Confession time: Try and try as I did, I could never get obsessed with Lost when it was airing on ABC. As much as everyone loved it and raved about it and held legitimate discussion groups about it (why were there polar bears on a tropical island anyway?!), the fact that episodes would constantly present new and strange mysteries without any payoff of years (and sometimes, no payoff at all!) was just too much for me, and I had to give up watching to save myself from throwing something at my television set in frustration. I always figured, however, that it was just me — that I was perhaps apart of a small pool of people who just didn't get the show, like an English major with Calculus or something. So, color me pretty shocked at this news: Turns out, ABC's Lost writers didn't know what was going on either, and constantly made up crazy new plotlines and mysteries with no real endgame, exit strategy, or concept of why.
The admittance came from writer/executive producer Nick Santora (known for his work on Prison Break and Scorpion) during an episode of the Nerdist Writer's Panel podcast. According to Uproxx, Santora recalled an actual conversation he had with a writer of Lost when the show was airing, and Santora was working on Prison Break:
I had friends that were writing on Lost, I can’t say who they were. And I was watching football with one of them and I was telling them how much I loved the show…and I’m like, “How are you going to pay all this stuff off?” And he looked at me and goes, “We’re not.” And I go, “What do you mean you’re not?” He said, “We literally just think of the weirdest most f***ed up thing and write it and we’re never going to pay it off.” And I look at him and I’m like, “That’s such bull***t! You are completely f***ing with the audience.” I want to bring a class-action lawsuit on behalf of everyone who watched Lost all those years.
So, all this time...all this time...no one has actually known what was actually going on in a series that was literally the nation's obsession for the entire time it was airing on television — not even the writers. There are whole academic classes devoted to this show! Does the fact that this show meant nothing all along say more about the viewers, or the writers?
At the very least, though...this explains so much about that show.
Image: Giphy
