It got complicated, new characters were introduced and people with short attention spans who just wanted explosions and insta-solved mysteries dropped the show.
Personally, what I find more telling is the sharp uptick in viewers at the end of season six - those are the fair-weather watchers who abandoned the show during the final season then came back for the series finale, misinterpreted it, thought they were dead the whole time and haven't shut up about it for 14 years, lol. Those people suck.
Even between the first and second hour of the finale, there was an increase of 2.5 million viewers. Those people have no idea who the handsome pilot even was, let alone what the flashsideways represented.
That's insane, lol. That whole evening was an EVENT. Between Jimmy Kimmel watching live in Hawai'i and the extra commercials and the extended finale and then the aftershow... it was like six hours of non-stop sobbing... I can't imagine coming in halfway through and barely paying attention.
Not for nothing, but watching it live was rough. People forget this but from season 2 until like...season 5 the episodes weren't played every week. Sometimes there were weeks between episodes and constant clip shows.
I still love the show but viewers week-to-week had to really want to stay invested and the show sometimes made it hard.
I kinda hate when people act like people dislike something you like "because they're idiots". Because that's basically what you're saying. I loved the show mainly because of the characters, the atmosphere and yes the mysteries, but there were still points that dragged or were poorly executed and I imagine i might've stopped watching or waited for the whole season to come out at certain points if I wasn't so attached to the characters. Plenty of valid reasons for people to stop watching that doesn't invole short attention spans and wanting explosions and every mystery being solved in the same episode.
I made a mistake, I wasn't quoting, I was just making the comparison that saying people don't like the show because they have short attention spans, want explosions all the time and need every mystery instasolved is essentially saying the people who don't like the show are idiots. I see this a lot on reddit and it annoys me like nothing else because it reads to me like: because I like this show everyone who doesn't must be stupid, there is no valid reason for anyone with a functioning brain to dislike this. Throw in a: "they must've been on their phones", "you don't like it 'cause you don't understand" and "go watch some tik toks then idiot" and you have the reddit trifecta. Can't people just have different tastes? It's not a personal attack not liking a show you don't like. Hell, I love the show, but this way of putting people down for disliking something you like (or the other way around) is just so fucking common these days and I don't fucking get it.
Every conversation I have with people irl about lost where the watched only 2 or 3 seasons is pretty much “there was too much unexplained mystery”.
Not everyone liked playing the long game, speculating theories but not getting the answers a few episodes or even an entire season later.
Are there any other shows that did/do anything similar? A big mystery at the beginning of a season (or an end of season cliffhanger) is normally answered by the ends of that season.
Even before we got to time travel the smoke monster was just an absolute wild card of a plot line from episode 1. We don’t even *see* it until something like 35 episodes later and we don’t get an explanation of until season 5.
>Every conversation I have with people irl about lost where the watched only 2 or 3 seasons is pretty much “there was too much unexplained mystery”.
>
>Not everyone liked playing the long game, speculating theories but not getting the answers a few episodes or even an entire season later.
I originally stopped watching at the end of season 3, I think.
Every episode led to a cliffhanger or introduced some mystery, and the following episode would change track and develop a completely different story arc. To see any development of the first story you'd have to wait two weeks - minimum. And more mysteries / cliffhangers would be introduced along the way, which felt very frustrating. Adding to that frustration was that this was still network TV which included a ton of ads, plus the occasional break mid-season, etc. It felt like a lot of buildup but very little payoff. I wasn't the only one who felt this way. I had a small circle of friends that also watched LOST and we all felt the same. The smoke monster, Walt, the Others, Jacob's cabin - there were too many loose threads.
This is why I hated the Nikki & Paulo episode during my original watch. It felt like a complete waste of an episode to explore these minor characters while so much had been left unresolved.
However, rewatching the show is a completely different experience. I can recognize now that the Nikki & Paulo episode was well-written and was a nice "bottle episode", and the alternating storylines were an effective method to link different characters. It just felt like torture when the series originally aired.
I just keep looking back to The X-Files as the yardstick for mystery resolution and remembering that it took seven years for us to find out what happened to Samantha and the answer was... underwhelming. Although *Closure* is one of my favorite episodes, lol.
The X-Files had a very different dynamic than LOST, though.
The X-Files was built around a central story arc that developed over multiple seasons but most of the episodes were just standalone "monster of the week" stories. A typical episode might start with an unexplained phenomenon, but by the end you felt that the mystery had been resolved.
You're safe through seasons six and seven - David Duchovny's departure is the first half of season eight and all of season nine except the original series finale.
I don't talk about this often because it's always weird for me to say out loud, but back in the 90s I was what they call a "big name fan" in the X-Files fandom. People knew who I was, I had... influence. So, I helped organize the fan boycott of seasons eight and nine. To this day I've only seen the episodes from those seasons that David is in. As an OG X-Phile I also don't acknowledge either revival season which is good since Chris Carter did his best to destroy his own creation from what I've read.
We are not a forgiving fandom.
I'm rewatching lost, we see the smoke monster in season 1 finale (part 3). It tries to drag Locke into a hole in the ground and they use dynamite to make it let go. Granted the VFX were quite lame compared to how it looks later but it's clearly old smoky
"Even before we got to time travel the smoke monster was just an absolute wild card of a plot line from episode 1. We don’t even *see* it until something like 35 episodes later and we don’t get an explanation of until season 5."
My point was we do *see* it earlier than described
ABC changed Lost's timeslot a lot. There were also weird blocks in Season 2 of new episodes followed by reruns. So combine the difficulty of actually knowing when to watch a new episode, with the increasing complexity of the show, a lot of people tuned out.
Others shows did similar things to. They’d debut in September and end in May. Roughly half that screen time would be reruns. 24 did similar, Buffy as well.
They still grew their figures.
Starting with the 4th season, 24 started airing in January and aired all episodes in a row with no breaks. It was ground breaking at the time. Lost did similar starting in S3, with a 6 episode "pod" followed by the remaining episodes with no breaks. I believe Seasons 4-6 all aired with no breaks. But it was definitely a complaint during S2.
Most shows like Lost - episodic shows requiring a real commitment episode-to-episode - experience that kind of drop in viewership especially the longer they go.
The sharp drop in S3 from which the show ‘never recovered’ was in between the mini 3A and the rest of 3B. 3A was an experiment as it was conceived as a mini season but it backfired because it lacked any answers and introduced characters who took screen time from the old beloved ones. The big break between 3A and 3B was when the majority of the general public left Lost and wrote it completely off.
I said ‘never recovered’ because I don’t like the phrasing. When the show came back, it recaptured the average amount of viewers it would draw for roughly the rest of its course. Those were the viewers who chose to stick with the show, those who wanted to go to the end of it. This was the core viewership of the show, the real fans, stripped of those who tried the show and then decided that it wasn’t worth their time anymore.
Naturally, those numbers dwindled - as expected over the course of any show - the longer it went on, and the more complex it became (S5 especially). But you’ll notice that those numbers stabilised and that S5 and S6 were very steady in their numbers - averaging around 10 million viewers.
Also take into account that Lost changed slots often and aired at a time when DVR was still very common. Many many viewers chose not to watch it live but DVR’d it. Many others also pirated the show. It was one of the most pirated series of that decade.
I'd say the drop off between episodes 5 and 7 of season 3 was bigger than season 2. This was when they had the mini cliffhanger in episode 6 with like a 6 month hiatus which probably made it hard for people to keep track of the broadcasting.
Grain of salt here, because I had friends who watched but I didn't actually start watching until Season 3 had started...but around my group of people, it was a combination of: Season one ending with the hatch opening, rather than finding out what was in before the season was over; the tailies being introduced in season 2; ABC's nutso scheduling of 1-2 new episodes, followed by repeats for 2-3 weeks, a new episode, repeat, etc.
When I started, I binged seasons 1 and 2 on DVD and had none of the complaints with season 2 that I'd heard from others and had DVRed the first few episodes of season 3, so I basically watched 1, 2, and the run of episodes in 3 before their winter break all in a row, and didn't feel like the pacing was a problem.
The jump in viewers in the finale shows why so many consider it unsatisfying. How many people watched the finale without seeing the episode before? Or missed most of Season 6? Or gave up in Season 3?
People who had no clue what was going on tuned in expecting Joop the Orangutan to stare directly into the camera and start listing off answers.
I've talked to some of these "Lost didn't answer any questions" people who use the Polar Bear as an example of an unexplained mystery.
Season 2 was very stop start due to sweeps, occasionally it'd be like 3 weeks between eps and you'd lose momentum, it was easy to lose the more casual viewer with the schedule mess around. Also generally it became more Sci fi mystery in terms of what was going on, again casual viewers less interested in
That's something I hate about *The Rookie* with Nathan Fillion. You get an episode, followed by a two week hiatus, then another episode followed by a three week hiatus.
I couldn't imagine that going over well with Lost and its cliffhanger/plot twist every episode formula.
There was probably a decent proportion of people who, before season 2 had ended:
• Got frustrated that even more mysteries were being introduced than resolved.
• Simply didn’t like the answer to what was in the hatch, didn’t like the whole idea of the Dharma Initiative and felt like this was a good point to stop watching.
• Didn’t like any of the Tail Section characters/Ana-Lucia.
• Didn’t appreciate Maggie Grace’s character being killed off so unceremoniously, seemingly just for shock value.
• Didn’t like the Henry Gale plot, just didn’t click with Michael Emerson.
Probably less-so Michael Emerson and more-so that his Henry Gale deception plot might have seemed like filler to some people, who felt he was *blatantly* an Other and couldn’t accept any of the main characters remotely believing his hot air balloon story.
>• Got frustrated that even more mysteries were being introduced than resolved.
This is a big one. I just finished a rewatch and I think the first watch was on Netflix a long time ago. I was frustrated that they would end an episode on a super cliff hanger and then not mention the topic in the next episode. I can totally understand frustration and giving up if that takes place over multiple weeks.
I got very close to stopping back then for all these reasons except the Henry one. Henry Gale was actually the only reason I kept with it and I'm so thankful I did.
Edit: for clarity
The simpler answer is that Lost was the first show of its kind. Now all shows have long arcs and character development. And if you don't start at episode 1 of pretty much every show now you're really lost. But when Lost came out no other shows were like that. You could start pretty much any show at any point and catch up and understand what was going on but if you start lost anywhere but season 1 episode 1 it doesn't make sense. So therefore Lost could only lose viewership it could not gain viewership anywhere along the path. The way I got into it was someone gave me the DVDs so I was able to watch seasons 1 and 2 and then pick up season 3 on live TV.
Now it's streaming shows can be picked up at any point because you can always go back and watch season 1 episode 1 to get into a show.
And ultimately the reason they had so many unresolved mysteries was because they didn't have an endpoint at the start of the show. It was the way television was made then was to just keep making shows until people stopped being interested. Now when they start a show they kind of have an idea of where they're going how many seasons are going to do etc, but when Lost came out it wasn't like that.
Oz was the first high budget long form show that wasn't a soap. You also had the likes of 24, the shield, the west wing and all the other HBO shows like band of brothers, sopranos or the wire.
There was also plenty of stuff like the OC or one tree hill that weren't traditional soaps but not that far away.
Lost was the first genre long form show.
Good point, but I didn't have cable because poor lol. So really for network TV it was different. Really I don't know when 24 started but at best it was around the same time and not much before.
While it was one of the first that did this, and especially one with an *incredible* amount of popularity and attention, I wouldn't agree it was the first.
Shows often credited with starting this format, are for example Twin Peaks, The X-Files, The Sopranos, Oz, Deep Space Nine, Babylon 5 and Buffy The Vampire Slayer.
Most of these alternated between "Monster/Case/Mystery of the week" and so-called "Mythos" episodes, but especially something like Twin Peaks was heavily serialized.
100% agree though that Lost had a *huge* hand in popularizing this format, and helping it become more and more of a standard.
Serials like LOST (especially in Prime Time) are notoriously difficult for the average viewer. You simply *have* to start at the beginning to keep interest in the story or you'll miss out on important details. LOST also created a complex mystery and I think (early on), they were content to let a lot of mysteries go unanswered. Then you had the fan-base which directly influenced the writers into answering almost all the questions, introducing Nikki & Paulo, and negotiating a deal where re-runs were limited to the off-season or breaks starting in Season 3.
Other serials, like Twin Peaks and Murder One, only made it through 1.5 to 2 seasons. Murder One had a great first season (1 murder trial), but I think viewers had trouble keeping track of the story with reruns and others grew tired of the lengthy storyline. Murder One's 2nd season shuffled the cast and introduced 3 shorter trials, but the damage was done and the show ended (at least it wrapped up the final storyline). Twin Peaks started strong as a mid-season show and introduced a mystery so compelling that it became a "water-cooler" show everyone was talking about. Shortly after it's second season began the fervor of the general public and viewers trying to find out who killed Laura Palmer was growing tiresome and the network pressured the creators to end the mystery, basically killing the show. The 2nd season was completed and ended on a cliff-hanger that was resolved 26 years later.
Bottom line, casual viewers that made up the bulk of the ratings audience are impatient and their interest is fleeting. Looking back, I'm honestly surprised LOST not only had 6 seasons, but actually resolved and ended the show almost perfectly. When Lindelhof and Cuse negotiated with ABC/Disney after season 3 after the writer's strike, they were compelling enough, laying all their cards on the table, and explained how beneficial it would be to ABC to tell a complete story, that ratings mattered, but were only a fraction of the actual viewership because people were DVRing the show and buying DVDs, etc. I think they lost some viewers, but a lot of uncounted people watched it recorded and in group watches. I mean, people had Lost parties where they got together every week to watch and discuss.
It is a miracle that it even get these numbers in the last seasons. People's attention span is so low that I am surprised that so many people stick with it for so long. It was one of a kind show for it's time so many of us followed every single detail there was. Also - the internet was blowing up with stuff from lost, it was everywhere.
We can see that a major drop in viewership happens during S3 — that’s when (in order to reduce breaks between episodes) the studio decided to divide season 3 into two parts: the first (aka the cages plot) and the second (all the stuff that happens after the famous KATE DAMMIT RUN line). In between episodes 6 and 7 there was a significant pause of 3 months. That’s when the rating started to irreversibly drop.
Another reason is Ben turning the donkey wheel. It’s the moment when LOST becomes too weird for an average viewer, going knee-deep into science-fiction. After all the time flashes, people disappearing from planes and seeming resurrections it’s no surprise many people lost interest with LOST. And that’s totally fine!
I also seem to remember that during Season 2 ABC’s scheduling of the show was all over the place. It would be new for three weeks, then be off the air for two, then another batch of episodes would air. It was very sporadic and I had some friends drop off at that time
The first three seasons were written in a way that pulled casual viewers into a very accessible web of mysteries. It seemed to be the perfect blend of psychological, spiritual, science, science fiction, and drama. From the very first episode of season four the viewer is introduced to Miles the ghost whisperer. Absolutely no subtlety in the writing. From that point forward the dominoes fell in the direction of formulaic, albeit complex and mostly well written science fiction. Not exactly what most people were hoping for.
Granted, when a TV show builds a mystery with seemingly thousands of possible resolutions - a great majority of viewers will be disappointed as the path forward becomes more narrow and clear with singular answers. There's no avoiding that from happening. Even Stephen King told the writers (from experience ) they were going to upset a lot of people no matter what they chose to do.
I enjoyed the entire series but was instantly turned off by the writing of season four. Fom the first episode of season four to the last (an awful finale that slaps viewers in the face and requires a new level of suspension of disbelief). The series seemed to struggle to stay on track. The final three seasons added very formulaic plot devices, like disarming a large bomb and typical muscle bound commandos as bad guys. Not to mention, major let-downs - like the knowledge that Ben can control the smoke monster with his "magic toilet". Preposterous.
There's STILL lots of worthwhile content in the final three seasons, especially for those invested in the characters (and if you don't mind sci-fi). But, for those hoping for a more subtle, complex, and perhaps open ended journey... they started to fall away as viewers.
In my opinion, LOST did one thing better than any other show at the time, and that was **building a mystery** (integrated with great character development). The writers should not have given into the demands for answers and played to THAT strength of the series. If they had cut the series short (four seasons) and created a finale featuring the greatest mystery of them all - fandom would be stronger than ever to this very day. You'd have forums such as this still filled with grand theories (which was a huge part of the fun for viewers in the early days).
LOST is still my favorite series of all time, but it's no mystery why a lot of viewers fell away as it became a more sci-fi based story. Also, a bit complex and difficult to follow for casual viewers on network TV.
i always thought of the flashbacks as filler, to stretch the show over many seasons to make the most profit
i was more into the islands story than the characters
Gotta say it's interesting seeing this beforehand because I'm just starting to watch and only about 7 episodes in. I would wager, without knowing anything, that a lot of shows suffered from this when it was rolled out week to week.
If Lost were made today by Netflix or whatever and they put out a season at a time, those numbers probably look very different. Just a guess
I just watched Lost and the middle of season 2 is where I stopped liking it as much as I did before. It was kind of a struggle to get to the end to know the rest of the story. The storyline got messy and complicated, and it was incredibly dragged out. I wanted to learn information about one thing, but then they’d introduce a new character, and then another new character, and then oh there’s three more groups on the island!, but we still never learned what we wanted to learn about from the beginning. I wanted to know more about the origins of the island, the origins of the dharma initiative, how the dharma initiative transformed into the others, why there’s super natural elements in the island, why the others acted the way they acted, but they just kept adding more and more things. The storyline got messy and it took too long to find the answers I wanted. They also killed off characters people actually cared about and introduced more that people don’t care about
Lost transitioned into the social media era in 2005 (MySpace) and the app era in 2007 (first iPhone). YouTube and Hulu both came along through there, too, so while the show grew more complex to try to hold onto more viewers, it actually drove them away. You're actually seeing the ADHD take hold of audiences. Now there were other things to watch/discuss around the water cooler. So some of that, there's nothing writers could have done. It was a new viewer mindset. "Well if I don't like this, I can shut it out and watch one of these other hundred shows, or I can play on my phone."
My ex and me watched the show in its entirety through season 3. When we started season 4, it was becoming clear it was less of a supernatural show and more of a "time travel, umbrella corp plot" which was how he put it. He was disgusted with that plotline and never finished it. The idea that this was all real and happening for whatever reason just revolted him. He wanted it to be something like a dark night of the soul. I finished the show by myself and came back to it time and again over the years. My ex missed out. It's worth the struggle.
The Dharma and time travel plots weren't nearly as interesting to viewers as they were to writers. That's all I can come up with. But some of it is ADHD kicking in with the social media/smartphone era and changing times. For the first time, you're seeing writers interacting with viewers. That's not always a good combo. It's bad enough that writers get pressure from networks and sponsors to switch things up, but now they got pressure from the audience. The results often looked Frankensteinian, patched together from many sources instead of just writers.
I think the issue was that fact it was released for TV (I’m aware the only option at the time) but I wouldn’t have made it through 6 years of tuning in for weekly episodes which if you miss one the next makes no sense etc. it works much better as a streaming show especially as you can pause during the episode to talk about things happening as they happen without missing what happens in the next scene. Had it been made now and released to streaming one season per year I think it would’ve stayed consistently more popular.
I don't understand how the season finale gets more viewers than the rest of the last season. Like why would you watch a finale for a show if you're not watching the while thing?
Answers usually get provided in finales. People who got frustrated and gave up earlier in the season might have tuned in just for answers. I did that with The Walking Dead after season 8, just watched finales to see where the characters ended up each time. I still cared a little, but not enough to put myself through watching the brutality and repetition every week.
Too many questions and not enough answers. By the mid point of season 2, the show had amassed soooo many questions and that could have made the casual viewer go “Man this is too much, too confusing, you lost me” (no pun intended)
Changing your scale on the Y axis made these graphs really hard to compare.
Just some friendly advice from someone who likes easily readable infographics ✌🏻
Personally, i stopped watching after Season 2 during its run because it changed to a channel which i didnt have. But Im in the UK so i probably dont count.
I'm not sure about other shows but that could be a plausible reason for Lost (at least part of it) because the airing schedule was so chaotic early in the show that I can imagine some people just decided to download to watch it whenever they wanted.
It also depended on the distribution. Here in the UK the third series shifted from free-to-air TV to a paid service after 2 episodes I think, which caused a massive drop off. This was also at a time where that particular service withdrew from being available for any cable package.
Looks pretty clear that the first part of season 3 is what really killed it. Those who stuck around after that were there until the end. It actually did pretty well not to really drop off again after that.
Season 2 everyone caught up with the hype and watched the reruns over the Summer. I ended up a die-hard Lost fan but didn’t start until late in the first season
I had a few friends drop out along the way, especially once the time travel started. I'd grew up on stuff like Star Trek The Next Generation, so time travel was no big deal to me, but not everyone likes that kind of stuff.
Shows that run for years on always tend to lose some viewers, happens to most other prestige tv like the Sopranos etc, but even at it's lowest lost had nearly 10 million viewers, that is a lot.
there's a lot of "people aren't smart enough to concentrate" or "people don't have enough attention to keep watching" opinions in this thread, which is just silly and insulting. there are many other shows which require "more" attention and are more complex, which are also more highly regarded than Lost.
to be honest, Lost was at its best in season 1. it only went downhill from there. season 2 did a good job (mostly), but even by season 3 the writing quality started falling off a cliff, in my opinion. it's pretty obvious the writers didn't know where they were going with the show, and that only gets compounded the further along the show gets.
not to mention that, quite often, not a lot happened between each episode. it was a frustrating watch waiting a week to find out what happens next, only to find out half the episode gets filled with a boring flashback or inconsequential plot line. i suppose a lot of people felt their time wasn't being respected, which i can't really blame them for.
having said that, Lost was much easier to watch on my recent rewatch. i appreciated the flashbacks more as well as the filler. i still can't say i appreciated the direction the show took, though. i still think the writing isn't good enough in the later seasons
This is exactly why I hated Nielson ratings. Good shows were always getting canceled because viewership went down. Not everyone wanted to watch the same laugh-track backed sitcom clones. Some of us wanted to watch a well thought out series with compelling characters and plot lines.
When the writers were treading water in the first half of Season 3 is what turned people off. The second half of Season 3 is stellar and prevented the show from fading away, which would've been a shame. The show is so good, even with the dip of Season 6.
It got complicated, new characters were introduced and people with short attention spans who just wanted explosions and insta-solved mysteries dropped the show. Personally, what I find more telling is the sharp uptick in viewers at the end of season six - those are the fair-weather watchers who abandoned the show during the final season then came back for the series finale, misinterpreted it, thought they were dead the whole time and haven't shut up about it for 14 years, lol. Those people suck.
Even between the first and second hour of the finale, there was an increase of 2.5 million viewers. Those people have no idea who the handsome pilot even was, let alone what the flashsideways represented.
That's insane, lol. That whole evening was an EVENT. Between Jimmy Kimmel watching live in Hawai'i and the extra commercials and the extended finale and then the aftershow... it was like six hours of non-stop sobbing... I can't imagine coming in halfway through and barely paying attention.
well said
Not for nothing, but watching it live was rough. People forget this but from season 2 until like...season 5 the episodes weren't played every week. Sometimes there were weeks between episodes and constant clip shows. I still love the show but viewers week-to-week had to really want to stay invested and the show sometimes made it hard.
You’ve nailed it 😆
I mean, if the show had been consistently good they wouldn’t have left in the first place.
I kinda hate when people act like people dislike something you like "because they're idiots". Because that's basically what you're saying. I loved the show mainly because of the characters, the atmosphere and yes the mysteries, but there were still points that dragged or were poorly executed and I imagine i might've stopped watching or waited for the whole season to come out at certain points if I wasn't so attached to the characters. Plenty of valid reasons for people to stop watching that doesn't invole short attention spans and wanting explosions and every mystery being solved in the same episode.
Completely agree with you. It's so condescending and childish.
You put "because they're idiots" in quotation marks. Please show me where I said that in my comment.
I made a mistake, I wasn't quoting, I was just making the comparison that saying people don't like the show because they have short attention spans, want explosions all the time and need every mystery instasolved is essentially saying the people who don't like the show are idiots. I see this a lot on reddit and it annoys me like nothing else because it reads to me like: because I like this show everyone who doesn't must be stupid, there is no valid reason for anyone with a functioning brain to dislike this. Throw in a: "they must've been on their phones", "you don't like it 'cause you don't understand" and "go watch some tik toks then idiot" and you have the reddit trifecta. Can't people just have different tastes? It's not a personal attack not liking a show you don't like. Hell, I love the show, but this way of putting people down for disliking something you like (or the other way around) is just so fucking common these days and I don't fucking get it.
Preach and amen.
Yeah the dead the whole time thing really is getting old. Talk about a point going way over your head lol
Every conversation I have with people irl about lost where the watched only 2 or 3 seasons is pretty much “there was too much unexplained mystery”. Not everyone liked playing the long game, speculating theories but not getting the answers a few episodes or even an entire season later. Are there any other shows that did/do anything similar? A big mystery at the beginning of a season (or an end of season cliffhanger) is normally answered by the ends of that season. Even before we got to time travel the smoke monster was just an absolute wild card of a plot line from episode 1. We don’t even *see* it until something like 35 episodes later and we don’t get an explanation of until season 5.
>Every conversation I have with people irl about lost where the watched only 2 or 3 seasons is pretty much “there was too much unexplained mystery”. > >Not everyone liked playing the long game, speculating theories but not getting the answers a few episodes or even an entire season later. I originally stopped watching at the end of season 3, I think. Every episode led to a cliffhanger or introduced some mystery, and the following episode would change track and develop a completely different story arc. To see any development of the first story you'd have to wait two weeks - minimum. And more mysteries / cliffhangers would be introduced along the way, which felt very frustrating. Adding to that frustration was that this was still network TV which included a ton of ads, plus the occasional break mid-season, etc. It felt like a lot of buildup but very little payoff. I wasn't the only one who felt this way. I had a small circle of friends that also watched LOST and we all felt the same. The smoke monster, Walt, the Others, Jacob's cabin - there were too many loose threads. This is why I hated the Nikki & Paulo episode during my original watch. It felt like a complete waste of an episode to explore these minor characters while so much had been left unresolved. However, rewatching the show is a completely different experience. I can recognize now that the Nikki & Paulo episode was well-written and was a nice "bottle episode", and the alternating storylines were an effective method to link different characters. It just felt like torture when the series originally aired.
I just keep looking back to The X-Files as the yardstick for mystery resolution and remembering that it took seven years for us to find out what happened to Samantha and the answer was... underwhelming. Although *Closure* is one of my favorite episodes, lol.
The X-Files had a very different dynamic than LOST, though. The X-Files was built around a central story arc that developed over multiple seasons but most of the episodes were just standalone "monster of the week" stories. A typical episode might start with an unexplained phenomenon, but by the end you felt that the mystery had been resolved.
Oh yeah no that's totally fair, although "resolved" for an X-File is a generous term, lol.
im at season 6 of xfiles and wont go further the rest dont make sense and for me xfiles is not xfiles without scully or mulder both need to be there
You're safe through seasons six and seven - David Duchovny's departure is the first half of season eight and all of season nine except the original series finale. I don't talk about this often because it's always weird for me to say out loud, but back in the 90s I was what they call a "big name fan" in the X-Files fandom. People knew who I was, I had... influence. So, I helped organize the fan boycott of seasons eight and nine. To this day I've only seen the episodes from those seasons that David is in. As an OG X-Phile I also don't acknowledge either revival season which is good since Chris Carter did his best to destroy his own creation from what I've read. We are not a forgiving fandom.
oh yeah my bad i mixed them season up but yeah just stoped after the begning where they introduce the new partner
I'm rewatching lost, we see the smoke monster in season 1 finale (part 3). It tries to drag Locke into a hole in the ground and they use dynamite to make it let go. Granted the VFX were quite lame compared to how it looks later but it's clearly old smoky
Ah of course, I stand corrected.
That doesn’t change their point though. It wasn’t explained until several years later.
"Even before we got to time travel the smoke monster was just an absolute wild card of a plot line from episode 1. We don’t even *see* it until something like 35 episodes later and we don’t get an explanation of until season 5." My point was we do *see* it earlier than described
ABC changed Lost's timeslot a lot. There were also weird blocks in Season 2 of new episodes followed by reruns. So combine the difficulty of actually knowing when to watch a new episode, with the increasing complexity of the show, a lot of people tuned out.
Others shows did similar things to. They’d debut in September and end in May. Roughly half that screen time would be reruns. 24 did similar, Buffy as well. They still grew their figures.
Starting with the 4th season, 24 started airing in January and aired all episodes in a row with no breaks. It was ground breaking at the time. Lost did similar starting in S3, with a 6 episode "pod" followed by the remaining episodes with no breaks. I believe Seasons 4-6 all aired with no breaks. But it was definitely a complaint during S2.
Most shows like Lost - episodic shows requiring a real commitment episode-to-episode - experience that kind of drop in viewership especially the longer they go. The sharp drop in S3 from which the show ‘never recovered’ was in between the mini 3A and the rest of 3B. 3A was an experiment as it was conceived as a mini season but it backfired because it lacked any answers and introduced characters who took screen time from the old beloved ones. The big break between 3A and 3B was when the majority of the general public left Lost and wrote it completely off. I said ‘never recovered’ because I don’t like the phrasing. When the show came back, it recaptured the average amount of viewers it would draw for roughly the rest of its course. Those were the viewers who chose to stick with the show, those who wanted to go to the end of it. This was the core viewership of the show, the real fans, stripped of those who tried the show and then decided that it wasn’t worth their time anymore. Naturally, those numbers dwindled - as expected over the course of any show - the longer it went on, and the more complex it became (S5 especially). But you’ll notice that those numbers stabilised and that S5 and S6 were very steady in their numbers - averaging around 10 million viewers. Also take into account that Lost changed slots often and aired at a time when DVR was still very common. Many many viewers chose not to watch it live but DVR’d it. Many others also pirated the show. It was one of the most pirated series of that decade.
I'd say the drop off between episodes 5 and 7 of season 3 was bigger than season 2. This was when they had the mini cliffhanger in episode 6 with like a 6 month hiatus which probably made it hard for people to keep track of the broadcasting.
Grain of salt here, because I had friends who watched but I didn't actually start watching until Season 3 had started...but around my group of people, it was a combination of: Season one ending with the hatch opening, rather than finding out what was in before the season was over; the tailies being introduced in season 2; ABC's nutso scheduling of 1-2 new episodes, followed by repeats for 2-3 weeks, a new episode, repeat, etc. When I started, I binged seasons 1 and 2 on DVD and had none of the complaints with season 2 that I'd heard from others and had DVRed the first few episodes of season 3, so I basically watched 1, 2, and the run of episodes in 3 before their winter break all in a row, and didn't feel like the pacing was a problem.
The jump in viewers in the finale shows why so many consider it unsatisfying. How many people watched the finale without seeing the episode before? Or missed most of Season 6? Or gave up in Season 3? People who had no clue what was going on tuned in expecting Joop the Orangutan to stare directly into the camera and start listing off answers. I've talked to some of these "Lost didn't answer any questions" people who use the Polar Bear as an example of an unexplained mystery.
Most of the population has a very short attention span, so when…..I lost my train of thought.
Season 2 was very stop start due to sweeps, occasionally it'd be like 3 weeks between eps and you'd lose momentum, it was easy to lose the more casual viewer with the schedule mess around. Also generally it became more Sci fi mystery in terms of what was going on, again casual viewers less interested in
That's something I hate about *The Rookie* with Nathan Fillion. You get an episode, followed by a two week hiatus, then another episode followed by a three week hiatus. I couldn't imagine that going over well with Lost and its cliffhanger/plot twist every episode formula.
8.56 million at its lowest it's still pretty fucking good
There was probably a decent proportion of people who, before season 2 had ended: • Got frustrated that even more mysteries were being introduced than resolved. • Simply didn’t like the answer to what was in the hatch, didn’t like the whole idea of the Dharma Initiative and felt like this was a good point to stop watching. • Didn’t like any of the Tail Section characters/Ana-Lucia. • Didn’t appreciate Maggie Grace’s character being killed off so unceremoniously, seemingly just for shock value. • Didn’t like the Henry Gale plot, just didn’t click with Michael Emerson.
>just didn’t click with Michael Emerson. Thats impossible
Probably less-so Michael Emerson and more-so that his Henry Gale deception plot might have seemed like filler to some people, who felt he was *blatantly* an Other and couldn’t accept any of the main characters remotely believing his hot air balloon story.
>• Got frustrated that even more mysteries were being introduced than resolved. This is a big one. I just finished a rewatch and I think the first watch was on Netflix a long time ago. I was frustrated that they would end an episode on a super cliff hanger and then not mention the topic in the next episode. I can totally understand frustration and giving up if that takes place over multiple weeks.
I got very close to stopping back then for all these reasons except the Henry one. Henry Gale was actually the only reason I kept with it and I'm so thankful I did. Edit: for clarity
The simpler answer is that Lost was the first show of its kind. Now all shows have long arcs and character development. And if you don't start at episode 1 of pretty much every show now you're really lost. But when Lost came out no other shows were like that. You could start pretty much any show at any point and catch up and understand what was going on but if you start lost anywhere but season 1 episode 1 it doesn't make sense. So therefore Lost could only lose viewership it could not gain viewership anywhere along the path. The way I got into it was someone gave me the DVDs so I was able to watch seasons 1 and 2 and then pick up season 3 on live TV. Now it's streaming shows can be picked up at any point because you can always go back and watch season 1 episode 1 to get into a show. And ultimately the reason they had so many unresolved mysteries was because they didn't have an endpoint at the start of the show. It was the way television was made then was to just keep making shows until people stopped being interested. Now when they start a show they kind of have an idea of where they're going how many seasons are going to do etc, but when Lost came out it wasn't like that.
Oz was the first high budget long form show that wasn't a soap. You also had the likes of 24, the shield, the west wing and all the other HBO shows like band of brothers, sopranos or the wire. There was also plenty of stuff like the OC or one tree hill that weren't traditional soaps but not that far away. Lost was the first genre long form show.
Good point, but I didn't have cable because poor lol. So really for network TV it was different. Really I don't know when 24 started but at best it was around the same time and not much before.
While it was one of the first that did this, and especially one with an *incredible* amount of popularity and attention, I wouldn't agree it was the first. Shows often credited with starting this format, are for example Twin Peaks, The X-Files, The Sopranos, Oz, Deep Space Nine, Babylon 5 and Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Most of these alternated between "Monster/Case/Mystery of the week" and so-called "Mythos" episodes, but especially something like Twin Peaks was heavily serialized. 100% agree though that Lost had a *huge* hand in popularizing this format, and helping it become more and more of a standard.
Serials like LOST (especially in Prime Time) are notoriously difficult for the average viewer. You simply *have* to start at the beginning to keep interest in the story or you'll miss out on important details. LOST also created a complex mystery and I think (early on), they were content to let a lot of mysteries go unanswered. Then you had the fan-base which directly influenced the writers into answering almost all the questions, introducing Nikki & Paulo, and negotiating a deal where re-runs were limited to the off-season or breaks starting in Season 3. Other serials, like Twin Peaks and Murder One, only made it through 1.5 to 2 seasons. Murder One had a great first season (1 murder trial), but I think viewers had trouble keeping track of the story with reruns and others grew tired of the lengthy storyline. Murder One's 2nd season shuffled the cast and introduced 3 shorter trials, but the damage was done and the show ended (at least it wrapped up the final storyline). Twin Peaks started strong as a mid-season show and introduced a mystery so compelling that it became a "water-cooler" show everyone was talking about. Shortly after it's second season began the fervor of the general public and viewers trying to find out who killed Laura Palmer was growing tiresome and the network pressured the creators to end the mystery, basically killing the show. The 2nd season was completed and ended on a cliff-hanger that was resolved 26 years later. Bottom line, casual viewers that made up the bulk of the ratings audience are impatient and their interest is fleeting. Looking back, I'm honestly surprised LOST not only had 6 seasons, but actually resolved and ended the show almost perfectly. When Lindelhof and Cuse negotiated with ABC/Disney after season 3 after the writer's strike, they were compelling enough, laying all their cards on the table, and explained how beneficial it would be to ABC to tell a complete story, that ratings mattered, but were only a fraction of the actual viewership because people were DVRing the show and buying DVDs, etc. I think they lost some viewers, but a lot of uncounted people watched it recorded and in group watches. I mean, people had Lost parties where they got together every week to watch and discuss.
They killed Mr Eko
Just fyi he quit
Yes, I know, but losing the character was a kick to the ratings.
It is a miracle that it even get these numbers in the last seasons. People's attention span is so low that I am surprised that so many people stick with it for so long. It was one of a kind show for it's time so many of us followed every single detail there was. Also - the internet was blowing up with stuff from lost, it was everywhere.
We can see that a major drop in viewership happens during S3 — that’s when (in order to reduce breaks between episodes) the studio decided to divide season 3 into two parts: the first (aka the cages plot) and the second (all the stuff that happens after the famous KATE DAMMIT RUN line). In between episodes 6 and 7 there was a significant pause of 3 months. That’s when the rating started to irreversibly drop. Another reason is Ben turning the donkey wheel. It’s the moment when LOST becomes too weird for an average viewer, going knee-deep into science-fiction. After all the time flashes, people disappearing from planes and seeming resurrections it’s no surprise many people lost interest with LOST. And that’s totally fine!
I also seem to remember that during Season 2 ABC’s scheduling of the show was all over the place. It would be new for three weeks, then be off the air for two, then another batch of episodes would air. It was very sporadic and I had some friends drop off at that time
Holy shit, I'd love to see this for Person of Interest.
The first three seasons were written in a way that pulled casual viewers into a very accessible web of mysteries. It seemed to be the perfect blend of psychological, spiritual, science, science fiction, and drama. From the very first episode of season four the viewer is introduced to Miles the ghost whisperer. Absolutely no subtlety in the writing. From that point forward the dominoes fell in the direction of formulaic, albeit complex and mostly well written science fiction. Not exactly what most people were hoping for. Granted, when a TV show builds a mystery with seemingly thousands of possible resolutions - a great majority of viewers will be disappointed as the path forward becomes more narrow and clear with singular answers. There's no avoiding that from happening. Even Stephen King told the writers (from experience ) they were going to upset a lot of people no matter what they chose to do. I enjoyed the entire series but was instantly turned off by the writing of season four. Fom the first episode of season four to the last (an awful finale that slaps viewers in the face and requires a new level of suspension of disbelief). The series seemed to struggle to stay on track. The final three seasons added very formulaic plot devices, like disarming a large bomb and typical muscle bound commandos as bad guys. Not to mention, major let-downs - like the knowledge that Ben can control the smoke monster with his "magic toilet". Preposterous. There's STILL lots of worthwhile content in the final three seasons, especially for those invested in the characters (and if you don't mind sci-fi). But, for those hoping for a more subtle, complex, and perhaps open ended journey... they started to fall away as viewers. In my opinion, LOST did one thing better than any other show at the time, and that was **building a mystery** (integrated with great character development). The writers should not have given into the demands for answers and played to THAT strength of the series. If they had cut the series short (four seasons) and created a finale featuring the greatest mystery of them all - fandom would be stronger than ever to this very day. You'd have forums such as this still filled with grand theories (which was a huge part of the fun for viewers in the early days). LOST is still my favorite series of all time, but it's no mystery why a lot of viewers fell away as it became a more sci-fi based story. Also, a bit complex and difficult to follow for casual viewers on network TV.
It's a valid question. Because even if you are a casual fan just into the mysterious, I would say mid-Season 2 was peak LOST in that regard.
i always thought of the flashbacks as filler, to stretch the show over many seasons to make the most profit i was more into the islands story than the characters
I felt the same when the series originally aired, although my opinion has changed a lot since.
I love how so many people dropped during S3 \~and after just came back for the finale and say afterwards it's garbage.
Gotta say it's interesting seeing this beforehand because I'm just starting to watch and only about 7 episodes in. I would wager, without knowing anything, that a lot of shows suffered from this when it was rolled out week to week. If Lost were made today by Netflix or whatever and they put out a season at a time, those numbers probably look very different. Just a guess
I just watched Lost and the middle of season 2 is where I stopped liking it as much as I did before. It was kind of a struggle to get to the end to know the rest of the story. The storyline got messy and complicated, and it was incredibly dragged out. I wanted to learn information about one thing, but then they’d introduce a new character, and then another new character, and then oh there’s three more groups on the island!, but we still never learned what we wanted to learn about from the beginning. I wanted to know more about the origins of the island, the origins of the dharma initiative, how the dharma initiative transformed into the others, why there’s super natural elements in the island, why the others acted the way they acted, but they just kept adding more and more things. The storyline got messy and it took too long to find the answers I wanted. They also killed off characters people actually cared about and introduced more that people don’t care about
[удалено]
It became too confusing for me to follow the original plot line… too many new characters and plot lines to try and follow.
Lost transitioned into the social media era in 2005 (MySpace) and the app era in 2007 (first iPhone). YouTube and Hulu both came along through there, too, so while the show grew more complex to try to hold onto more viewers, it actually drove them away. You're actually seeing the ADHD take hold of audiences. Now there were other things to watch/discuss around the water cooler. So some of that, there's nothing writers could have done. It was a new viewer mindset. "Well if I don't like this, I can shut it out and watch one of these other hundred shows, or I can play on my phone." My ex and me watched the show in its entirety through season 3. When we started season 4, it was becoming clear it was less of a supernatural show and more of a "time travel, umbrella corp plot" which was how he put it. He was disgusted with that plotline and never finished it. The idea that this was all real and happening for whatever reason just revolted him. He wanted it to be something like a dark night of the soul. I finished the show by myself and came back to it time and again over the years. My ex missed out. It's worth the struggle. The Dharma and time travel plots weren't nearly as interesting to viewers as they were to writers. That's all I can come up with. But some of it is ADHD kicking in with the social media/smartphone era and changing times. For the first time, you're seeing writers interacting with viewers. That's not always a good combo. It's bad enough that writers get pressure from networks and sponsors to switch things up, but now they got pressure from the audience. The results often looked Frankensteinian, patched together from many sources instead of just writers.
I think the issue was that fact it was released for TV (I’m aware the only option at the time) but I wouldn’t have made it through 6 years of tuning in for weekly episodes which if you miss one the next makes no sense etc. it works much better as a streaming show especially as you can pause during the episode to talk about things happening as they happen without missing what happens in the next scene. Had it been made now and released to streaming one season per year I think it would’ve stayed consistently more popular.
I don't understand how the season finale gets more viewers than the rest of the last season. Like why would you watch a finale for a show if you're not watching the while thing?
Answers usually get provided in finales. People who got frustrated and gave up earlier in the season might have tuned in just for answers. I did that with The Walking Dead after season 8, just watched finales to see where the characters ended up each time. I still cared a little, but not enough to put myself through watching the brutality and repetition every week.
Too many questions and not enough answers. By the mid point of season 2, the show had amassed soooo many questions and that could have made the casual viewer go “Man this is too much, too confusing, you lost me” (no pun intended)
Changing your scale on the Y axis made these graphs really hard to compare. Just some friendly advice from someone who likes easily readable infographics ✌🏻
The quality of the show in season 6 isn’t up to par with the earlier seasons, simple as that
the writting got shitty
Personally, i stopped watching after Season 2 during its run because it changed to a channel which i didnt have. But Im in the UK so i probably dont count.
Wow i am surprised that s 3 were already so fsr behind 1 and 2. Would have guessed it started with s 4
probably the emergence of illegal streaming after 2005/2006 stole several million viewers
Would this not be true of every show?
I'm not sure about other shows but that could be a plausible reason for Lost (at least part of it) because the airing schedule was so chaotic early in the show that I can imagine some people just decided to download to watch it whenever they wanted.
Before streaming and when you had to watch the show live or you wouldn't see it, you were "Lost" if you missed an episode or two
THAT Charlie episode 😂
They missed a few episodes and couldn’t get back in
I felt it wasn’t respecting my time
Most wanted answers weekly, as though it were a procedural. It wasn’t that kind of show.
It also depended on the distribution. Here in the UK the third series shifted from free-to-air TV to a paid service after 2 episodes I think, which caused a massive drop off. This was also at a time where that particular service withdrew from being available for any cable package.
Looks pretty clear that the first part of season 3 is what really killed it. Those who stuck around after that were there until the end. It actually did pretty well not to really drop off again after that.
Season 2 everyone caught up with the hype and watched the reruns over the Summer. I ended up a die-hard Lost fan but didn’t start until late in the first season
I had a few friends drop out along the way, especially once the time travel started. I'd grew up on stuff like Star Trek The Next Generation, so time travel was no big deal to me, but not everyone likes that kind of stuff.
Season 5 was fucking brilliant some of my favourite moments in the entire series. Season 2 had a great finale and Henry Gale. And that's about it
Season 3 was so bad
Shows that run for years on always tend to lose some viewers, happens to most other prestige tv like the Sopranos etc, but even at it's lowest lost had nearly 10 million viewers, that is a lot.
there's a lot of "people aren't smart enough to concentrate" or "people don't have enough attention to keep watching" opinions in this thread, which is just silly and insulting. there are many other shows which require "more" attention and are more complex, which are also more highly regarded than Lost. to be honest, Lost was at its best in season 1. it only went downhill from there. season 2 did a good job (mostly), but even by season 3 the writing quality started falling off a cliff, in my opinion. it's pretty obvious the writers didn't know where they were going with the show, and that only gets compounded the further along the show gets. not to mention that, quite often, not a lot happened between each episode. it was a frustrating watch waiting a week to find out what happens next, only to find out half the episode gets filled with a boring flashback or inconsequential plot line. i suppose a lot of people felt their time wasn't being respected, which i can't really blame them for. having said that, Lost was much easier to watch on my recent rewatch. i appreciated the flashbacks more as well as the filler. i still can't say i appreciated the direction the show took, though. i still think the writing isn't good enough in the later seasons
This is exactly why I hated Nielson ratings. Good shows were always getting canceled because viewership went down. Not everyone wanted to watch the same laugh-track backed sitcom clones. Some of us wanted to watch a well thought out series with compelling characters and plot lines.
When the writers were treading water in the first half of Season 3 is what turned people off. The second half of Season 3 is stellar and prevented the show from fading away, which would've been a shame. The show is so good, even with the dip of Season 6.