Oh Lost, where do we even begin? If you were a fan of the six-season show, no doubt you remember the tumultuous rollercoaster of emotions that you went through while watching the show. It strung us along and often left more questions hanging than they actually answered.
AND THEN, after ALL OF THAT, the writers had to go and divide an entire country with their highly controversial ending. Some people loved it, some people hated it, and some people are still trying to figure out exactly what the hell happened to Jack and friends while they were on the island. The large opinion about how the show ended was that after everything the characters met up in a church, which was supposed to be the gates of Heaven… you know, because they were all actually DEAD. I’ll never forget watching the last episode with my father and our complete opposite reactions. Almost simultaneously, he said “That was great!” while I shouted “Are you fucking kidding me?!”
What if I told you the ending was almost entirely different?
Lost contained a lot of misleading details that actually didn’t mean anything, and one of those was thought to be the drawing of a volcano on a blackboard in a Dharma Initiative school. Turns out it was put there for a reason. Lost co-showrunner Carlton Cuse and co-creator Damon Lindelof explained:
Cuse: “We were always looking to cannibalize anything on Hawaii to aid in the visual storytelling of the show. We also thought of the island as a character on the show, so we were always looking for things that would give it more personality.”
Lindelof: “The question was always, how do you basically visualize and dramatize the idea that the island itself is all that separates the world from hellfire and damnation? And the answer was the volcano.”
Lindelof continued: “The volcano had been dormant for the duration of the series, but based on moving into this endgame, the island had become unstable and the volcano was going to erupt. We were going to have lots of seismic activity, and ultimately, there was going to be this big fight between the forces of good and the forces of evil, which ended up in the series manifesting as Jack and The Man in Black, in the midst of magma. Magma spewing everywhere!”
In the end, the decision to scrap the idea was determined by money, because what isn’t? ABC was unwilling to pay up the dough for what would probably be the most expensive scenes on television at the time.
Which ending do you think you would have preferred? Although Cuse and Lindelof both agree that the ending they went with turned out better, I highly doubt everyone will agree with them.
