@@guyledouche7939me too but also I feel privileged to have watched this at the time in the old fashioned way, having to wait week by week and year by year for new series - before I even had my first smartphone! 😂
The island isn't done with us, and your channel is the proof!!! Thank you 🙏🏼 If after 20 years from the first episode thousands of people are still here to talk about the show, the stories, mysteries and more is because Lost in more than a tv series!!!
Some aspects were no doubt deliberate, including the often repeated one eye symbology shown throughout the show. That always tells me that there’s a mysterious agenda we likely wont uncover..
Half the characters in breaking bad were originally going to die in season 1, and plans changed CONSTANTLY, but no one accuses the show of "making it up as it went along".
I think what a lot of people don’t realize about producing tv shows is that sometimes things don’t pan out the way they think and realizations are discovered along the way about what works and what doesn’t. Why kill off a character that turns out better than initially expected just because that was the original idea? There are opportunities to make adjustments that won’t destroy the overall narrative. If I recall correctly, Walking Dead also did this with Carol.
this channel has the best, most thorough understanding of LOST of any other channel or forum anywhere else on the internet. thank you for making these videos!!!
Honestly, what they needed was the showrunners to pay as much attention to details and story as this guy. Because he has done a better job of trying to make sense it as well they did. I know he's an advocate for the show and defending its production and writing, but I honestly think what he has largely succeeded in doing is creating a mythology that makes sense for the most part to fill the gaps that the original showrunners missed.
Ill always feel a bit cheated. If you dont think monetary gains dictated keeping the audience on edge over completing an arc or resolving a mystery for good story telling and art then...youre wrong. These same models are seen in f2p games today. Spike people's "fever" and then give them minimal doses to supress withdrawl. I still love the show and it was good....but the criticism is 100% credible.
Every bit of your content is meticulously planned, researched, scripted, recorded, edited, etc... and I appreciate all of the hard work very much. Thank you!
Hi! I just got caught up on the videos I missed. I got chills watching all of them. And I'm really sad that The Theory of Everything is over. WOW. No words to describe how much I enjoy your content. I think YOU should be the one to write a sequel/requel/prequel. I would definitely watch it❤
Kudos to you doing Lost content in 2024. I was so entrenched in the Lost mythos back in the day and those reality games they did really worked well in bringing me extra intrigue. Thanks for doing this.
The haters of the ending are the Jacks of the world. Takes some of us longer to let ourselves believe. For me, this show put all my inner questions and wonderings into such a brilliant format. I will never forget waking up an hour earlier than I needed to before school to binge as much as I could of the DVD’s me and my friends were sharing around and the way I sat and sobbed with a smile on my face at the ending. It perfectly showed the experience of finally letting yourself believe in something. After all of Jacks dismissing anything not based in science, he was healed by the realisation that we all matter. All of us.
I'm caught between selling my DVD:s or just keeping them for the future. After seeing this video, a third option was revealed; Maybe watch them again? Very good video!!
With all the drivel and slop we have been given over the last few decades by cable network channels, it's surprising to hear how micromanaging the network was on LOST even after the raving reviews of season 1. Smart management should have seen the success and immediately taken a hands-off approach, letting the showrunners do what they do. It doesn't get much worse than executives in a board room ruining a good show because they want something different than what the viewers want.
This is very eye opening. Thanks ! Gives me some ammunition whenever I come across the people who completely bash it saying they didnt know anything. I've always thought, no one ever has a whole story written up in their mind. And even if they do its subject to change. Ask literally any novelist that has ever existed since the beginning of time. Not knowing where you are going is not an inherently bad thing. Of course just like them, any writer knows what big ideas they want to hit on, clearly its the same here.
This reminds me a bit of some things Stephen King once said about his Dark tower series: He talked about his inspirations, one of them being Tolkien with TLOTR. He wanted to write something equal, but he was only 19 and if he had started writing then, it would just became his (Tolkien's) story again. Furthermore he talked about how people wrote to him asking about the ending of the dark tower because they wouldn't be around anymore because of sickness. But he couldn't answer this. He didn't know. He had to write it to discover how it goes! He always said he did not write the dark tower he just wrote down what the Ka (something like fate or destiny in the dark tower universe) showed him.
A prime example to back this up is watching how the two shows Games Of Thrones and The Handmaid’s Tale BOTH surpassed the books and a lot of changes were made in the show that contrasts the books.
Awesome and very thoroughly and clear breakdown! I always chuckle if I read 'they were making it up as they went along'. Lemme tell you a secret. That is how TV is made, especially at that time. It's how creation goes, things are discovered and expanded upon or reduced. Recently it's changed a little because of the reduced nr of episodes, making it possible to write a whole season before the first episode airs. It's still being made up as it went along, just before it's aired. It's also not always great, cause it often feels like a stretched out movie where you don't have random amazing character episodes like the dharma-van episode of Lost. It doesn't enable you to bond with characters, and it's why older shows with like 70+ episodes are way more popular on streaming. And I think that's where they're slowly moving towards again. Why invest $200M into 6-8 episodes when you can make like 16-18 for less that enables people to become more engrossed and put in more time watching your content. Looking forward to the next part, since the second half isn't covered as much as the inception and the first half! As well as you're episode by episode guide!
First... to get lost. Also, I was rewatching Angel and Sawyer is in the first episode. It was pretty weird to see Vamp Sawyer. Also, the Proto-Dharma idea named Medusa reinforces my idea that greek mythology played a huge role in the story. And that the island is Calypso's Ogygia.
I personally love all the “filler” episodes like Hurley getting the dharma van working. Idk why anyone dislikes those. Because even if the writers didn’t do what I’m about to say intentionally, they portrayed things that would actually happen while people were on an island. If I was stranded on the island w a group of people and we found a van and someone was a mechanic, why WOULDNT we try to get it up and running?
I’m a huge lost fan, think it was the best show ever and don’t get me wrong I love your videos and I’ve seen all of them, but I gotta disagree with you on the idea that the writers had some grip on things. I think they just threw in mystery after mystery to keep us intrigued and then when they couldn’t find a way to explain their way out of all of it they suddenly changed from sci fi to spiritual mystery and found some lame excuses like “we don’t like the exposition scenes from star wars or the matrix so we’re just gonna leave it to the audience” lol. I really like some of the explanations you came up with but they still feel forced at times. I really loved lost and it was a completely unique experience that I think we may never match again but I really think the writers screwed us over with season 6. Still thanks for this channel and your videos though, I really enjoyed watching them.
Thank you for making this! I was obsessed with LOST to an unhealthy level back in the day. And the truth is absolutely in the middle. I am doing a rewatch and analyzing what they intended when the episodes aired. I think they intended purgatory as the big reveal but the audience figured it out and they called an audible to the flash sideways. They even admitted they didn't develop Jacob and the man in black until between season 1 and 2. The fog analogy or road trip one do indeed explain where the show is going. Something like time travel was probably an ungrounded idea when Cuse mentioned it but it wasn't concrete at the time. And considering this was loosely based on the stand I think the sickness was going to play a bigger role and Walt was the token psychic Stephen King child. I firmly believed he conjured the polar bears from the comics but the show called an audible and created the frozen donkey wheel to explain the polar bears. Things like this kinda explain the writing process as it went along.
I absolutely loved this series💚🇬🇧🌱 no denying it was stretched to far, would of been the greatest show ever if they did it in four awesome seasons rather than an iffy six...
When I saw you had created a new video I just knew my Sunday was going to be good a one. I started to watch Lost for the 21th ? 22nd? 25th? time last week. Can't actually remember how many times, but it definitely won't be the last, and your work plays a big part in it. I'll never thank you enough... And can't help thinking that a drop of the Source helped create this masterpiece and inspired (or not, but still..) all the humans it touched. (OMG, I sound like Locke in the first seasons 😄, but you know what I mean...)
Why doesnt the Smoke Monster just go over the ultrasonic pylons? We know it's possible to go ver and under them because locke, sayid, kate and the others did so, why didnt he do it? Considering they're there to protect everyone from the monster
Why didn't they just let him off the island? That's all he wanted, and it's not like he was bad guy - much more sympathetic than Jacob. The whole "The world will end" seemed like a lie.
@@TokyoXtreme they didnt let him off the island because everyone (rightly or not) thought that the world would end if they did so, also he clearly wasnt a good person, he killed many people, also when he was talking to Claire he said that after Kate had finished helping him get Sawyer and Jack off the island she could have killed her
If you watch that scene back, you'll see that the smoke monster doesn't actually make it close enough to the pylons to go over them. A human being can literally walk between the pylons before being affected by the sonar waves (it's like once they are directly between the pylons that they become affected), which can either kill or incapacitate them. But the smoke monster can't even get that far between the pylons. He hits the invisible barrier like a brick wall. Smokey doesn't react the same way to the pylons as people do. The field repels him instantly. He can't get close enough to go over them. He's bound by different rules than human beings.
I recently finished watching all seasons of Lost for the first time and so far I have been pleased by it all. Aside from wishing Jack had found a way to defeat…Dark John and lived to protect the island.
I love lost and couldn't give a fck if nobody else on earth likes it. I definitely don't care if it was planned or they were winging it. Most people you hear talk about it didn't even understand the ending anyway 🤷♂️
Well said. Gotta love it when people who didn’t even watch the whole show and clearly don’t understand it like to make proclamations about its quality based on what they heard somewhere online being espoused by fellow ignorant commentators.
@@josephbrown9685yes but that’s also the great wonder of Lost - like the characters in the show were often misled or confused the viewers also have gone through a journey - I watched it 20 years ago week by week and completely missed the meaning at the end but now after rewatching it on streaming services I understand now. So like the characters us viewers can be redeemed too so don’t write them off! 😂
I liked season one but love most of others cause the wierdness and island mysteries was in foreground more mythology loved it wanted more of it Moe weirdness the better wilder the better loved the season two finale loved Desmond omg and the hatch loved time travel others was so intriguing anything with the island was intriguing lol and epic
Won’t be too long of a wait. I’m just completing the final edit of it now. It will be released to Patreon first then it will go live on RUclips a couple of weeks after that. Should be some time in March 🙏
I love Lost and this is the BEST RUclips channel on the series. I loved the first season and it's my favourite season. I love how they opened the second season with Desmond being inside the hatch. Totally unexpected but brilliant.
I write long epic fantasy books and I rarely have more than the current book plotted. Then I build on things. I plant seeds and grow them over books. I have the advantage of writing words. I don't have to worry about the actor playing my character quitting or dying or budgets considerations or time constraints. I don't have set hours of programming that i have to fill. Each season of the show feels outline, espeically the last three stories. I can say, I know that sometimes your plans seem good, but don't work when you go to implement them and force you course correct. Sometimes, inspiration hits you deep into a series that can take you in an unplanned direction. Creating longform fiction is a messy process for a novelist working alone. And if you don't realize that, ask yourslef why GRR Martin hasn't released the next SOIAF novel in 13 years.
Great comment! And totally agreed. I'll be touching upon this a little bit in the next part -- the difference of being a sole author with full creative control over a novel versus running a TV show that employs roughly 500 people and not having full control over every aspect of that production as a result. There's a lot of nuance to what happened behind the scenes of this show.
@@LOSTEXPLAINED108 I love this video series. I came to the LOST bandwagon MANY years after it was already off tv, so the people that I would have chatted with about it weren't even watching it when I was. But that did give one benefit they didn't get. I got to binge watch it. My brain got to STAY focused on it. I don't think I would have liked it as much had I had to try n remember all of that every week n had to deal with the time delays between finale episodes n new seasons starting up etc.
Didn't have time to deeply check your channel, but I will! Was the showrunners making it up? I don't care, the result is great and Lost will always be my favorite TV show, not objectively the best, let's be honest, but my favorite, a marker of my life.
@@LOSTEXPLAINED108 yeah youre really talented. have you considered creating another channel about movies in general where you dissect them like you do lost to solve unanswered questions and mysteries. eventually youll have spoken all there is about lost and id love to see you do something else as youre a really smart guy
That's true, once I complete the episode guide I will have completed my LOST journey. Although it will take several years to finish the episode guide so there is some time before we reach 'The End', as it were. But you're right, at some point I should broaden my focus. Perhaps once the episode guide becomes a well-oiled machine, I can launch a new channel to run alongside it to discuss other things. It's certainly something I am open to doing, I just need a unique take and approach. Really appreciate the kind words and encouragement!
@LOSTEXPLAINED108 Yes!! There's still so much to discover with lost. If and when you decide to do the movie channel, please let Groundhog Day be the first you dissect! I've always wondered what really may have happened to him there, and with your attention to detail, I know you could come up with some solid theories.
31:53 You nailed it. It's all based on a personal bias/belief system that has to utilize a contradictory logical fallacy to be true. Having a "lack of plan" is a relatively nascent/bandwagon-jumping complaint permeated in internet culture imo. It's exactly how people seem to hate the recent Star Wars movies because they "didn't have a plan" but in reality, when George Lucas made "A New Hope" he has mentioned MANY times in public that he didn't have Empire or Return of the Jedi mapped out either and yet the criticisms for those OT films are completely absent.
This has been your best video so far. I’m always glad to learn new information about the creative process behind Lost, so this was invaluable. I’m really looking forward to part 2.
Technically I've seen it three times - on release with local TV delay of year-two (yes it was a thing before streaming services), over decade ago stretched in three month period and recently binged this smoking monster in a week+, second monitor while playing games thing. Surprisingly I was much less annoyed by the time travel plot but hated absolutely everything about Juliet and found Kate+Jack romance even more absurd than Sawyer's playing the house as LaFleur. Jack cries more than I remembered. The ending was ruined by characters changing their minds over this and that constantly. OH, so he was NOT certain about the thing - what a twist! OH, he WAS but only pretending to not be, wow. OH never mind, it was all a bluff. OH they are lost and confused, projecting their uncertainties onto anyone invested with the show. I laugh at crying Jack at this point. There seem to be benefits of watching it now as opposed to sooner. There's no hype, no real fear of spoilers, no silly promo red herrings from various late night show guest appearances of LOST actors. You can choose your own pace, skip the boring parts (yes, it's blasphemous but everyone does it nowadays). The chance of being massively disappointed is balanced by layered distance from growing expectations. Considering how fragile the series formula is, with all bad things potentially happening from actors leaving mid-season to shows being canceled altogether, it's truly a leap of faith to invest attention to any starting project. 2019 Evil - wonderful, guilty pleasure experience, ending with almost graceful emergency landing. 2022 From - strong start with bland season 2, kinda going nowhere. Not obsessively investigating the popular criticism points, I've only watched one TV show close to perfection - The Leftovers. It has this unique quality some may experience by watching it together with their close friend or partner. Unlike the 1967 The Prisoner which could make you slightly paranoid over your wife having three phones and wearing mismatching shoes but only on Saturdays.
What annoyed me as a UK viewer was the fact that only a few seasons in, enough to get you hooked onto it, it was then bought up ? and SkyTV a subscription based TV service that knowing its popularity at that time, put it behind a paywall. I thought it was a shitty thing to do.
Yes! This drove me nuts too! A lot of American shows would air here in the UK (usually on BBC or Channel 4), gain a decent audience, but then only a couple of years later the channels would decide that licensing the rights was now too expensive, so they would drop the shows mid-run. And yes, quite often Sky would pick them up... and who had Sky back then?! And this happened across multiple shows for me: Buffy and 24 on the BBC (had to wait for the video boxsets to come out in order to catch up), and later with Angel and LOST on Channel 4, who gave up both shows after two seasons each. British audiences got really screwed back in those days as there were little to no alternative options in the early 2000s.
@@LOSTEXPLAINED108 Now it is on NF I may watch it again and finally get to the end. I didnt watch it out of general principle. But I am not sure I could put up with it now as it was a zeitgeist thing in the moment. New TV. But now I am sure I will be picking it to pieces now I am just a miserable fella. I can moan about everything. Thanks for the reply. I will be watching your other videos no doubt throughout my rewatch. SO thanks for the reply.
This show was enthrolling. I really loved it, until midway thru season 4. Not a hater by any means and am a big big fan of this show and thanks to you i have understood a lot of things that were just left unanswered. So, thank you for your efforts. I do really wish that this show was able to go on for a few more seasons to truly flesh out the important parts that were... LOST by finishing way to early. Maybe if they omitted all the Kate and Sun episodes, they wcould have fitted everything into 6 seasns.... Maybe??? (Not saying that Kate was a bore or that Sun was uninteresting... hmmmm...) Cheers.
I loved season 4 but seasons 5 and 6 were definitely the weakest for me. When they tried to craft in the mythology and time travel it just didn’t do it for me. Especially the whole remembering your life so you can move on.
I provide some links in the further reading section to some of the sources I used. Javier’s essay - The LOST Will and Testament - is particularly illuminating about those first two seasons. Worth a read on its own!
It’s ironic but I honestly think season 4 is one of the tightest seasons of all time. It pays off the ending of 3 (we have to go back), it has an overarching mystery though the whole piece (the oceanic 6) which are revealed through the whole season, some interesting new characters who are pivotal to the lore and an ever growing sense of dread about what happened to the people who didn’t get off the island - are they alive, are they dead, are they still there? It’s beautifully handled and perfectly put together.
Wait... people don't like the episode where they fix the Dharma bus? I love that episode! Honestly one thing i wish Lost did more was give them vehicles. The boat was cool. Maybe a new raft which is only designed to take them around the outside of the island would have been cool. Instead of an escape, it's for exploration. If the island is this huge, a few expeditions a season which lead to smaller mysteries which can get solved along the way might have helped keep it interesting. Doesn't even always have to be Dharma or egyptian stuff. Just finding evidence of other people having been stranded there. Like mini-detective stories. Could even change up the format of the flashbacks a bit, focusing on these survivors from long ago. Giving the cast a break.
I know LOST isn’t perfect, but they got far more right than wrong. There is a lot of important plot points that get resolved by the end, many of them from season one. Even the controversial ending was just fine as far as I’m concerned.
This show still stands as my favorite! I was 29 years old when this premiered. Before every season I would rewatch the show up to that point so by the time we got to the final season I’ve seen season 1 - 6 times.
LOST is fundamentally a reshaping a n d reimaginging of the Old ABC series The New People with Richard Kiley. Instead of a straight forward deserted island / survival series, Lost became in my view a slightly Pirandello like, flashback driven, Assymetrical serialized drama. It was a show that's relative narrative success was based on its structure not specific stories and scripts .
When “Alias” was pitched to the network, I wonder if JJ Abrams made it clear that there would be supernatural elements? Eventually it became a somewhat spy version of Buffy so of course there were fantasy / supernatural elements. But like Lost, we didn’t really realize this until near the end of season 1.
I love this show. Watched it the entire series all the way through a few times. I think they made a mistake in ANSWERING certain questions. I loved the time travel. I loved the flash sideways. And I loved the mythology. I don't think they should have ever shown Jacob. I don't think they should have killed Locke. I think Jack was a boring character. And I think they ruined the character of Clair. But, I also think the things that did right far outweigh the things they got wrong. Sawyer's character arch is one of the best in TV history. Desmond had the best backstory and I loved that he was the central character in the sideways world. And there's Ben. Best Villian ever!!
Fascinating insight into the story of how LOST came to be the way it came to be and the games showrunners/writers had to play with clueless network executives interfering with the creative process. As with any serialized series-LOST was a work in progres. Looking forward to your coverage of Seasons 4-6. ............... Initially I drifted away early in Season 1 then stumbled onto the episode where the HATCH was discovered and after they blasted it open, I had to find out what happened next and was hooked. Every series of the nature (like Battlestar Galactica that ran concurrently) has seemingly pointless episodes that did not seem to move the story forward-had bits that made sense later on. When viewed as a whole, upon rewatching a few times, it was amazing how sell the pieces came together by the series finale - which many drew the false conclusion "They Were Dead The Whole Time". I was really hoping the 12-minute epilog shown only during the AFTER SHOW and as a special edition DVD, that eventually a sequel series would happen with Hugo, Ben and Walt running the Island. Where they would create their own Dharma Initiative, recruiting scientists and archaeologists to unlock the islands known (and yet to be discovered). With appearance by some of those who left aboard Flight 316. Along with children of the Losties.
I still think they knew the beginning and the end but didn't know the route in between 👍🤔 they didn't know how they'd get from A to B, but they knew what A and B were as plot points...
To begin with, most of Television writing has been "making it up.as you go along". Most TV shows have been written during the course of production over the history of television. Thus TV shows didn't get 22 scripts or 15 scripts or 10 scripts written and rewritten ready to go at the beginning of filming in the summer. You may get 2-3 scripts ready at the season but unless you are doing a cable or streaming show where you shoot all the episodes in a period of time and then release it, you write scripts as you go along - so to speak
I always thought that the writers had an overall plan, but also "winged it" a lot too. The long breaks and the gaps between character-specific episodes allowed for fan input to shape certain aspects of the narrative. LOST was one of the first shows of the internet era.
I just rewatched, for the first time, after all these years. I appreciate this channel and all the videos, but the show felt weeks to week that is was an overall display of what happens when each character makes the wrong decision, more than 60% of the time.
Great deep dive about the Behind the scene stuff of the show that I didn't know about. Glad this channel exists for one of my favorite shows. Keep up the good work. And stay Lost.
I'm the 3rd one here, 9 minutes after upload, I remember saying months ago I'd be here for your next video,and at a convenient time, when I have nothing else to watch
I just finished this series for the 5th or so watch, and decided it’s my all time favorite series. Then I discovered this channel, and you’ve done an EXCELLENT job with your videos. Watching this almost makes me want to start it over again! 😂
But don’t you think that is the result of the first seasons having longer episode counts and the storylines moving at a slower pace due to the fact they didn’t know when the show would end? I think had they secured an end date from the start then we would have seen everything happen at a much quicker but steadier pace and without any of the narrative stretching that those first three seasons kicked up in their wake. For me, the last half of the series had very little filler whereas the first half had lots of filler and regularly dragged its feet.
@@LOSTEXPLAINED108 Difference is, I don't consider it as 'filler'. Fine, maybe even the writers call it that, but to me, it's necessary to flesh the world out. Let's take the Hurley minibus episode, just like the video. Without that episode, there's nothing to tie the viewer to the bus when we see it again in 1977. The slower pace gives tension. I think it has more to do with the "instant gratification" that our society has somehow made the standard rather then the exception. There wasn't much time to soak in the story, lore, and world in the final 3 seasons. To wrap up my rant, in a way we're both correct. Sure, the first 3 season definitely effected the perception of the last 3, but I think I would still find it as being rushed even without watching the first 3. I'm also a a big The Walking Dead fan, to this day I won't miss an episode of the spinoffs...That must say a lot of my taste haha
Well, I love the whole thing from start to finish, even the filler, and I agree that the filler was mostly great for character or world building. Those first three seasons and the slower pace is what helped us truly fall in love with the characters. But I personally prefer when LOST picked up the plot and left behind the leisurely pace and side quests to cover the bigger mythological milestones. I always look forward to getting to the last third of Season Three in a rewatch as that is when the show really starts to ramp up the good stuff in terms of story. Season Five is my personal favourite season of the entire run, but it’s all gravy as far as I am concerned 🙂
This was brilliantly well done, thank you so much for spending so much time researching this put this together. I've always been to die hard fan of the show, but I knew almost none of this. I miss the fun i had when watching along back in the day, scouring lostpedia to learn as much as i could. I was doing an internship I hated during s6, but I kept myself sane sending back and fourth thousand word long essays to a close friend, with Visio block flow diagrams trying to explain the timeline. Such great memories. Please keep up this channel, it brings me so much joy. I went to Hawaii with my wife and in-laws last year and under the guise of tourism sneak took them to as many filming locations as I could. It was surreal going for Chinese food next to the place they shot Ekos Africa scenes, then driving a few minutes to go sit on the survivor beach the rest of the day.
Back watching your videos as I am currently in the middle rewatching the series. I really appreciate the insight you have and the effort you put into these videos, truly remarkable. One question though - I’ve very picky about shows in general and LOST is pretty much the only series I have a deep connection with. I’m assuming LOST is also your favorite show, but can you recommend any other shows that are similar?
Thank you 🙏 LOST is probably my favourite show - it’s certainly the one I have the deeper knowledge of. Although I also have to give love to Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The X-Files for being my formative TV experiences as a young lad. I think those two shows had a heavy influence over LOST as well in terms of their mythological elements. I have never seen any show that did what LOST did. It really is unique. The closest I have ever come to something like it was a British miniseries called The Third Day starring Jude Law, which often felt like LOST meets The Wicker Man; sort of an English folk horror version of The Island. Imagine a traditional John Locke episode where he is following weird signs and forces while The Others try to crown him their leader only it is stretched out as its own standalone story. It’s a very different show, but it has similar concepts and vibes. Otherwise, I’ve seen very few shows that come even remotely close.
Thank you and a lot of things said kept it so great for me as well! A tv show like that with so much ambitions should've been loved and respected but I never took it for granted because Lost is always gonna be up there as the best TV show
u should make a video on how season 4 was supposed to be since it was ment to be longer. love the show. re watching rn for the 4th time. showing it to my girl. were almost thru season 5!
I just recently discovered this channel and have been watching your videos everyday. I don't really have the words to describe how impressed I am by this body of work. I'm completely blown away. LOST is and has been since it aired my favorite TV show of any genre. I have long since given up on arguing with people about the ending and trying to defend the writers so I'm grateful that this channel is doing that in a much more educated and classy way than I could ever achieve. Thank you so much for all the time and effort that must go into this. I will definitely be directing people to this page from now on. ❤
I really appreciate the kind words, thank you 🙏 I am honoured if anyone shared my videos as a way of combatting some of the negativity and criticism surrounding the show online. That is a very high compliment!
I remember coming up with my own sort of head canon to explain just why the smoke monster sounded the way that it did both based on an old quote I saw DL gave once (saying that the sound designer of the show came up with what to use at the start after they gave him a general description of what the "monster" was), and with what we eventually learned exactly what the monster was by the end. That is, I liked the idea of every sound we first heard of the monster during those first couple seasons, it's a mixture of several different elements, but they key thing being NONE of them are HUMAN. They're basically either mechanical sounding, or animalistic. And since when we later see Lock as the Man In Black, he even describes the experience as having his humanity stripped away from him when Jacob turned him into this thing. so that's kinda where I settled in my mind.
I always viewed the MiB monster as essentially a mimic. He copies the dead, absorbs their personas, and imitates them down to the finest detail. The sounds he makes in smoke form, whether animalistic growls or those steam pressed mechanical howls, could be a mix of noises from the jungle wildlife and the various electromagnetic sounds generated by the island. He even mimics the whispers, according to a small chestnut of lore that Damon Lindelof dropped in an interview a few years back. But from a practical production standpoint, I think when the monster sound effects were first created for the show’s Pilot episode, the writersroom certainly seemed to imply that Smokey was more mechanical in nature.
I'm just starting the video, but I have to say that "They made it up as they went along!" is a funny criticism. That's true of pretty much every series. When George Lucas made Star Wars he didn't yet know precisely everything that was going to happen in the next 2 movies. He hadn't definitively decided on Vader being Luke's father, for example. Or that Leia was Luke's sister. When Tolkien wrote The Hobbit, he had no plans for a sequel. Bilbo's magic ring was not the One Ring, the Necromancer of Mirkwood was not Sauron. Until he wrote The Lord of the Rings. When CS Lewis wrote his Ransom Trilogy or the Narnia series, he made up each story as he came to it, yet each series is a cohesive whole. Though I haven't read it, many people love Steven King's Dark Tower series, even though he was making it up as he went along and didn't know the ending when he started the series, and even went back and rewrote the 1st book to fit better with the rest. Even when someone has a general outline of how their planned series is going to go, they don't know every detail along the way until they actually take the time to write it, and even then some parts of the original plan can change. So in the end, even if the showrunners of Lost didn't have any ideas of where they wanted to go with the series, that wouldn't automatically make it a badly written series. Such a ridiculous criticism.
I agree with what you're saying, that every long-running story is ultimately decided piecemeal and any changes/alterations to that narrative are par for the course. That is just how writing a story over the course of many years, movies or episodes works. You can have a general outline of where it is all going, but anything can happen to change the direction of that outline, especially in the television world. Although I think this particular criticism about LOST is slightly more complex. To cannibalise a response I made to another comment on this video: When viewers ask if LOST was made up as it went along they are really asking if the writers knew where the story was going. Did their story follow the pathway of an actual plan or did they make it up without any real planning at all? And if there was no real plan then why did the writers say there was? Does that make the answers we got to long asked questions a bit of a bait-and-switch? This is what is at the heart of the debate surrounding how the show came together and why I felt it necessary to make a video breaking down the various evidence inside and outside of the show. For a long time, it's been a very binary argument between fans and detractors of the series and I wanted to make it clear in video-form exactly how the show was put together, and why it's not a simple yes or no answer.
I'm a "season 1 is my favorite" person, but solely because the character development was such a strong focus across the first few episodes. I feel like, in service to the larger plot, the characters became much less important in later seasons. I watched and became a fan because this was a group of people that were interesting and i wanted to hang out with, not because I wanted to find out what the cave was all about. To me, the writers strike marked a very abrupt disruption to a really fun narrative mythology that was being slowly unfolded, and I felt like they never completely recovered the rhythm. I really enjoyed the first and last seasons and episodes here and there in the other seasons.
I discuss the impact from the writers strike in Part 2 and document what exactly in their plans changed. I agree that the character development was exceptional in Season One, but that’s because they couldn’t flesh out the mythology so they mainly focused on character. As the network let them off the leash in later seasons they could implement all their crazy ideas without as much resistance, but as a result the characters became pawns of the plot far more than before.
My problem with 'Lost' has never so much been about whether or not the writers/creators had a plan... it's that the finale came off like an endorsement of religion over science. Essentially, "don't worry about all the facts and figuring things out in life... just have faith." The entire series was basically a study in how to fail at the principle of Chekhof's Gun.
I think LOST is non-denominational. It's not a religious ending, more so a spiritual one. But that doesn't mean it is throwing the science out. I have discussed and explored the show’s mythology from the POV of both science and faith in depth in my videos. It doesn't choose one over the other IMO. It presents both and effectively says that they are two sides of the same coin. So, if DHARMA represents science's overreach of nature then we have to also analyse how so many characters of faith are manipulated into doing terrible things out of faith. The Others represent organised religion and they are portrayed as the bad guys for most of the show until their faith effectively wipes them out. John Locke is the key man of faith throughout the series and his whole character arc becomes a cautionary tale on blind faith. His beliefs are used against him and he is manipulated into his death. Sure, they all end up in a Catholic church at the end in an afterlife construct, but this is also the same church that exists in the real world Los Angeles. They have been there before when they were alive. And it has a DHARMA station beneath it (representing science). In other words: faith is above but science is beneath. Two sides of the same coin. I make a comparison between Mother and Faraday in my video on The Origins of The Island. They both understand and explain the light beneath the island based on separate interpretations: Mother explains it in mystical terms, while Faraday explains it with physics. But both are essentially explaining the same thing in different ways. LOST is definitely a spiritual show, but it doesn't come at the cost of science. It strikes a balance between its two major themes.
Hey! Im kind of new to the channel, I really like your content and I got a question that dont know if you talked about this topic in other video, but on the episode ""Stranger in a strange land"" Jack wakes up inside a bear cage while some people surrounds the cage. Among those people were Cindy and the kids of the Tail section. Who are the rest of the people though, and what they were doing there? Or whats the purpose of the scene for the storyline of the series?
I think they’re temple others? And/or Cindy might have spent some time in room 23. It’s plausible that although Cindy wasn’t on the initial lists of “good people” for the others to take, Goodwin could have made a case for her which led to her later abduction. It also cannot be completely ruled out that Cindy was a mainland other returning home, although this theory raises too many questions about if the others had an awareness that 815 was due for the island (or if Jacob put her on this path although she’s not a confirmed candidate afaik). While this theory is probably not true, Lostipedia makes some good arguments in favor of this, like: Cindy agreeing that Nathan wasn’t on the plane despite “having a good memory of passengers”; furthermore not recognizing Jin, Sawyer or Michael later when they found them on the beach. Also IMO the smoothness with which she disappears later seems easier to achieve if one snuck off as opposed to kidnapped at close range in broad daylight.
I was one of the big fans that were disappointed with the ending and the 6th season as a whole. Been re-watching it for the first time in 14 years with my wife, who is a first time watcher and so far I have enjoyed watching Lost over again far more than I expected. Plus I've been coming to this channel to have some things make sense and I might actually end up enjoying the overall show much more on a my second run.
I hope these videos help you to see the ending in a new light, so to speak. I have had many people (who felt angry with the last couple of seasons) get in touch with me to say that the show held up better upon a rewatch after digesting the videos on this channel. So, I hope that also proves true for you too. 🙏
After this two-parter is done, I'll be launching an episode guide to go through the show episode-by-episode. So, still lots more to come on this channel!
I do plan on watching all the videos on your channel, in the near future, so in case you talk about this in one of your videos I'm deeply sorry, but in the meantime I've got one quick question: Who tf was Karl? He appeared out of nowhere, there seemed to be a whole lot of mystery surrounding him, and we didn't ever learn much about him. Is he really just Karl, or do you have any theories on him, or on what was possibly intended for his character?
I don't think there was any overarching mystery intended to exist around Karl once we found out more about him in Season Three. He was one of the youngest Others on The Island and was Alex's boyfriend. Ben didn't approve of their romance because he was worried Karl would get Alex pregnant (and we know that can be deadly), so he locked Karl up and tried to "re-educate" the boy. Karl got jailbreaked by Alex, Kate and Sawyer, and eventually switched sides to help our Losties, sticking with them until his death at the hands of Widmore's goons. I think the biggest mystery about Karl is why someone as young as him was recruited in the first place. He didn't seem to have parents on The Island, at least none that ever stepped up to question Ben about his treatment of the boy. It's likely he was a runaway or an orphan in the real world, a kid without ties who wouldn't be missed. And either he was brought there by The Others at the request of Jacob (because Karl was secretly a candidate) or like many other candidates he was brought there by a fated accident or "coincidence", and because he was so young, The Others took him in. Also, I think Karl was a little bit older than Alex, maybe 18 or 19, and that might have been another factor that Ben didn't like. But it's all speculation as we never find out his specific backstory.
20 years have passed and I still have goosebumps when Locke's smiling at the rain...
Terry O’ Qiuinn and Michael Emerson were the capstones of this series for me.
Damn I feel old...
@@guyledouche7939me too but also I feel privileged to have watched this at the time in the old fashioned way, having to wait week by week and year by year for new series - before I even had my first smartphone! 😂
@@tinygold772 the show really does have a different feel when you binge watch vs. week to week.
Im currently watching the whole series again for the 6th time, "you're timing is impeccable John" as Ben Linus said.
Same here. Uncanny.
*your
@@wompastompa3692 it's a minor grammar mistake, I'll leave it like that just to annoy you.
@@harrisonmckenzie4905
>doubling down on IESLB
Done.
Ben : « How did you know when to be here »
Flocke : « The island told me »
Follow the leader , beechcraft seen
The island isn't done with us, and your channel is the proof!!! Thank you 🙏🏼
If after 20 years from the first episode thousands of people are still here to talk about the show, the stories, mysteries and more is because Lost in more than a tv series!!!
Some aspects were no doubt deliberate, including the often repeated one eye symbology shown throughout the show.
That always tells me that there’s a mysterious agenda we likely wont uncover..
Half the characters in breaking bad were originally going to die in season 1, and plans changed CONSTANTLY, but no one accuses the show of "making it up as it went along".
I think what a lot of people don’t realize about producing tv shows is that sometimes things don’t pan out the way they think and realizations are discovered along the way about what works and what doesn’t. Why kill off a character that turns out better than initially expected just because that was the original idea? There are opportunities to make adjustments that won’t destroy the overall narrative. If I recall correctly, Walking Dead also did this with Carol.
The scene where we see the machine gun in Walts trunk, the writers had no idea yet what they were going to do with that
this channel has the best, most thorough understanding of LOST of any other channel or forum anywhere else on the internet. thank you for making these videos!!!
It's a thing of beauty, folks! As always.
I truly 10000% believe that the world needed this channel
I hope the world finds me. That would certainly help boost my subs count! 😂
@@LOSTEXPLAINED108 The funny thing is your catalog might reach the whole series in length by the time people find you.
@@LOSTEXPLAINED108 If it makes you feel better. We both started producing Lost videos at the same time, and you've got 20,000 more than me 😢
Honestly, what they needed was the showrunners to pay as much attention to details and story as this guy. Because he has done a better job of trying to make sense it as well they did. I know he's an advocate for the show and defending its production and writing, but I honestly think what he has largely succeeded in doing is creating a mythology that makes sense for the most part to fill the gaps that the original showrunners missed.
Ill always feel a bit cheated. If you dont think monetary gains dictated keeping the audience on edge over completing an arc or resolving a mystery for good story telling and art then...youre wrong. These same models are seen in f2p games today. Spike people's "fever" and then give them minimal doses to supress withdrawl.
I still love the show and it was good....but the criticism is 100% credible.
There has not been another show that created the same feeling of awe and amazement as Lost did. My favourite show of all time.
I’ve started to rewatch lost.. even tho I’m still lost watching it I have to give them credit.. it’s brilliantly written and stands on its own league
Same, facts
Every bit of your content is meticulously planned, researched, scripted, recorded, edited, etc... and I appreciate all of the hard work very much. Thank you!
Hi! I just got caught up on the videos I missed. I got chills watching all of them. And I'm really sad that The Theory of Everything is over. WOW. No words to describe how much I enjoy your content. I think YOU should be the one to write a sequel/requel/prequel. I would definitely watch it❤
Thank you 🙏 While The Theory of Everything has ended, the LOST Episode Guide is about to begin. One door closes and another opens. Stay tuned!
Kudos to you doing Lost content in 2024. I was so entrenched in the Lost mythos back in the day and those reality games they did really worked well in bringing me extra intrigue. Thanks for doing this.
The haters of the ending are the Jacks of the world. Takes some of us longer to let ourselves believe. For me, this show put all my inner questions and wonderings into such a brilliant format. I will never forget waking up an hour earlier than I needed to before school to binge as much as I could of the DVD’s me and my friends were sharing around and the way I sat and sobbed with a smile on my face at the ending. It perfectly showed the experience of finally letting yourself believe in something. After all of Jacks dismissing anything not based in science, he was healed by the realisation that we all matter. All of us.
I'm caught between selling my DVD:s or just keeping them for the future. After seeing this video, a third option was revealed; Maybe watch them again? Very good video!!
With all the drivel and slop we have been given over the last few decades by cable network channels, it's surprising to hear how micromanaging the network was on LOST even after the raving reviews of season 1. Smart management should have seen the success and immediately taken a hands-off approach, letting the showrunners do what they do. It doesn't get much worse than executives in a board room ruining a good show because they want something different than what the viewers want.
The haters work hard, but LOST Explained works harder! What a great idea for a 2-parter. Really loving this so far!
This is very eye opening. Thanks ! Gives me some ammunition whenever I come across the people who completely bash it saying they didnt know anything. I've always thought, no one ever has a whole story written up in their mind. And even if they do its subject to change. Ask literally any novelist that has ever existed since the beginning of time. Not knowing where you are going is not an inherently bad thing. Of course just like them, any writer knows what big ideas they want to hit on, clearly its the same here.
This reminds me a bit of some things Stephen King once said about his Dark tower series: He talked about his inspirations, one of them being Tolkien with TLOTR. He wanted to write something equal, but he was only 19 and if he had started writing then, it would just became his (Tolkien's) story again. Furthermore he talked about how people wrote to him asking about the ending of the dark tower because they wouldn't be around anymore because of sickness. But he couldn't answer this. He didn't know. He had to write it to discover how it goes! He always said he did not write the dark tower he just wrote down what the Ka (something like fate or destiny in the dark tower universe) showed him.
A prime example to back this up is watching how the two shows Games Of Thrones and The Handmaid’s Tale BOTH surpassed the books and a lot of changes were made in the show that contrasts the books.
Awesome and very thoroughly and clear breakdown! I always chuckle if I read 'they were making it up as they went along'. Lemme tell you a secret. That is how TV is made, especially at that time. It's how creation goes, things are discovered and expanded upon or reduced. Recently it's changed a little because of the reduced nr of episodes, making it possible to write a whole season before the first episode airs. It's still being made up as it went along, just before it's aired. It's also not always great, cause it often feels like a stretched out movie where you don't have random amazing character episodes like the dharma-van episode of Lost. It doesn't enable you to bond with characters, and it's why older shows with like 70+ episodes are way more popular on streaming. And I think that's where they're slowly moving towards again. Why invest $200M into 6-8 episodes when you can make like 16-18 for less that enables people to become more engrossed and put in more time watching your content.
Looking forward to the next part, since the second half isn't covered as much as the inception and the first half! As well as you're episode by episode guide!
First... to get lost. Also, I was rewatching Angel and Sawyer is in the first episode. It was pretty weird to see Vamp Sawyer.
Also, the Proto-Dharma idea named Medusa reinforces my idea that greek mythology played a huge role in the story. And that the island is Calypso's Ogygia.
Your channel is awesome!
This video deserves so many more views. Should be essential viewing for every lost fan and critic.
I personally love all the “filler” episodes like Hurley getting the dharma van working. Idk why anyone dislikes those. Because even if the writers didn’t do what I’m about to say intentionally, they portrayed things that would actually happen while people were on an island. If I was stranded on the island w a group of people and we found a van and someone was a mechanic, why WOULDNT we try to get it up and running?
41:15 If you look closely you could see the smoke monster in Locke's eye ball reflections. And that was as early as episode 4 season 1.
"Oh they were dead all along"
I’m a huge lost fan, think it was the best show ever and don’t get me wrong I love your videos and I’ve seen all of them, but I gotta disagree with you on the idea that the writers had some grip on things. I think they just threw in mystery after mystery to keep us intrigued and then when they couldn’t find a way to explain their way out of all of it they suddenly changed from sci fi to spiritual mystery and found some lame excuses like “we don’t like the exposition scenes from star wars or the matrix so we’re just gonna leave it to the audience” lol. I really like some of the explanations you came up with but they still feel forced at times. I really loved lost and it was a completely unique experience that I think we may never match again but I really think the writers screwed us over with season 6. Still thanks for this channel and your videos though, I really enjoyed watching them.
Thank you for making this! I was obsessed with LOST to an unhealthy level back in the day. And the truth is absolutely in the middle. I am doing a rewatch and analyzing what they intended when the episodes aired. I think they intended purgatory as the big reveal but the audience figured it out and they called an audible to the flash sideways. They even admitted they didn't develop Jacob and the man in black until between season 1 and 2. The fog analogy or road trip one do indeed explain where the show is going. Something like time travel was probably an ungrounded idea when Cuse mentioned it but it wasn't concrete at the time. And considering this was loosely based on the stand I think the sickness was going to play a bigger role and Walt was the token psychic Stephen King child. I firmly believed he conjured the polar bears from the comics but the show called an audible and created the frozen donkey wheel to explain the polar bears. Things like this kinda explain the writing process as it went along.
has it really been 20 years? wow.
September 22 this year is the pilot episode anniversary!
@@josephbrown9685wow
I absolutely loved this series💚🇬🇧🌱 no denying it was stretched to far, would of been the greatest show ever if they did it in four awesome seasons rather than an iffy six...
When I saw you had created a new video I just knew my Sunday was going to be good a one. I started to watch Lost for the 21th ? 22nd? 25th? time last week. Can't actually remember how many times, but it definitely won't be the last, and your work plays a big part in it. I'll never thank you enough... And can't help thinking that a drop of the Source helped create this masterpiece and inspired (or not, but still..) all the humans it touched. (OMG, I sound like Locke in the first seasons 😄, but you know what I mean...)
Why doesnt the Smoke Monster just go over the ultrasonic pylons? We know it's possible to go ver and under them because locke, sayid, kate and the others did so, why didnt he do it? Considering they're there to protect everyone from the monster
Why didn't they just let him off the island? That's all he wanted, and it's not like he was bad guy - much more sympathetic than Jacob. The whole "The world will end" seemed like a lie.
@@TokyoXtreme they didnt let him off the island because everyone (rightly or not) thought that the world would end if they did so, also he clearly wasnt a good person, he killed many people, also when he was talking to Claire he said that after Kate had finished helping him get Sawyer and Jack off the island she could have killed her
If you watch that scene back, you'll see that the smoke monster doesn't actually make it close enough to the pylons to go over them. A human being can literally walk between the pylons before being affected by the sonar waves (it's like once they are directly between the pylons that they become affected), which can either kill or incapacitate them. But the smoke monster can't even get that far between the pylons. He hits the invisible barrier like a brick wall. Smokey doesn't react the same way to the pylons as people do. The field repels him instantly. He can't get close enough to go over them. He's bound by different rules than human beings.
I recently finished watching all seasons of Lost for the first time and so far I have been pleased by it all.
Aside from wishing Jack had found a way to defeat…Dark John and lived to protect the island.
I love lost and couldn't give a fck if nobody else on earth likes it. I definitely don't care if it was planned or they were winging it. Most people you hear talk about it didn't even understand the ending anyway 🤷♂️
Well said. Gotta love it when people who didn’t even watch the whole show and clearly don’t understand it like to make proclamations about its quality based on what they heard somewhere online being espoused by fellow ignorant commentators.
@@josephbrown9685yes but that’s also the great wonder of Lost - like the characters in the show were often misled or confused the viewers also have gone through a journey - I watched it 20 years ago week by week and completely missed the meaning at the end but now after rewatching it on streaming services I understand now. So like the characters us viewers can be redeemed too so don’t write them off! 😂
I liked season one but love most of others cause the wierdness and island mysteries was in foreground more mythology loved it wanted more of it Moe weirdness the better wilder the better loved the season two finale loved Desmond omg and the hatch loved time travel others was so intriguing anything with the island was intriguing lol and epic
Just finished it, so when is the next upload, part 2?
Won’t be too long of a wait. I’m just completing the final edit of it now. It will be released to Patreon first then it will go live on RUclips a couple of weeks after that. Should be some time in March 🙏
@@LOSTEXPLAINED108 Okay, thanks, I'll be here waiting.
I love Lost and this is the BEST RUclips channel on the series. I loved the first season and it's my favourite season. I love how they opened the second season with Desmond being inside the hatch. Totally unexpected but brilliant.
Such a great video! Keep up the good work! Love your videos! Lost needs to stay alive. No other show like it.
I write long epic fantasy books and I rarely have more than the current book plotted. Then I build on things. I plant seeds and grow them over books. I have the advantage of writing words. I don't have to worry about the actor playing my character quitting or dying or budgets considerations or time constraints. I don't have set hours of programming that i have to fill. Each season of the show feels outline, espeically the last three stories. I can say, I know that sometimes your plans seem good, but don't work when you go to implement them and force you course correct. Sometimes, inspiration hits you deep into a series that can take you in an unplanned direction. Creating longform fiction is a messy process for a novelist working alone. And if you don't realize that, ask yourslef why GRR Martin hasn't released the next SOIAF novel in 13 years.
Great comment! And totally agreed. I'll be touching upon this a little bit in the next part -- the difference of being a sole author with full creative control over a novel versus running a TV show that employs roughly 500 people and not having full control over every aspect of that production as a result. There's a lot of nuance to what happened behind the scenes of this show.
You can BE a fan n still be critical.
Absolutely. They are not mutually exclusive things. I have my own criticisms of aspects of the show too.
@@LOSTEXPLAINED108 I love this video series. I came to the LOST bandwagon MANY years after it was already off tv, so the people that I would have chatted with about it weren't even watching it when I was. But that did give one benefit they didn't get. I got to binge watch it. My brain got to STAY focused on it. I don't think I would have liked it as much had I had to try n remember all of that every week n had to deal with the time delays between finale episodes n new seasons starting up etc.
There will never be a series like Lost...no words to describe the absolute incomparable genius of the creators...
I can’t imagine how deflated they must have felt that so many people just didn’t get the ending at the time!
Excellent argument. So glad the channel's still cookin. Makes me wanna watch again every time.
Didn't have time to deeply check your channel, but I will!
Was the showrunners making it up? I don't care, the result is great and Lost will always be my favorite TV show, not objectively the best, let's be honest, but my favorite, a marker of my life.
your editing, timing and creativity is sublime. amazing channel
What a lovely comment! Thank you 🙏
@@LOSTEXPLAINED108 yeah youre really talented. have you considered creating another channel about movies in general where you dissect them like you do lost to solve unanswered questions and mysteries. eventually youll have spoken all there is about lost and id love to see you do something else as youre a really smart guy
That's true, once I complete the episode guide I will have completed my LOST journey. Although it will take several years to finish the episode guide so there is some time before we reach 'The End', as it were. But you're right, at some point I should broaden my focus. Perhaps once the episode guide becomes a well-oiled machine, I can launch a new channel to run alongside it to discuss other things. It's certainly something I am open to doing, I just need a unique take and approach. Really appreciate the kind words and encouragement!
@LOSTEXPLAINED108 Yes!! There's still so much to discover with lost. If and when you decide to do the movie channel, please let Groundhog Day be the first you dissect! I've always wondered what really may have happened to him there, and with your attention to detail, I know you could come up with some solid theories.
Great choice! Groundhog Day is one of my favourite movies of all time! 🙂
31:53 You nailed it. It's all based on a personal bias/belief system that has to utilize a contradictory logical fallacy to be true. Having a "lack of plan" is a relatively nascent/bandwagon-jumping complaint permeated in internet culture imo.
It's exactly how people seem to hate the recent Star Wars movies because they "didn't have a plan" but in reality, when George Lucas made "A New Hope" he has mentioned MANY times in public that he didn't have Empire or Return of the Jedi mapped out either and yet the criticisms for those OT films are completely absent.
This has been your best video so far. I’m always glad to learn new information about the creative process behind Lost, so this was invaluable. I’m really looking forward to part 2.
Will they ever continue or reboot this series?
I explore that very possibility in my previous video: ruclips.net/video/2R1-vIiWGRM/видео.html
@@LOSTEXPLAINED108 Okay, thanks for the fast reply!
Thank you for your commitment into making this video. Lost is truly one of the few tv shows that i would rewatch for the third time.
Technically I've seen it three times - on release with local TV delay of year-two (yes it was a thing before streaming services), over decade ago stretched in three month period and recently binged this smoking monster in a week+, second monitor while playing games thing. Surprisingly I was much less annoyed by the time travel plot but hated absolutely everything about Juliet and found Kate+Jack romance even more absurd than Sawyer's playing the house as LaFleur. Jack cries more than I remembered.
The ending was ruined by characters changing their minds over this and that constantly. OH, so he was NOT certain about the thing - what a twist! OH, he WAS but only pretending to not be, wow. OH never mind, it was all a bluff. OH they are lost and confused, projecting their uncertainties onto anyone invested with the show. I laugh at crying Jack at this point.
There seem to be benefits of watching it now as opposed to sooner. There's no hype, no real fear of spoilers, no silly promo red herrings from various late night show guest appearances of LOST actors. You can choose your own pace, skip the boring parts (yes, it's blasphemous but everyone does it nowadays). The chance of being massively disappointed is balanced by layered distance from growing expectations.
Considering how fragile the series formula is, with all bad things potentially happening from actors leaving mid-season to shows being canceled altogether, it's truly a leap of faith to invest attention to any starting project. 2019 Evil - wonderful, guilty pleasure experience, ending with almost graceful emergency landing. 2022 From - strong start with bland season 2, kinda going nowhere.
Not obsessively investigating the popular criticism points, I've only watched one TV show close to perfection - The Leftovers.
It has this unique quality some may experience by watching it together with their close friend or partner. Unlike the 1967 The Prisoner which could make you slightly paranoid over your wife having three phones and wearing mismatching shoes but only on Saturdays.
What annoyed me as a UK viewer was the fact that only a few seasons in, enough to get you hooked onto it, it was then bought up ? and SkyTV a subscription based TV service that knowing its popularity at that time, put it behind a paywall. I thought it was a shitty thing to do.
Yes! This drove me nuts too! A lot of American shows would air here in the UK (usually on BBC or Channel 4), gain a decent audience, but then only a couple of years later the channels would decide that licensing the rights was now too expensive, so they would drop the shows mid-run. And yes, quite often Sky would pick them up... and who had Sky back then?! And this happened across multiple shows for me: Buffy and 24 on the BBC (had to wait for the video boxsets to come out in order to catch up), and later with Angel and LOST on Channel 4, who gave up both shows after two seasons each. British audiences got really screwed back in those days as there were little to no alternative options in the early 2000s.
@@LOSTEXPLAINED108 Now it is on NF I may watch it again and finally get to the end. I didnt watch it out of general principle. But I am not sure I could put up with it now as it was a zeitgeist thing in the moment. New TV. But now I am sure I will be picking it to pieces now I am just a miserable fella. I can moan about everything. Thanks for the reply. I will be watching your other videos no doubt throughout my rewatch. SO thanks for the reply.
LOST was one of a kind
Such great and amazing context. Just want to thank you again and say you are - so - awesome - !
This show was enthrolling. I really loved it, until midway thru season 4. Not a hater by any means and am a big big fan of this show and thanks to you i have understood a lot of things that were just left unanswered. So, thank you for your efforts. I do really wish that this show was able to go on for a few more seasons to truly flesh out the important parts that were... LOST by finishing way to early. Maybe if they omitted all the Kate and Sun episodes, they wcould have fitted everything into 6 seasns.... Maybe??? (Not saying that Kate was a bore or that Sun was uninteresting... hmmmm...) Cheers.
I loved season 4 but seasons 5 and 6 were definitely the weakest for me. When they tried to craft in the mythology and time travel it just didn’t do it for me. Especially the whole remembering your life so you can move on.
Nice work. I thought I was a lost fan, but most of these quotes I’ve never seen before. Especially from the writers that are not Lindelof and Cuse
I provide some links in the further reading section to some of the sources I used. Javier’s essay - The LOST Will and Testament - is particularly illuminating about those first two seasons. Worth a read on its own!
Thank YOU for this video.
It’s ironic but I honestly think season 4 is one of the tightest seasons of all time. It pays off the ending of 3 (we have to go back), it has an overarching mystery though the whole piece (the oceanic 6) which are revealed through the whole season, some interesting new characters who are pivotal to the lore and an ever growing sense of dread about what happened to the people who didn’t get off the island - are they alive, are they dead, are they still there? It’s beautifully handled and perfectly put together.
Been waiting!
Wait... people don't like the episode where they fix the Dharma bus? I love that episode! Honestly one thing i wish Lost did more was give them vehicles. The boat was cool. Maybe a new raft which is only designed to take them around the outside of the island would have been cool. Instead of an escape, it's for exploration. If the island is this huge, a few expeditions a season which lead to smaller mysteries which can get solved along the way might have helped keep it interesting. Doesn't even always have to be Dharma or egyptian stuff. Just finding evidence of other people having been stranded there. Like mini-detective stories. Could even change up the format of the flashbacks a bit, focusing on these survivors from long ago. Giving the cast a break.
I know LOST isn’t perfect, but they got far more right than wrong. There is a lot of important plot points that get resolved by the end, many of them from season one. Even the controversial ending was just fine as far as I’m concerned.
This show still stands as my favorite! I was 29 years old when this premiered. Before every season I would rewatch the show up to that point so by the time we got to the final season I’ve seen season 1 - 6 times.
LOST is fundamentally a reshaping a n d reimaginging of the Old ABC series The New People with Richard Kiley.
Instead of a straight forward deserted island / survival series, Lost became in my view a slightly Pirandello like, flashback driven, Assymetrical serialized drama.
It was a show that's relative narrative success was based on its structure not specific stories and scripts .
When “Alias” was pitched to the network, I wonder if JJ Abrams made it clear that there would be supernatural elements? Eventually it became a somewhat spy version of Buffy so of course there were fantasy / supernatural elements. But like Lost, we didn’t really realize this until near the end of season 1.
I love this show. Watched it the entire series all the way through a few times. I think they made a mistake in ANSWERING certain questions. I loved the time travel. I loved the flash sideways. And I loved the mythology.
I don't think they should have ever shown Jacob. I don't think they should have killed Locke. I think Jack was a boring character. And I think they ruined the character of Clair.
But, I also think the things that did right far outweigh the things they got wrong.
Sawyer's character arch is one of the best in TV history. Desmond had the best backstory and I loved that he was the central character in the sideways world. And there's Ben. Best Villian ever!!
Fascinating insight into the story of how LOST came to be the way it came to be and the games showrunners/writers had to play with clueless network executives interfering with the creative process. As with any serialized series-LOST was a work in progres. Looking forward to your coverage of Seasons 4-6. ............... Initially I drifted away early in Season 1 then stumbled onto the episode where the HATCH was discovered and after they blasted it open, I had to find out what happened next and was hooked.
Every series of the nature (like Battlestar Galactica that ran concurrently) has seemingly pointless episodes that did not seem to move the story forward-had bits that made sense later on.
When viewed as a whole, upon rewatching a few times, it was amazing how sell the pieces came together by the series finale - which many drew the false conclusion "They Were Dead The Whole Time".
I was really hoping the 12-minute epilog shown only during the AFTER SHOW and as a special edition DVD, that eventually a sequel series would happen with Hugo, Ben and Walt running the Island. Where they would create their own Dharma Initiative, recruiting scientists and archaeologists to unlock the islands known (and yet to be discovered). With appearance by some of those who left aboard Flight 316. Along with children of the Losties.
I still think they knew the beginning and the end but didn't know the route in between 👍🤔 they didn't know how they'd get from A to B, but they knew what A and B were as plot points...
To begin with, most of Television writing has been "making it up.as you go along".
Most TV shows have been written during the course of production over the history of television. Thus
TV shows didn't get 22 scripts or 15 scripts or 10 scripts written and rewritten ready to go at the beginning of filming in the summer.
You may get 2-3 scripts ready at the season but unless you are doing a cable or streaming show where you shoot all the episodes in a period of time and then release it, you write scripts as you go along - so to speak
I always thought that the writers had an overall plan, but also "winged it" a lot too. The long breaks and the gaps between character-specific episodes allowed for fan input to shape certain aspects of the narrative. LOST was one of the first shows of the internet era.
As ever, thank you for the awesome content!!!
I just rewatched, for the first time, after all these years. I appreciate this channel and all the videos, but the show felt weeks to week that is was an overall display of what happens when each character makes the wrong decision, more than 60% of the time.
Great deep dive about the Behind the scene stuff of the show that I didn't know about. Glad this channel exists for one of my favorite shows. Keep up the good work. And stay Lost.
People are daft af. The people who make such complaints have no idea how coming up with and running TV show works.
I'm the 3rd one here, 9 minutes after upload,
I remember saying months ago I'd be here for your next video,and at a convenient time, when I have nothing else to watch
Isn't every TV show to a certain degree kinda making it up as they go along? Lost gets unfairly treated with this issue 🤦
I just finished this series for the 5th or so watch, and decided it’s my all time favorite series. Then I discovered this channel, and you’ve done an EXCELLENT job with your videos. Watching this almost makes me want to start it over again! 😂
I think and hope they do it again with another series. It can't be related to lost, but it can be just as awesome.
See, I don't entirely agree with the ending here. I felt like the last 3 season feel incredibly rushed.
But don’t you think that is the result of the first seasons having longer episode counts and the storylines moving at a slower pace due to the fact they didn’t know when the show would end? I think had they secured an end date from the start then we would have seen everything happen at a much quicker but steadier pace and without any of the narrative stretching that those first three seasons kicked up in their wake. For me, the last half of the series had very little filler whereas the first half had lots of filler and regularly dragged its feet.
@@LOSTEXPLAINED108 Difference is, I don't consider it as 'filler'. Fine, maybe even the writers call it that, but to me, it's necessary to flesh the world out. Let's take the Hurley minibus episode, just like the video. Without that episode, there's nothing to tie the viewer to the bus when we see it again in 1977. The slower pace gives tension. I think it has more to do with the "instant gratification" that our society has somehow made the standard rather then the exception. There wasn't much time to soak in the story, lore, and world in the final 3 seasons. To wrap up my rant, in a way we're both correct. Sure, the first 3 season definitely effected the perception of the last 3, but I think I would still find it as being rushed even without watching the first 3. I'm also a a big The Walking Dead fan, to this day I won't miss an episode of the spinoffs...That must say a lot of my taste haha
Well, I love the whole thing from start to finish, even the filler, and I agree that the filler was mostly great for character or world building. Those first three seasons and the slower pace is what helped us truly fall in love with the characters. But I personally prefer when LOST picked up the plot and left behind the leisurely pace and side quests to cover the bigger mythological milestones. I always look forward to getting to the last third of Season Three in a rewatch as that is when the show really starts to ramp up the good stuff in terms of story. Season Five is my personal favourite season of the entire run, but it’s all gravy as far as I am concerned 🙂
Lost is the greatest show ever written!
This was brilliantly well done, thank you so much for spending so much time researching this put this together. I've always been to die hard fan of the show, but I knew almost none of this.
I miss the fun i had when watching along back in the day, scouring lostpedia to learn as much as i could. I was doing an internship I hated during s6, but I kept myself sane sending back and fourth thousand word long essays to a close friend, with Visio block flow diagrams trying to explain the timeline. Such great memories.
Please keep up this channel, it brings me so much joy.
I went to Hawaii with my wife and in-laws last year and under the guise of tourism sneak took them to as many filming locations as I could. It was surreal going for Chinese food next to the place they shot Ekos Africa scenes, then driving a few minutes to go sit on the survivor beach the rest of the day.
Some of the stuff between the start and finish was brilliant. When they killed off John Locke it really turned to shite.
The idiots who think it was a " scam " dont realize that the ones FUNCING the Show need to see results ..THe show was the biggest show at its time
Glad to hear some of the backstory. Lost ended up being such a disappointment in the end.
Back watching your videos as I am currently in the middle rewatching the series.
I really appreciate the insight you have and the effort you put into these videos, truly remarkable.
One question though - I’ve very picky about shows in general and LOST is pretty much the only series I have a deep connection with. I’m assuming LOST is also your favorite show, but can you recommend any other shows that are similar?
Thank you 🙏 LOST is probably my favourite show - it’s certainly the one I have the deeper knowledge of. Although I also have to give love to Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The X-Files for being my formative TV experiences as a young lad. I think those two shows had a heavy influence over LOST as well in terms of their mythological elements.
I have never seen any show that did what LOST did. It really is unique. The closest I have ever come to something like it was a British miniseries called The Third Day starring Jude Law, which often felt like LOST meets The Wicker Man; sort of an English folk horror version of The Island. Imagine a traditional John Locke episode where he is following weird signs and forces while The Others try to crown him their leader only it is stretched out as its own standalone story. It’s a very different show, but it has similar concepts and vibes. Otherwise, I’ve seen very few shows that come even remotely close.
The details in these videos are insanely accurate, great work! Thank you, as always, for putting in the effort, really appreciated
Countless shows and movies made after LOST, are imitating LOST.
LOST is essentially a Netflix or Hulu original series before such a thing even existed.
Remember when the show aired, internet was on the rise and all the crazy theories after each episode.
Thank you and a lot of things said kept it so great for me as well! A tv show like that with so much ambitions should've been loved and respected but I never took it for granted because Lost is always gonna be up there as the best TV show
u should make a video on how season 4 was supposed to be since it was ment to be longer. love the show. re watching rn for the 4th time. showing it to my girl. were almost thru season 5!
I will discuss the impact that the writers strike had on Season Four in Part Two.
Sounds like politics today. No in between when it should be.
I just recently discovered this channel and have been watching your videos everyday. I don't really have the words to describe how impressed I am by this body of work. I'm completely blown away.
LOST is and has been since it aired my favorite TV show of any genre. I have long since given up on arguing with people about the ending and trying to defend the writers so I'm grateful that this channel is doing that in a much more educated and classy way than I could ever achieve.
Thank you so much for all the time and effort that must go into this. I will definitely be directing people to this page from now on. ❤
I really appreciate the kind words, thank you 🙏 I am honoured if anyone shared my videos as a way of combatting some of the negativity and criticism surrounding the show online. That is a very high compliment!
Babe, wake up, new video from Lost Explained dropped
Idt it does but I was always curious as to how the others were so strong and good at fighting
I can literally count on you to post something and it makes me go back and rewatch LOST lol I don’t know who to blame at this point
I take full responsibility 😂
@@LOSTEXPLAINED108 could be worse addictions I guess😂
I remember coming up with my own sort of head canon to explain just why the smoke monster sounded the way that it did both based on an old quote I saw DL gave once (saying that the sound designer of the show came up with what to use at the start after they gave him a general description of what the "monster" was), and with what we eventually learned exactly what the monster was by the end. That is, I liked the idea of every sound we first heard of the monster during those first couple seasons, it's a mixture of several different elements, but they key thing being NONE of them are HUMAN. They're basically either mechanical sounding, or animalistic. And since when we later see Lock as the Man In Black, he even describes the experience as having his humanity stripped away from him when Jacob turned him into this thing. so that's kinda where I settled in my mind.
I always viewed the MiB monster as essentially a mimic. He copies the dead, absorbs their personas, and imitates them down to the finest detail. The sounds he makes in smoke form, whether animalistic growls or those steam pressed mechanical howls, could be a mix of noises from the jungle wildlife and the various electromagnetic sounds generated by the island. He even mimics the whispers, according to a small chestnut of lore that Damon Lindelof dropped in an interview a few years back. But from a practical production standpoint, I think when the monster sound effects were first created for the show’s Pilot episode, the writersroom certainly seemed to imply that Smokey was more mechanical in nature.
I'm just starting the video, but I have to say that "They made it up as they went along!" is a funny criticism. That's true of pretty much every series. When George Lucas made Star Wars he didn't yet know precisely everything that was going to happen in the next 2 movies. He hadn't definitively decided on Vader being Luke's father, for example. Or that Leia was Luke's sister. When Tolkien wrote The Hobbit, he had no plans for a sequel. Bilbo's magic ring was not the One Ring, the Necromancer of Mirkwood was not Sauron. Until he wrote The Lord of the Rings. When CS Lewis wrote his Ransom Trilogy or the Narnia series, he made up each story as he came to it, yet each series is a cohesive whole. Though I haven't read it, many people love Steven King's Dark Tower series, even though he was making it up as he went along and didn't know the ending when he started the series, and even went back and rewrote the 1st book to fit better with the rest. Even when someone has a general outline of how their planned series is going to go, they don't know every detail along the way until they actually take the time to write it, and even then some parts of the original plan can change. So in the end, even if the showrunners of Lost didn't have any ideas of where they wanted to go with the series, that wouldn't automatically make it a badly written series. Such a ridiculous criticism.
I agree with what you're saying, that every long-running story is ultimately decided piecemeal and any changes/alterations to that narrative are par for the course. That is just how writing a story over the course of many years, movies or episodes works. You can have a general outline of where it is all going, but anything can happen to change the direction of that outline, especially in the television world. Although I think this particular criticism about LOST is slightly more complex. To cannibalise a response I made to another comment on this video:
When viewers ask if LOST was made up as it went along they are really asking if the writers knew where the story was going. Did their story follow the pathway of an actual plan or did they make it up without any real planning at all? And if there was no real plan then why did the writers say there was? Does that make the answers we got to long asked questions a bit of a bait-and-switch? This is what is at the heart of the debate surrounding how the show came together and why I felt it necessary to make a video breaking down the various evidence inside and outside of the show. For a long time, it's been a very binary argument between fans and detractors of the series and I wanted to make it clear in video-form exactly how the show was put together, and why it's not a simple yes or no answer.
I'm a "season 1 is my favorite" person, but solely because the character development was such a strong focus across the first few episodes. I feel like, in service to the larger plot, the characters became much less important in later seasons. I watched and became a fan because this was a group of people that were interesting and i wanted to hang out with, not because I wanted to find out what the cave was all about. To me, the writers strike marked a very abrupt disruption to a really fun narrative mythology that was being slowly unfolded, and I felt like they never completely recovered the rhythm. I really enjoyed the first and last seasons and episodes here and there in the other seasons.
I discuss the impact from the writers strike in Part 2 and document what exactly in their plans changed. I agree that the character development was exceptional in Season One, but that’s because they couldn’t flesh out the mythology so they mainly focused on character. As the network let them off the leash in later seasons they could implement all their crazy ideas without as much resistance, but as a result the characters became pawns of the plot far more than before.
AHHHHH new Lost Explained dropped!!
My problem with 'Lost' has never so much been about whether or not the writers/creators had a plan... it's that the finale came off like an endorsement of religion over science. Essentially, "don't worry about all the facts and figuring things out in life... just have faith." The entire series was basically a study in how to fail at the principle of Chekhof's Gun.
I think LOST is non-denominational. It's not a religious ending, more so a spiritual one. But that doesn't mean it is throwing the science out. I have discussed and explored the show’s mythology from the POV of both science and faith in depth in my videos. It doesn't choose one over the other IMO. It presents both and effectively says that they are two sides of the same coin.
So, if DHARMA represents science's overreach of nature then we have to also analyse how so many characters of faith are manipulated into doing terrible things out of faith. The Others represent organised religion and they are portrayed as the bad guys for most of the show until their faith effectively wipes them out. John Locke is the key man of faith throughout the series and his whole character arc becomes a cautionary tale on blind faith. His beliefs are used against him and he is manipulated into his death.
Sure, they all end up in a Catholic church at the end in an afterlife construct, but this is also the same church that exists in the real world Los Angeles. They have been there before when they were alive. And it has a DHARMA station beneath it (representing science). In other words: faith is above but science is beneath. Two sides of the same coin.
I make a comparison between Mother and Faraday in my video on The Origins of The Island. They both understand and explain the light beneath the island based on separate interpretations: Mother explains it in mystical terms, while Faraday explains it with physics. But both are essentially explaining the same thing in different ways. LOST is definitely a spiritual show, but it doesn't come at the cost of science. It strikes a balance between its two major themes.
Hey! Im kind of new to the channel, I really like your content and I got a question that dont know if you talked about this topic in other video, but on the episode ""Stranger in a strange land"" Jack wakes up inside a bear cage while some people surrounds the cage. Among those people were Cindy and the kids of the Tail section. Who are the rest of the people though, and what they were doing there? Or whats the purpose of the scene for the storyline of the series?
I think they’re temple others? And/or Cindy might have spent some time in room 23. It’s plausible that although Cindy wasn’t on the initial lists of “good people” for the others to take, Goodwin could have made a case for her which led to her later abduction. It also cannot be completely ruled out that Cindy was a mainland other returning home, although this theory raises too many questions about if the others had an awareness that 815 was due for the island (or if Jacob put her on this path although she’s not a confirmed candidate afaik). While this theory is probably not true, Lostipedia makes some good arguments in favor of this, like: Cindy agreeing that Nathan wasn’t on the plane despite “having a good memory of passengers”; furthermore not recognizing Jin, Sawyer or Michael later when they found them on the beach. Also IMO the smoothness with which she disappears later seems easier to achieve if one snuck off as opposed to kidnapped at close range in broad daylight.
I was one of the big fans that were disappointed with the ending and the 6th season as a whole.
Been re-watching it for the first time in 14 years with my wife, who is a first time watcher and so far I have enjoyed watching Lost over again far more than I expected. Plus I've been coming to this channel to have some things make sense and I might actually end up enjoying the overall show much more on a my second run.
I hope these videos help you to see the ending in a new light, so to speak. I have had many people (who felt angry with the last couple of seasons) get in touch with me to say that the show held up better upon a rewatch after digesting the videos on this channel. So, I hope that also proves true for you too. 🙏
I thought that your last video was perhaps the last one. SO happy to be wrong!
After this two-parter is done, I'll be launching an episode guide to go through the show episode-by-episode. So, still lots more to come on this channel!
@@LOSTEXPLAINED108 😍 gold mate, thank you so much 🙏
I do plan on watching all the videos on your channel, in the near future, so in case you talk about this in one of your videos I'm deeply sorry, but in the meantime I've got one quick question:
Who tf was Karl?
He appeared out of nowhere, there seemed to be a whole lot of mystery surrounding him, and we didn't ever learn much about him.
Is he really just Karl, or do you have any theories on him, or on what was possibly intended for his character?
I don't think there was any overarching mystery intended to exist around Karl once we found out more about him in Season Three. He was one of the youngest Others on The Island and was Alex's boyfriend. Ben didn't approve of their romance because he was worried Karl would get Alex pregnant (and we know that can be deadly), so he locked Karl up and tried to "re-educate" the boy. Karl got jailbreaked by Alex, Kate and Sawyer, and eventually switched sides to help our Losties, sticking with them until his death at the hands of Widmore's goons.
I think the biggest mystery about Karl is why someone as young as him was recruited in the first place. He didn't seem to have parents on The Island, at least none that ever stepped up to question Ben about his treatment of the boy. It's likely he was a runaway or an orphan in the real world, a kid without ties who wouldn't be missed. And either he was brought there by The Others at the request of Jacob (because Karl was secretly a candidate) or like many other candidates he was brought there by a fated accident or "coincidence", and because he was so young, The Others took him in.
Also, I think Karl was a little bit older than Alex, maybe 18 or 19, and that might have been another factor that Ben didn't like. But it's all speculation as we never find out his specific backstory.