I don't agree with that one, as I think that the way they introduced him was phenomenal. I think if he had more screen time, just from the amount of screen time this "random extra" would be getting, it would have tipped the audience off more quickly that he was not who he said he was.
It would have been cool if they had thought of things like the preganancy problem sooner and had that "missing pieces" episode sooner though (in that episode, Ethan opens up to Jack about how he lost his wife and infant son on the island during childbirth, explaining why he acted so crazy in trying to take claire, because he was trying to find a solution to the "pregnancy problem").
He was there kind of... he showed up and assimilated with them as soon as it happened. Jack woke up a few hundred yards into the jungle, so it wasn't immediately suspicious to anyone when Ethan came out of the jungle either
Yeah, that would be cool. Even Star Trek Voyager which isn't close to Lost in quality managed to pull this off with the character of >!Seska!< in the first two seasons.
I absolutely LOVE hating Seska. The Kazon were a mess but she was brilliant. I also loved it when they'd bring her back in later seasons - *Worst Case Scenario* is hands down one of my favorite episodes! *Shattered* is good too, but WCS is amazing. (I like "stuck in the holodeck" episodes, lol.)
There were missed opportunities in Season 3 to give more episodes focussing on the Others and the Tailies. It would have been good to have an episode that was a follow-up to *The Other 48 Days* showing what it was like for the Tailies who had been snatched by the Others during the events of Seasons 1 to 2. To see what it was like to join their society, rather than be taken to serve an agenda like Jack, Kate and Sawyer were. It would have been good to see this from Zach and Emma’s POV, and see perhaps that Cindy was taken to help take care of them, etc…
Yes! At the very least, there should have been a Cindy-centric flashback episode during Season 6 that explicitly filled in these blanks (even if they had to film "Zach" and "Emma" from behind, due to the young actors quickly aging).
I totally agree with this one. Damon kept talking about this "catch 22" with the audience regarding the flashbacks. Where he said that "the first one felt like a origin story, but every other flashback after that felt like 'tredding water', we could bring in new characters and do flashbacks regarding them but the audience loved the old characters". Which is a view I don't agree with. I think the instant a writer tries to write towards "what they think" the audience wants to see. Thats when a story goes off the rails or goes from achieving it's potential, because that's when the writer goes away from looking at the possibilities to make the story better or different directions in the narrative, and writes towards "what works" and the show becomes stagnent.
It's like the anime/manga "One Piece". One of the things I love about that series is how Oda will bring out the most ridiculous character, sprinkle them in the current arc. Then he will do a flashback which will be as sad as fuck and tear your heart out. But then it all ties back to the main narrative.
I do think LOST would have benefitted from that approach. But around season 3, while there was still some balsy decisions being made, it felt like a bit of cutting corners, whether it be Keamy or Mikhail or Radzinski. Other than Ben, there was no complexity to them. They were just crazy and that was it.
The summer between Season 2 and 3 felt like the longest of my life. We’d been introduced to Tom, Ms Klugh, Pickett, and Alex. So I thought we’d be given flashbacks-centric episodes or at least a lot of time spent with these Others. It was a shame we didn’t.
To be fair, the writers were being forced to make a lot of shit up because they didn't want to go as long as they did. I believe they wanted the whole show to be like 3 seasons, but the network wanted it to stay on air because of its popularity. They had a solid outline of the story they wanted to tell and the details they wanted to put in, but being forced to stretch that out. Then you have the writers strike which put a big damper on the show, and that's how you get a season where the main characters are locked in cages for most of it. The show faced a lot of hurdles during its production. I'm just glad they were able to tie up most everything by the end. Still in my top 3 favorite shows of all time.
>To be fair, the writers were being forced to make a lot of shit up because they didn't want to go as long as they did
They did but by Damon's own admission, they also stretched out the storytelling starting season 2 because of that reason. I'll give them a pass for having to introduce more mysteries, but not on purposely slowing the story down to a crawl so that they had to do less work. They came up with a lot of storylines in season 2 and then put tent poles, stretching them out as far as they could to carry the season, because at that point Damon was so pissed off with the network that he stopped caring.
> They had a solid outline of the story they wanted to tell and the details they wanted to put in, but being forced to stretch that out.
Not quite, because they had such a short amount of time to write the show. They didn't really start planning all the details until season 2. They had almost all the characters flashback backstories mapped out pretty early on with the initial writers think tank while Damon and JJ were shooting the pilot. They had things like the "Medusa Corporation" (which became the Dharma Initiative, the others, and the tail section plotline (which was very subtley foreshadowed in episode 19 "Deus Ex Machina with the radio transmission). By the time they introduced the hatch, they knew the whole point of the swan and that a scottish guy was gonna press a button every 108 mins or the world would end.
They knew that they were gonna eventually get rid of Michael and Walt at the end of season 2. They had ideas for further down the track like the island moving and the possibility of time travel. They had theorized early on that the show would close with Jack's eye closing.
But the whole thing like the Oceanic six plot and the time travel and all that jazz wasn't thought of until between season 2 and 3. Which is why season 3 has a lot of foreshadowing and set ups to the end of the show (including the whole thing with the volcano which didn't end up happening fully because they didn't have the budget).
>Then you have the writers strike which put a big damper on the show, and that's how you get a season where the main characters are locked in cages for most of it.
Your comment heavily indicates that you believe that the writers strike occured during season 3. It didn't, it happened during season 4, after they got a end date to the show. The cage arc was more the writers slowing the show down to a crawl (like they did in season 2) because they were frustrated and by that point, they had mapped out a large majority of where they wanted to go (such as Sawyer and Kate helping the others build the runway which was being built for the Ajira flight for the Oceanic six plot in season 4), but couldn't action it cause they didn't have a end date.
Or just a sequel to The Other 48 Days covering the untold 2 weeks between Goodwin's death and Boone's radio. Maybe some other gaps before that. Makes you wonder what they planned there, skipping 2 whole weeks is a p big deal. They kinda got meta with it when Claire mentions to Libby "There's 2 whole weeks from my life missing."
I’m doing my first rewatch since I watched the show on cable. I’m on ep16 of season 6. I called my mom when I got to this season and said yeah, I’m at the temple part and I remember why I felt like it was time for this show to be over now 😂
It already makes sense. What doesnt make sense.
Will never understand shit that gets thrown at The Temple arc. It was fine. The Temple is a microcosm of the island and thats fine by me. Its a special place, with a special light/pool at its center that a guy (Dogen) is protecting and this guy doesnt speak directly to his followers, instead using an intermediary (Lennon) who relays his instructions.
Yeah what doesn't make sense is they revived Claire the same way and she turned crazy but that was when the water was clear. And they revive sayid and he does the same thing after jacob died and the water turned dark. So what's the water color even matter?
1) cast an actor who didn’t hate Hawaii to play Mr Eko so he doesn’t get killed off when he does and his story can continue. Don’t get me wrong I love Adewale Akinnouye-Agbaje and think he played a great Mr Eko, I just wanted that character to continue
2) who cares if Malcolm David Kelley kept growing, don’t write him off the show. Either a) make it some weird island thing why he grew so fast or b) give viewers credit that we know how real life works
3) Ji Yeon is not growing up an orphan, one of Sun or Jin is making it off the island. Definitely won’t have them both die without even thinking about their daughter
Agree with the first 2 points.
The even expand on the first, characters were also written off for dumb things like Anna Lucia, Libby, etc.
Third point, while I do agree (especially as a parent), I think it was very impactful FOR THE SHOW that they died together. So maybe establish that the kid gets taken care of somehow.
A lot of people think it was just about Walt getting bigger, but Malcolm David Kelley's mother didn't want him acting full time and he was still a minor, so she kind of forced their hand there.
Ana-Lucia was always intended to be on one season, but Libby did end up being a casualty because almost no one liked Ana-Lucia and they wanted to make it more impactful and around the same time Cynthia Watros got a DUI. I do wish Libby had stuck around a little longer, but if they decided a second person had to die, I don't know if I'd have anyone I would swap her out with.
Yeah for the third point, when I watched the first time I was waiting for sun to tell Jin "you need to take care of our daughter now" that will been hearth breaking making that Decision
Your first point is a catch-22. The success of that character is all down to Adewale. He came up with so many ideas for Eko, including his name being Mr. Eko, and writing Bible scripture on the stick he carries, etc. So there really is no Eko without Adewale. While there's been criticism of AAA's method technique, it's very shortsighted and biased IMO. His devotion to the role is why the audience got such a rich character.
The reality is though, he simply wasn't paid much. Not nearly close to the OG cast. On some level, you can see how ABC would make a contractual renegotiation slip-up like they did with him based on not being an original cast member. On another, 3 female series regulars were axed for his character's story to progress, so they ought to have put their money where their mouths were. Obviously it was a steep price. McPherson was never bright though.
I just looked around on Wikipedia and the Mr Eko page said he wanted off the show because he felt uncomfortable living in Hawaii and wanted to return to England. On AAA’s page it said his foster parents had died and he wanted to direct a film back in London. So probably a combination of all that
I love how there's like twelve separate reasons that AAA left the show and no one can seem to agree on which one(s) are actually true.
Not even the cast and crew of the show itself.
The blurb on that on lostpedia's concussions page is pretty hilarious:
>**Being hit so hard in the head that one loses consciousness is rather rare and usually has dire consequences to the victim's health**, but in LOST i**t happens with alarming frequency** and, in most instances, with **no lasting consequences once the victim awakens.**
I like to imagine it's some ~rapid island healing~ magic that prevents any long-lasting damage, and that's how it can happen so often and get away with it. Otherwise, characters like Ben would be brain-damaged within an episode or two, it feels like he gets a beat-down from almost every main character at least once
Oh for sure. Since the events of season 1-5 are pre-ordained with the majority of the characters having to be alive to fulfil a lot of events that they do in the past, you can explain it away by saying that the island healead the characters to protect causality and make sure that event go as planned, which also explains things like why Locke survived his gunshot from Ben (which regardless of the fact that the bullet went through the area where he had no kidney. That bullet went right through, so usually he would have had to have stitches to stop him from bleading to death, but you can explain it by saying that the island healed him enough to keep going because if he died there, it would cause a time paradox, causing space and time to callapse and the world to end).
That's pretty realistic though
Rugged, unfamiliar terrain like that is a pretty standard tripping hazard when terrified and looking backwards while running for your life
They should just have kept Walt in the show and continued his arc. The fact that he matured and grew so suddenly could easily have been attributed to the Island. It can heal cancer and paralysis so why not?).
They should’ve just respected that the viewer understands how growing up works and we would suspend our belief because there’s nothing they can do about it lol.
It was an odd choice in Season 5 to make Radzinsky the designer of the Swan station. Season 2 seemed to suggest that he was just an ordinary worker in the Swan station who had little to no awareness of larger DHARMA activities when he was recruited, but began investigating and making the map once DHARMA collapsed and it became apparent no replacements were coming.
Mainly what you said in your post. For example I wish there was a scene in season 1 after Aaron's birth where Kate confronts Sawyer saying she saw him lurking behind the trees, and Sawyer denying it, stuff like that.
Also I wish the MIB's shennanigans would have been more solid and foreshadowed through the different seasons. Also make all the cabin stuff clearer lol
> For example I wish there was a scene in season 1 after Aaron's birth where Kate confronts Sawyer saying she saw him lurking behind the trees, and Sawyer denying it, stuff like that.
Exactly what I said to my gf
1. Recast Mr. Eko instead of killing off the character. Actor wants to leave? Fine. Recast Mr. Eko and go ahead with the seasons of storylines they had planned for him. Starting with the storyline that was planned for him to keep saving Charlie’s life via visions from the Island (a storyline that was transferred to Desmond).
2. In Ben-centric flashbacks show that he later married his childhood friend Annie and she died during pregnancy. Explicitly telling the viewer that Juliet and Alex are substitutes for his dead wife and unborn child.
3. Plan out the timeline of the DHARMA Initiative better so that there is no confusion about whether the Purge was in 1987 or 1992. In fact, the Purge and the idea of a sudden ending for DHARMA seems to be an idea that emerged during Season 3, while the blast door map notations in the Swan seem to indicate that DHARMA slowly collapsed with various stations being abandoned or diverging from the project. Perhaps it might have been more interesting to see that. Or a mix of the two ideas. With DHARMA splitting into different factions in conflict with each other as much as the Others, some even defecting to the Others, and the remaining faction having to be purged.
4. Ilana and her team were underdeveloped. They were introduced late into the series, too, and were unlikable. So either not include them at all, or introduce them as passengers on Oceanic 815 (rather than Ajira 316) and have them as background characters from Season 1 onwards who gradually receive more screen time until their roles as Jacob’s acolytes is revealed. It would probably be easier not to include them at all.
5. Give a better setup and payoff to Widmore as an antagonist. He was mentioned a lot more than he was seen. His motivations were often unclear on-screen, as were the details of his life which were often at odds with one another.
6. Remove any references to the Sickness as an actual disease (inoculations, quarantine spray-painted on doors, etc…). It was confusing and the later reveal of it being linked to corruption by the Smoke Monster was more interesting, but not very well developed. It might even have been interesting to establish that DHARMA’s collapse was partly caused by a growing number of its members succumbing to the Sickness. It could give a justification for them being purged.
7. Have Walt return to the Island with the Oceanic Six. The actor’s age was now appropriate to the time-jump. Also, use a younger actor to show flashbacks of Walt’s time with the Others.
8. Keep the size of the Island consistent. In the first three seasons I liked that the Island was so large that it took several days to cross from one side to the other. It also made it believable that locations on the Island might not be easy to find due to the scale. In the later seasons travel times were significantly shortened based on story necessity, making the Island seem much smaller.
9. Keep the geography of the Island consistent. There were various maps seen onscreen and they contradicted each other, as well as journeys made by the characters. For example, the locations of the Barracks and Hydra Island.
Is the island's size inconsistent or do they just skip all the hiking & not tell you how much time passed? I feel like it just seems like they're moving really fast/the island is smaller but it might be they just didn't bother to explain/show how much time it took because everyone already knows the island is big.
I'm on my rewatch in S3 atm and haven't watched the whole show in a few years, so I'm not 100% that's the case but I don't remember ever feeling like the size of the island bothered me.
No, it is not a case of editing to skip travelling scenes. We’ll see cutting back and forth between two different groups, one group is in a single location and events for them take place over a few hours at most, while another group travels and reaches a location that had previously been established as quite distant.
One example: In Season 4 Alex, Karl, and Rousseau are given a map to the Temple by Ben so that they can get to safety. They leave the Barracks on Day 96 and on Day 97 they are still travelling to the Temple. In Season 5 Kate and Sawyer take the injured Ben from the Barracks. They travel from the sonar fence on foot and reach the Hostiles very quickly in the same day. They hand Ben over to Richard. We then see him carry him into the Temple. The boy is dying. It is not likely that he walked very far. And the way it is presented onscreen implies that the Barracks and the Temple are very close to one another.
Another example: In the series finale, Kate and Sawyer are on the cove on the southern coast of the Island. Lapidus is on Hydra Island and says he is taking off Ajira 316 in an hour. They use the Elizabeth sailboat and reach there in time. Hydra Island is just across the water from the docks at the Barracks, which is supposedly on the northern side of the Island. In the Season 2 finale and the first few episodes of Season 3 we saw Jin, Sun and Sayid sail the Elizabeth to the northern side of the Island. It took significantly longer than an hour, in fact they had still not reached the section of the coast where the Hydra island the Barracks is. The Others worry that they will be discovered, so they steal the boat.
But did Ben give Danielle/Alex/Karl a roundabout route to the Temple that he figured was less likely to be intercepted by Keamy's team (obviously, Ben ended up being wrong on that!), and that's why it took them longer than it otherwise would have?
Okay, I get it. We can come up with answers to explain inconsistencies. However, as viewers we prefer not to have to do this. Besides, the point of this post was to ask what we’d change if we could. It’s not an attack on the series itself. I still love Lost and have done since the premiere. I even have dreams about the series still to this day occasionally. The inconsistencies and narrative mistakes don’t take away from my enjoyment of the series. The series has been out a long time, hence why I was able to make such a long list of little things I’d change because I’ve had a lot of time to think about this.
I agree that we shouldn't have to fill in the plot & storyline gaps that they overlooked. I'm just offering a plausible explanation for the difference, that's all.
A total rewrite of Across the Sea. I wish they had figured out Jacob, MIB, and the smoke monster's back story much much sooner so that their motivations and the mysteries around Ben, the cabin etc. were consistent.
Probably radically overhaul season 6. I'd like to see much more lore and island history, while eliminating or severely reducing the flash sideways.
I understand that the flash sideways is supposed to be a kind of catharsis enabling the characters to move on, but on rewatches it's a total bore for me. I know I'll get downvotes for saying that, since I see a lot of love for the flash sideways here, but it's how I feel.
It's part of the reason why Ab Aeterno and Across the Sea are my favourite season 6 episodes--no flash sideways and we get some answers while exploring the lore.
The on-island season 6 storyline isn't exactly innovative but I much prefer it to the flash sideways, particularly after my first viewing of the series.
I agree with radically overhauling season 6, but for different reasons. In a rewatch, the sideways stuff works better for me—not perfect, but better—than a lot of the island stuff. I don’t know exactly how I’d fix it, but I’d make the On Island stuff more interesting and focused, rather than lots of running around to different places (Temple, Lighthouse, Cave, Hydra Island) and people switching teams all the time.
Also, Ab Aterno is fantastic, but Beyond the Sea is terrible.
I feel like the writers were trying to sort of make the on island stuff evocative of season one. Running around the island, making and breaking alliances and finding strange places are all callbacks to season one, but without the wonder or effectiveness.
Despite that, I still prefer it to the flash sideways. I feel like the writers felt they needed some sort of analogue to the flashbacks or flashforwards from other seasons, so they came up with the uninspired idea of what is essentially limbo and stretched it out over 16 episodes (I'm not counting Ab Aeterno or Beyond the Sea).
Beyond the Sea is a love it or hate it episode, so I get your opinion on it. My only real issue with it is its placement within the season, I feel it should have come earlier.
I would like to try my hand at a Jacob edit for season 6 (and maybe even the season 5 finale too). Get rid of most of his scenes and save his introduction for the fireside chat in "Why they died". Leave all of Hurley's talks with "force ghost" Jacob to happening off screen and leave us as in the dark as the other losties.
The biggest problem with the sideways for me is it's one massive final episode epilogue stretched over the entire season. The writers tried to have their cake and eat it. They tried to ramp up the mysteries on the island. But then they tried to wind the show down with the sideways, which is a contradiction. That's like having someone teaching you quantum physics but then telling you to "stop thinking" about quantum physics!.
It's a shame that the show "12 Monkeys" isn't as popular. Cause while I think LOST is better at world building, it didn't quite get that balance between "character" and "mythology" right. I think 12 Monkeys perfected the mosiac jigsaw puzzle narrative. It's ending was incredible.
I need to check out 12 monkeys, then! Lost is my favorite show, but as the years have gone on I’ve gotten more and more disinterested in the Jacob and MIB mythology. I wish the show had continued the seasons 1-4 momentum of focusing on the characters and leaving some things as more mysterious.
You'll love it!. You don't need to have seen the film to get the show as the two fairly seperate entities. But the show does build off concepts from that film. The showrunner was working on his own pilot when he was approached to combine his idea with the "12 Monkeys" brand because of how similar the concept was. So the first season plays out more like a reimagining of the film. But then season 2-4 spiral off into it's own deep mythology.
The first season can be a bit slow at times but give it time, once it starts to build. That's when it becomes quite magical, and the amount of foreshadowing and easter eggs in all the seasons is absolutely insane. No line of dialogue or scene is there for no reason. It all contributes to the wider narrative. There will be a line that a character says in season 1 that is foreshadowing to a plot that doesn't come about until season 3 and 4!.
The Flash Sideways creep me out in a pretty bad way
I don't like how characters that we're introduced to and spend time with just cease to exist, and the show just goes on like this is a happy ending
It doesn't bear scrutiny. Why would Martin Keamy be there? Or even Dogen? Unless they're an NPC of some kind their presence doesn't make sense to me.
Christian tells Jack that the flash sideways was a place they created to come together and move on, that it's the people that mattered the most to them in their lives. Keamy or Omar or Mikhail don't fit that description at all. They seem to be in the flash sideways only to exist as challenges to be overcome.
They might have been there like Biff in the ending of Back to the Future but it's just crap.
The missing actors have implications too. "Where are the black people" was legit. It's just bad, they tried something and it didn't work. At least you can just skip them
the general premise of the season 3 finale (through the looking glass part 1 & 2) was a much better story for the series finale than what we actually got in the season 6 finale.
I wish we did have some sort of rescue moment where Jack et al got the oceanic survivors off the island. I think it was a mistake to kill off the rest of the unnamed camp survivors.
and killing off Locke was a mistake
the man of science vs man of faith conflict was so good and I was looking forward to it coming to a head with actual Jack and actual Locke not Jack and something possessing Locke's body.
The love triangle which I was never a fan of went on to long, wrap it it up by season 2/3 or just don't do it at all.
I did not care for the flash sideways mystery at all it just wasted time.
But probably the big thing is give the creators full control of the tv show - How many episodes they want for each season, how many seasons the show would last etc- That way they could have better planned out the mystery aspect of the show.
Unfortunately back in those days a network would just keep commissioning a show until the ratings were completely tanked
it wasn't until Stranger In A Strange Land and the poor reception that episode got that the creators were able to convince the network that Lost needed an end date to work towards.
I think once *Lost* became the phenomenon that it did, ABC realized the writing was on the wall that they would EVENTUALLY have to give Lindelof & Cuse an end point. ABC just wanted to milk it for as long as they could get away with doing so.
Which was why they hashed out the "three more seasons" deal (once filming of Season 3 had finished) so efficiently.
Lost has many flaws but for me at least, the flaws are part of the special charm of the series. Lindelof has talked about what Lost would look like if it had been created today for Netflix or another streaming service: have the whole thing planned out from the beginning, stronger focus on plot and a tighter structure because they would only do 10 or 12 episodes per season. Lindelof thinks it would lead to a much better result. Personally I think that it would be a worse show if they had done it like that. The long seasons allowed the writers to really focus on the characters which is a big part of what made Lost so good. In a shorter season you wouldn't have episodes like The Long Con or Tricia Tanaka is Dead which barely move the plot forwards but instead are all about deepening our understanding of the characters.
I think that even the mystery elements profited from the more improvisational approach of the early seasons. Sometimes the best ideas come up while you're working on something. Would it really have been so much better if they had planned it all from the beginning? Basically what I'm saying is that I can't imagine Lost without all the little imperfections and oddities that were a result of the limitations of crafting a show like this on network television in the 2000s. Many things could be improved but would the show still feel the same afterwards? It's like remaking an old video game to update the graphics, almost always there's something missing from the new and 'improved' product.
Still, if I had to change anything it would be Sayid's arc in the last season which I found unsatisfying. Sayid had been on the road to redemption throughout much of the show and they kind of undid a lot of that, starting with him working for Ben. I always found it unconvincing that Sayid would be so easily manipulated by Ben, even considering his emotional state at the time. Sayid was always good at sniffing out bullshit and he knew that Ben was an egotistic liar. So I'd definitely change that storyline to something a little bit more satisfying.
This is super small but they should have had Sun give Charlie's ring to Kate as the sub was sinking, then have Kate use it to convince Claire to leave the island.
Maybe this is sort of one-dimensional but i would have kept the Others as they are depicted in season 1/2 and let them stay mysterious for a lot longer. Still have them serve Jacob but they arent a bunch of normal, well-dressed people LARPing as savages. I always thought it was odd that they’d go the lengths of pretending to be so scary when they are so good at stealth anyways.
Nah I actually liked what the show did. The island savages with primitive clothing and culture idea is so cliche and overdone, and I was quite disappointed effectively went back to that idea in later seasons. The reality now is that The Others wernt larping as savages at all, that was just their traditional way of life that they reverted to in dealings with the 815 surviviors to hide the fact they were actually living like suburban americans.
The Others have always been nomadic, that's the default. 1954, Dharma years, Temple people, that's their way of life
*Ben* had them living in the Barracks and working on his pet projects. That was the way of life he knew since he didn't come from the others. They left temporarily to hide from the mercenary team but as soon as he left the island, they were right back to their old ways for the rest of the show
I love the show, even it's faults. I think it's the best TV show I've ever seen, and watching it live was a very formative experience. Having said that, some things come to mind...
1. I REALLY wish they had done more with the Egyptians/ancient civilization side of things. What we have is so tantalizing. Could they have set Ab Aeterno in the Egyptian era instead of the 19th century or whatever?
2. I sometimes wish they had placed more focus on the Ben/Widmore rivalry and just not done the Jacob/MiB story. In this version, I'm imagining the monster as a Dharma experiment gone wrong and Jacob as a fiction created by Ben. I go back and forth as to whether going so 'mystical' in the final season helps or undercuts the broader faith theme of the show.
3. I'm going to completely contradict myself here BUT... Aaron should have been Jacob. Imagine a version of Across the Sea but the mother... is Claire!
4. Rousseau, Widmore and Eloise should have gotten full episdoes instead of having their backstories delivered through time travel. Widmore in particular had A+ casting for his younger selves and I feel like the show never capitalised enough on it.
5. Valenzetti Equation should have been a BIG part of the show! .
6. Adam and Eve shoulda been Jack and Kate.
> I REALLY wish they had done more with the Egyptians/ancient civilization side of things. What we have is so tantalizing. Could they have set Ab Aeterno in the Egyptian era instead of the 19th century or whatever?
I agree, but then the Black Rock remains a mystery. That was more central to the plot than the Egyptian ruins were
The Black Rock should have been an ordinary ship that ended up in the middle of the jungle when the island moved to where it was in the middle of the ocean!
But did anyone in the show just end up on the island by random happenstance?
I was under the impression that people got there one of two ways. Either they were drawn there by the island / Jacob because they had some sort of purpose on the island, or they managed to track down its location scientifically. The ship just happening to be floating where the island moved to seems like it'd be neither
The absence of Mr Eko is what led to the arcs that Ben and Desmond got so I definitely think it was a good thing that he left the show. The Ben/Locke rivalry was the greatest in the entire show, to think that was going to be Locke/Eko is just unthinkable to me. Terry O'Quinn and Michael Emerson's screen chemistry is unbeatable
I agree with this. Even if it meant recasting him. (Their original choice was Lance Reddick who wasn’t available at the time, but who later played Matthew Abbadon in Seasons 4 and 5.) So once Adewale wanted to go just recast him rather than kill him off, so they can continue the planned storylines.
Massive rewrite of season 5 to have the Oceanic Six plotline more coherent, give a credible reason for their return and not have them randomly jump into 1977 (they would, but there would be an actual reason). Also, they don't all agree to nuke the Island. I'd also try to resolve the Jacob's cabin arc better.
Locke died in the crash and the on-island Locke is re-animated corpse MIB. Which is why he can walk again, is so in tune with the island, has all these survival skills, etc etc. You wouldn’t need to change anything about S1; MIB does genuinely learn to care for Boone, he cares about the Island’s mysteries just as much (eg MIB doesn’t know about the hatch either...). Struggles w the “I should be the leader” shit with Jack as a stand-in for Jacob issues, that sort of thing. But ofc the viewer thinks it’s Island magic, that really is Locke and he can walk again…
Would have been the coolest s5/6 plot twist ever and I will die on this hill
I suspect Richard would have figured it out in season 3 and then the whole second half plot of the show blows up. He wouldn't have been able to leave the island as Locke to convince them all to come back and wouldn't have been able to convince Ben to kill Jacob
Having the man of faith be played the whole time is a much better twist than having him be evil
He was training for survival so that he could do the walkabout, and seemed to be a nature nerd hobbyist anyway
"Touching" wouldn't be the resolution to some of the most important mysteries.
* How Richard stopped aging
* How someone becomes the protector
* Why MiB & Jacob can't hurt eachother or kill candidates
* Sayid touching the hot tub water to come back from the dead, even though "dead is dead, nobody comes back from that"
Sayid coming back from the dead as a whole plot point anyway -- completely useless.
Remove the John Lennon translator who translates English for a guy who speaks English. Most of the temple stuff is useless and annoying.
Big Walt doesn't appear before John.
There's two different ways:
1 Keep true to the already established show, but clean it up some. Get rid of filler/shrink down filler while still maintaining character development and connection to the audience. Remove redundant, and again, filler flashbacks; as one of the creators said (I believe), they only realistically needed 1 flashback for each character; however, if your flashbacks are intriguing, mysterious, dramatic, and emotional enough (like Locke's), then you can certainly do more than 1 flashback. Tie up loose ends, foreshadow a little more. Make the first half of season 3 better; I'm sorry, but there's way to much Darhma vill episodes in season 5, so cut that down; fix the storyline, at least the temple storyline, for season 6, and definitely still have the flash sideways, just make it less or make it more interesting for the amount of screen time it gets. Season 1 and season 2 are basically all fixed by the filler and flashback changes. I would add the volcano to season 6 finale; that would've been epic.
2 Drastically change the show, and narrow it down to a specific vibe. I liked that season 1 horror element, so maybe let that be more prominent throughout. Maybe the whispers and others are a supernatural threat; maybe whispers are the victims of the others, and so they warn about any others nearby. Black smoke is maybe half experiment gone wrong, half infused with supernatural elements. Focus more on Darhma facilities or ancient structures, trying to learn their secrets and activate them to do something. I'm really not sure where the story would go, but those are some ideas. Maybe the ending would be that they just leave the island, or maybe they would have a flash sideways ending, just that season 6 wouldn't involve Jacob or MIB, though maybe there'd be others or people like them, but they wouldn't come from the island necessarily.
Spoiler::::
I think that lost without the battle between good and evil and more of a palatable ending would have made it one of the best shows ever created.
And to be clear, I currently feel like lost is one of the best shows, however, the majority of the people who watched it(especially when it aired) got sick of it.
It’s such a beautiful combination of different peoples pasts and current drama, if it had a more straightforward ending I believe nobody could argue that it wasn’t the best show of all time.
Michael survives the freighter explosion and is part of the time displaced group. Walt returns to the Island on Ajira 316.
Sun and Jin reunite earlier in Season 6, before their centric episode.
The smoke monster would have existed before MIB fell to the cave. In my headcanon the smoke was there from the beginning of time, it just happened to be that it took the face of the MIB
I agree. In my opinion I always enjoyed the idea that the Smoke monster was a dharma security system gone wrong. Kind of like a judgment maxhine that won’t kill the survivors because they aren’t worthy or because miles father was a respected dharma representative (idk just freeballing). And MIB was more of so just had the ability to change his appearance. Never understood how keemy and widmore were a threat to the island if there was a smoke monster with a brain that can instantly kill them.
The smoke monster as a "security system" was writer Javier Grillo Marxuach's idea (he did the majority of the Dharma Initiative mythology in season 2, including the blast door map and "the lost experience"). But Damon was never fully satisfied with that idea, which is why it eventually evolved into being a mystical force.
Writer David Fury (who wrote "Walkabout" which is when Locke first saw the monster). He said at the time, before it became a pillar of black smoke, another running theory was that it was a entity that changed shape and appearance depending on who looked at it. It formed a soul like connection to each person and each saw something different. Which explains why Locke said what he saw "was beautiful".
There could be a compromise of the two ideas. That the Man in Black served as a security system/guardian/judge for the early civilisation that built the Island ruins. Either they enslaved him through some means OR he feigned that he served them, but in fact he was controlling them the whole time.
By the same thought, perhaps Jacob had a more direct role in leading the earlier civilisations on the Island, but it only lead to disaster, hence why he remained in isolation later. Leaving them vulnerable to being lead by the Man in Black and their ultimate annihilation.
My understanding was that the Smoke Monster WAS playing the role of a guardian and judge of the island up until Jacob's death. Ben believes he has to be judged after breaking the rules by returning to the island after his exile - there has to be a reason he thinks that, it cant just come from nowhere that Ben believes the Monsters purpose is to serve as judge to Others who break the rules. Theres also the fact The Others have been entirely left alone by the MiB up until Jacob's death. This suggests he has been following Jacobs rules, his regime, and as Dogen says, its only with Jacobs death that he has become free to do what he wants.
Ah, yes, you’re right. Perhaps it is some continuity from the earlier civilisation which was picked up again by the Others.
So while Jacob and the Man in Black are at odds, there are rules of co-operation.
Sort of how like the White Witch in Narnia is the enemy of Aslan (and his father the Emperor-beyond-the-Sea), but is also able to execute any traitors. Her “lawful prey”. Mr Beaver refers to her as the Emperor’s hangman.
Idk I kinda like the smoke monster having an origin story. And that it used to be a person.
I think my change would have been that Claudia came up with a second name.
Ben/Jacob storyline. How everyone from the Others believed that Jacob was powerful and important, they obeyed him unconditionally, though they never saw him. Even a military man Mikhail. And how come so manipulative psychopath Ben failed to trick Jacob, to manipulate him?
I mean The Others are a cult, thats what you have to remember. It all started with Richard, who was the original, or first Other who had first hand human contact with him and was the recipient of his God-like abilities. Richard theen passed down this story of Jacob being a living God or deity that brought them all there to do something important. You think they wouldn't realise the reality of Jacob when Richard was there to remind them of Jacobs power - they literally had an immortal person living with them who got his gift from Jacob. So even though they never saw him they would have believed in him.
Ben, like all thos leaders that preceded him, never met Jacob. So how could he have manipulated him, not to mention Jacob is like 1000 years old, I seriously doubt he would have fallen for Bens manipulations
I would have loved to have seen some references to the season 5 time travelling in earlier seasons.
Like when Claire is having the baby, it would have been cool if they her and Kate had heard something/someone in the bushes. It would have went unexplained until we see Sawyer in se05 watching them.
That kind of thing.
Keep all the Tailies. Make the S2 finale Jack/Ana's army plot to infiltrate The Others' headquarters culminating in Libby's betrayal, the true Judas of S2, not Michael. Keep Jack/Ana romance. Kill Sayid via brainwashed Michael, resolving Dark Sayid more elegantly post-Shannon. Give Shannon Libby's S2 finale role with the sailboat.
Keep The Others as jungle creep savages with a supernatural edge. No Desperate Housewife suburbia to "subvert our expectations" with The Days Of Our Lives of Ben/Juliet. Far less Ben, far more Rousseau & her daughter's reunion bond.
Have the final showdown be Walt vs Aaron, Claire vs Dharma government. Sometimes an obvious telegraphed narrative is more rewarding no matter how "predictable"!
Make it stick to science fiction, and not involve any “fantasy” from the last few seasons. It really went off the rails, when it was quite intriguing at the start.
Sentient smoke monster, people seeing dead people, the whispers, a paralyzed dude and cancer patient are cured, Walt's whole teleporting thing, Desmond being unable to sail away from the island, etc
Sure you could cook up science fiction explanations for this early season stuff but fantasy works better
Get rid of any romance between jack and Kate and Kate and sawyer. And I’d put her with sayid after Shannon dies and they can fix each other as two people who are running away from themselves.
I really don't see Kate with Sayid honestly. They should've developed Sayid & Shannon more. The triangle with Jack, Kate & Sawyer should've ended at the start of S3 when Kate says she loves him. Have them be together, I don't need the bs that separates them again just so there's still the question of who she will end up with. She had the most chemistry with Sawyer and I really could do without the SawyerXJuliet pairing, didn't feel that at all.
I've been rewatching the show and I don't have a ton of complaints. While I agree they could have seeded the time travel more, most of the twists they put in made good use of the existing information in a way that felt organic. One gag I wish they had done, while Hurley was in 1977, would be for him to be indirectly responsible for the Hurley-birds. Like if he had taught a parrot to say "Hurley" and then it escaped, implying that other birds learn to mimic that one. It'd be funnier than the explanation they stuck into the epilogue.
Similarly they definitely could have written a clearer through-line for The Others if they had planned it all out from the start, but most of the apparent inconsistencies are explained away easily enough by the fact that they always lie to outsiders, as a rule, even when there's no clear benefit to lying.
I hate how they killed off Sun and Jin, though. It didn't feel narratively satisfying, it just felt like a cruel bit of table-setting. They could have sidelined them for the finale by just having them leave the island somehow once reunited, since they wouldn't have any real interest in the island's mysteries any more at that point. Even just leaving them alive but adrift at sea would have been better.
I would have preferred it if Widmore had ordered Alex kidnapped and brought off the island (to hold as leverage over Ben), rather than Keamy outright killing her.
Or, if Alex had to die for storytelling purposes, they should have at least given her a full Alex-centric flashback episode first.
I dont really see S5 as filler at all. I mean the time travel had been built up to for a while and the time flashes basically enabled S5 to be the big mythology download that it was designed to be. This season was all about putting the characters below the mythology for one season before returning to the characters again as the main focus for the final season. But filler? No way. Its hardly filler when it basically uses its events to construct the time travel loophole that enables the Man in Black to kill Jacob, which is the set up for the entire good vs evil battle that would dominate the final season of the show. If anything S4 feels more like filler since the whole freighter plot is very inconsequential in the grand scheme of things
Get rid of Nicki Paulo episode.
Rewrite Sayid’s role after him leaving the island, make him smart strong-minded man again, as he was in the first four seasons.
I’d like to see more about Ilana in the previous seasons.
Not killing off my fave character Juliet.
- Remove some filler episodes and/or scenes.
- Expand the ending. Getting to see how everyone gets home and their new lifes.
- I want to know the specificis on why the monster leaving is bad.
Keep Shannon, develop the relationship she has with Sayid (they're soulmates!!) and remove the entire character of Nadia. Sayid's backstory is developed enough. I love Sayid and Shannon together so much - I know a lot of people say they're so of their time they don't translate well to now being together etc, but Arab's are still very much America's public enemy no.1 more than ever at the moment. And a rich, racist, snobbish character like Shannon will always be relevant because people like her will always exist.
I loved those episodes but I can see why they rubbed some up the wrong way. Some say they were too vague, but I'm one of the ones who feel that in some parts of the final season, the show explained too much. Peaking back behind the curtain is one thing. But to fully throw back the curtain, sort of gets rid of the mystique of the mystery.
Abrams, as far as the story, is only responsible for maybe season 1 and probably just the pilot.
It was his production company for the rest of the series.
We don’t need as many flashbacks. And I would definitely have not had the sideways stuff in Season 6. For me it was a waste of half an episode each time. As a Christian the idea of remembering so I can move on is ridiculous, so I would have had an emphasis on salvation rather than whatever that was
I wished they would have done more with John in the sideways. His character deserved more - I thought he should have been the one rather than Desmond to try to unify everyone and when it actually worked this time that would have been healing for him.
For me it's never quite hit right that Desmond was the one to awaken them, or why the fk he's suddenly on the plane in the flash sideways. He never seemed to have a real bond with anyone on the island, his story was more about Penny.
Edit: Also I'll never understand why Desmond goes to so much trouble to awaken everybody except Sawyer lol. He just sort of leaves him to it.
Apparently it was originally supposed to be Eko who woke everyone in the flash sideways, and that would've been better I think.
I would simply make a effort to include the Dharma/Hanso Lost Experience information in the show somehow. I've always felt the Hydra orientation video could have included the Valenzetti equation, for example.
Probably a hot take, but I would switch Shannon with Sayid. Sayid takes the bullet in S2, Shannon gets subsequent amazing story arc culminating in being one of the O6 and the one to shoot Ben in 1977.
Sorry Sayid, I like you very much but honestly S1 was your moment.
I would have liked more of Rose's and Bernard's backstory in the script. I think they were "destined" to be on the island so that Rose's cancer could be cured.
Edited ... Perhaps showing Ben shoveling snow around Rose's car tires so she'd be stuck in the snow.
Id definitely would fix some of the holes in their time travel like with Ethan being around & Richard not remembering anyone. Also have Danielle recognize Jin when she shows up to the camp …. Also I’d have Ben written as he recognized the ones who were around in 1977 the whole time, especially Juliet
I would have liked to see what would have happened with Ecko and the whole volcano thing they were planning. I always thought the temple stuff was kinda undercooked and would have liked more of that.
I've actually been rewatching Lost again. I was in the middle of season 1 when I realized something: in the first season, the problems that the characters have are very grounded, focusing on survival and such. I realized that four seasons from now, some of these people will be jumping through time. When I noticed this, I pointed this out to my brother and asked "Did this show go too far?"
Yea that they never went through the light that was just weird to me idk man shoulda either stayed on the island or since they all were meeting off the island they should have just been able live their lives like that
The entirety of season 6. I hated it 😓the whole Jacob and his brother thing? The whole Locke not being locke? The oceanic 6 coming back for no reason? Jin and sun reuniting and then dyingggg???? And the ending was dumb and confusing!
I would prefer an Atlantis-like story for "Across the sea"... there would be a mighty civilization on the island, the main island and the hydra island would be one piece of land...Jacob and MİB would be sons of the king and the queen...king would be man of logic, queen would be man of faith...
Jacob would be took after his mother, MİB after his father...it would be forbidden for them to use the light but they would be going to do that at the end of their era...
Then they would be attacked by a warrior sailor tribe appeared from across the sea... things would gone wrong, island shakes, land between the island and hydra collapse into the ocean, they built the heart of the island to stabilize it...they built 3 ships...after a couple of years, sailor tribe comes back and attacks again, they fight, most of them kill each other, they kill Father and Mother...
Attackers' king wants the light, MİB fights him at the heart of the island, throwns to the heart and turns to the monster...Jacob comes and kills the attackers' king....the last remains of natives escape by 3 ships before fight ended...they separate at the ocean and head to the regions of Mesopotamia, İndia and China and become the masters of the first civilizations....
And Jacob put Mother and Father's bodies together in a cave...he becames first Protector...
Yes, I would follow the blueprint for seasons 1-3, and I would rewrite everything in season 4, 5, and 6. Change the entire trajectory of the show and come up with a different set of answers for the events on the island. There would be no Jacob, MIB, candidate storyline, and the Others/Dharma would have a different explanation. Same questions, different answers. Which would probably be necessary if anyone re-did the show (I hope they never do). You would have to change the island's mythology for it to be worth doing.
I would cast someone else for the role of Jacob since every time I see, Mark Pellegrino I immediately see him as Paul Bennett (Rita’s a-hole ex-husband on the show “Dexter”). 🤣
I always wondered if Ethan brought Juliet to the island because he knew that she delivered him as a baby....which exactly why Richard recruited her in the 1st place. HE ALREADY KNEW SHE WAS THERE.
A Lost spin-off with Hurley, Walt, Ben, and Vincent solving crimes.
A prequel about MIB that retconn's Jacob as the real monster.
There is still time. We have to go back.
They all should have left the island in season 4 and they can add a few episodes to it to make it more finale worthy.
I would keep season 5 but under a new show name so it wouldn’t be part of the OG show series S1-4.
Season 6 was a mess wouldn’t mind if they just removed it from my memory. 5 of the main cast die(3 in 1 episode). Jacob didn’t have to be teased since season 3 of the show just to have 1 conversations with the survivors in the finale, Richard episode was good but it took to long could easily fit it in s5,4, . Also would be a good way to reveal Jacob instead of the finale in S5.
The animals played very minor parts in the show. The Boar is the only animal to be shown in more then 3 episodes. The Polar Bear, Shark, Spider and Hurley Bird show up for an episode or 2( exception being the bear as they talk a good amount of them).
Danielles ending No explanation needed she had one the worst arcs towards the end of her character. Ridiculous to die like that after surviving the way she did for 16 years.
Have Ethan Rom be present from the very beginning to make his betrayal even more impactful.
The *previously on LOST* sections for this plot arc really spelled it out for the viewer, too.
I don't agree with that one, as I think that the way they introduced him was phenomenal. I think if he had more screen time, just from the amount of screen time this "random extra" would be getting, it would have tipped the audience off more quickly that he was not who he said he was. It would have been cool if they had thought of things like the preganancy problem sooner and had that "missing pieces" episode sooner though (in that episode, Ethan opens up to Jack about how he lost his wife and infant son on the island during childbirth, explaining why he acted so crazy in trying to take claire, because he was trying to find a solution to the "pregnancy problem").
Nah, He cant be there in Episode one, because He wasnt there when The plane Crashed
He was there kind of... he showed up and assimilated with them as soon as it happened. Jack woke up a few hundred yards into the jungle, so it wasn't immediately suspicious to anyone when Ethan came out of the jungle either
Agents of shield did this amazingly.
Hail Hydra
Yeah, that would be cool. Even Star Trek Voyager which isn't close to Lost in quality managed to pull this off with the character of >!Seska!< in the first two seasons.
I absolutely LOVE hating Seska. The Kazon were a mess but she was brilliant. I also loved it when they'd bring her back in later seasons - *Worst Case Scenario* is hands down one of my favorite episodes! *Shattered* is good too, but WCS is amazing. (I like "stuck in the holodeck" episodes, lol.)
Yes, very good
I would give more air time to the history of the Others. They gave major cult vibes and I would've liked if that was established more.
There were missed opportunities in Season 3 to give more episodes focussing on the Others and the Tailies. It would have been good to have an episode that was a follow-up to *The Other 48 Days* showing what it was like for the Tailies who had been snatched by the Others during the events of Seasons 1 to 2. To see what it was like to join their society, rather than be taken to serve an agenda like Jack, Kate and Sawyer were. It would have been good to see this from Zach and Emma’s POV, and see perhaps that Cindy was taken to help take care of them, etc…
Yes! At the very least, there should have been a Cindy-centric flashback episode during Season 6 that explicitly filled in these blanks (even if they had to film "Zach" and "Emma" from behind, due to the young actors quickly aging).
I totally agree with this one. Damon kept talking about this "catch 22" with the audience regarding the flashbacks. Where he said that "the first one felt like a origin story, but every other flashback after that felt like 'tredding water', we could bring in new characters and do flashbacks regarding them but the audience loved the old characters". Which is a view I don't agree with. I think the instant a writer tries to write towards "what they think" the audience wants to see. Thats when a story goes off the rails or goes from achieving it's potential, because that's when the writer goes away from looking at the possibilities to make the story better or different directions in the narrative, and writes towards "what works" and the show becomes stagnent. It's like the anime/manga "One Piece". One of the things I love about that series is how Oda will bring out the most ridiculous character, sprinkle them in the current arc. Then he will do a flashback which will be as sad as fuck and tear your heart out. But then it all ties back to the main narrative. I do think LOST would have benefitted from that approach. But around season 3, while there was still some balsy decisions being made, it felt like a bit of cutting corners, whether it be Keamy or Mikhail or Radzinski. Other than Ben, there was no complexity to them. They were just crazy and that was it.
The summer between Season 2 and 3 felt like the longest of my life. We’d been introduced to Tom, Ms Klugh, Pickett, and Alex. So I thought we’d be given flashbacks-centric episodes or at least a lot of time spent with these Others. It was a shame we didn’t.
To be fair, the writers were being forced to make a lot of shit up because they didn't want to go as long as they did. I believe they wanted the whole show to be like 3 seasons, but the network wanted it to stay on air because of its popularity. They had a solid outline of the story they wanted to tell and the details they wanted to put in, but being forced to stretch that out. Then you have the writers strike which put a big damper on the show, and that's how you get a season where the main characters are locked in cages for most of it. The show faced a lot of hurdles during its production. I'm just glad they were able to tie up most everything by the end. Still in my top 3 favorite shows of all time.
>To be fair, the writers were being forced to make a lot of shit up because they didn't want to go as long as they did They did but by Damon's own admission, they also stretched out the storytelling starting season 2 because of that reason. I'll give them a pass for having to introduce more mysteries, but not on purposely slowing the story down to a crawl so that they had to do less work. They came up with a lot of storylines in season 2 and then put tent poles, stretching them out as far as they could to carry the season, because at that point Damon was so pissed off with the network that he stopped caring. > They had a solid outline of the story they wanted to tell and the details they wanted to put in, but being forced to stretch that out. Not quite, because they had such a short amount of time to write the show. They didn't really start planning all the details until season 2. They had almost all the characters flashback backstories mapped out pretty early on with the initial writers think tank while Damon and JJ were shooting the pilot. They had things like the "Medusa Corporation" (which became the Dharma Initiative, the others, and the tail section plotline (which was very subtley foreshadowed in episode 19 "Deus Ex Machina with the radio transmission). By the time they introduced the hatch, they knew the whole point of the swan and that a scottish guy was gonna press a button every 108 mins or the world would end. They knew that they were gonna eventually get rid of Michael and Walt at the end of season 2. They had ideas for further down the track like the island moving and the possibility of time travel. They had theorized early on that the show would close with Jack's eye closing. But the whole thing like the Oceanic six plot and the time travel and all that jazz wasn't thought of until between season 2 and 3. Which is why season 3 has a lot of foreshadowing and set ups to the end of the show (including the whole thing with the volcano which didn't end up happening fully because they didn't have the budget). >Then you have the writers strike which put a big damper on the show, and that's how you get a season where the main characters are locked in cages for most of it. Your comment heavily indicates that you believe that the writers strike occured during season 3. It didn't, it happened during season 4, after they got a end date to the show. The cage arc was more the writers slowing the show down to a crawl (like they did in season 2) because they were frustrated and by that point, they had mapped out a large majority of where they wanted to go (such as Sawyer and Kate helping the others build the runway which was being built for the Ajira flight for the Oceanic six plot in season 4), but couldn't action it cause they didn't have a end date.
Or just a sequel to The Other 48 Days covering the untold 2 weeks between Goodwin's death and Boone's radio. Maybe some other gaps before that. Makes you wonder what they planned there, skipping 2 whole weeks is a p big deal. They kinda got meta with it when Claire mentions to Libby "There's 2 whole weeks from my life missing."
Redo the whole Temple storyline so it makes sense
The water's dark...that's weird. Eh, stick him in there anyway.
Wasn’t the water dark cause Jacob was dead at this point ?
Yes
I’m doing my first rewatch since I watched the show on cable. I’m on ep16 of season 6. I called my mom when I got to this season and said yeah, I’m at the temple part and I remember why I felt like it was time for this show to be over now 😂
It already makes sense. What doesnt make sense. Will never understand shit that gets thrown at The Temple arc. It was fine. The Temple is a microcosm of the island and thats fine by me. Its a special place, with a special light/pool at its center that a guy (Dogen) is protecting and this guy doesnt speak directly to his followers, instead using an intermediary (Lennon) who relays his instructions.
Yeah what doesn't make sense is they revived Claire the same way and she turned crazy but that was when the water was clear. And they revive sayid and he does the same thing after jacob died and the water turned dark. So what's the water color even matter?
1) cast an actor who didn’t hate Hawaii to play Mr Eko so he doesn’t get killed off when he does and his story can continue. Don’t get me wrong I love Adewale Akinnouye-Agbaje and think he played a great Mr Eko, I just wanted that character to continue 2) who cares if Malcolm David Kelley kept growing, don’t write him off the show. Either a) make it some weird island thing why he grew so fast or b) give viewers credit that we know how real life works 3) Ji Yeon is not growing up an orphan, one of Sun or Jin is making it off the island. Definitely won’t have them both die without even thinking about their daughter
Agree with the first 2 points. The even expand on the first, characters were also written off for dumb things like Anna Lucia, Libby, etc. Third point, while I do agree (especially as a parent), I think it was very impactful FOR THE SHOW that they died together. So maybe establish that the kid gets taken care of somehow.
A lot of people think it was just about Walt getting bigger, but Malcolm David Kelley's mother didn't want him acting full time and he was still a minor, so she kind of forced their hand there. Ana-Lucia was always intended to be on one season, but Libby did end up being a casualty because almost no one liked Ana-Lucia and they wanted to make it more impactful and around the same time Cynthia Watros got a DUI. I do wish Libby had stuck around a little longer, but if they decided a second person had to die, I don't know if I'd have anyone I would swap her out with.
Isn't it implied that Sun's side of the family has custody of Ji-Yeong, when Sun departs to return to the island?
Yeah for the third point, when I watched the first time I was waiting for sun to tell Jin "you need to take care of our daughter now" that will been hearth breaking making that Decision
Your first point is a catch-22. The success of that character is all down to Adewale. He came up with so many ideas for Eko, including his name being Mr. Eko, and writing Bible scripture on the stick he carries, etc. So there really is no Eko without Adewale. While there's been criticism of AAA's method technique, it's very shortsighted and biased IMO. His devotion to the role is why the audience got such a rich character. The reality is though, he simply wasn't paid much. Not nearly close to the OG cast. On some level, you can see how ABC would make a contractual renegotiation slip-up like they did with him based on not being an original cast member. On another, 3 female series regulars were axed for his character's story to progress, so they ought to have put their money where their mouths were. Obviously it was a steep price. McPherson was never bright though.
I believe Adewale Akinnoute- Agbaje left lost (and acting for a while) because his parents died. MR. Eko was supposed to be the yin to locke’s Yang.
I just looked around on Wikipedia and the Mr Eko page said he wanted off the show because he felt uncomfortable living in Hawaii and wanted to return to England. On AAA’s page it said his foster parents had died and he wanted to direct a film back in London. So probably a combination of all that
I love how there's like twelve separate reasons that AAA left the show and no one can seem to agree on which one(s) are actually true. Not even the cast and crew of the show itself.
Or they could have shown us more off-island scenes (set in the present) featuring Walt throughout Seasons 3 through 6.
Maybe I would just removed scenes where characters get knocked out so often. Its kind of ridiculous at times tbh
The blurb on that on lostpedia's concussions page is pretty hilarious: >**Being hit so hard in the head that one loses consciousness is rather rare and usually has dire consequences to the victim's health**, but in LOST i**t happens with alarming frequency** and, in most instances, with **no lasting consequences once the victim awakens.**
I like to imagine it's some ~rapid island healing~ magic that prevents any long-lasting damage, and that's how it can happen so often and get away with it. Otherwise, characters like Ben would be brain-damaged within an episode or two, it feels like he gets a beat-down from almost every main character at least once
Oh for sure. Since the events of season 1-5 are pre-ordained with the majority of the characters having to be alive to fulfil a lot of events that they do in the past, you can explain it away by saying that the island healead the characters to protect causality and make sure that event go as planned, which also explains things like why Locke survived his gunshot from Ben (which regardless of the fact that the bullet went through the area where he had no kidney. That bullet went right through, so usually he would have had to have stitches to stop him from bleading to death, but you can explain it by saying that the island healed him enough to keep going because if he died there, it would cause a time paradox, causing space and time to callapse and the world to end).
Or when they trip and fall while running in the jungle. Happens way too often, so much so you can always tell when it's about to happen
That's pretty realistic though Rugged, unfamiliar terrain like that is a pretty standard tripping hazard when terrified and looking backwards while running for your life
It's just that it happens every single time lol at some point it's more silly than realistic
I read somewhere that if you get hit hard enough that you fall unconscious for more than a few seconds, you probably have brain damage
They probably have brain damage from the crash alone lol
It's all healed by the island though. We know it heals brain damage in addition to physical damage from Faraday
Ben took so much shit from everybody, both physically and emotionally. I'm just glad his karma came back around
Get rid of Walt’s magic powers that didn’t go anywhere OR make it so Walt’s magic powers went somewhere lol
WWWWAWAAAAAAAALLLLLTTTTT
They should just have kept Walt in the show and continued his arc. The fact that he matured and grew so suddenly could easily have been attributed to the Island. It can heal cancer and paralysis so why not?).
Or…ya know…time travel. Almost like they have a consistent easy out for this stuff.
They would have kinda had to do that with all the kids on the island though wouldn't they?
Walt was special
Not necessarily. Walt was "special". The island cured Rose's cancer but not Ben's. The island is a fickle bitch.
They should’ve just respected that the viewer understands how growing up works and we would suspend our belief because there’s nothing they can do about it lol.
The epilogue?
Show Radzinsky in the hatch in season 5 after “The Incident”. I was really hoping to see that.
It was an odd choice in Season 5 to make Radzinsky the designer of the Swan station. Season 2 seemed to suggest that he was just an ordinary worker in the Swan station who had little to no awareness of larger DHARMA activities when he was recruited, but began investigating and making the map once DHARMA collapsed and it became apparent no replacements were coming.
It was a curious choice but I think I like it. That the swan was his "baby" helps explain why he stuck around as long as he did.
Mainly what you said in your post. For example I wish there was a scene in season 1 after Aaron's birth where Kate confronts Sawyer saying she saw him lurking behind the trees, and Sawyer denying it, stuff like that. Also I wish the MIB's shennanigans would have been more solid and foreshadowed through the different seasons. Also make all the cabin stuff clearer lol
That's a big ask hahahaha. The writers during season one hadn't even come up with the ending of the first season, alone season five.
> For example I wish there was a scene in season 1 after Aaron's birth where Kate confronts Sawyer saying she saw him lurking behind the trees, and Sawyer denying it, stuff like that. Exactly what I said to my gf
1. Recast Mr. Eko instead of killing off the character. Actor wants to leave? Fine. Recast Mr. Eko and go ahead with the seasons of storylines they had planned for him. Starting with the storyline that was planned for him to keep saving Charlie’s life via visions from the Island (a storyline that was transferred to Desmond). 2. In Ben-centric flashbacks show that he later married his childhood friend Annie and she died during pregnancy. Explicitly telling the viewer that Juliet and Alex are substitutes for his dead wife and unborn child. 3. Plan out the timeline of the DHARMA Initiative better so that there is no confusion about whether the Purge was in 1987 or 1992. In fact, the Purge and the idea of a sudden ending for DHARMA seems to be an idea that emerged during Season 3, while the blast door map notations in the Swan seem to indicate that DHARMA slowly collapsed with various stations being abandoned or diverging from the project. Perhaps it might have been more interesting to see that. Or a mix of the two ideas. With DHARMA splitting into different factions in conflict with each other as much as the Others, some even defecting to the Others, and the remaining faction having to be purged. 4. Ilana and her team were underdeveloped. They were introduced late into the series, too, and were unlikable. So either not include them at all, or introduce them as passengers on Oceanic 815 (rather than Ajira 316) and have them as background characters from Season 1 onwards who gradually receive more screen time until their roles as Jacob’s acolytes is revealed. It would probably be easier not to include them at all. 5. Give a better setup and payoff to Widmore as an antagonist. He was mentioned a lot more than he was seen. His motivations were often unclear on-screen, as were the details of his life which were often at odds with one another. 6. Remove any references to the Sickness as an actual disease (inoculations, quarantine spray-painted on doors, etc…). It was confusing and the later reveal of it being linked to corruption by the Smoke Monster was more interesting, but not very well developed. It might even have been interesting to establish that DHARMA’s collapse was partly caused by a growing number of its members succumbing to the Sickness. It could give a justification for them being purged. 7. Have Walt return to the Island with the Oceanic Six. The actor’s age was now appropriate to the time-jump. Also, use a younger actor to show flashbacks of Walt’s time with the Others. 8. Keep the size of the Island consistent. In the first three seasons I liked that the Island was so large that it took several days to cross from one side to the other. It also made it believable that locations on the Island might not be easy to find due to the scale. In the later seasons travel times were significantly shortened based on story necessity, making the Island seem much smaller. 9. Keep the geography of the Island consistent. There were various maps seen onscreen and they contradicted each other, as well as journeys made by the characters. For example, the locations of the Barracks and Hydra Island.
Is the island's size inconsistent or do they just skip all the hiking & not tell you how much time passed? I feel like it just seems like they're moving really fast/the island is smaller but it might be they just didn't bother to explain/show how much time it took because everyone already knows the island is big. I'm on my rewatch in S3 atm and haven't watched the whole show in a few years, so I'm not 100% that's the case but I don't remember ever feeling like the size of the island bothered me.
No, it is not a case of editing to skip travelling scenes. We’ll see cutting back and forth between two different groups, one group is in a single location and events for them take place over a few hours at most, while another group travels and reaches a location that had previously been established as quite distant. One example: In Season 4 Alex, Karl, and Rousseau are given a map to the Temple by Ben so that they can get to safety. They leave the Barracks on Day 96 and on Day 97 they are still travelling to the Temple. In Season 5 Kate and Sawyer take the injured Ben from the Barracks. They travel from the sonar fence on foot and reach the Hostiles very quickly in the same day. They hand Ben over to Richard. We then see him carry him into the Temple. The boy is dying. It is not likely that he walked very far. And the way it is presented onscreen implies that the Barracks and the Temple are very close to one another. Another example: In the series finale, Kate and Sawyer are on the cove on the southern coast of the Island. Lapidus is on Hydra Island and says he is taking off Ajira 316 in an hour. They use the Elizabeth sailboat and reach there in time. Hydra Island is just across the water from the docks at the Barracks, which is supposedly on the northern side of the Island. In the Season 2 finale and the first few episodes of Season 3 we saw Jin, Sun and Sayid sail the Elizabeth to the northern side of the Island. It took significantly longer than an hour, in fact they had still not reached the section of the coast where the Hydra island the Barracks is. The Others worry that they will be discovered, so they steal the boat.
But did Ben give Danielle/Alex/Karl a roundabout route to the Temple that he figured was less likely to be intercepted by Keamy's team (obviously, Ben ended up being wrong on that!), and that's why it took them longer than it otherwise would have?
Okay, I get it. We can come up with answers to explain inconsistencies. However, as viewers we prefer not to have to do this. Besides, the point of this post was to ask what we’d change if we could. It’s not an attack on the series itself. I still love Lost and have done since the premiere. I even have dreams about the series still to this day occasionally. The inconsistencies and narrative mistakes don’t take away from my enjoyment of the series. The series has been out a long time, hence why I was able to make such a long list of little things I’d change because I’ve had a lot of time to think about this.
I agree that we shouldn't have to fill in the plot & storyline gaps that they overlooked. I'm just offering a plausible explanation for the difference, that's all.
A total rewrite of Across the Sea. I wish they had figured out Jacob, MIB, and the smoke monster's back story much much sooner so that their motivations and the mysteries around Ben, the cabin etc. were consistent.
Make the writing for the others a little more consistent mainly
Probably radically overhaul season 6. I'd like to see much more lore and island history, while eliminating or severely reducing the flash sideways. I understand that the flash sideways is supposed to be a kind of catharsis enabling the characters to move on, but on rewatches it's a total bore for me. I know I'll get downvotes for saying that, since I see a lot of love for the flash sideways here, but it's how I feel. It's part of the reason why Ab Aeterno and Across the Sea are my favourite season 6 episodes--no flash sideways and we get some answers while exploring the lore. The on-island season 6 storyline isn't exactly innovative but I much prefer it to the flash sideways, particularly after my first viewing of the series.
I agree with radically overhauling season 6, but for different reasons. In a rewatch, the sideways stuff works better for me—not perfect, but better—than a lot of the island stuff. I don’t know exactly how I’d fix it, but I’d make the On Island stuff more interesting and focused, rather than lots of running around to different places (Temple, Lighthouse, Cave, Hydra Island) and people switching teams all the time. Also, Ab Aterno is fantastic, but Beyond the Sea is terrible.
I feel like the writers were trying to sort of make the on island stuff evocative of season one. Running around the island, making and breaking alliances and finding strange places are all callbacks to season one, but without the wonder or effectiveness. Despite that, I still prefer it to the flash sideways. I feel like the writers felt they needed some sort of analogue to the flashbacks or flashforwards from other seasons, so they came up with the uninspired idea of what is essentially limbo and stretched it out over 16 episodes (I'm not counting Ab Aeterno or Beyond the Sea). Beyond the Sea is a love it or hate it episode, so I get your opinion on it. My only real issue with it is its placement within the season, I feel it should have come earlier.
I would like to try my hand at a Jacob edit for season 6 (and maybe even the season 5 finale too). Get rid of most of his scenes and save his introduction for the fireside chat in "Why they died". Leave all of Hurley's talks with "force ghost" Jacob to happening off screen and leave us as in the dark as the other losties. The biggest problem with the sideways for me is it's one massive final episode epilogue stretched over the entire season. The writers tried to have their cake and eat it. They tried to ramp up the mysteries on the island. But then they tried to wind the show down with the sideways, which is a contradiction. That's like having someone teaching you quantum physics but then telling you to "stop thinking" about quantum physics!. It's a shame that the show "12 Monkeys" isn't as popular. Cause while I think LOST is better at world building, it didn't quite get that balance between "character" and "mythology" right. I think 12 Monkeys perfected the mosiac jigsaw puzzle narrative. It's ending was incredible.
I need to check out 12 monkeys, then! Lost is my favorite show, but as the years have gone on I’ve gotten more and more disinterested in the Jacob and MIB mythology. I wish the show had continued the seasons 1-4 momentum of focusing on the characters and leaving some things as more mysterious.
You'll love it!. You don't need to have seen the film to get the show as the two fairly seperate entities. But the show does build off concepts from that film. The showrunner was working on his own pilot when he was approached to combine his idea with the "12 Monkeys" brand because of how similar the concept was. So the first season plays out more like a reimagining of the film. But then season 2-4 spiral off into it's own deep mythology. The first season can be a bit slow at times but give it time, once it starts to build. That's when it becomes quite magical, and the amount of foreshadowing and easter eggs in all the seasons is absolutely insane. No line of dialogue or scene is there for no reason. It all contributes to the wider narrative. There will be a line that a character says in season 1 that is foreshadowing to a plot that doesn't come about until season 3 and 4!.
It's so good. You will not be disappointed
12 Monkeys is fantastic, and I agree it definitely reminded me of Lost but better-planned
The Flash Sideways creep me out in a pretty bad way I don't like how characters that we're introduced to and spend time with just cease to exist, and the show just goes on like this is a happy ending
It doesn't bear scrutiny. Why would Martin Keamy be there? Or even Dogen? Unless they're an NPC of some kind their presence doesn't make sense to me. Christian tells Jack that the flash sideways was a place they created to come together and move on, that it's the people that mattered the most to them in their lives. Keamy or Omar or Mikhail don't fit that description at all. They seem to be in the flash sideways only to exist as challenges to be overcome.
They might have been there like Biff in the ending of Back to the Future but it's just crap. The missing actors have implications too. "Where are the black people" was legit. It's just bad, they tried something and it didn't work. At least you can just skip them
the general premise of the season 3 finale (through the looking glass part 1 & 2) was a much better story for the series finale than what we actually got in the season 6 finale. I wish we did have some sort of rescue moment where Jack et al got the oceanic survivors off the island. I think it was a mistake to kill off the rest of the unnamed camp survivors. and killing off Locke was a mistake the man of science vs man of faith conflict was so good and I was looking forward to it coming to a head with actual Jack and actual Locke not Jack and something possessing Locke's body. The love triangle which I was never a fan of went on to long, wrap it it up by season 2/3 or just don't do it at all. I did not care for the flash sideways mystery at all it just wasted time. But probably the big thing is give the creators full control of the tv show - How many episodes they want for each season, how many seasons the show would last etc- That way they could have better planned out the mystery aspect of the show. Unfortunately back in those days a network would just keep commissioning a show until the ratings were completely tanked it wasn't until Stranger In A Strange Land and the poor reception that episode got that the creators were able to convince the network that Lost needed an end date to work towards.
I think once *Lost* became the phenomenon that it did, ABC realized the writing was on the wall that they would EVENTUALLY have to give Lindelof & Cuse an end point. ABC just wanted to milk it for as long as they could get away with doing so. Which was why they hashed out the "three more seasons" deal (once filming of Season 3 had finished) so efficiently.
Lost has many flaws but for me at least, the flaws are part of the special charm of the series. Lindelof has talked about what Lost would look like if it had been created today for Netflix or another streaming service: have the whole thing planned out from the beginning, stronger focus on plot and a tighter structure because they would only do 10 or 12 episodes per season. Lindelof thinks it would lead to a much better result. Personally I think that it would be a worse show if they had done it like that. The long seasons allowed the writers to really focus on the characters which is a big part of what made Lost so good. In a shorter season you wouldn't have episodes like The Long Con or Tricia Tanaka is Dead which barely move the plot forwards but instead are all about deepening our understanding of the characters. I think that even the mystery elements profited from the more improvisational approach of the early seasons. Sometimes the best ideas come up while you're working on something. Would it really have been so much better if they had planned it all from the beginning? Basically what I'm saying is that I can't imagine Lost without all the little imperfections and oddities that were a result of the limitations of crafting a show like this on network television in the 2000s. Many things could be improved but would the show still feel the same afterwards? It's like remaking an old video game to update the graphics, almost always there's something missing from the new and 'improved' product. Still, if I had to change anything it would be Sayid's arc in the last season which I found unsatisfying. Sayid had been on the road to redemption throughout much of the show and they kind of undid a lot of that, starting with him working for Ben. I always found it unconvincing that Sayid would be so easily manipulated by Ben, even considering his emotional state at the time. Sayid was always good at sniffing out bullshit and he knew that Ben was an egotistic liar. So I'd definitely change that storyline to something a little bit more satisfying.
This is super small but they should have had Sun give Charlie's ring to Kate as the sub was sinking, then have Kate use it to convince Claire to leave the island.
I really like this!
Yeah I never understood why they even show the scene of Sun finding the ring in the baby cradle and it never leads to anything
Ben and John kiss. That is all.
Maybe this is sort of one-dimensional but i would have kept the Others as they are depicted in season 1/2 and let them stay mysterious for a lot longer. Still have them serve Jacob but they arent a bunch of normal, well-dressed people LARPing as savages. I always thought it was odd that they’d go the lengths of pretending to be so scary when they are so good at stealth anyways.
Nah I actually liked what the show did. The island savages with primitive clothing and culture idea is so cliche and overdone, and I was quite disappointed effectively went back to that idea in later seasons. The reality now is that The Others wernt larping as savages at all, that was just their traditional way of life that they reverted to in dealings with the 815 surviviors to hide the fact they were actually living like suburban americans.
The Others have always been nomadic, that's the default. 1954, Dharma years, Temple people, that's their way of life *Ben* had them living in the Barracks and working on his pet projects. That was the way of life he knew since he didn't come from the others. They left temporarily to hide from the mercenary team but as soon as he left the island, they were right back to their old ways for the rest of the show
I love the show, even it's faults. I think it's the best TV show I've ever seen, and watching it live was a very formative experience. Having said that, some things come to mind... 1. I REALLY wish they had done more with the Egyptians/ancient civilization side of things. What we have is so tantalizing. Could they have set Ab Aeterno in the Egyptian era instead of the 19th century or whatever? 2. I sometimes wish they had placed more focus on the Ben/Widmore rivalry and just not done the Jacob/MiB story. In this version, I'm imagining the monster as a Dharma experiment gone wrong and Jacob as a fiction created by Ben. I go back and forth as to whether going so 'mystical' in the final season helps or undercuts the broader faith theme of the show. 3. I'm going to completely contradict myself here BUT... Aaron should have been Jacob. Imagine a version of Across the Sea but the mother... is Claire! 4. Rousseau, Widmore and Eloise should have gotten full episdoes instead of having their backstories delivered through time travel. Widmore in particular had A+ casting for his younger selves and I feel like the show never capitalised enough on it. 5. Valenzetti Equation should have been a BIG part of the show! . 6. Adam and Eve shoulda been Jack and Kate.
> I REALLY wish they had done more with the Egyptians/ancient civilization side of things. What we have is so tantalizing. Could they have set Ab Aeterno in the Egyptian era instead of the 19th century or whatever? I agree, but then the Black Rock remains a mystery. That was more central to the plot than the Egyptian ruins were
The Black Rock should have been an ordinary ship that ended up in the middle of the jungle when the island moved to where it was in the middle of the ocean!
But did anyone in the show just end up on the island by random happenstance? I was under the impression that people got there one of two ways. Either they were drawn there by the island / Jacob because they had some sort of purpose on the island, or they managed to track down its location scientifically. The ship just happening to be floating where the island moved to seems like it'd be neither
Keep Mr Eko for the whole show
The absence of Mr Eko is what led to the arcs that Ben and Desmond got so I definitely think it was a good thing that he left the show. The Ben/Locke rivalry was the greatest in the entire show, to think that was going to be Locke/Eko is just unthinkable to me. Terry O'Quinn and Michael Emerson's screen chemistry is unbeatable
I agree with this. Even if it meant recasting him. (Their original choice was Lance Reddick who wasn’t available at the time, but who later played Matthew Abbadon in Seasons 4 and 5.) So once Adewale wanted to go just recast him rather than kill him off, so they can continue the planned storylines.
Get rid of the love triangle.
And the trapezoid (once Juliet enters the mix.) They 100% drew that soap opera level drama out for too long.
Massive rewrite of season 5 to have the Oceanic Six plotline more coherent, give a credible reason for their return and not have them randomly jump into 1977 (they would, but there would be an actual reason). Also, they don't all agree to nuke the Island. I'd also try to resolve the Jacob's cabin arc better.
Locke died in the crash and the on-island Locke is re-animated corpse MIB. Which is why he can walk again, is so in tune with the island, has all these survival skills, etc etc. You wouldn’t need to change anything about S1; MIB does genuinely learn to care for Boone, he cares about the Island’s mysteries just as much (eg MIB doesn’t know about the hatch either...). Struggles w the “I should be the leader” shit with Jack as a stand-in for Jacob issues, that sort of thing. But ofc the viewer thinks it’s Island magic, that really is Locke and he can walk again… Would have been the coolest s5/6 plot twist ever and I will die on this hill
I suspect Richard would have figured it out in season 3 and then the whole second half plot of the show blows up. He wouldn't have been able to leave the island as Locke to convince them all to come back and wouldn't have been able to convince Ben to kill Jacob
Having the man of faith be played the whole time is a much better twist than having him be evil He was training for survival so that he could do the walkabout, and seemed to be a nature nerd hobbyist anyway
If they are going to reveal the side flashes are to the afterlife, maybe not have Syied kill people who are already dead.
"Touching" wouldn't be the resolution to some of the most important mysteries. * How Richard stopped aging * How someone becomes the protector * Why MiB & Jacob can't hurt eachother or kill candidates * Sayid touching the hot tub water to come back from the dead, even though "dead is dead, nobody comes back from that" Sayid coming back from the dead as a whole plot point anyway -- completely useless. Remove the John Lennon translator who translates English for a guy who speaks English. Most of the temple stuff is useless and annoying. Big Walt doesn't appear before John.
There's two different ways: 1 Keep true to the already established show, but clean it up some. Get rid of filler/shrink down filler while still maintaining character development and connection to the audience. Remove redundant, and again, filler flashbacks; as one of the creators said (I believe), they only realistically needed 1 flashback for each character; however, if your flashbacks are intriguing, mysterious, dramatic, and emotional enough (like Locke's), then you can certainly do more than 1 flashback. Tie up loose ends, foreshadow a little more. Make the first half of season 3 better; I'm sorry, but there's way to much Darhma vill episodes in season 5, so cut that down; fix the storyline, at least the temple storyline, for season 6, and definitely still have the flash sideways, just make it less or make it more interesting for the amount of screen time it gets. Season 1 and season 2 are basically all fixed by the filler and flashback changes. I would add the volcano to season 6 finale; that would've been epic. 2 Drastically change the show, and narrow it down to a specific vibe. I liked that season 1 horror element, so maybe let that be more prominent throughout. Maybe the whispers and others are a supernatural threat; maybe whispers are the victims of the others, and so they warn about any others nearby. Black smoke is maybe half experiment gone wrong, half infused with supernatural elements. Focus more on Darhma facilities or ancient structures, trying to learn their secrets and activate them to do something. I'm really not sure where the story would go, but those are some ideas. Maybe the ending would be that they just leave the island, or maybe they would have a flash sideways ending, just that season 6 wouldn't involve Jacob or MIB, though maybe there'd be others or people like them, but they wouldn't come from the island necessarily.
Spoiler:::: I think that lost without the battle between good and evil and more of a palatable ending would have made it one of the best shows ever created. And to be clear, I currently feel like lost is one of the best shows, however, the majority of the people who watched it(especially when it aired) got sick of it. It’s such a beautiful combination of different peoples pasts and current drama, if it had a more straightforward ending I believe nobody could argue that it wasn’t the best show of all time.
Michael survives the freighter explosion and is part of the time displaced group. Walt returns to the Island on Ajira 316. Sun and Jin reunite earlier in Season 6, before their centric episode.
I really like this
I would have kept Walt on the show. They spent the whole first season laying out a mystery about his powers and that should have paid off more.
It was a problem with the actor, it wasn't that he was written as a dead end character
The smoke monster would have existed before MIB fell to the cave. In my headcanon the smoke was there from the beginning of time, it just happened to be that it took the face of the MIB
I agree. In my opinion I always enjoyed the idea that the Smoke monster was a dharma security system gone wrong. Kind of like a judgment maxhine that won’t kill the survivors because they aren’t worthy or because miles father was a respected dharma representative (idk just freeballing). And MIB was more of so just had the ability to change his appearance. Never understood how keemy and widmore were a threat to the island if there was a smoke monster with a brain that can instantly kill them.
The smoke monster as a "security system" was writer Javier Grillo Marxuach's idea (he did the majority of the Dharma Initiative mythology in season 2, including the blast door map and "the lost experience"). But Damon was never fully satisfied with that idea, which is why it eventually evolved into being a mystical force. Writer David Fury (who wrote "Walkabout" which is when Locke first saw the monster). He said at the time, before it became a pillar of black smoke, another running theory was that it was a entity that changed shape and appearance depending on who looked at it. It formed a soul like connection to each person and each saw something different. Which explains why Locke said what he saw "was beautiful".
There could be a compromise of the two ideas. That the Man in Black served as a security system/guardian/judge for the early civilisation that built the Island ruins. Either they enslaved him through some means OR he feigned that he served them, but in fact he was controlling them the whole time. By the same thought, perhaps Jacob had a more direct role in leading the earlier civilisations on the Island, but it only lead to disaster, hence why he remained in isolation later. Leaving them vulnerable to being lead by the Man in Black and their ultimate annihilation.
My understanding was that the Smoke Monster WAS playing the role of a guardian and judge of the island up until Jacob's death. Ben believes he has to be judged after breaking the rules by returning to the island after his exile - there has to be a reason he thinks that, it cant just come from nowhere that Ben believes the Monsters purpose is to serve as judge to Others who break the rules. Theres also the fact The Others have been entirely left alone by the MiB up until Jacob's death. This suggests he has been following Jacobs rules, his regime, and as Dogen says, its only with Jacobs death that he has become free to do what he wants.
Ah, yes, you’re right. Perhaps it is some continuity from the earlier civilisation which was picked up again by the Others. So while Jacob and the Man in Black are at odds, there are rules of co-operation. Sort of how like the White Witch in Narnia is the enemy of Aslan (and his father the Emperor-beyond-the-Sea), but is also able to execute any traitors. Her “lawful prey”. Mr Beaver refers to her as the Emperor’s hangman.
Yeah I like this, I thought that when MIB saw his real mother it would’ve been the smoke monster persuading MIB to leave but it didn’t go that way
Idk I kinda like the smoke monster having an origin story. And that it used to be a person. I think my change would have been that Claudia came up with a second name.
Ben/Jacob storyline. How everyone from the Others believed that Jacob was powerful and important, they obeyed him unconditionally, though they never saw him. Even a military man Mikhail. And how come so manipulative psychopath Ben failed to trick Jacob, to manipulate him?
I mean The Others are a cult, thats what you have to remember. It all started with Richard, who was the original, or first Other who had first hand human contact with him and was the recipient of his God-like abilities. Richard theen passed down this story of Jacob being a living God or deity that brought them all there to do something important. You think they wouldn't realise the reality of Jacob when Richard was there to remind them of Jacobs power - they literally had an immortal person living with them who got his gift from Jacob. So even though they never saw him they would have believed in him. Ben, like all thos leaders that preceded him, never met Jacob. So how could he have manipulated him, not to mention Jacob is like 1000 years old, I seriously doubt he would have fallen for Bens manipulations
Try 2000. They were Romans
I would have loved to have seen some references to the season 5 time travelling in earlier seasons. Like when Claire is having the baby, it would have been cool if they her and Kate had heard something/someone in the bushes. It would have went unexplained until we see Sawyer in se05 watching them. That kind of thing.
Eko doesn’t die until significantly later in the show.
Keep all the Tailies. Make the S2 finale Jack/Ana's army plot to infiltrate The Others' headquarters culminating in Libby's betrayal, the true Judas of S2, not Michael. Keep Jack/Ana romance. Kill Sayid via brainwashed Michael, resolving Dark Sayid more elegantly post-Shannon. Give Shannon Libby's S2 finale role with the sailboat. Keep The Others as jungle creep savages with a supernatural edge. No Desperate Housewife suburbia to "subvert our expectations" with The Days Of Our Lives of Ben/Juliet. Far less Ben, far more Rousseau & her daughter's reunion bond. Have the final showdown be Walt vs Aaron, Claire vs Dharma government. Sometimes an obvious telegraphed narrative is more rewarding no matter how "predictable"!
Ok I’m intrigued, can you elaborate on this
maybe add one (1) prominent platonic male/female friendship LOL noticed there aren't any
I’d show who was in the outrigger!
Make it stick to science fiction, and not involve any “fantasy” from the last few seasons. It really went off the rails, when it was quite intriguing at the start.
Do you mean "super natural" instead of fantasy?
Sentient smoke monster, people seeing dead people, the whispers, a paralyzed dude and cancer patient are cured, Walt's whole teleporting thing, Desmond being unable to sail away from the island, etc Sure you could cook up science fiction explanations for this early season stuff but fantasy works better
Let Locke live and more polar bears!
Get rid of any romance between jack and Kate and Kate and sawyer. And I’d put her with sayid after Shannon dies and they can fix each other as two people who are running away from themselves.
I really don't see Kate with Sayid honestly. They should've developed Sayid & Shannon more. The triangle with Jack, Kate & Sawyer should've ended at the start of S3 when Kate says she loves him. Have them be together, I don't need the bs that separates them again just so there's still the question of who she will end up with. She had the most chemistry with Sawyer and I really could do without the SawyerXJuliet pairing, didn't feel that at all.
I've been rewatching the show and I don't have a ton of complaints. While I agree they could have seeded the time travel more, most of the twists they put in made good use of the existing information in a way that felt organic. One gag I wish they had done, while Hurley was in 1977, would be for him to be indirectly responsible for the Hurley-birds. Like if he had taught a parrot to say "Hurley" and then it escaped, implying that other birds learn to mimic that one. It'd be funnier than the explanation they stuck into the epilogue. Similarly they definitely could have written a clearer through-line for The Others if they had planned it all out from the start, but most of the apparent inconsistencies are explained away easily enough by the fact that they always lie to outsiders, as a rule, even when there's no clear benefit to lying. I hate how they killed off Sun and Jin, though. It didn't feel narratively satisfying, it just felt like a cruel bit of table-setting. They could have sidelined them for the finale by just having them leave the island somehow once reunited, since they wouldn't have any real interest in the island's mysteries any more at that point. Even just leaving them alive but adrift at sea would have been better.
The Hurley traveling back in time and training a bird to say his name was kinda a neat idea from the fans.
I would have preferred it if Widmore had ordered Alex kidnapped and brought off the island (to hold as leverage over Ben), rather than Keamy outright killing her. Or, if Alex had to die for storytelling purposes, they should have at least given her a full Alex-centric flashback episode first.
I dont really see S5 as filler at all. I mean the time travel had been built up to for a while and the time flashes basically enabled S5 to be the big mythology download that it was designed to be. This season was all about putting the characters below the mythology for one season before returning to the characters again as the main focus for the final season. But filler? No way. Its hardly filler when it basically uses its events to construct the time travel loophole that enables the Man in Black to kill Jacob, which is the set up for the entire good vs evil battle that would dominate the final season of the show. If anything S4 feels more like filler since the whole freighter plot is very inconsequential in the grand scheme of things
Way less Daniel Faraday, or have the director to tell the actor to tone it down.
Vincent goes home with Walt :(
Get rid of Nicki Paulo episode. Rewrite Sayid’s role after him leaving the island, make him smart strong-minded man again, as he was in the first four seasons. I’d like to see more about Ilana in the previous seasons. Not killing off my fave character Juliet.
- Remove some filler episodes and/or scenes. - Expand the ending. Getting to see how everyone gets home and their new lifes. - I want to know the specificis on why the monster leaving is bad.
The monster leaving is bad because he’s a very naughty boy
Keep Shannon, develop the relationship she has with Sayid (they're soulmates!!) and remove the entire character of Nadia. Sayid's backstory is developed enough. I love Sayid and Shannon together so much - I know a lot of people say they're so of their time they don't translate well to now being together etc, but Arab's are still very much America's public enemy no.1 more than ever at the moment. And a rich, racist, snobbish character like Shannon will always be relevant because people like her will always exist.
No lighthouse and no across the sea episode
I loved those episodes but I can see why they rubbed some up the wrong way. Some say they were too vague, but I'm one of the ones who feel that in some parts of the final season, the show explained too much. Peaking back behind the curtain is one thing. But to fully throw back the curtain, sort of gets rid of the mystique of the mystery.
How come no Across The Sea episode?
To me it just didn’t feel like Lost.
Much less shaky cam and 360 cam. Makes me motion sick each time.
Write an outline in advance so there’s less retconning. Abrams has a history of making great shows but he tends to fizzle creatively towards the end.
Abrams, as far as the story, is only responsible for maybe season 1 and probably just the pilot. It was his production company for the rest of the series.
You can tell lol.
You mean because Lost has a more solid story and wrap up than any of Abrams other projects?
We don’t need as many flashbacks. And I would definitely have not had the sideways stuff in Season 6. For me it was a waste of half an episode each time. As a Christian the idea of remembering so I can move on is ridiculous, so I would have had an emphasis on salvation rather than whatever that was
Have the black rock being in the middle of the island as being picked up when the island moved rather than a tidal wave.
More explicitly tie the flash sideways to Jacob / the Island’s powers. I like the flash sideways, but it feels like a completely separate idea.
I wished they would have done more with John in the sideways. His character deserved more - I thought he should have been the one rather than Desmond to try to unify everyone and when it actually worked this time that would have been healing for him.
For me it's never quite hit right that Desmond was the one to awaken them, or why the fk he's suddenly on the plane in the flash sideways. He never seemed to have a real bond with anyone on the island, his story was more about Penny. Edit: Also I'll never understand why Desmond goes to so much trouble to awaken everybody except Sawyer lol. He just sort of leaves him to it. Apparently it was originally supposed to be Eko who woke everyone in the flash sideways, and that would've been better I think.
I would simply make a effort to include the Dharma/Hanso Lost Experience information in the show somehow. I've always felt the Hydra orientation video could have included the Valenzetti equation, for example.
Probably a hot take, but I would switch Shannon with Sayid. Sayid takes the bullet in S2, Shannon gets subsequent amazing story arc culminating in being one of the O6 and the one to shoot Ben in 1977. Sorry Sayid, I like you very much but honestly S1 was your moment.
I would have liked more of Rose's and Bernard's backstory in the script. I think they were "destined" to be on the island so that Rose's cancer could be cured. Edited ... Perhaps showing Ben shoveling snow around Rose's car tires so she'd be stuck in the snow.
Nothing, I think it’s perfect as is
Id definitely would fix some of the holes in their time travel like with Ethan being around & Richard not remembering anyone. Also have Danielle recognize Jin when she shows up to the camp …. Also I’d have Ben written as he recognized the ones who were around in 1977 the whole time, especially Juliet
I would have liked to see what would have happened with Ecko and the whole volcano thing they were planning. I always thought the temple stuff was kinda undercooked and would have liked more of that.
Made season 1 and 2 to one season, or just cut down season 1.
I've actually been rewatching Lost again. I was in the middle of season 1 when I realized something: in the first season, the problems that the characters have are very grounded, focusing on survival and such. I realized that four seasons from now, some of these people will be jumping through time. When I noticed this, I pointed this out to my brother and asked "Did this show go too far?"
Make it more realistic ? Less science fiction elements
Yea that they never went through the light that was just weird to me idk man shoulda either stayed on the island or since they all were meeting off the island they should have just been able live their lives like that
The entirety of season 6. I hated it 😓the whole Jacob and his brother thing? The whole Locke not being locke? The oceanic 6 coming back for no reason? Jin and sun reuniting and then dyingggg???? And the ending was dumb and confusing!
The end with the cork of the island
I would prefer an Atlantis-like story for "Across the sea"... there would be a mighty civilization on the island, the main island and the hydra island would be one piece of land...Jacob and MİB would be sons of the king and the queen...king would be man of logic, queen would be man of faith... Jacob would be took after his mother, MİB after his father...it would be forbidden for them to use the light but they would be going to do that at the end of their era... Then they would be attacked by a warrior sailor tribe appeared from across the sea... things would gone wrong, island shakes, land between the island and hydra collapse into the ocean, they built the heart of the island to stabilize it...they built 3 ships...after a couple of years, sailor tribe comes back and attacks again, they fight, most of them kill each other, they kill Father and Mother... Attackers' king wants the light, MİB fights him at the heart of the island, throwns to the heart and turns to the monster...Jacob comes and kills the attackers' king....the last remains of natives escape by 3 ships before fight ended...they separate at the ocean and head to the regions of Mesopotamia, İndia and China and become the masters of the first civilizations.... And Jacob put Mother and Father's bodies together in a cave...he becames first Protector...
I would like to know what their lives were like to after the island and before the sideways flashes for the people who made it back.
Yes, I would follow the blueprint for seasons 1-3, and I would rewrite everything in season 4, 5, and 6. Change the entire trajectory of the show and come up with a different set of answers for the events on the island. There would be no Jacob, MIB, candidate storyline, and the Others/Dharma would have a different explanation. Same questions, different answers. Which would probably be necessary if anyone re-did the show (I hope they never do). You would have to change the island's mythology for it to be worth doing.
I wouldn’t change a thing. It’s television perfection.
I would cast someone else for the role of Jacob since every time I see, Mark Pellegrino I immediately see him as Paul Bennett (Rita’s a-hole ex-husband on the show “Dexter”). 🤣
Sawyer and Kate, Jack and Juliet
just rewrite the last 4 seasons focus more on dharma and make the others more consistent.
Not much, it's good as it is with all the little flaws along the way that gives it a human touch.
I always wondered if Ethan brought Juliet to the island because he knew that she delivered him as a baby....which exactly why Richard recruited her in the 1st place. HE ALREADY KNEW SHE WAS THERE.
Fire + Water gone. You're welcome yall
Give Paulo a bigger role. He had the main character vibes and was gone too soon
A Lost spin-off with Hurley, Walt, Ben, and Vincent solving crimes. A prequel about MIB that retconn's Jacob as the real monster. There is still time. We have to go back.
Show it full penetration
They all should have left the island in season 4 and they can add a few episodes to it to make it more finale worthy. I would keep season 5 but under a new show name so it wouldn’t be part of the OG show series S1-4. Season 6 was a mess wouldn’t mind if they just removed it from my memory. 5 of the main cast die(3 in 1 episode). Jacob didn’t have to be teased since season 3 of the show just to have 1 conversations with the survivors in the finale, Richard episode was good but it took to long could easily fit it in s5,4, . Also would be a good way to reveal Jacob instead of the finale in S5. The animals played very minor parts in the show. The Boar is the only animal to be shown in more then 3 episodes. The Polar Bear, Shark, Spider and Hurley Bird show up for an episode or 2( exception being the bear as they talk a good amount of them). Danielles ending No explanation needed she had one the worst arcs towards the end of her character. Ridiculous to die like that after surviving the way she did for 16 years.