Television Getting in to LOST again.

[skillzdadirecta]

2 hours ago, MarSolo said:

Was the purgatory theory really the end game?

No it wasn't and Lindelof has been adamant that it's NOT purgatory (when it totally is) Even the actor who played Sawyer has no idea what the fuck it is at the end.

 

Lost Star Still Thinks The Island Was Really Purgatory

SCREENRANT.COM

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Lost star, Josh Holloway, thinks the island was purgatory all along.

 

Quote

I’m still confused. I’ll be honest with you. I think that’s one theory. We could have all been dead. Or we could have been in like this purgatory thing. I always thought that, and still do kind of really think it was more that. To me, that’s what makes more sense. Then they kind of sidestepped it with the parallel life at the end. But I don’t know, because they always said, 'No, it’s not purgatory.'

 

but to answer your question @MarSolo what I was told was that The Island basically was the location of a UFO that crashed on earth millions of years ago and as the land masses of earth formed and developed, the Island grew around it. The Survivors were drawn to the island because it was essentially sending out a distress beacon and certain people on the planet were responsive to it. The smoke monster was a security device essentially, or the ghost of an alien, I don't remember, but give or take a few details, this is what I was told was Lindelof's original concept for what the island would turn out to be by one of the show's former writers. He said Lindelof essentially got spooked when online speculation was leaning too much towards the crashed UFO theory. Again, this was the early days of social media and Lindelof was VERY involved with the online fandom. As i said before, I believe he took himself off of social media after that experience. Don't know if he stayed off but he has said that it was too stressfull and was harmful to his creative process being that involved with the online conversation.

[MarSolo]

On 1/19/2023 at 12:56 PM, skillzdadirecta said:

No it wasn't and Lindelof has been adamant that it's NOT purgatory (when it totally is) Even the actor who played Sawyer has no idea what the fuck it is at the end.

 

Lost Star Still Thinks The Island Was Really Purgatory

SCREENRANT.COM

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Lost star, Josh Holloway, thinks the island was purgatory all along.

 

 

but to answer your question @MarSolo what I was told was that The Island basically was the location of a UFO that crashed on earth millions of years ago and as the land masses of earth formed and developed, the Island grew around it. The Survivors were drawn to the island because it was essentially sending out a distress beacon and certain people on the planet were responsive to it. The smoke monster was a security device essentially, or the ghost of an alien, I don't remember, but give or take a few details, this is what I was told was Lindelof's original concept for what the island would turn out to be by one of the show's former writers. He said Lindelof essentially got spooked when online speculation was leaning too much towards the crashed UFO theory. Again, this was the early days of social media and Lindelof was VERY involved with the online fandom. As i said before, I believe he took himself off of social media after that experience. Don't know if he stayed off but he has said that it was too stressfull and was harmful to his creative process being that involved with the online conversation.

Oh shit, I surprisingly never heard THAT was the original intention! Dammit, that’s so much better than what we got!

 

Also, why isn’t Josh Halloway in more things? Sawyer was legit my favorite character by season 3 and I’m bummed that every show he’s gotten since LOST has been cancelled prematurely. 
 

I was even more bummed that the trailers for the fourth Mission Impossible flick made it seem like he was the main villain and then he’s barely in the flick.

[skillzdadirecta]

7 minutes ago, MarSolo said:

Oh shit, I surprisingly never heard THAT was the original intention! Dammit, that’s so much better than what we got!

 

Also, why isn’t Josh Halloway in more things? Sawyer was legit my favorite character by season 3 and I’m bummed that every show he’s gotten since LOST has been cancelled prematurely. 
 

I was even more bummed that the trailers for the fourth Mission Impossible flick made it seem like he was the main villain and then he’s barely in the flick.

Yeah i never understood why he didn't get more work. Him or Matthew Fox for that matter. He had a show that got canceled pretty quickly at one point, I forget what it was... some kind of spy thing. But yeah I thought he would have gotten more work. He probably made so much money from lost that he can be real picky about what he works on. he was a successful model before Lost.

 

But as far as that original idea, if you go back and watch the first two seasons, it TOTALLY lines up with that theory. 

[MarSolo]

30 minutes ago, skillzdadirecta said:

Yeah i never understood why he didn't get more work. Him or Matthew Fox for that matter. He had a show that got canceled pretty quickly at one point, I forget what it was... some kind of spy thing. But yeah I thought he would have gotten more work. He probably made so much money from lost that he can be real picky about what he works on. he was a successful model before Lost.

 

But as far as that original idea, if you go back and watch the first two seasons, it TOTALLY lines up with that theory. 

Intelligence! It was a CBS crime drama basically but it was a lot of fun.

 

Then he had that alien invasion show Colony with Carl Weathers and Rick’s wife from the Walking Dead that was pretty decent for the first two seasons.

 

I’m definitely due for a rewatch of LOST so I’m definitely keeping that idea in the back of my head when I watch.

[skillzdadirecta]

20 minutes ago, MarSolo said:

Intelligence! It was a CBS crime drama basically but it was a lot of fun.

That was it! 

[Guest]

I just don't understand why people care if it was "made up as they went" or "all planned out". Most of the best shows in history were made up as they went, even if the show runners had some idea about where they were headed.

[TheLeon]

20 minutes ago, sblfilms said:

I just don't understand why people care if it was "made up as they went" or "all planned out". Most of the best shows in history were made up as they went, even if the show runners had some idea about where they were headed.

People wanted to know how that polar bear got on the island, but more importantly they wanted to know that the writers knew how the polar bear got on the island when they wrote that there was a polar bear on the island, not 4 seasons later when they were writing a different plot and thought “oh, and I guess this is how we can justify that fucking polar bear we randomly threw in there years ago”. 
 

 

[Kal-El814]

1 hour ago, TheLeon said:

People wanted to know how that polar bear got on the island, but more importantly they wanted to know that the writers knew how the polar bear got on the island when they wrote that there was a polar bear on the island, not 4 seasons later when they were writing a different plot and thought “oh, and I guess this is how we can justify that fucking polar bear we randomly threw in there years ago”. 
 

 

Yeah but none of this actually matters and I’d wager people are bad at guessing what’s planned vs what isn’t, and their guess is mostly based on how smoothly the plane lands and has very little to do with the route to the runway. It’s weird that people get hung up on this so much.

[skillzdadirecta]

3 hours ago, sblfilms said:

I just don't understand why people care if it was "made up as they went" or "all planned out". Most of the best shows in history were made up as they went, even if the show runners had some idea about where they were headed.

Exactly right... enjoy the show or not but the fact is they were flying by the seat of their pants for awhile. Vince Gilligan and his crew don't plan SHIT in advance even though their shows seem like it. The problem with Lost is that viewers were led to believe that it would all make sense in the end and it didn't because they were filling episodes to meet an order and had abandoned what they originally intended for the island to be. For some fans who were literally obsessing over every little clue this show dropped for years, the fact that it WASN'T planned came across like a betrayal and like they had wasted their time. For most shows, making it up as you go along works and doesn't matter. For a show like Lost that traded on mystery and all of the pieces fitting together in the end, for a lot of people Lost's "plane" didn't land smoothly.

 

3 hours ago, TheLeon said:

People wanted to know how that polar bear got on the island, but more importantly they wanted to know that the writers knew how the polar bear got on the island when they wrote that there was a polar bear on the island, not 4 seasons later when they were writing a different plot and thought “oh, and I guess this is how we can justify that fucking polar bear we randomly threw in there years ago”. 
 

 

This... all of this.

[Guest]

I think it may have helped that I watched the whole thing in the lead up to the last few episodes airing, so I never got into the water cooler chatter.

[skillzdadirecta]

1 hour ago, sblfilms said:

I think it may have helped that I watched the whole thing in the lead up to the last few episodes airing, so I never got into the water cooler chatter.

Oh that definitely made a difference. Wataching it week to week as it came out for that ending was a huge letdown for a lot of fans. I was late to the party myself, I didn't start watching it until after the first season was done before the second season started.

[Moa]

I like that we're still capable of beefing over LOST.

[Anathema-]

16 hours ago, sblfilms said:

I just don't understand why people care if it was "made up as they went" or "all planned out". Most of the best shows in history were made up as they went, even if the show runners had some idea about where they were headed.

 

Right, what matters is whether/how it's all narratively consistent from beginning to end and how readily apparent it is. I think you can just use examples from the show to demonstrate the consistency rather than saying a friend of mine knows people and told me. 

 

People want to trust that the writers won't pull any tricks with the drama and LOST never does. Watching it with someone who doesn't weirdly obsess over every detail she didn't even remember or recognize a need to answer anything about a polar bear, a bird, or even whispers. The things that don't really matter didn't actually matter and still don't. The show is about people, not geegaws. 

[MarSolo]

Once the show focused on “protecting the island from the Man in Black, this new villain we JUST introduced in the fifth season finale”, it lost me.

 

It’s a shame, because I loved the fifth season and all the time travel stuff.

[Anathema-]

5 hours ago, MarSolo said:

Once the show focused on “protecting the island from the Man in Black, this new villain we JUST introduced in the fifth season finale”, it lost me.

 

It’s a shame, because I loved the fifth season and all the time travel stuff.

 

The man in black is the monster and was there since the beginning.  

[MarSolo]

15 hours ago, Anathema- said:

 

The man in black is the monster and was there since the beginning.  

Meh, it seemed like a HUGE retcon that he was the Smoke Monster, especially after that one episode where it showed that Ben was able to “call” the Smoke Monster to attack the soldiers from the boat.

[TheShader]

On 1/20/2023 at 11:14 PM, Moa said:

I like that we're still capable of beefing over LOST.

It's a time honored tradition. 100 years from now our grandchildren and great grand children will still come together to celebrate the LOST beef. Most of them will not even have watched it, but like choosing a sports team they will defend the side their family has had for generations. 

[Anathema-]

4 hours ago, MarSolo said:

Meh, it seemed like a HUGE retcon that he was the Smoke Monster, especially after that one episode where it showed that Ben was able to “call” the Smoke Monster to attack the soldiers from the boat.

 

There's plenty in LOST that's retconning, but the thing is that they're really good at making everything line up and make sense. You can believe Charles Widmore is who he turned out to be even if it's kind of obvious it wasn't strictly planned to that level of detail when they introduced him.

 

The writers have even been open with doing that at times as well, where Michael Emerson famously was hired for a short 2-3 episode arc and was ultimately not only extended but written in to the existing plans for the leader of the others. But just because it's a retcon in some sense it's ultimately not an abuse of the audience because they're careful so that nothing significantly contradicts itself. They had plans and adapted things to fit. That's not wrong. 

 

As far as the monster goes .. the writers were also open with the overall pacing of their show. It began open ended and changed halfway through. They outlined the full back half of the show after they were done with the third. The point where Ben summons the monster is after the point where they would have clearly decided what it was and what it was doing. It can't be retroactive.

 

Of course if you look closely enough not every detail of the man in black being the monster holds up to strict scrutiny when you go back to the beginning. But what is clear is there's a malevolent force on the island that kills some of the survivors and tries to get the other ones to kill themselves indirectly. The outlines of the game and the trap are there. The monster being made of smoke is even there. Enough pieces are there that don't contradict so it's easy to read as a clear narrative.

 

What's more important for demonstrating consistency though are examples like a John episode followed immediately by a Jack episode where John fails the moral test of the island and Jack passes it. It doesn't hurt that it very cleanly reads as the monster running his con on Locke and he just falls for it. Retroactive? Maybe. But you really have to look for it, it's much more fun and honestly easier to just let it pretend that it was all meant like that from the beginning (even the parts they admit weren't that way).

[TheShader]

I feel like something that doesn't get discussed enough is 99% of online fan theories were garbage, and people also just got upset because their imagined lore didn't come true or was contradicted. 

 

One it the best examples was the Black Rock. When they first found it, the characters straight up said it was likely washed into the middle of the island by a large tsunami. Then people made all kinds of wild 'maybe aliens time traveled The Black Rock from another planet to transport their space Jesus to the island so they could conquer earth' theories, and then got pissed when The Black Rock was shown as being washed into the island by a large tsunami. 

 

I swear, most people ruined the show for themselves because they put too much emphasis that they were correct in some inane theory that they never paid attention to anything in the show that contradicted them and then blamed the show's writing instead of their own inability to think critically. 

[Anathema-]

It's kind of insane how little importance many things have watching it straight through in '23. Even stuff that I thought was greatly important was truly an inconsequential blip. 

[TheShader]

One of my favorite 'solved mysteries' is my favorite for exactly this, and I remember people also being pissed because the solution was dead simple. 

 

It was when they found the inhaler dropped on a trail, and realized the case of the missing inhaler was that it literally just fell out of Shannon's pocket. 

 

It showed how inconsequential some things are, and that sometimes things aren't a mystery... It's that sometimes when people are in high stress situations like they were in season 1 trying to survive with nothing that the human condition sometimes is to assume the absolute worst and start putting knives to people's throats. 

 

And the inhaler didn't really need any more of an explanation than that. 

[Anathema-]

I remember it being such a huge controversy over whether John blew up the sub in s3 and what it would mean if someone else did it but there was all this proof yadda yadda people picking apart insane detail when the dialog is literally almost thirty minutes of Ben asking John not to blow up the sub and John saying he's definitely going to blow up the sub, then he says I'm going outside to blow up the sub and then he goes outside and blows up the sub and then apologizes for blowing up the sub. Sawyer gives him crap for blowing up the sub a few episodes later. We 100% did it to ourselves. 

[TheShader]

18 minutes ago, Anathema- said:

 We 100% did it to ourselves. 

100%, and it's a shame because theorizing is legitimately half the fun of your first run through. As much as the show is about the characters and heroes journey at its heart, there's no denying how much speculation is a part of the DNA. Even when watching on DVD or streaming. 

 

But this level of obsession is bound to rip any show apart when people are rewatching an episode 15 times before the next episode, and constantly overanalyzing every tiny line out of context. Especially living in the age of Dan Brown level conspiracy theories where we all thought every slightly misspelled word was a secret clue to the answers of the universe. Which lead to something as simple as Sawyer reading Of Mice and Men turning into some secret message by the writers to hint that the island is Atlantis and the whispers are all the citizens that died when the island was swallowed by the ocean. 

 

(actually, in retrospect, The Island could have been Atlantis in-universe. It tracks it might have spent some time where Plato described it to be, was teleported, and people of the time assumed it sank under the sea) 

[Kal-El814]

I think I watched the series on Blu-ray and IIRC a bunch of the menus and stuff had questions about the mysteries of the show that... the show didn't end up addressing or were red herrings. So yeah I suppose the fans did it to themselves but it's also something the marketing team ran with and encouraged, it didn't come out of nowhere. 

[TheShader]

Also, I don't think the purgatory thing could be any clearer if Lindelof tried. They weren't in purgatory. Purgatory is a Christian concept where your soul goes to a neutral area before being sent to Hell or deemed worthy for Heaven. The flash sideways was a place the survivors created together by their bond on the island. A place they could meet up at one last time, accept their lives were over, and move on together. Which 'move on' was purposefully never described, as 'which afterlife/religion is correct' is not something they wanted to have answered in the series. Which, again, is why they've been beyond adamant that this wasn't purgatory, because it is not a part of the Christian afterlife. 

[Anathema-]

The sideways place isn't purgatory but it serves as a place similar to what people think about purgatory is for. It's not only a place where they could meet each other again it gives every character who failed the moral test their opportunity.

 

John died tragically after being completely unable to get past his demons. The sideways place gives him a happier life but many of the same challenges. The moment John wakes up, the moment they all wake up, is the moment where their souls truly let go and are ready to move on. Contrast that to Hurley, who was completely aware of where they were the entire time and had no need to wake up. 

 

While I'm on the subject, watching Hurley from the beginning... It was always him. You can see it. You can literally see him grow in to the role over the course of the show. 

[Anathema-]

6 hours ago, Kal-El814 said:

I think I watched the series on Blu-ray and IIRC a bunch of the menus and stuff had questions about the mysteries of the show that... the show didn't end up addressing or were red herrings. So yeah I suppose the fans did it to themselves but it's also something the marketing team ran with and encouraged, it didn't come out of nowhere. 

 

The writers responded to the Internet for better and worse. 

[skillzdadirecta]

On 1/21/2023 at 8:50 AM, Anathema- said:

I think you can just use examples from the show to demonstrate the consistency rather than saying a friend of mine knows people and told me. 

 

I have used examples. The only point in bringing up the original intended ending is to dispute the fact that they had it all planned out. They did and then they changed it. Again, it works for you, for a lot of fans it didn't and it seemed like a betrayal. Also there is a HUGE difference between watching the whole series on bluray or streaming after the fact and watching it week to week, season to season and dealing with all of the theories and delays and whatnot to be given an ending that the head writer specifically ruled out in interviews.

 

Lost is the main reason why, with few exceptions, I don't watch serialized TV week to week anymore and would rather wait until all the episodes are out before diving in with few exceptions. I haven't started Last of Us yet for instance and I'm not getting got like that again. For you the show worked and still does and I respect that. However it DIDN'T work for a lot of folks particularly for fans who were watching the show week to week at the time it aired and they are NOT wrong either. As you also said, the marketing team leaned into all of the fan theories and such and encouraged the water cooler speculation with the promise that it would all make sense in the end. Can you really blame fans for feeling letdown when that wasn't the case for some of them? It may have been for you and that's fine but it wasn't for a lot of folks.

 

And you're right... the writers DID respond to the internet, specifically Damon Lindelof and it ultimately hurt the show in my opinion. Like I said he learned a valuable lesson from that and did stronger work after Lost. It was his first show as a showrunner and was a huge hit and he got overwhelemed. It's understandable. I didn't watch The Leftovers because I was so pissed by Lost but I've heard nothing but good things about it. He hit Watchmen out of the park though and he redeemed himself with me even though Alan Moore despises the idea of it  It's all good. You love the show and that's cool. I just took exception to the idea that it was tightly planned out when it clearly wasn't despite the fact that the themes may or may not have been consistent... which is entirely different from the plot.

[TheShader]

Can you provide any source on the UFO/alien thing? Cause I cannot find anywhere in which anyone states that there was some intended ending involving aliens. Also, the island wasn't purgatory, it's not something people guessed from the ending. Even if we were to call the flash sideways 'purgatory', that was entirely separate from the island, which people believed to be purgatory. In fact, on both of those points, the only mention of an aliens spacecraft I could find was an interview with Damon talking about the ending while the show was still running, and he specifically stated he didn't want a flashy twist ending where you find out something like The Island was an alien spaceship the whole time, and it flies off in the end. He wanted a conclusion to the story of the individuals, not a gimmicky twist ending.

 

 

[Anathema-]

When you watch The Leftovers and Watchmen you can see in LOST where his hand is and where Carlton Cuses' was. It's obvious one of them wanted to scatter mystery boxes around and the other wanted clear character directions and motivations. Thankfully both are written in to the show and the extraneous parts truly don't matter. I don't even remember half the shit we thought about the show that just doesn't matter. 

 

The Hurley bird was a crazy thing designed to make Michael shoot at it to discover he had no bullets in his gun. It doesn't have to be anything more than that and it wasn't. Only the obsessive watching made it into something more than it was. 

[skillzdadirecta]

1 hour ago, TheShader said:

Can you provide any source on the UFO/alien thing? Cause I cannot find anywhere in which anyone states that there was some intended ending involving aliens. Also, the island wasn't purgatory, it's not something people guessed from the ending. Even if we were to call the flash sideways 'purgatory', that was entirely separate from the island, which people believed to be purgatory. In fact, on both of those points, the only mention of an aliens spacecraft I could find was an interview with Damon talking about the ending while the show was still running, and he specifically stated he didn't want a flashy twist ending where you find out something like The Island was an alien spaceship the whole time, and it flies off in the end. He wanted a conclusion to the story of the individuals, not a gimmicky twist ending.

 

 

 No I cannot provide proof because it was told to me by a former writer of the show. Believe it or not, doesn't really matter. What matters is the ending clearly didn't match up to what was being setup in earlier seasons. Once they had an idea of how they were going to resolve the show, they started writing towards THAT and as someone else said, that didn't occur until they knew for sure that the show was ending after season 6 I think? ABC wanted to keep it going but Lindelof was pretty over it. I think ABC wanted 10 seasons and Lindelof's original plan was for five. They compromised at six.

 

38 minutes ago, Anathema- said:

When you watch The Leftovers and Watchmen you can see in LOST where his hand is and where Carlton Cuses' was. It's obvious one of them wanted to scatter mystery boxes around and the other wanted clear character directions and motivations. Thankfully both are written in to the show and the extraneous parts truly don't matter. I don't even remember half the shit we thought about the show that just doesn't matter. 

 

The Hurley bird was a crazy thing designed to make Michael shoot at it to discover he had no bullets in his gun. It doesn't have to be anything more than that and it wasn't. Only the obsessive watching made it into something more than it was. 

To be fair, I think the mystery box influence came from Abrams. He has stated often that what's in the box doesn't matter and its really his style of writing. In fact you can see similarities between how Lost turned out and how he handled the sequel trilogy, particuarly Rise of Skywalker. He truly doesn't give a shit about resolving mysteries that he himself sets up. 

 

As far as the obsessive watching thing goes, they totally played on that. At least the network and marketing execs did and ultimately it biut them in the ass in my opinion. Lindelof clearly learned a lesson from it and his writing got better after that because he stopped paying attention to online fandom. he also stopped biting off more than he could chew. After Lost became a hit, he took on a BUNCH of work and got overwhelmed pretty quickly because he was living the fanboy's dream and wanted to work on everything that was offered to him.