, the writers abandoned that premise and had to figure it out as they went along. Unable to have a non-purgatory premise make sense within the show, they eventually created a new purgatory, and decided never to explain any of the mysteries of the island itself - despite the fact that the mysteries of the island itself were one of the main driving forces of the show for the first few seasons.

tl;dr: LOST was originally about a group of people navigating purgatory after a plane crash but fans figured it out so the writers panicked and made a new show, but still had to bring in purgatory anyway since that’s the only thing that would make sense.