LOST ENDING REVEALED

 Binge watching and streaming services has all but killed the long, episodic American television series.  Darling series like Squid Game, a 9 episode kill-fest, keeps Netflix rolling with content. LOST also had its Battle Royale elements with the Others and the Smoke Monster, but not in a concentrated form like SG.

Nonetheless, SG won international fans for the Korean horror-action-game series. One major point was that in the end - - - there was an end! A winner! A clear conclusion!

In the early century, LOST and the Sopranos did something highly unusual: infuriate long time fans with strange endings. LOST's last season sideways arc will always be debated as a bad re-set by writers who wrote themselves into a corner with no way out. LOST never got the clear ending that now another show.

The Sopranos ended with a jarring, sudden cut to black screen.

The crime family was having dinner in a small restaurant when the door opens. Boom - -  no noise, no clue, just a black screen. The End. Fans debated for years what it meant. Did Tony did whacked? Did the family break up? Did nothing happen? Did the creators not know how to end the show?

Show runner David Chase recently spoke to Hollywood Reporter about the show and its ending. Chase said that 2 years before the ending, he was driving from NYC to New Jersey as Tony Soprano often did in the series. He saw a small road side diner. In his head, he thought that would make a good location for Tony's final demise. Yes, Chase always thought that Tony was going to die in the finale. It was just when and where. 

The article stated:

"Because the scene I had in my mind was not that scene. Nor did I think of cutting to black. I had a scene in which Tony comes back from a meeting in New York in his car. At the beginning of every show, he came from New York into New Jersey, and the last scene could be him coming from New Jersey back into New York for a meeting at which he was going to be killed. Yeah. But I think I had this notion—I was driving on Ocean Park Boulevard near the airport and I saw a little restaurant. It was kind of like a shack that served breakfast. And for some reason I thought, “Tony should get it in a place like that.” Why? I don’t know. That was, like, two years before."

Chase said, "I had no idea it would cause that much—I mean, I forget what was going on in Iraq or someplace; London had been bombed! Nobody was talking about that; they were talking about The Sopranos. It was kind of incredible to me. But I had no idea it would be that much of an uproar. And was it annoying? What was annoying was how many people wanted to see Tony killed. That bothered me."

IN PASSING

Actress Mira Furlan has passed away. She was 65.

She will be remembered as Danielle Rousseau in LOST.

Her character was important as a means of telling the story about the Island. She was shipwrecked on the island 16 years before Flight 815.  As the Island Smoke monster began to manifest its evil in her crew, she lived to survive alone. She was pregnant. Her child, Alex, was stolen from her by Ben. It was her sense of revenge that kept her alive (and perhaps that led to the Smoke Monster allowing her to live).

Her story also introduced us to the Temple where the Smoke Monster apparently lived. It also set the stage to tell the story that survivors could co-exist with the Others. The truce would be a fragile one.

It also showed that mental issues were an embedded theme of the show. Living as a hermit for years made Rousseau a survivalist; keen to nature and her surroundings. When she captured Sayid, he was aware of how dangerous she could be. But he believed she was different than the Others.

When she joined the 815 survivors to fight the Others (as a means of reuniting with her daughter), many fans thought her death scene lacked the full potential of a reunion and worthy demise.

 

WHAT WOULD YOU CHANGE?

 AN OUT-OF THE BLUE QUESTION:

WHAT IN LOST WOULD YOU HAVE CHANGED?

 There were plenty of unanswered questions, plenty of angst about the final seasons direction, and curses about the Ending. But generally, what would you as a loyal viewer want to have changed in the original series?

PLOT ELEMENTS? 

Did the show have to have its start as a plane crash survival story? Could have it been set in a different location such as hospital, mental institution, a secluded university campus or secret military base?

Did the show have to have a mixed genre premise? Could it have been a straight drama? Or could it have been a straight action-mystery?

Did the show need to have unclear time travel rules and supernatural smoke monster elements? If you took away the Jacob and the Island story line, would LOST still have delivered on its character goals?

CHARACTERS?

Would you have pared down the ensemble cast into a smaller focus group? Would you have eliminated the Tailies from consideration? Would you have changed the Others from its Ben's cult status to something else (like pagan, primitive natives with special powers such as worshipping the smoke monster)?

Would you have not used flash backs and flash forwards to give us the main characters pre-island stories? Would you have given the broken characters a new chance to live out their lives in their set, reality pain (such as Locke and his paralysis)?

Would you have given a secondary character a bigger role in the main story? Would the Others been better served under Patchy? What if the pilot survived to take control away from Jack? 

THE ENDING?

What did you really want to see in the final episode? Did you need a happy ending or could you have lived with a bitter island bloodbath? Did you need to see a post-island epilogue of the final survivors trying to cope back in the real world (such as Sawyer maybe uniting with his daughter)?

Would you have wanted to erase the flash sideways world in its entirety? Would you like the island stories to end, in context, on the island?

Would you have wanted one last twist - - - such as Hurley in the mental institution playing with an island snow globe?  

Would you have accepted a Sopranos style ending (sudden end to black) which was considered by the show runners?

A WORD FROM THE CREATORS

 At a recent virtual panel at NY Comic Con, LOST showrunner continued his advocacy for LOST. Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse said there no plans for a reboot or spinoff of the series which had its 15th anniversary of its premiere. However, they would support another show in the LOST "universe" if someone had a great idea to convince Disney/ABC to do it.

 Lindelof and Carlton Cuse were asked what they both think about any possible reboot or spinoff. 

"It would not be a good idea for us to go back," Cuse said. "This comes up all the time and, I think, Damon and I have been very consistent and forthright on this topic. We told the story that we wanted to tell."

Over six seasons, LOST followed a group of survivors of Oceanic flight 815 who crash landed on an island. As they tried to go back home (and then get back to the island), it was consistently a top-rated show on ABC.

To this day fans love re-watching and discussing the series' few unsolved mysteries — including one Cuse and Lindelof said they'll never answer about the identity of the people on the Season 5 outrigger.

While they have no interest in rebooting "Lost" or exploring any spinoffs, Lindelof said he would be supportive of anyone who pitched a good idea. 

"If somebody else comes along who has a great idea to do something set in the 'LOST' universe and sells that to The Walt Disney Company, they will have our blessings to do that," Cuse said. "We see no reason to do it. It doesn't feel like there's anything that we have left to say that's worth saying. We did it."

Lindelof said Disney has never come to him with any other show pitches since the show wrapped up in 2010.

"For the three final seasons of the show — four, five, and six — we put so much emotional energy into ending this show," Lindelof added of why they have no need to revisit this world. 

After 15 years, the show continues to be a iconic series from the past. To re-create a show with that much detail and location shooting would cost double or triple the old budget (which was already high for its time). Another re-boot problem would be that it was a serial show, where each episode was linked to the next. This made it impossible for secondary revenue like television syndication, which demands intact single episodes of shows (in case people cannot watch everyone in a row).

The LOST universe itself is a cryptic concept. Fans still debate whether it was science fiction or fantasy. Fans still debate whether it was real, imaginary or a hybrid psychotic event(s). For all its flaws, it would be very difficult for another producer to re-create the magic of the Island and its mysteries.

THREE AND OUT

Yahoo News reported on LOST's back story from one of its co-creators.

LOST launched a television phenomenon by creating mysteries and Easter egg hunts like the numbers, the hatch, and The Others.  It had high ratings from the 2004 pilot right up until the finale in 2010.

A common debate has been when the series jumped the rails to go out into filler tangents and story line dead ends. Some believe the middle seasons were merely filler episodes which distracted from the original intent of the show.

Co-creator Damon Lindelof  all but admitted it when he recently said the original outline for the ABC series was a three-season run.

“There were all of these compelling mysteries and so we were saying, ‘We wanna have this stuff answered by the end of Season 1, this stuff answered by the end of Season 2, and then the show basically ends after about three years,’” Lindelof told Collider. “That was the initial pitch.”

“[ABC] were not even hearing it… they were just like, ‘Do you understand how hard it is to make a show that people want to watch? And people like the show? So why would we end it? You don’t end shows that people are watching.’”

Eventually, ABC allegedly agreed to set an end date for the show – but on its own terms: 10 seasons.

That never came to pass, as Lindelof eventually reached a compromise during negotiations around Lost’s third season.

Lindelof was set on a longer fourth season to wrap the story up which still involved “a number of the characters” getting off the island and later returning for the final run. When ABC offered just nine episodes, the two parties settled on slightly shorter seasons up to season six, a marked departure compared to the 20-plus episode seasons we got in the show’s first two years.

Despite the apparent directional conflict with the network, LOST moved forward, with all its flaws, to the controversial finale. Would have a concentrated LOST series have been better? Would more mysteries been solved? Would the End be different?

 Let's look back at the first three seasons as a guide with the help of lostpedia:

Season 1 concentrated on the middle-section survivors and their fight for survival and rescue. This was the modern update of the Robinson Caruso shipwreck story. It is a classic premise to hook viewers with a familiar story told in a new way.

Major plot points included:

Finding a suitable camp location.
Half the survivors, including Kate, Sawyer, and Sayid settled on a beach near the crash site.
The rest, led by Jack, chose to live in the caves which are located in the jungle, near a source of fresh water.
Investigating the Island (searching for food and water, discovering the caves, and learning about the Black Rock).
Confrontations with The Monster.
Getting to know and trust each other (see especially Kate, Locke, Sawyer, and Jin).
There is a relatively long-standing animosity between Michael and Jin: the latter attacked the former in order to get his watch back, which Michael had found in the wreckage of the plane.
The survivors (especially Jack and Shannon) begin to question Locke's intentions due to his lie about Boone's injury and consequent death.
Trying to leave the island.
Building and launching the raft.
Hunting for Claire, after she was taken by the Others.
Opening the Hatch found by Locke and Boone.
Started to tell the survivors' story by introducing and using Flashbacks.

The early story was basic survival: food, shelter and water. Also, a means of rescue.
But the survival group was not unified so individuals personal instincts were more important than uniting around  common leader. This was the early character conflict between those who thought they would lead.

The mysteries were unusual: the Black Rock ship found in the middle of the island; the Smoke Monster, the Others and the Hatch.  The story pivoted from basic survival to danger from Monster, the Others and the Island itself.




Season 1 Finale: As the castaways brace themselves for an attack, Claire's baby is kidnapped, leading Charlie and Sayid on a dangerous chase into the jungle. While the threat of the Others bears down on the castaways, the raft crew continues their flight from the island - but when the hope of rescue appears on the horizon, they will soon learn that appearances can be deceiving. Charlie and Sayid stumble into a trap as they race to confront the kidnapper. Jack and Locke argue as they prepare to blow open the hatch. The raft crew is overjoyed to be discovered by a passing ship, but their elation is short-lived when they realize things are not what they appear. The hatch is opened, and what is inside it stuns the survivors.
 

Season Two focused on the Hatch. To find something scientific and out of the ordinary on the Island filled the castaways with hope (and food and protection) but also doubt (what was its purpose on the island). The writers were praised for effectively using flashbacks to flesh out the secrets of the characters.

Major plot points included:

The Swan, the Numbers, and pressing the button, all of which appeared to have been resolved by the end of the season.
The tail-section survivors, whose stories began and ended in the season, with the exception of Eko and Bernard.
The Others, including Tom, Goodwin, Klugh, and the fake Henry Gale (Ben).
The DHARMA Initiative stations/
Continued to tell the survivors' story by using flashbacks

Finale: Live Together, Die Alone: After discovering something odd just offshore, Jack and Sayid come up with a plan to confront "The Others" and hopefully get Walt back. Meanwhile, Eko and Locke come to blows as Locke makes a potentially cataclysmic decision regarding the "button" and the Hatch.

Season 3 mainly focused on the Others who had become the biggest danger to the castaways survival.

Major plot points included:

The Others (including Juliet Burke, Tom Friendly, Ben Linus and Richard Alpert), who they are, why they are on the Island, the way they live their lives and who leads them.
Contact with the outside world, including Penny; the Flame and Galaga being destroyed.
Desmond's future-telling powers, going back in time and Charlie's imminent death, and to a lesser extent, time.
The mysteries of the island, mainly pregnancy issues and the healing properties (see Mikhail).
The arrival of Naomi and the freighter.
Continued to use Flashbacks and during the final episode of the Season 3 they first introduced the Flash-forward idea that was used throughout all of Season 4.

Finale: Through the Looking Glass:  Jack and the castaways begin their efforts to make contact with Naomi's rescue ship.

"Through the Looking Glass" means where nothing is quite what it seems. In Lewis Carroll's book, it can mean clocks that work backwards or "... a poor sort of memory that only works backwards."
Alice again enters a fantastical world, this time by climbing through a mirror into the world that she can see beyond it. There she finds that, just like a reflection, everything is reversed, including logic (e.g. running helps you remain stationary, walking away from something brings you towards it, chessmen are alive, nursery rhyme characters exist, etc.).

At the end of Season 3, current reflection shows series turned to pure fantasy and not reality.


But by the end of Season 3, LOST could have wrapped up its main stories without jumping the shark (literally and figuratively) with the entire Jacob Temple worship story which attempted to merge ancient religions with an old Greek surreal tale of sibling rivalry.


A three season run would have boiled the LOST story universe into easily absorbed plots:

1. The conflict and tension in the 815 survivors camp on leadership and direction for survival. A passenger class struggle between the middle section and the tail section who had more contact and suspicions about the Others.
2. The external conflict and combat with the Others who claim the Island and its magical properties as their own. The story would have concentrated more on the science cult's obsession with time, pregnancy and mental experiments (which could have easily explained the Monster as being the physical manifestation of mentally ill minds through the Island's unique electromagnetic fields). In other words, the Smoke Monster would have been the island Frankenstein, roaming the island after breaking out of its captivity.
3. The realization that the only way to leave the Island was through the Others assets (boats, communications, etc.) or through rebellion (the freighter coming back to dethrone Ben as the island leader.) It could have been an interesting dynamic on whether Widmore would be as evil as Ben or whether he would have rescued the 815ers then restore the "real" original research of the Island. This would have been a cleaner and more logical ending to the series as it avoids the pitfalls of supernatural beings and clear evidence of a purgatory premise. The main characters would be given an opportunity to "go home" on the freighter or "stay" to live a new life on the Island.

THE END REVEALED BY A SLIP OF THE TONGUE

When the Sopranos ended its television run, it did so in such a fashion that it had its fandom up-in-arms, cursing and wondering what the hell happened to their favorite show. It ended with a hard cut to black. No one knew what would have happened next even though the episode built up to a climatic ending. Boom, without warning, the series ended.

With this type of controversial ending now possible, LOST fans worried that its show runners would also try to pull a large "fake out" to avoid answering the calls of diehard fans for answers to the key mysteries.

The writers did try to get out of years of story layers when they thrust upon us the flashforward universe, where the characters were living different lives but apparently in the same island time frame. It began to call into question whether the flashbacks were actually truthful portrayals of the characters prior to the crash landing on the island. For if the flashforwards were not "real" in the sense that that universe was merely a holding world until the souls of the friends could reunite in the after life, then the same could have been true of the flashbacks (which contained some serious medical and legal errors). If the flashbacks were a dream state, what was the island? A collective dream state or purgatory as speculated by some season one viewers.

LOST viewers never got the clarity from the producers about the last season. We were merely told that the show was always "character focused" so they did not have to answer the complaints.

After many years of debate, Soprano fans got their answer. From recent NY Post article:

The Sopranos” creator David Chase accidentally spoiled the finale during a leaked interview for  his book celebrating the Emmy-winning HBO mob drama.

At the end of 2007’s final episode, titled “Made in America,” Tony Soprano (played by the late James Gandolfini) is eating out with his family amid a turf war between the New Jersey and New York Mafia families while an enemy hit man waits in their midst.

The screen then fades to black as Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’ ” blares on the soundtrack, leaving it ambiguous whether the show’s star gets whacked — until now.

Spoiler alert: In the roundtable discussion, co-author Alan Sepinwall asked Chase, “When you said there was an end point, you don’t mean Tony at Holsten’s [the diner], you just meant, ‘I think I have two more years’ worth of stories left in me.’ ”

Then Chase, 74, dropped the bombshell: “Yes, I think I had that death scene around two years before the end … But we didn’t do that.”

Noticing his epic leak, co-author Matt Zoller Seitz chimed in: “You realize, of course, that you just referred to that as a death scene.”

“F - - k you guys,” replied Chase upon realizing his blunder.

TEN YEARS AFTER

As Yahoo UK recently published:

"In the end, it was a Shephard — two of them, actually — who led the lost flock home. Ten years ago this week, the hit ABC series, Lost, brought it’s time-and-reality hopping narrative to a conclusion in the super-sized series finale, appropriately titled “The End.”

The final moments of the final episode feature the show’s hero, Jack Shephard (Matthew Fox), reuniting with his fellow Oceanic Flight 815 castaways in a heavenly dimension as they prepare to move on to whatever realm lies beyond death. “Where are we going?” Jack asks his father, Christian Shephard (John Terry), whose specter had haunted him throughout Lost’s six-season run.

“Let’s go find out,” Papa Shephard replies. At that point, father and son take their place in pews surrounded by the entire cast — even those who died early in the show’s run — and they collectively step into the light.

That may sound final, but “The End” turned out to be just the beginning of the debate over Lost’s place in the pantheon of all-time TV greats. Certainly, the show’s 2004 premiere was a seismic pop culture event, with action that rivalled big-screen blockbusters and ratings to match."

The first takeaway is that LOST was the first epic series that had a complicated mythology and Easter egg fan service to make it the pioneering show for the internet commentary community. Fan sites devoured each episode like an all-you-can-eat buffet.  Fan theories became more complex than the LOST writers best imagination. It was the first interactive television program, some of it in real time chat rooms. Today, some YouTubers live stream commentary during k-dramas, but that pales in comparison to the national media dedicating columnists for weekly recaps.

It was a critical and viewer juggernaut. But as the seasons progressed and the tangential story lines got more convoluted, the show runners hubris took the series down split road to a dead end. The biggest complaint was the land fill sized pile of unanswered questions. When one weaves an elegant story, with mysteries, viewers expected show worthy answers. Rambling into the series finale, Cuse and Lindelof acknowledged there was no way they’d be able to craft an ending that paid off every plot thread and satisfied every viewer.


“We have to have the answers to the mysteries so that there is something to work towards, but what we don't have are the stories,” Lindof said in a 2010 Wired interview.  “J.K. Rowling can sit down and say, ‘Here's how Harry Potter's parents were killed, and here's who killed them,’ but how am I going to reveal that information to the audience in the most emotionally impactful way? So we know what we want to do, but we have very little idea of how and when we're going to do it.”

Second, this confirmed in some people's minds that at a certain point, the writers were making things up on the fly. There was no concrete ending from the beginning. The show drifted on the ocean of fan support. In the end, the show runners confessed they decided to do was to design a finale that emphasized "character over mystery."

 But when you base six years of story on mysteries, many fans thought that was a cop-out. Especially true when the show's producers vehemently denied during the first season that the show was set in purgatory. But the End showed a mixed religious message that main characters had died in the past and the island was some other dimension (further complicated by another universe of the sideways world).

Third, LOST did get into the surreal story writing genre by not only having character flash backs but also "flash sideways," a different  timeline where apparently Jack and the rest of the castaways were back in the real world, albeit leading different lives than what we saw in the flashback sequences that were a major part of previous seasons.

But these did not add a layer of mystery more than one of confusion. A few critics thought this was mere annoying filler episodes. Others thought the writers "stumped" themselves in their original time frame ("painted themselves into a corner") so they tried to "re-boot" the series with another time line.

The evolution of the Man in Black as the personification of dead Locke really did not answer the confinement of Jacob and the Smoke Monster to an island where human beings were used as chess pieces in a sadistic game. But if you look to the religious elements, especially ancient Egyptian culture, one could find a potential answer that the island was the underworld which a soul would have to navigate dangerous tests in order to be judged by the gods in the afterlife.

But the show runners did not want LOST to fall into that realm. They wanted LOST to stand on its own mythology as pure fantasy. They decided that they did not have to answer all the questions or defend their creative choices because enough fans were fully invested (with their own ideas) it did not really matter.

Fourth, there was a sour taste of being hustled by a three card monte boardwalk shark. The End did not tie up loose ends. It made them more tangled as we see Jack "die" on the island while  Hurley and  Ben Linus remain on the island as "new protectors" only to "shut it down" in a hasty DVD epilogue. It did not explain why pilot Frank Lapidus miraculously gets everyone else — including Kate, Sawyer, and Claire off the island. Why were these characters "saved?" What did they do when they returned "home?" How did some find their way to Christian Shephard's church?

In the final scene, Christian opens the church doors to engulf the inside with a bright white light, symbolizing the moment between death and the after life. In the real world, “The End” wasn’t exactly the end that a lot of viewers were waiting for with half the fans found it a comfortable, happy ending while half felt it was a disappointing conclusion in a Hollywood trope way. It did bring to the forefront the debate on whether  the “Flash sideways” universe functioned as a kind of purgatory between life and death — the same theory that was advanced about the island itself when the show first launched. As one commentator put it: “I think the overall lesson is that we're all going to die eventually, so we may as well surround ourselves with as many attractive people as we can.”

Fifth, the LOST legacy may truly be the backtracking by the show runners.  Lindelof heard the criticisms loud and clear, and responded to them in public. “There was a very early perception… that the island was purgatory and we were always out there saying, 'It's not purgatory, this is real, we're not going to Sixth Sense you,’”


But three years later, he said  “Lost was all about mystery and questions and answers and [I wanted] to try to answer a mystery the show hadn't even asked up until that point… A portion of the audience was like, 'Oh, that wasn’t on my list, I'm not interested in that.' But we were.” Even as he stood by “The End,” the online reaction clearly took its toll.

Despite its still-divisive ending, the early success of LOST remains something that TV networks would love to emulate in an increasingly fractured TV landscape. In 2019, ABC hinted that it would not be adverse to rebooting the series.  But do not expect any of the original creative team to return for a potential revival. "I, personally, am not going to be involved with other versions of Lost because we told the most complete version," Lindelof said last year.  "I feel like I spent four years of my life begging them to end it and when they finally said yes, the ending that we did probably should stand as our ending."

LOST was highly entertaining, addictive and mentally stimulating but with all first loves, it had its bad points, questionable choices and nasty arguments.  As a series of intertwined and related episodes, LOST could never handle syndication re-runs because viewers missing episodes would themselves become lost. Syndicated viewers demand self-contained episodes like Star Trek.

It is hard to believe that it has been TEN YEARS since LOST concluded its run. There are very few blogs or sites that still contribute new content to the LOST community. But there are occasional posts of nostalgia about the series. And that is one of the hope's of any television production - - - a nostalgic memory.

FROM THE DARKNESS TO THE DAWN

If one looks back at the legacy of LOST, it was a dark friend who could not find his final path.

It began as an action-drama in the vestiges of tales of shipwreck sailors on uninhabited, savage tropical islands. The viewers were drawn into the story as "what would I do?" "How would I survive?" and "This is what I would do" questions in their minds. But we quickly saw the reality of the situation: death. Tragic death.

It quickly shifted to dramatic politics as alpha males started to lobby the survivors to impose their dominance over the group. Jack was the reluctant leader, over the burning desire of Locke and the self-interest of Sawyer.

But the leadership issue was secondary to the instinctive greed of the castaways. Survival of the fittest was the rule of the day. Sawyer began to hoard valuable things which made him into an outcast, a role that he enjoyed. Because he had no connection to the group, he could con them out of their perceived valuables. Kate also fell back into her pre-island survival tactics: charm and escape.

As the days, weeks and months went on, darkness beset our friend. We would see the return of the inner madness in Hurley as his imaginary friend tried to convince him to kill himself. Sawyer would not hesitate to kill Locke's father in a "deal." The Others, especially Ben, had no remorse in ruling by fear and death.

Even the island's guardian angel, Jacob, did not intervene when his Temple followers were massacred by his brother. We were told that this cycle of human carnage was the norm for the Man in Black in his game with Jacob.

In a sense, whether you thought it was true or literary, our island friend was in purgatory; a place where one could not leave on your own - - - trapped in the deepest, darkest and troubled portions of your personality. 

It has been said that it always darkest before the dawn. Before the final duel with MIB, the island was in chaos. Splinter groups hid in terror or joined the hunt to destroy the remaining castaways. It was only when Jacob "died" to give Jack the magic power to defeat his brother, did only a handful of people could break their physical and mental chains to leave the island cesspool of damnation.

We never saw what the dawn of a new day would have brought to the survivors who flew off Hydra Island in a broken airplane flown by an alcoholic pilot because the show diverted into a parallel universe. The flip side of darkness, a lighter more gentle (almost medicated) view of the main characters. But even then, they were subconsciously haunted by their island past.

In the end, when the full light engulfed the church, no one can say for sure that anyone found true redemption, true happiness, or even hope of enlightenment. The white light like white noise was a background element that erased the moment only to leave lingering questions in its wake.

LEADERSHIP

Joe DiMaggio said, “A person always doing his or her best becomes a natural leader, just by example.”

In LOST, there were various characters who pushed to become leaders. It was a mix of office politics and mortal combat.

Jack was the Reluctant Leader. He got the job from the 815 survivors because he was a doctor. There were injured people who needed his help. He gave instructions . . . people listened to him. But a few did not like Jack because he got the respect they did not. Sawyer, for example, wanted the appreciation of being a leader without the responsibility. Only after the time flash skip to become the sheriff of the others did Sawyer learn what it took to protect his people.

Locke was the Hopeful Leader. He always wanted to be acknowledged and accepted for his skills so that he could be one of the popular kids. The fact that his foster home orphan upbringing gave him the anger and bitterness that would shape his adult life and decisions was not lost on the writers. For every opportunity to take a leadership role, he failed because he demanded too much. When he came back to camp with food, he thought he would be accepted as a leader. But Jack was still the man. Locke never let go of that rivalry. When Locke was thought of the chosen leader of the Others, one who could dethrone Ben, he took the chance to seize total control over the group. But the one condition he could not meet: killing his own father.

Ben was also an outcast. He grew up in the environment of an alcoholic father who blamed him for the death of his mother (in childbirth). As a result, Ben was a shy, bitter boy who dreamed of controlling his own destiny. When the Others were in a leadership flux, he took control by means of violence - - - slaying his rivals to seize total control like a military dictator. He used fear and threats to become the Absolute Leader on the island. But being a dictator brought detractors in his own group who wanted to have someone to remove Ben from power.

Leadership is a double edged sword. It can be used to offensively consolidate power, direction and support for the common good. Or it could be used defensively to hold onto power, unilaterally force decisions and abuse authority for corrupt purposes.

All of those elements were seeded in LOST's story lines. None of the main character leaders had a good final result. There leadership strengths would turn into their personal weaknesses. Even Jacob, the islands real, True Leader, succumbed to his own hubris.

GOLDEN PASS

Daniel Dae Kim has built a golden pass after LOST.

In a recent conversation with The Hollywood Reporter, Kim also discusses his preparation for his role in the reboot version Hellboy, and reflected on his moments on the Lost set, as well as his reflections on his final scene as Jin on LOST.  FROM THE INTERVIEW:

Fifteen years ago, you arrived in Hawaii to film Lost's pilot, and it sounds like you haven't left since.

That is correct. If you would've asked me when I was a little kid growing up in Pennsylvania whether or not I would spend the majority of my career in Hawaii, I would've laughed. But, stranger things have happened, and they actually have. I'm here, and it really feels like I found home for me and my family.

Do you still feel Hawaii's laid-back vibe despite living there?

That vibe really does exist, but like any other place, once you're there for more than just a vacation, you learn a lot more about the people and the location that deepens your knowledge base. That can be both positive and negative. It's still an amazing place to live, and the fact that I'm choosing to live here — even though I'm not working here any longer — says everything.

Is it tricky navigating Hollywood from afar? Are you flying back and forth constantly?

Yes. (Laughs.) It's very difficult. I think I've gotten platinum status on two different airlines in the past year. I literally flew 200,000 miles in the last calendar year.

There's a Lost "golden pass" joke that practically writes itself here, but I'll refrain for now.

(Laughs.) Right! But, it's worth it. My family loves it here. My children got to spend their entire childhood here. It's a pretty special place.

When you reflect on Lost, what are some of the smaller memories or in-between moments that surprisingly stick with you, such as Terry O'Quinn playing guitar offscreen?
That's a good question. The first things that pop up are the moments in between takes. Because we were all friends, our time together — between takes — was as special as the time that we were actually shooting. The moments where the guitars would come out, all of our set chairs would be in a circle, so we could all see each other and talk to each other. There were several of us who play guitar and a lot of us who sang. So, spontaneous sing-along sessions would just kind of break out, and certain times we would get so passionate about them that we would delay shooting because we needed to finish a version of "Roxanne" that we were all singing. (Laughs.)

Co-showrunner Carlton Cuse used to talk a lot about how Jin and Sawyer tested at the bottom of cast in the early days of the show. After all you were both antagonists, so you're not supposed to be liked. By the end, your characters were beloved by test audiences. Since you probably didn't know the entirety of Jin's massive arc as of season one, did you lament Jin's reception at first, even though you were fulfilling the role as the writing intended?

Yes. Absolutely, I did. I was very concerned about it. Though I was reassured that the character was going to grow and develop, what I wasn't sure about was how the show would be received. If, for instance, we got four or five episodes on the air and then we got canceled, the entirety of Jin's character would be what you saw at the beginning. To me, that was problematic because it represented a number of stereotypes that I worked so hard to avoid in my career. So, that was my concern. I had a lot of faith in J.J. [Abrams] and Damon [Lindelof] that if the show continued, the character would grow and deepen; they had assured me of that. So, it wasn't a matter of trusting them, it was just a matter of trusting whether or not the show would be successful.

Many fans consider Jin and Sun to be Lost's greatest romance. Their conclusion on the submarine affects me each and every time I see it. Since the show has now been off the air for almost nine years, has your rationalization of Jin's decision to leave his daughter behind changed at all?
 
I can see both sides of that decision, but the thing that I keep coming back to is that he had wronged his wife in many ways. The decision to stay with her was part of his atonement. That's the emotional place where that decision came from. I think there was the rational question of whether or not he would've made it out alive, and I think all of those combined for him to make the choice that he did. To me, it was a very powerful statement about love and making that sacrifice for an ideal and a feeling that is undeniable.

LEGACY SHOWS

Since LOST there have been many iconic and epic television shows that critics and fans stressed over.

Breaking Bad was a media darling based upon its premise, its script and its compelling actors.

Currently, the fantasy epic Game of Thrones is on everyone's radar. The coffee room talk is very high on this series as fans are eagerly anticipating the climatic ending.

But it is very hard for a show to keep itself on the rails when fan expectations are so far ahead of the ability of the writers and staff to meet those expectations.

There are the big, deep film franchises like Avengers: End Game which will set in the next few weeks a world wide box office record of more than $3 billion.

But there are iconic series, like Star Trek and Star Wars, who have had their spin-offs, sequels and prequels not being received as highly as the original shows. Some of that is viewer burn-out of the franchise's story. In some cases, the original show fan base has aged out and the material does not hook younger viewers. There are more diversions now for people to spend their entertainment time, such as video games, YouTube broadcasts and Twitch streams.

LOST is still considered a legacy show because it long running series that captured the imagination of both critics and fans to the point of obsession on every detail. Game of Thrones has many similar attributes as fans are trying to figure out who will survive to the End. And the End is the key to the legacy of a series.

For many, LOST's ending was weak to a fail. For others, it was the perfect happy ending for their favorite characters. Many thought the questions had to be answered about the mythology of the show. Others thought the final character development was more important. Insiders have tried to conceal many of the production issues which partially caused major shifts in scripts and settings which may or may not have caused the strange, disjointed final season to come together.

The debate of LOST's End is a continuation of the in-season debates about the motivations of the characters, who was good, who was evil, and what everything meant to mean in the Big Picture. This on-line fan community debates were just as important as the show itself.

The only problem with LOST's legacy is that it is frozen in time. People still remember it, but memories will fade over time. It is not in syndication because it is a series that builds upon each previous episode. It is not like a sit-com that has a self contained 30 minute story line resolution. As such, LOST does not have the continuing traction of Star Trek, which continues to be syndicated and shown on a daily basis across the cable spectrum. In that regard, LOST will never be as popular as Star Trek.  But it may be more important to future screenwriters on the pitfalls of expectations in creating a legacy show.

HOME SUCCESS

LOST actress Kim Yun-jin has found success in her homeland after a 19 year career outside of Korea.

Kim  returned to her home turf to take the lead role in SBS series “Ms. Ma, Goddess of Revenge.” The story is loosely based on the fictional character of Miss Marple from Agatha Christie’s crime novels and short stories. When LOST finished its sixth season in 2010, Kim was able to secure a spot in the US entertainment scene by starring in another US hit series, “Mistresses.”

In the SBS mystery-thriller series, which premiered Oct. 6, Kim plays a mother seeking revenge for her daughter’s death. After being locked up in a mental institution for killing her daughter, she digs into the mystery to clear her name.

The Saturday-Sunday drama, at its halfway point, is in second place with an average viewership rating of 6.9 percent, trailing behind MBC’s “Hide and Seek,” which has been raking in an average viewership share of 12 percent. Korean viewership tends to increase as the show progresses and usually climaxes in the final episodes.

Though Kim has taken part in local films while pursuing her career in the US, the SBS series is her first return to the local TV scene in almost two decades. At a press event held for promotions of the show, she said it was hard to find time to star in local TV productions as Korean production schedules are much tighter.

“I normally worked four days a week in the US, but since shooting (this series), I have not been able to find the time to do laundry,” she said.

“I have never imagined shooting 20 scenes a day, but everything goes so quickly. I was very worried when I first saw the shooting schedule, but things happened smoothly according to the timetable and I found it truly amazing.”

US network and streaming platforms have been licensing Korean dramas. Netflix created its own Korean mystery variety show, "Busted," which was renewed for a second season. With the success of the film "Crazy Rich Asians," more Asian actors will be cast in more diverse roles. But it also nice to know that some actors can go home to find success.

NEW ENDING

Author Maria Robinson wrote, “Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.”

It is very difficult today to do a show like LOST: a large cast, remote location shooting outside Hollywood studio gates, and a long run to develop and execute a complex story structure. Today's audience is not as patient. We live in a world of instant gratification and quick swipe destruction.

Traditional American TV networks (CBS, NBC and ABC) have lost their grip on the vast majority of viewers. Current network shows are recycled sit coms and spot dramas from the 1980s and 1990s (medical, cop shows, family comedies like Roseanne). Networks do not have the time or resources to re-invent their shows towards a younger audience.

The younger audience does not sit in front of a television set in the family living room. They are mobile, independent loners. With an internet connection, they can search and find their own amusement. The top landing spot is YouTube, where people nearly their own age have their personal channels doing goofy things teens would do if they actually went outside and played in the school yard.

As the networks got bulldozed by cable operators offering a hundred diverse channels, cable itself has also run its course. You may have a hundred channels ported into your cable box, but the choice is becoming more limited as specialty channels can no longer find sponsors. And channels co-owned or operated by major media conglomerates have started to run the UHF business model of re-runs of very old shows to fill time slots.

Cable operators last gasp was the rebellious nature of original programming at HBO or Showtime. But those outlets have now been muscled out of critic's circles by the economic power of the new platform: the streamers like Netflix and Amazon whom are pouring billions into their own original shows. Netflix's model is to run a new series maybe for a season or two, then it vanishes. The idea is to keep subscribers tuned in to "new" shows and movies. It is a disposal approach for a growing disposable society.

Just as LOST was unable to get a syndication deal because each episode was not a stand alone story, current creators have to maximize revenue streams in order to survive the next pitch meeting. It is doubtful that a show like LOST today would be green lit for no more than 12 episodes. Could LOST have been compressed into a 12 episode season? Perhaps, as the tangential filler would have to be discarded and a clearer, tighter premise on the science fiction part of the program would have been the foundation for climax and conclusion. It would have been less character driven and more story driven series. For example, Jack could have been killed off in the pilot (as the original pilot script called for), but he could have appeared throughout the show as a trapped ghost (like Michael at the end). But that presupposes that the show runners would actually make a decision on whether the island was purgatory or time-space pocket of abnormality.

But even in today's smartphone world, YouTube content creators are yesterday's news when SNS feeds are the way to get more followers that social media marketers covet. Twitter and Instagram are the current hot platforms for quasi-entertainment (or more apt, time killing). It seems there is more ambiguous to celebrity wannabe status on those feeds which must strike a chord with Millennials.

If you are a studio head or even a guy sitting in his basement with his laptop, you have to wonder what is the next bit that will be a long term trend. It is like chasing a cat in a cornfield. There will be more misses than hits. But in the current climate, some viewers really do not care. And that could be the end of highly complex fictional storytelling.

RETURN TO K-DRAMA

Kim Yun-jin is set to make her first appearance in a Korean TV series in nearly 20 years, according to the Korean paper Chosen Ilbo.

The star of the U.S. hit series "Lost" appears as a detective in the crime thriller "Ms. Ma, Goddess of Revenge," which is slated to start airing early next month.

"I have appeared both in U.S. TV series and Korean films and dramas, but few people recognize any Korean TV series that I was in. So I hope this will be it," she said.

In the Korean adaption of the popular "Miss Marple" series by British author Agatha Christie, Kim plays a woman who is falsely accused of killing her daughter and embarks on a journey to prove her innocence.

Kim said the shooting for the Korean drama was more intense. In her US TV series, she would shoot 10 scenes a day. For the k-drama, it was double. In South Korea, dramas are filmed in a "live" production schedule. It means that actual series shooting begins before all the scripts are completed. In fact, with instant SNS commentary, some shows will actually change direction or character choices as the series is being shot. It creates a more stressful and overworked situation.

Kim moved to the U.S. when she was young, and debuted in Korea with a TV series in 1996. She shot to fame with "Swiri," a Korean hit film about North Korean spies, in 1999. After that, she was cast in the hit ABC series "Lost" and starred in another ABC series, "Mistresses," from 2013 to 2016 in the U.S. Most Korean actors would like to be in a Hollywood blockbuster. But as diverse Hollywood claims to be, it is still a closed company town. The rare example of risky full diversification is "Crazy Rich Asians" movie.

It is rare for Korean movies to have large releases in America or Europe besides the film festival circuit. In Asia, Korean movies are fighting for recognition against larger budgets and mainstream production studios in China, Hong Kong and Japan.

But k-dramas have an international audience. Besides being popular in Asia, Korean dramas are popular in South America and the United States as the internet and translation portals have spread programming throughout the world. Netflix has started some original programming with native Korean actors, such as the original variety/mystery series "Busted."

ANOTHER LOSTY SERIES

Another season, another network, another LOST-like television series.

This fall, according to the preview and Deadline Hollywood article, the NBC show MANIFEST begins "when Montego Air Flight 828 lands after a turbulent but otherwise routine flight, the 191 passengers and its crew learn that while only a few hours passed for them, the rest of the world has considered them missing—and presumed dead—for over five years. As the passengers try to reintegrate themselves into the world, some of them experience strange phenomena, leading them to believe "they may be meant for something greater than they ever thought possible."

It seems like the LOST pitch without the crash landing on the island.

The showrunners have set themselves up for a high standard of mystery and mythology to pull off a reasonable sci-fi explanation of how a jet plane goes missing for 5 years without crashing or passengers aging. 

It is assumed that the show has to whittle down the main cast from 191 passengers in crew to a hand full of focus characters with the "strange" events surrounding their new lives post-flight. What is strange, what is supernatural, and what is there "new greater purpose" in life seems to take bits of the island guardian and castaways fight to "save the world" from something bad to the main land and the ordinary lives of regular people. 

MANIFEST may or may not be worth watching. The TBS satire, Wrecked, was a train wreck from the start. It was a bad parody and extremely unfunny. It failed on all cylinders.

MANIFEST's producers include Hollywood movie veterans so the quality of the filming could be great, but even the best production values cannot save a poor script or plot.

MANIFEST premieres in late September.

 

TAKING LIBERTIES

Evangeline Lilly made her break-out career role as Kate in LOST. However, she recently stated that there were difficult parts during filming the series, according to an interview in a recent podcast (and reported in the New York Post.

Lilly played a strong, spunky, wild child character who would get a second chance to erase her past on the island. But since this was her first credited role as an actress, she did not have the clout on the set.

She said that being new to Hollywood meant that she was not comfortable enough to speak up when she felt pressured, and that led to some very upsetting shooting conditions.

“In Season 3, I’d had a bad experience on set with being basically cornered into doing a scene partially naked, and I felt had no choice in the matter,” Lilly said on the podcast. “I was mortified and I was trembling, and when it finished, I was crying my eyes out and I had to go on and do a very formidable, very strong scene thereafter.”

That wasn’t the last time Lilly was forced to undress on camera against her wishes. “In Season 4, another scene came up where Kate was undressing and I fought very hard to have that scene be under my control and I failed to control it again. So I then said, ‘That’s it, no more. You can write whatever you want — I won’t do it. I will never take my clothes off on this show again.’ And I didn’t.”

Losing control of her bodily autonomy wasn’t the only thing she didn’t like about LOST as the show progressed and started to focus more on a love triangle between her character Kate and the male leads Jack (Matthew Fox) and Sawyer (Josh Holloway).

“I felt like my character went from… having her own story and her own journey and her own agendas to chasing men around the island and that irritated the shit out of me,” said Lilly. She added that she “did throw scripts across rooms when I’d read them because I would get very frustrated by the diminishing amount of autonomy she had and the diminishing amount of her own story there was to play.”

In today's #METOO environment, one would assume most of the directors would be less pushy in putting actors into uncomfortable positions. On the other hand, Hollywood has been for centuries a cesspool of power plays and taking advantage of actors.

It is also interesting to note, that she states that her character's story changed during the series into a love triangle story line which she did not like. It is another piece of evidence that the show runners and writers had no direct, clear path of the main story lines. They would change on the fly to meet the demands of the network or ratings. Some fans wanted to see a romantic element between the main leads. But did that really improve the story?

Lilly believes it diminished her character's story which was one of running away from her family problems, the lack of responsibility in her life and her manipulation of men for her own means. Her character never got truly punished for her misbehavior. Her cuteness was a defense. She used it to her advantage, but not as a means to find love. Even her marriage to the Florida cop was more a convenient cover than true love. She was lost because she grew up without unconditional loving parents. All of her relationships ended badly. Why would she want her character to change midway through the series to become a cliche fluttering heart girlfriend?

UPDATE August 6, 2018:

Creators and executive producers JJ Abrams,  Damon Lindelof, Jack Bender and Carlton Cuse issued a joint statement apology for the alleged problems on the show, which ran on ABC from 2004-2010.
“Our response to Evie’s comments in the media was to immediately reach out to her to profoundly apologize for the experience she detailed while working on Lost,” the statement read. “We have not yet connected with her, but remain deeply and sincerely sorry. No person should ever feel unsafe at work. Period.”

FLEETING FAME

Yahoo News reported a bizarre incident involving a LOST cast member.

Evangeline Lilly was en route to do press for the new sequel Ant-Man and the Wasp, in which she shares equal billing with Paul Rudd  when the encounter occurred.

“I was walking onto the plane and this talent scout was like, ‘Oh my God, for a minute there I thought you were Julia Roberts. Does anyone ever tell you you look like Julia Roberts? You could be a model. You could be an actress,” recounted Lilly. “I’m like, ‘Oh, well, that’s very nice of you.’ And she’s like, ‘No, that’s what I do. I’m a scout. I manage talent. And I think you have potential. I’m telling you, you could have a career if you wanted a career [in entertainment].”

Lilly never let on that she did already, in fact, have a very successful career in film and television  “I had to delicately turn her down and tell her I wasn’t interested in the industry.”

The talent scout, meanwhile, may never know that she had tried to recruit a Marvel superhero. Lilly, in her mind, could be the one who got away. “If only I could have signed that girl, I could have made something out of her. Instead she’s just gonna wallow away in her tiny life,” Lilly laughed. “[She’s] never gonna know she could’ve been the first title female character in the MCU.”

LOST AS A TERM OF ART

In a recent WIRED article, the writer uses the LOST franchise as a term of art.

The reviewer of HBO series "Westworld" said his problem was not that thw show would not be enjoyable, but that it was that it’s the kind of show that invites obsession. The kind that presents Big Questions—that never get answered. - - -   essentially, that it was going to be the next LOST.

LOST began to get viewers to deep dive into episodes to find clues. Apparently, Westworld was trying to accomplish some of the same tricks of the old ABC series. It started with logos . . . do they mean something else?

In the episode, "The Riddle of the Sphinx,"opened with a montage: James Delos (Peter Mullan) is in a finely appointed modernist apartment. He walks through what appears to be his morning routine: drinking water, smoking a cigarette, getting in a few minutes on a stationary bike. All the while, he’s listening to the Rolling Stones’ “Play with Fire.” If the scene felt familiar, here's why: It's just about exactly how Lost introduced Desmond at the beginning of Season 2. (Yes, Season 2! The same season in which Westworld currently finds itself.) In that montage, Desmond made a smoothie, typed a series of numbers into a computer and pushed “the button,” and got in a few minutes on a stationary bike—all while listening to another 1960s hit: Cass Elliot's "Make Your Own Kind of Music."

The reviewer reminds those that don’t remember,  LOST ended almost exactly eight years ago, on May 23, 2010. And, after six seasons of giving its audience diamonds-in-the-sand clues involving hieroglyphics, philosophy (there’s literally a character named John Locke), flashbacks, flashforwards, smoke monsters, and 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42 (aka “The Numbers”), most of those hints led exactly nowhere. The ending was satisfying in its way, but most fans still to this day throw up their hands in frustration when asked what it all meant. (Seriously, if you didn’t watch and want to feel good about all the time you saved not doing so, Google “unanswered Lost questions.” It was a lot of setup without a lot of payoff and was frankly a little annoying. 

The reviewer concludes with "But." 

 That show also changed the way a lot of us watch TV. It taught people to look for clues, to not take everything at face value, and to not always assume that narrative answers would be spoon-fed to them. And in that regard, it was revolutionary.

So LOST has now become a turn-of-art meaning, its own genre in the televisions universe. When a show that does not want viewers to passively "follow" the story as presented, but challenge the events seen in real time to see if they make sense or mask some hidden meaning. As a story telling template, LOST will endure as a quirky, frustrating, roller coaster of tangent plots, red herrings and Machina moments that will drive obsessive viewers crazy. And maybe in an era of instant smart phone gratification and a ten second twitter attention span, TV needs obsessive shows in order to survive.

WONDERLAND

What would it be like to be caught between worlds?

The world of the living and the world of the dead.

The world of the living and an other world of a distant alien planet.

Both are plausible explanations of the island in LOST. It is true because of the lack of concrete canon to support the sci-fi story lines with actual physics.

Peppered throughout the discussions of the island are scientific concepts like "portals," "worm holes," time travel experimentation, psychological conditioning, and unique electromagnetic properties. But to suspend belief in a science basis for the island, what do we have to consider?

An island that cannot be seen or mapped from the sky is not an island. It is something else.
An island that can move and disappear is not an island. It has to be something else.

But since Eloise Hawking could calculate its apparent location (with some assumptions), the island's movement must follow a pattern. Nature follows patterns. So does the Earth's electromagnetic grid. The island could be moving to intersection points along with Earth's electromagnetic grid. This makes the island a ship and not an island.

Electromagnetism and bending of light are principles in research for stealth technologies. To make things appear invisible, magicians use mirrors and distraction (such as a pretty assistant) to make the illusion complete. Mirrors, distractions and illusions were all story points in LOST.

What is the purpose of an island moving along an electromagnetic grid? It could be "recharging" itself from specific deep core entry points. It may need a certain amount of energy or flow to "contain" its own power system (which malfunctioned several times to create time skips and purple skies).

Some viewers believed the island was a space-time portal. The teleportation of Locke and Ben to Tunisia was proof of it (in a small scale). The capture of Flight 815 from the sky could be another example as well as all the ship wrecks. It could also explain the "immortality" of Jacob since he controlled the island and thus controlled time itself. One could equate Jacob to that of being a Time Lord.

No one has really thought about the island as being a TARDIS like device piloted by aliens. But in a UFO observatory conspiracy theory, an island would be a good cover to house a base to spy on human beings. A remote island would be a great place to bring humans to do experiments on. You don't need to be gray aliens to poke humans; as shape shifting beings you can create yourself in the image of your laboratory animals.

Jacob and the Man in Black did admit that bringing humans to the island was part of their grand game. An experiment on how humans react to the island conditions, with MIB lamenting that humans always screwed up in the end. MIB was so frustrated with it that he wanted to go "home." But Jacob would not let him - - - basically making him/it a prisoner on the island. So MIB used the corrupt humans in order to rebel against Jacob, to seize control of the island ship to leave Earth.

It does sound like a Dr. Who story line: who controls the TARDIS can control the universe. As Widmore desired control of the island, there were others like Ben who tried to protect it from becoming a weapon of power. But Ben was corrupted by that same power when he purged Dharma.

Therefore, we have the literary means of the island being the center piece between two worlds. The debate is what is the other world?  Is it the religious connotation of the after life (as adored by the temple and the Egyptian mythology)? Or it is a sci-fi based drama based upon the Faraday notebook and Dharma stations?

In either situation, it puts our castaways not as lost survivors of a transportation disaster, but human guinea pigs in a science fiction fantasy world.

MANIFEST DESTINY?

From the Hollywood Reporter and the web, there is news that NBC has ordered a pilot for a series which contains some initial traits of LOST. The synopsis is as follows:

A plane mysteriously goes missing mid-flight. Later, it reappears. For the passengers on board, it’s like it never happened. For everyone else, years have passed with the assumption that everyone on board was dead.

That’s the plot of Manifest, a new TV pilot ordered by NBC that’ll be produced by Robert Zemeckis. Jeff Rake (executive producer of The Mysteries of Laura) wrote the show, which will focus on how that passage of time changes the lives of the people on board as well as why it happened in the first place.

The show's premise is set up as a plane disaster to spawn dramatic mysteries which harks to LOST and the genre of castaways like Robinson Caruso. But this series seems to have no beaches, no smoke monsters—just one massive, unfathomable event, a long passage of time, and the fallout from it.

Zemeckis was the director and co-creator of Back to the Future.  He won an Oscar for directing Forrest Gump. He’s produced a few TV series over the years, but nothing in several decades.

This show will investigate maybe not the reason why the plane disappeared (any science fiction reason would probably suffice) but what happens to the characters who suddenly land 5, 10, 15 years later?  Of course their normal lives would have changed. Characters who were married probably no longer have spouses (since one can be declared dead after 7 years). Spouses who have remarried with children would want little to so with the returning spouse (or maybe not - - - that could be a point of conflict.) Characters would be coming home to find they have no job, no home, or lost family members who may have died without knowing their lost family member was still alive.

We could see the use of "flashbacks" to narrate the back stories of the airplane passengers as they try to navigate through a new world which forgot about them.

The pilot episode needs to hit hard and grasp the viewers immediately to avoid the curse of LOST strong start and weak finish.