An oral history ofLosts daring, divisive finale, our last truly communal broadcast TV experience.
The Art of Ending Things
How great entertainment sticks the landing.
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This article was originally published on February 25, 2021.
Were recirculating it now thatLostis streaming on Netflix.
When theLostfinale aired on May 23, 2010, it was a very big deal.
It was also, quite possibly, the last big deal of its kind.
ABCspromosfor The End,Losts last chapter, hyped it as the most anticipated episode in television history.
That only sounded like aslightexaggeration.
When the finale aired, it sparked divided responses (understatement) from fans.
Others were extremely vocally angry about not getting more direct answers to the shows many questions.
Still others came away from it all convinced that the castaways had been dead the whole time.
(They were not dead.
They really werent.)
Because, yes, of course, we had to go back.
I believe the first counteroffer was nine seasons.
We were like,No, we cant.
But we needed to know [when we would end].
It was impossible to move forward without a clear sense of what the rest of the journey was.
The best we could do was get six seasons.
At least we were able to end the show on our own timetable.
That was something that hadnt been done before.
Liz Sarnoff, writer and executive producer:The first three seasons, we did so many episodes.
I mean, we did like 22 to 25 a season.
There wasnt a lot of time to speculate on the future.
Certainly one of them was Jacks eye closing.
Once hes dead, show is over.
If it wasnt season one, it was in the break between seasons one and season two.
Eddy Kitsis, writer and executive producer:I feel like we also had the Vincent component.
]I remember thinking about that for years.
Lindelof:There were certain things that we were already guided by and locked in on.
Those conversations were happening as early as that mini-camp [for the writers after season one].
We did refer to the island as being a cork in the hellmouth.
Its like the Death Star.
And Damon got all weird with me and he was like, Whove you been talking to?
I was like, I havent talked to nobody.
Pretend I never said anything.
And I walked away.
So I quit my theorizing right there.
We all always loved the idea and wanted to keep it as a secret.
When Josh mentioned it, Im like, Oh, okay.
Someone is basically talking to him.
Jimmy Kimmel,Lostsuper-fan and host ofJimmy Kimmel Live!
They said, Heres what well do.
We will tell you how the series ends.
We will write it down, and well put it in an envelope.
And then you’re able to decide whether you want to open it or not.
He said, Let me tell you the story of how were going to end the show.
And he said, Why?
And I said, Look up.
And we were in front of a pub called the Walkabout.
I look at Damon and he looks at me and he goes, Oh my God.
[The season-one episode that reveals Locke was in a wheelchair before landing on the island is called Walkabout.
]I said, I have to take a picture of you in front of it.
So I do that.
Then he says, Let me take one of you.
Lindelof:Yes, that is true.
Mystery shows like that are so tricky because nobody wants the mystery to end, but they want answers.
The level of difficulty was, I think, the hardest Ill ever encounter.
Lets not attempt to anticipate this reaction or that reaction.
Lets make the finale that we ourselves want to see.
And would it be weird for him to be in the church because hes grown now?
Sarnoff:Damon would always say, Theres questions that make you go,Ohhhh.
And then theres questions that make you go,Huh.
You dont want theHuh.
Particularly in the final scene of the finale, you dont want people going,Whos that kid?
People dont consider it part of the canon.
I do, but the look on peoples faces when theyre like, What about Walt?
In fact, an attempt to do that would just be didactic.
That was sort of what answers look like.
And I dont think it was great.
We had been talking about this for a really long time, so it was pretty good vibes.
Sarnoff:It was one of the more emotional times I can ever remember in any writers room.
And that was the year of the writers strike and all this other stuff.
He was like,Im sending you and Adam [Horowitz] the final piece.
There was this feeling of specialness because its like, we were all in on this secret together.
Adam Horowitz, writer and executive producer:I remember feeling,Wow, this is it.
And it was beautiful.
Keeping the Secrets ofLost
Throughout the shows run, theLostteam took steps to ensure spoilers didnt leak.
(Note:That did not always work!)
But the details surrounding the finale were in such demand that they were guarded with extra intensity.
You know, we were joking with Damon and Carlton.
Theyre like, Okay, we might take you up on that.
Michael Emerson (Benjamin Linus):That last script was a high-security script.
This was especially high stakes.
This could not get out into the world.
Maggie Grace (Shannon Rutherford):They really enjoyed the spy games of getting people scripts.
It was early then, before Marvel took it to another level of paranoia.
Jorge Garcia (Hugo Hurley Reyes):The scripts got more and more secretive as the series progressed.
Otherwise, they wouldnt be able to deliver a script unless I was home.
We just kinda strapped it to a bench in front of my house.
If someone really wanted, they could easily just steal the whole mailbox.
Yunjin Kim (Sun):I got the script, but it was thinner than I expected.
A lot of the scenes that I was not involved in were missing.
But it was like that the last five or six episodes.
In season six, we had a lot of pages missing.
The whole exchange between Jack and his father, Christian Shepherd, I definitely did not get those pages.
Emerson:My whole gig atLostwas kind of operating in the dark.
I got comfortable with that.
And here I said, I need to know whats going on with my character.
They said, We dont want to tell you the ending.
Are you trying to get the ending out of us?
I was like, No, I just need to do my job.
I dont really know whats going on.
I couldnt understand what I was doing [in the flash-sideways].
Why did I want to get everyone back to the church?
Why was I reawakening everyone, what was my objective?
At the end I got there.
I knew what was happening as we were filming it.
No, no, no.
There was no double me in a wedding dress.
I never met her.
Kim:Wow.I had no idea that was happening.
They didnt tell us anything we didnt need to know.
The work could be physically taxing, daunting, and occasionally a little scary.
(There was a bit of a mix-up involving a knife.)
Well, they did it, they frickin did it.
What do you think?
Cusick:I think people were happy that it was ending.
I was one of the few that was like,We could do another season.
Theres a lot more story to be told here.
Terry OQuinn (John Locke):It was physically stressful because you know, Im not a kid.
I think at that time I was 58.
Holloway:Didnt me and Evy [Evangeline Lily] jump off a cliff?
[Note: Yes.
Yes, they did.]
Holloway:I remember how crazy our stunt guy was.
So hes like, Okay, lets do this.
Im going to die.
Im like, Dont die, bro.
Its like 70 feet high.
Just jump, you know?
Hes like, No, its cool.
Its cool if I die.
And he went ahead, 70 feet off that cliff.
They have plaques on that cliff of the people who have died.
So its pretty major.
Youve got to get pretty close to the edge.
Bender:We were really up there [on that cliff].
The actors were really up there.
On any set of mine, its always safety first.
So we mapped out the action, totally safe and broke down all the shots.
Bender:We had a fake knife and a real knife.
The real knife, like whenever youre doing a movie, is dulled down.
Terry was working with a real knife and the fake knife.
[Matthew] saw me pull it out and then we wrestled with it.
Bender:We were doing this switch with the blade and Terry picked up the wrong one.
OQuinn:I plunged it into Matthews side.
It was just to protect him from where I was supposed to stab him.
So I stabbed him with a real knife.
Bender:The scene ended with Matt rolling off and next thing I know these guys are fucking laughing.
Im going, whats going on?
Terry goes, I fucked up.
I went, Oh my God.
OQuinn:Fortunately, I stabbed him where I was supposed to, so it didnt pierce his pad.
I dont think any harm was done.
They wont give you a dangerous knife to wrestle with.
Emerson:I chiefly remember being injured [during production of the finale].
I had torn the meniscus in my left knee on-set.
We were shooting a scene, it must have been maybe three or four episodes before the finale.
Holloway:I remember going, Man, is this going to be cheesy?
We were all thinking,Oh man, I wonder if its going to work.
And when they did it, it was awesome, I thought.
Those things were musts, they needed to be serviced.
And hopefully the good side of fan service, where the fans really want you to listen to them.
Holloway:Elizabeth was so sweet, is so sweet, as a person.
Like, you cant shake her.
I tried to get her mad.
Id just be an asshole sometimes, like being Sawyer-ish on set.
She would just be like, Oh, Josh.
So I called them [in Hawaii].
I think first I called Carlton.
It was a good dialogue, it was a good back and forth.
Carlton is an intellectual processor, so he kind of worked his way through, he asked questions.
Let me talk to Damon, he said.
Thirty minutes later, Damon called me back.
Probably what I was looking for in that moment was maybe more answers and maybe more clarity.
I think that was what might have been playing out.
I do remember what Damon said to me: Im going to start crying.
Youre really upsetting me.
What do you mean?
And Im on the phone saying some version of, Yeah, but.
Lindelof:Barrys recollection seems to be consistent with my own.
I know that This was the place you made together to find each other was already there.
I remember being very emotional and wanting it to be over.
Jossen:We had our conversation and he said, Okay, let me think about it.
I know what to do.
Theres so much brilliance in Carlton, theres so much brilliance in Damon.
They went and did their work.
And I mean, I loved it.
Lindelof:Theres stuff that makes me grimace a bit.
But its just a bridge too far.
And then Cynthia Watros was getting an iced tea at craft services.
And I was like,Libby is in the church?Thats no dig on Cynthia.
We wanted Libby there because Hurley wanted Libby there.
I just remember it being very weird in addition to being very emotional.
OQuinn:That was wonderful.
A lot of it was just spontaneous.
Then Id say to Jorge, Go over and pick up Matt and give him a bear hug.
And it was fabulous.
Its everybodys fantasy of what happens when we die.
So we were goofing around with whose baby that was and taking a lot of pictures of the baby.
It was a kind of creepy doll.
I think we all might have had a glass of wine later that night.
Holloway:We also got drunk, I think, while we did it.
A little bit, you know, because were all celebrating.
That was the last scene that we all did together.
Cusick:I brought my family my wife and my children were there.
I remember people playing the guitar and singing.
Somebody was singing Hallelujah.
I dont know who it was.
It could have been Terry.
OQuinn:Hallelujah was in my repertoire right around that time.
It brought back so many memories.
Im sitting next to Maggie and swaying back and forth.
Oh, its so sweet.
That wasnt just, Oh, its the finale and the last scene.
The entire run of the show, thats kind of the vibe.
This was our job, and we all felt very lucky.
I mean everything was crazy.
And they were extra-long episodes, so there was more music than normal.
We started just talking about the theme of fathers and dying and things like that.
Then I was like, All right, well, let me do these notes for you.
Give me like a half-hour.
Hes like, Okay.
And he hops out.
I turn around and I start cutting and about 30 seconds later, I suddenly burst into tears.
They were also very protective of everything in general anyway.
Not that I couldnt have gotten them if I wanted to, but it just worked better.
A lot of tears.
I felt like that was a better experience for the audience, to feel that its more spontaneous.
That is literally true.
In the middle of the finale, Raufs wifes water burst.
Glasgow:I drove home and got home in time for him to be born.
He was born at home.
Goldman:Whats cool is that baby supplied the crying for when Claire gives birth in the sideways.
Glasgow:It wasnt my son.
It was my daughter.
She was, I want to say 2 or 3.
Those are the tricks you end up doing.
You go, Oh, we need this thing and we dont have it.
Then its sort of like, Oh, come over here and cry into my iPhone.
The Finale Coda, a.k.a.
A post-credits sequence may have inadvertently contributed to that impression, but the spread of this disinformation endsnow.
Is there any way to soften that or ameliorate that?
Jossen:He calls me back at some point: I talked to Damon.
We think its a really cool idea.
Huge waves come in and the beaches erode away.
It was an environmental hazard.
So they read into that footage at the end that, you know, they were dead.
That was not the intention.
The intention was just to create a narrative pause.
But it was too portentous.
It took on another meaning.
And that meaning I think, distorted our intentions and helped create that misperception.
Garcia:I thought that was a nice bit to decompress at the end of it.
And people still say it.
People still talk about it the same way.
And at some level, you know, you cant have it both ways.
Holloway:Im still confused.
Ill be honest with you.
I think thats one theory.
We could have all been dead.
Or we could have been in like this purgatory thing.
I always thought that, and still do kind of really think it was more that.
To me, thats what makes more sense.
Then they kind of sidestepped it with the parallel life at the end.
But I dont know, because they always said, No, its not purgatory.
But I must have watched it again later.
And then I grew happier and happier with the ending over time.
Sarnoff:That [coda] didnt help things.
Also I think a lot of people had been saying that all along and they wanted to be right.
You know what I mean?
Jossen:There were always Easter eggs.
And many of them checked out on the show around season three.
I found that if someone said to me, Were they dead the whole time?
and I asked them, Do you know who Lapidus or Faraday are?
they could not answer those questions.
Again, this is not provable data.
I guess I would say, Lets debate.
You be Phyllis Schlafly and Ill be Bella [Abzug] and lets dance.
Im telling you, its an impossible task.
OQuinn:All you heard was the negative.
I heard plenty of that, but I didnt take it personally.
Or at least come to some conclusions yourself.
I know that the dissatisfaction with the end of a show is common.
Even I was dissatisfied withGame of Thrones.
But I wanted to write them a letter and say, Welcome to the club.
Cusick:The show is not about the ending.
That was the show.
And yet so delicious.
It really was the most interactive show, I think, ever.
Not since the Bible have so many scholars worked so hard to interpret what was written.
She keeps trying to watch it with me, but my wife is such a stickler with that.
Like, No, its not appropriate.
So Im going to sneak in and watch it with her.
Garcia:I ran into Damon at an airport [last] … March?
I was on my way to Atlanta to go do an episode ofMacGyver.
It was right when we started getting word that this apocalypse was starting.
[Damons] like, He just started watching it.
His son was great, so enthusiastic.
He recognized me and he got real excited to come and meet me.
I was like,Oh, thats cool.
His sons going to be a fan.
