We Have To Go Back!

 

We Have To Go Back!

Today, September 22, 2024, marks the 20^th anniversary of the LOST pilot.

It’s been a special year to be a Lost fan – from visiting Oahu and touring filming locations across the island, to meeting a handful of actors from the show at Smoky Mountain Terror and getting a photo op and autographs, to the 20^th anniversary of the show and the Getting Lost documentary premiering today (hopefully coming to streaming sooner rather than later)!

The show premiered in 2004, and I probably started watching with my family in 2006 at 8 years old after getting caught up on the first couple of seasons. We’d then watch every season, week after week, until the finale of the sixth and final season in 2010. The finale disappointed a large portion of viewers, and many more walked away with a gross misunderstanding of its ending.

Spoiler alert: NO, they were NOT dead the whole time.  I don’t understand how anyone could listen to Christian explicitly telling Jack “…everything that’s ever happened to you is real. All those people in the church – they’re all real too” and think that the events on the Island didn’t happen. Jack asks if they’re all dead (here in the “flash-sideways”) and Christian replies “Everyone dies sometime, kiddo. Some of them before you, some of them long after you…this is a place you all made together so you could find one another. The most important part of your life was the time that you spent with these people.” It is crystal clear that the events of the show were very real while the castaways were alive after surviving the plane crash, but I digress.

You’ll hear it said often, but they just don’t make television shows like they used to. In the age of eight-episode seasons made instantly available on streaming services with 2+ year waits between seasons, it’s easy to forget the time when a network like ABC would greenlight a brand-new show – especially a risky show like LOST without any widely-known starring actors and a pilot episode that would cost $14 million to produce. This was the most expensive pilot episode ever made at its time, and it is still the fourth most expensive. They had J.J. Abrams, Michael Giacchino, and a dream!

Gone are the days of 20+ episode seasons, with lively and active discussions in online forums theorizing about what everything means and what might happen next. Every episode leaves you on the very edge of your seat – desperate for the next one.

I’ve been watching LOST Circle (https://www.lostcircle815.com/), a fan edit of the show where all the character history, backstory, and flashbacks occur chronologically, with 14 episodes of exposition before we ever see the Island. I’ve timed it so I get to watch the plane crash episode today (September 22^nd is also the day the plane crashes in-universe).

LOST is my favorite tv show of all time, and I doubt any show will ever replace it as my clear 1^st place. I’m sure I could write a whole dissertation on this show, so I’ll end with this: The main theme of LOST can be summed up by yet another quote from Christian’s closing conversation with Jack – “You needed them and they needed you…to remember and to let go…not leaving, moving on.” The irony is that I can’t let go. Jack put it best – we have to go back!