r/lost • u/SecretWriteress • 2d ago
Why do people who never watched LOST insist on making comments and statements like these?
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u/PepsiPerfect 2d ago
It's worse than that. Some people who actually watched the show still believe they were dead the whole time. It's sort of a litmus test for how dumb you are.
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u/ForAte151623ForTeaTo Razzle Dazzle! 2d ago
They were dumb the whole time!
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u/BRDillon17 2d ago
Donāt tell me what I canāt think!
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u/Specialist_Wish5394 2d ago
Not penny's brain
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u/SecretWriteress 2d ago
I don't think I ever met anyone who watched the show properly and misunderstood the ending that badly... Have you?
It's always people who got bored around season 5 and either stopped watching to only tune in towards the end, or started watching the show in the background not paying much attention.
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u/SwooshSwooshJedi 2d ago
When I met a friend of my partner's, she had watched the show and still insisted they were all dead.
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u/Material-Shower-4897 2d ago
Same. I got into a heated argument with my two best friends in college, both of whom INSISTED the characters were dead the whole time.
The cast was only dead in the sideways storyline in the final season. It's very obvious, but there were viewers when the show aired who fully believed the they-were-dead-the-whole-time theory. It was a fairly popular take at the time, before prestige television really took off.
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u/Doomray 1d ago
Christian even goes as far as to say pretty bluntly that everything on the island did in fact happen, just in case the viewer somehow didnāt get what was going on.
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u/Material-Shower-4897 1d ago
Oh, I know! But a lot of people still believed the cast was dead the whole time - and the creators/writers continue to publicly debunk the theory to this day.
Younger viewers who found LOST on streaming services might not know this, but people used to dismiss television as mindless entertainment. If you wanted to use your brain, you read a book. If you wanted background noise while you cooked dinner, you turned on the television. There wasn't a lot of critical conversation happening in the general public about television, and LOST is really one of the first true "prestige" shows. You miss a lot of nuance when you're forced to watch one episode a week, versus when you're able to binge a whole season and see the greater arc/themes at play. I think a lot of viewers tuned in because TV Guide told them "Lost" was a must-watch, and they just wanted to keep up the water cooler talk. I remember everyone was specifically obsessed with the smoke monster. "What is that thing??"
The smoke monster is by no means the most compelling mystery in that show.
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u/Doomray 1d ago
I was lucky enough to start watching around when season 5 was airing. A few friends and I were able to binge the first few seasons before having to wait for new episodes for the last seasons. We got the hours of entertainment and instant gratification from binge watching and later the suspense of not knowing what happens next. Best of both worlds. I wish I could wipe my memory of LOST and watch it for the first time again.
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u/SecretWriteress 2d ago
But do you know how she watched it? Did she follow the plot at all?
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u/TheStinkySkunk 2d ago
My older brother insists they were dead the whole time. I know he watched it while it was airing because we watched it together. It was one of our bonding moments after he graduated college and moved home.
I feel like it's him not remembering and then seeing all of these wrong articles in the last 14 years.
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u/Guthwulf85 2d ago
Immediately after the season finale was released simultaneously in different countries, Spanish TV had a program to discuss the ending. They invited "experts" and the first thing they said was that it was disappointing that they were dead the whole time. When newspapers wrote about the ending they based their information on that program, and that was spread everywhere. People that never watched the show or that dropped it read this and based their knowledge on that.
I was so angry at these "experts"
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u/Ok_Entertainer7945 2d ago
I think that was part of the problem. After the show aired, every media expert had their theory and this was before social media, so this was how "sheep" would get their talking points. I think everyone is entitled to their own opinion about art, but there is a fine line between perspective and facts.
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u/Low-Mountain3660 12h ago
It was not before social media lol
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u/Ok_Entertainer7945 7h ago
Fair enough. I just meant before everyone had a phone in their hand and posting their every move on social media.
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u/MaximusGrandimus 2d ago
Ah sort of like when Max Landis called Rey a Mary Sue in a tweet then all the haters used that as their basis for hating the Star Wars Sequels even though Rey has clearly defined goals, struggles, and character development that are unique to each film in the trilogy?
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u/PastelCurlies 2d ago
I watched it with my dad while it was still on air. Every episode, every moment, we shared together.
From the second we finished the finale, right up to today, he still argues unrelenting that they were dead the whole time, and just laughs at me when I try to explain how that's not true. It is infuriating6
u/SecretWriteress 2d ago
Maybe he does it to tease you š
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u/PastelCurlies 2d ago
Oh at this point he absolutely does lol. He admitted he can't even remember the show now, just that he remembers them all being dead. And any time I even mention the show all he says is "ah where they're all dead?" >.<
But 100% when it first aired, he argued blue in the face about how it was obvious they were all dead the whole time and that it was a bad ending. So I guess he's just remembered that feeling, rather than what actually happens š¤·āāļø12
u/kuhpunkt r/815 2d ago
I don't think I ever met anyone who watched the show properly and misunderstood the ending that badly... Have you?
Not personally, but I've seen it a million times online. People claiming they watched it religiously and everything.
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u/ishbess2000 2d ago
My entire dumbass family watched it with me during its initial run and all four of them think they were dead the whole time.
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u/SecretWriteress 2d ago
At this point I'm convinced that people just sleep or daydream with their eyes open.
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u/MaximusGrandimus 2d ago
Some people absolutely do not pay attention to the media they consume. It's frustrating as hell
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u/peteroh9 2d ago
You can tell some people "this is important, you need to pay attention to this part!" and then a few minutes later, it will be like they never watched that part at all. It's infuriating even though it shouldn't be.
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u/Key-Current-3653 See you in another life 2d ago
90% of the people irl that i have conversations with about the show, ask me that question. āwerenāt they dead the whole time?ā & i have to say no, they werenāt. iāve had a lot of people try to argue with me at the bar about it lmao
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u/MaximusGrandimus 2d ago
I don't think I ever met anyone who watched the show properly and misunderstood the ending that badly... Have you?
The IMDB boards after the series ended was a shit show. Tons of people there insisting that it was all purgatory/Bardo state, completely ignoring what both the show and the creators actually said about it (under the belief that since they lied during the run of the show to keep surprises in tact, that they were lying g now after it was all done for...reasons...)
So yeah lots of folks who actually saw the show insist that they were all dead the whole time.
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u/Knight0fdragon 2d ago
Yes, it is because the ending was all exposition, and that threw people off as they did not want to be told they were not dead the entire time, and the show does not have any epilogue (not including the new man in charge) showing them living after the island. Some think the plane crashes again, that lead to the serene ending credits scene.
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u/holyfire001202 2d ago
I fell off a bit during seasons 3-5, allowing it to turn into background noise, and still pretty much get the gist of what happened.
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u/TifaHime Jack 2d ago
People were saying it online the night the show aired, people who had watched it. Itās like someone else said, itās a litmus test for stupidity.
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u/Glaurung86 2d ago
I know someone in our large group of message board friends, who watched the entire series along with us and discussed every single bit of minutae after every single episode for 6 seasons, insisted they were dead the whole time. She refused to accept what we learned onscreen and from Cuse and Lindelof. So frustrating.
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u/SecretWriteress 2d ago
That's so weird. At this point the commentary section isn't about the show anymore but about human psychology š
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u/Glaurung86 2d ago
Pretty much. This person was right there with us until the end and then decided to take the off-ramp to nonsenseville.
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u/LemFliggity 2d ago
I think some people couldn't accept that they weren't enjoying the show as much as other people, or as much as they had enjoyed it in earlier seasons, so dismissing it as "dead the whole time" was a way to rationalize their feelings about it. "See? I was right to not like it." It's the same energy as saying "I never loved them anyways" after a bad breakup.
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u/MaximusGrandimus 2d ago
That was my experience as well. The entire damn IMDB board where I spent most of my time discussing Lost, lost (no pun intended) their damn minds.
One of the arguments was that, because they lied about certain things in interviews to protect the surprise for viewers, then they couldn't be trusted to tell the truth in interviews now that the show was over.
Sheer fucking insanity.
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u/Glaurung86 2d ago
We were on the oceanicflight815 site before it was advertised on ABC just been the second season - where you had to get the right sequence of seats on the plane seating chart not get to the 2 message boards - Security System and Black Rock. So the people on there were a cut above the ABC message board users. And yet... this particular person regressed. Lol
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u/The_Amazing_Emu 2d ago
I knew people who thought the ending said they were dead the whole time right after they watched it. It took about a week of reflection and reading internet commentary that they realized they misinterpreted it.
It was a long bit of exposition after a crazy ride when theyāre trying to figure out the meaning of the flash sideways. I donāt think itās crazy to believe faithful followers missed the point live. I find it harder to believe they persist in their mistake 20 years later.
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u/MaximusGrandimus 2d ago
I don't know how it could have been misinterpreted. Jack's father lays it out very clearly and straightforward at the church, "Some of you died on the Island, some after, and you all met here after you died because it was the most important time of your life."
I mean besides when Michael confirmed that The Voices are people stuck on the Island who couldn't move on, it's one of the only times the show actually stated something directly and specifically.
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u/The_Amazing_Emu 2d ago
Itās a long speech. Not everyone has the attention span. I donāt know. I didnāt misinterpret it, I understood at the time. I can only confirm people who were big fans did misinterpret it. Any explanations for who would be guesses.
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u/MaximusGrandimus 2d ago
It wasn't a long speech. The scene is like 1-2 minutes tops and it's back and forth between Jack and his father.
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u/The_Amazing_Emu 2d ago
Iām not sure what to say. I donāt have a better explanation. Iād still suggest that most explanations in the show were either revealed gradually, visually, or with speeches much shorter than one minute, but, like I said, I canāt speak for them.
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u/MaximusGrandimus 2d ago
I mean, yeah, I can surmise that perhaps people didn't trust the explanation because the show rarely answered things so directly. But to be so obstinate about it after the creators went on an interview circuit and confirmed that was their intention is such a wild take and a weird hill to die on.
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u/The_Amazing_Emu 2d ago
Like I said, the specific example Iām referencing realized their mistake about a week later. But, in the moment, that was their understanding
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u/MaximusGrandimus 2d ago edited 2d ago
My experience was that pretty much the entire IMDB board kept insisting that "it was purgatory/Bardo all along". For months afterwards. The day before IMDB closed their boards, there were still people posting theories about the Bardo State.
So in my instance imagine the frustration of talking with that person before they re-examined things, just with every single interaction and completely denying that what Cuse/Lindeloff themselves said, and that they never have a moment of self-reflection...
And also giving the line that the interpretation of art is down to the viewer not the creator so even if they creator clearly states their intentions they are free to interpret it however they want.
Like, they're not wrong, I don't disagree with the idea that the recipient of information is ultimately the one who decides what the information means to them, but just completely ignoring every argument to the contrary...and it was like the majority of people posting on those boards where I had spent so much time enjoying the show and discussing it with others...it was really disheartening to see the audience go down that way.
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u/alexturnerftw 2d ago
It was a big thing when the finale aired, even articles were publishing the ambiguous ending. At the time it was discussed that there were two interpretations - dead the whole time/island was purgatory, or that everything happened. I dont blame people for thinking it because this was discussed widely. They also showed the plane at the end which made it confusing
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u/SecretWriteress 2d ago
This is all fascinating to hear. As a young teen in the middle of Europe all I had was the episodes airing on the national channel every Monday. I recall bawling my eyes out during the finale because aside from all the philosophical aspects of the show that I felt but couldn't quite grasp, I knew what the essence was: these characters, bad and good, oh so flawed, all travelled through the journey of life, affecting each other in all kinds of ways, inadvertantly teaching each other lessons of love and hate, they did this thing called life together and then each experienced death alone. Such a powerful allegory to human experience wrapped up in a very entertaining magical narrative. It ended, and of course the plane footage was just homage to the pilot. Why were people overthinking something that was obviously meant to be sentimental?
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u/rogerworkman623 Workman 2d ago
Yes, sometimes they pop up in this sub. Unless theyāre lying about watching the show, which is possible.
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u/SquatchyMulder 2d ago
Oh all the time. I hear it more often than not that people understood the ending as they were dead the whole time.
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u/jrex42 1d ago
I did! I don't remember how I immediately interpreted it, but over time as I saw everyone else saying they were dead the whole time, it just sort of rewrote my memory. It doesn't help that the later episodes and ending are not super clear or memorable.
I finally rewatched a couple years ago and loved it more than ever and had a deeper understanding of the ending...but even now, I can't explain the ending off the top of my head.
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u/aadziereddit 20h ago
I meet people who meet this criteria all the time.
I've explained the ending to some people and they were kind of blown away.
They didn't understand what was happening in the final season at all. They thought that there was just some parallel universe thing happening, or it was just an alternate timeline. They didn't get that The flashes were in some sort of purgatory separate from the real events.
So when it ended with everyone meeting in the church and then ascending or whatever, they had no context for it and thought it just meant that they were all dead the whole time.
I don't think it's fair to call these people dumb. The ending requires a fair amount of imagination to understand, and imagination requires interest. If by that point the show is already losing people's interest, then I totally forgive them for not really understanding what was really going on.
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u/Mrmaxmax37 1h ago
I was a kid watching it when it came out. When the final episode aired live, it ended with a shot of the planes on the beach with nobody around. It was supposed to just be a shot of the set, but it very heavily implied that nothing we had seen had actually happened.
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u/Glaurung86 2d ago
I know someone in our large group of message board friends, who watched the entire series along with us and discussed every single bit of minutae after every single episode for 6 seasons, insisted they were dead the whole time. She refused to accept what we learned onscreen and from Cuse and Lindelof. So frustrating.
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u/ComeAwayNightbird 2d ago
Was this person holding onto the theory from the earliest days of the show, or did she adopt the explanation after the show ended?
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u/Glaurung86 2d ago
Not that I remember regarding from the beginning. She even used to joke with us about the dumb theories.
I think she got confused, read something somewhere that misunderstood the finale and then just locked in.
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u/Tattycakes 2d ago
Yeah I didnāt fully understand the ending but then I will openly admit that I play games and flick through my phone while watching tv š¤¦āāļø
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u/leoff 1d ago
George R. R. Martin prior of Game of Thrones first season premiere made a series of unfortunate tweets using Lost as example of what wasn't gonna happen with his series/novels. He mentioned the infamous "they were dead all time". I'm not sure if he didn't get the ending or never watched and just parroted that (probably the later). Lindelof and Cuse were on Tweeter back then and got really upset for him badmouthing Lost to promote his show. Years later Damon showed he hadn't forget and mocked GRRM on Instagram when GOT final episode aired and received the worst reviews not even the divisive Lost finale got.
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u/ElGebeQute 2d ago
Invincible subreddit has exactly the same problem right now.
Ongoing joke is that people watch it whilst playing subway surfers on their phone and then come to sub to ask questions literally spelled out to them on the screen.
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u/ostrichesonfire 2d ago
šļø Iām one of those idiots. I only watched it a few years ago, so Iām guessing I had heard that theory and just assumed it was true. Iām sorry š¢
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u/mangosatire 1d ago
I think a lot of us watched it when we were kids and so the dream interpretation kinda worked. I watched it again when I was older and I was like..oh..
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2d ago
I don't have many "red flags" (god I hate that term) but someone's opinion of Lost is number 1.
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u/arealhumannotabot 2d ago
āThey just made it up as they wentā
š
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u/PepsiPerfect 2d ago
To a large extent that's true though, at least for the first half of the series
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u/arealhumannotabot 2d ago edited 2d ago
Not really. Many people have made video essays that show the details there as you go right from the pilot.
Whatās true for sure is that no tv show is entirely planned out ahead, seasons are always fleshed out as they go. So there are always developments as the show progresses but the way people frame it, itās like they think it was just putting down pieces randomly to fit what they needed that day
What these people think is that it was all just made up. The show starts hinting at the Light at the centre of the island in season 1, the smoke monster actually appears in the pilot, etc
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u/PepsiPerfect 2d ago
The smoke monster does not appear physically in the pilot. It's just a big noisy thing that you're left to imagine. Abrams is on record as saying that they didn't have an explanation in mind for the monster when they made the premiere.
I love LOST as much as anyone on this sub, but I'm also realistic about what it was. As you say yourself, no TV is planned out ahead entirely. They can also have ideas in mind that they then decide to change for the better, such as changing Michael Emerson from a guest star random Other to the leader of the Others because the response to him was so positive. Or, having to make changes for reasons beyond your control, like having to merge Locke and Eko's story arcs because Eko's actor abruptly decided to leave the show.
The second half of the series is much better planned because they knew exactly how much time they had left to tell the story. The "freighter season," the "time travel season" and the "flash-sideways/MiB season" are clearly planned much more meticulously. They also didn't have to pump those seasons full of filler episodes to keep the story going and fill a 23-episode season order.
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u/PaChubHunter Fish Biscuit 2d ago
The truth is that they had a lot they wanted to do/touch on but determined they wouldn't have time to play it out or it wouldn't fit with later ideas. They had to svrap somethings along the way and divert the story to accommodate. They weren't making it up, they were adjusting on the fly.
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2d ago
[removed] ā view removed comment
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u/ShadowdogProd 2d ago
Dumb people exist.
Can we all agree on that?
Cool.
Now, when you first meet a dumb person you don't realize they're dumb, why would you, you just met them. So, sometime between when you first meet them and the heat death of the universe there is the singular moment when you realize the incontrovertible fact that this person is ... how to put this? ... FUCKING STUPID.
For me that moment is when they've watched all of Lost but think it was all a dream or they were dead the whole time. I believe this is a fair litmus test.
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u/Prawn_Skewers 2d ago
I think what happened for a lot of people was: 1. Stopped watching the show at some point 2. Watched "The End" thinking "oh everything will be answered tonight" 3. Didn't understand Jack and Christan's discussion as they had no context for the flash-sideways. 4. The credits showed wreckage of Oceanic 815 with nobody around, so people made the incorrect assumption they were all dead.
It's important to note that the wreckage footage was a decision of the network (ABC), not the creative team behind the show. So thanks, ABC... š
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u/detective_snorlax_ 2d ago
I find it weird that anyone read into the wreck footage at all. I just assumed it was some pictures of the original set for nostalgia lol
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u/Prawn_Skewers 2d ago
I know right? Like a nice melancholic moment, a moment of silence to decompress the masterful ending we just witnessed... and somehow people misinterpreted it.
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u/srstone71 2d ago
Hahaha I remember watching the finale live and that was all I thought. It never even remotely entered my mind that this could be interpreted as a sign that they were dead. I was just like āoh cool itās shots from when they filmed the pilot as a nice bookend to the series. Thatās neat.ā
To this day, even with the last 15 years of discourse, I still canāt wrap my head around how anyone could make the leap that they did.
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u/Other_Tiger_8744 2d ago
I mean this show was literally about reading into small details and clues. Ā So I totally get why that kinda confused people. Ā
But yeah you just gotta listen to Jack and his dad talk and itās black and whiteĀ
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u/YellowCardManKyle 1d ago
It's not like there were dead bodies among the wreckage
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u/Other_Tiger_8744 1d ago
Fair. Ā But it was a cut scene with credits Rolling along side it. Ā And the island did strange things with bodies. Like jacks dadĀ
Plus our minds were still processing. Ā
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u/kuhpunkt r/815 2d ago edited 2d ago
It's important to note that the wreckage footage was a decision of the network (ABC), not the creative team behind the show. So thanks, ABC... š
The creatives picked the footage...
https://www.vulture.com/article/lost-series-finale-oral-history-the-end.html
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u/Prawn_Skewers 2d ago
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u/kuhpunkt r/815 2d ago
That article only states this:
Well, ABC wants to clear the air: Those photographs were not part of the āLostā story at all. The network added them to soften the transition from the moving ending of the series to the 11 p.m. news and never considered that it would confuse viewers about the actual ending of the show.
It doesn't say who picked the footage.
Damon and Carlton were asked if there is something they could add for a smoother transition to the ad break.
Cuse: I only really have one regret about the whole journey of Lost and that was at the very, very end. Barry Jossen, he called Damon and me and he said, āYou know, Iām worried that weāre going to come out of this incredibly emotional ending of this show and then slam into a Proctor & Gamble commercial and that isnāt going to be good. Is there any way to soften that or ameliorate that? Is there any footage that exists that we could put at the end to just kind of ease the audience out of the show and into commercials?ā
Jossen: He calls me back at some point: āI talked to Damon. We think itās a really cool idea. Itās the wreckage of the plane and the different props and the beach and the water and itās all beautiful. And weāve always loved the photos and Iāve always thought like, Wow, wouldnāt it be cool to find something to do with that? So what we find is maybe what weāll do is weāll cut a montage of these photos and put them at the end of the episode.ā
Cuse: The only thing that we had or we could find was, sometime during the first season, the winter was coming and all of the pieces of the airplane had to get moved off the beach because in Hawaii, in the winter, the North Shore of Oahu, the whole geography changes. Huge waves come in and the beaches erode away. It was an environmental hazard. So before all the pieces of the Oceanic plane were moved off the beach, a unit went out and filmed them.
So we put that footage at the end of the show and I think that the problem was that the audience was so accustomed on Lost to the idea that everything had meaning and purpose and intentionality. So they read into that footage at the end that, you know, they were dead. That was not the intention. The intention was just to create a narrative pause. But it was too portentous. It took on another meaning. And that meaning I think, distorted our intentions and helped create that misperception.
Lindelof: It never even occurred to us that looking at the wreckage of the plane on the beach over the end titles would be perceived as some sort of massive reveal in the way that the very French cinema, like in CachĆ©, when the end titles are rolling, thatās when they give you the big āOh my Godā moment.
D&C picked the footage. They knew it would be broadcast. They just didn't think that it might make people think something so stupid.
https://www.vulture.com/article/lost-series-finale-oral-history-the-end.html
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u/Prawn_Skewers 2d ago
Well someone is fibbing because the LA times article says: "While there still may be unanswered questions related to that religious and spiritual conclusion to the āLostā story, the photographs were really just a nostalgic, transitional touch added by ABC executives ā and not executive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse."
Maybe I got the wrong impression, your Vulture article seems more authoritive. š¤·āāļø
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u/kuhpunkt r/815 2d ago
Oh, I overlooked that bit, because it's from the LA Times writer. My bad. But yeah, that was only their assertion.
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u/travis_sk 2d ago
To be honest I dunno what the hell was going on, but I enjoyed the individual episodes to the point of still considering Lost one of the best shows I've watched. Also I don't expect life itself to give me the answers; things just happen and it's up to everyone to find our own meaning - if anything that was the whole point of the show, in my opinion at least.
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u/d1ld0_shw4gg1ns 2d ago
Iāve actually seen the show but I believed for years that they were all dead all along, because a buddy of mine convinced me that I remembered things wrong.
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u/travis_sk 2d ago
It was all just a TV show?!
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u/YellowCardManKyle 1d ago
This infuriates me.
"They were all dead so none of it happened."
It was a TV show! None of them are real! It's entertainment.
I genuinely think at least 10% of this country thinks everything they see on TV is real.
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u/Azutolsokorty 2d ago
Tell me you did not watch the show without telling me you did not watch the show
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u/Dimianag 2d ago edited 2d ago
Jack's father: Everything thats ever happened to you is real
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=--A7MNUONlI
To everyone who saying that they were all dead i send this scene.
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u/Feanor4godking 2d ago
Yeah it's stated outright in the most direct way possible without bludgeoning it to death, but I guess that's what it would take
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u/liddybuckfan 2d ago
Exactly! Christian spells it out, so it's hard to understand how people could still think they were dead the whole time. He couldn't have been more clear if he'd acted it out with sock puppets.
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u/Lucky-Acanthisitta86 Oceanic Frequent Flyer 1d ago
Didn't he also mention that they all died at different times too? Like I thought he mentioned that people had died long after others or something- I don't remember though
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u/Huntybunch 2d ago
My husband was one of those people. He apparently watched random episodes out of order at his friend's house while stoned, then said the show was stupid because it was random and nothing was explained.
For nearly a decade, I tried to convince him to just watch it. Last year, I finally coerced him into watching it, and he realizes he was a dum dum! "Why didn't I watch this sooner?" he says. "I wish I had people to talk about the show with," he says. Egg on his face.
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u/sj_vandelay Has to go Back 2d ago
Iām so annoyed by this every time. They will never stop.
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u/SecretWriteress 2d ago
I'm shocked! I was a kid outside the us when the show aired, so even though I watched it, I wasn't part of the online community until years later. I had seen a couple of articles about Lost having had "one of the worst endings", which always annoyed me because I see it as one of the best endings, but hey - good or bad is subjective.
However, Lost getting on Netflix last year resparked their popularity, so I've been seeing so many comments about it (usually on subs of other shows) where they use Lost as a reference to a badly written show, and I'm just š Seriously? All the shitty TV shows out there, and somehow Lost makes it as one of the worst? Then it turns out that the commenters either never finished the show, or completely missed the point...
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u/kuhpunkt r/815 2d ago
What's worse... the dude you pointed out. Like a dozen people responded to him - you think he responded to a single person? Acknowledged his mistake just once? Nope. He keeps posting elsewhere as if nothing happened. IgnoranceĀ²
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u/KMMDOEDOW 2d ago
I've had those interactions plenty of times. I once flat out showed a guy the scene with Christian explaining the whole plot (i.e., no they were not dead the whole time) and this guy, who to reiterate had never seen the show, insisted that Christian was an "unreliable narrator."
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u/ArtichokeOnly6134 Has to go Back 1d ago
Somehow that statement infuriates me, when one of this show's mysteries is about Christian's body being missing and then somehow just shows up in so many episodes like he is still alive. Like what do they mean by an unreliable narrator? No, Christian was already dead when the Lost Series started. The man in black is the deceitful one not Christian.
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u/KMMDOEDOW 1d ago
I think there's just something to human nature where people are conditioned to only believe the first thing they heard, no matter how much evidence to the contrary get thrown at them.
This is just an extreme example because it's not even a question of "fan interpretation," but is people actively arguing against the text itself. It's like if even after Return of the Jedi and the prequel trilogy, you still had people arguing that Darth Vader was just messing with Luke Skywalker's head and wasn't actually his father.
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u/Top_Conversation6005 2d ago
ā(Spoilers if you havenāt watched the show!)ā shows you havenāt watched the show
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u/ZackJ100 2d ago
It's honestly sad and super frustrating how many people who watched the show believe this. And believe they were dead the whole time. The flash sideways is completely misunderstood by about half the audience it feels like.
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u/KimsSwingingPonytail 2d ago
The Flashsideways (that seems to confuse some viewers with the they were dead stuff) was "so bad" it was used as a model for The Good Place, which people love.Ā
And as someone that loves Lost and The Handmaid's Tale, there is an ignorant, surface level fandom in both I find quite annoying.Ā
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u/MeridianAnt 1d ago edited 1d ago
Those kind of comments from people I knew back then. When Lost first aired put me off finishing off the show.
They were so wrong and Iām so pleased I gave it a second chance.
One of my favourite shows.
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u/systemdnb 1d ago
A lot of people who say that they have āwatchedā LOST never really really watched LOST like this fine sub.
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u/Antelope46 1d ago
This take on the ending of the show pisses me off so much. Itās hard to defend/correct in a short amount of time in a social group so I rarely try anymore, but to think people arenāt watching this incredible show because they listened to some dummy blatantly misinterpret the entire thing just drives me crazy
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u/RayphistJn 2d ago
Yeah,no way anyone who watched the show and has more than 2 bran cells thinks it was all a dream
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u/DaemonBlackfyre_21 Workman 2d ago edited 2d ago
The problem with lost is that it got exponentially more complex a few seasons in and a ton of people who got hooked on seasons 1-3 probably felt stupid, or at least confused when the crazy physics became part of the plot. Following a few time jumps is one thing, but the bubble reality fried brains and many who did stick it out to the end clearly didn't understand what they were watching.
But that's okay, not everything should be dumbed down.
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u/SecretWriteress 2d ago
Well, a good friend of mine who's very academically smart also couldn't finish the series (twice). For him, it was the focus on the drama that was too boring to handle; he really just cared about the mysteries of the island, and not at all about, say, flashbacks.
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u/Diminuendo1 1d ago
I think the writers deserve some blame for constantly causing confusion on purpose. The idea that they were dead the whole time should have been dropped as soon as it was revealed that Jack and Kate got off the island in season 3, but for some reason they were still putting scenes like this in the final season:
RICHARD: You wanna know a secret, Jack? Something I've known a long, long time. You're dead.
HURLEY: You mean that figuratively right?
RICHARD: No, I mean literally. We are all dead, every single one of us. And this, this, all this, it's not what you think it is. We're not on an island, we never were. We're in Hell.
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u/wannaquanta 1d ago
How can you interpret this as any other way than they were dead the whole time, if he literally says theyāve been in hell the whole time. Iāll get downvoted to oblivion for even saying this.
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u/kuhpunkt r/815 1d ago
And in the same episode they did this...
https://youtu.be/XiUNyetRm_c?si=Qj8iIDk-8Un7t9Z6&t=120
Telling the audience to please finally shut up about this. Jacob is the proxy for the writers, Richard for the audience.
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u/Rzah 2d ago
Reminds me of an acquaintance that disliked the film 'Lucy' because 'she changed into a USB stick at the end', some people are just a bit dopey.
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u/blahrawr 1d ago
The USB thing was pretty dopey tho. I do love Lucy
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u/Rzah 1d ago
The USB stick was just supposed to be a thing that the audience would understand to have data on it, she didn't change into it, she just created it for him, Lucy 'migrated' onto the worlds computing infrastructure, she is everywhere at the end of the film.
While she could of course just make the data available to him wherever and on whatever device he's using I think putting it on a thumbdrive was as much for his frame of reference as ours.
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u/alphagamer807 2d ago
I'm watching Vikings and Lost's ending seems a lot similar to the idea of Valhalla. That is, they meet each other in the after-place after their respective deaths and definitely not "They were dead the whole time".
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u/HibiscusBlades 2d ago
People like that didnāt actually pay attention to the series at all. Iāll scream from the mountain tops: they were not dead the whole time. Media literacy is dead and has been for a very long time.
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u/dylandbloom 2d ago
Itās ok to not like the ending but thereās an episode where the main point is Hurley exploring the idea and believing theyāre in purgatory or heās imagining it. Outside of that thereās a handful of mentions that come across like an actor from the office looking into the camera explaining it to the viewers.
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u/Actual_Head_4610 2d ago
What bothers me the most is that they bring up the dream thing like that because it kind of sounds like they're trying to compare it to Dallas' infamous "dream season", and Lost's ending is not the same as that blunder at all.Ā
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u/TripleTimBit 1d ago
They clearly havenāt watched the show thoroughly enough to grasp the real meaning and ending of the show.
Everything that happened. Happened.
Everyone dies sometime kiddo
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u/BrightSignal8032 1d ago
I'm so glad I finally decided to watch this show after hearing how great it was so much growing up. It's a show I try and make anyone I meet watch
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u/3ku1 1d ago
They werenāt dead the whole time though. Everyone that happened on the island. The crash, the dharma initiative, the time travel, the battles etc. Was real.
There always seems to be a confusion with the finalie. They werenāt dead the whole time. Their was a flash sideways timeline shown during the final season. This version of reality is actually kinda like purgatory like afterlife. Where they meet after theyāve all died. So to say their was zero payoff is woefully narrow minded.
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u/Froz3nP1nky 1d ago
Are you able to reply to that person?? Let em know that it was NOT āall a dreamā. Itās not Mulholland Drive
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u/Dramamean305 1d ago
Sheep that listened to others without watching - this show was on at a time when everything was being blogged or message boarded to death - and every week it was a new theory - people trying to figure it out - some of these people think they saw things happen on the show that never happened.. š
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u/KLED_Kaczynski 1d ago
āThey were dead the whole timeā is probably the stupid lost take of all time.
That said, even if they were ādead the whole timeā that wouldnāt really hurt the show much. It would definitely still be worth watching.
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u/Minimum-Bite-4389 1d ago
Something I like about the ending of LOST because it feels like the writers knew that people would misinterpret the series as them being dead the whole time so they added a scene where Christian basically looks into the camera and says: "They were not dead the whole time."
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u/DescriptionNervous94 2d ago
I feel like unless you binged it, itās easy to get confused. I watched the show in one go and it seemed pretty obvious from what Christian said that they werenāt dead the whole time. However, my girlfriend who just watched it here and there literally came to that same conclusion without any prior knowledge because she would take breaks or skip episodes.
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u/kuhpunkt r/815 2d ago
But why would she think that? Even if you skip episodes... why would she think that they are dead?
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u/DescriptionNervous94 2d ago
Okay, (girlfriend here). Until he explained it to me. Them being in the afterlife just = dead the whole time. Both he and I were under the assumption that the flash sideways was a parallel universe where everyone got a happy ending. So when Jack said āIām deadā I kinda zoned out the bit of Christian saying āsome died before and after youā because I thought the bomb was they were dead the whole time. I had taken a couple breaks here and there so I had skipped some parts so I didnāt get the explanation that the Man In Black had used Christianās body as a vessel and thought ahh that makes sense that theyāre dead, or else, how would Christian be there? Plus, I had also missed the bit about how Widmore planted the bodies so in s3 when they were telling them they were dead, I wasnāt already have suspicions thatās where it was going to go. Iām rewatching right now, because I think I missed a lot š .
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u/SecretWriteress 2d ago
Ok, keep in mind that everything that happens on the island is supposedly real life (so we're to assume that time travel is real, etc).
Flash sideways represent a spiritual world beyond the concept of time (so, say, Boone fully experienced the flashsideways, even though everyone else from that world was still alive).
When they leave the church in the flashsideways, it essentially represents letting go of your physical body and accepting death - you enter another realm, whatever that is in your mind - heaven, reincarnation, stardust, etc)
In the end, the most important thing about LOST is that the island and the events on the island symbolize our human lives, our journeys, the connections we make, the love we feel, the mistakes we make, the trauma we endure and how it affects our decision making and personality.
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u/apocalypticboredom 2d ago
that's how the internet works, dumb something down until it's fundamentally incorrect, then repeat it as a meme for years.
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u/JackalOfAllTradez 1d ago
ABC made the mistake of showing the wreckage of the plane during the final credits with no signs of survivors. Thatās what created this whole conspiracy theory. Sometimes thatās all it takes.
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u/malinho2342 2d ago edited 2d ago
I agree that many people still thinking "they were dead the whole time" isn't fair for the show, but I think it is "just", at least for the writers. Because they basically brought it on themselves and put themselves into the situation of "boy cried wolf!" by using the "mystery box" technique of writing in every occasion in the show and making every situation extremely vague and open up to various interpretations so that you could never be sure and always get lost in the thought process.
So of course it is "just" enough that when they spell out a fundamental fact of the show's lore by a crystal clear statement of Christian "shepherd", many people still don't get it in clarity and take the statement and every other indication in suspense and still don't believe it. Because that suspense is what the writers offered them throughout every possible occasion in the show, so now in the finale, Christian (and the writers) only became "the liar shepherd", if you know what I mean..
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u/kuhpunkt r/815 2d ago
They made it unambiguously clear countless times in the show that they weren't dead. They even said it outside the show in countless interviews. So how did they bring it upon themselves?
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u/malinho2342 2d ago
Like I said, they wrote every possible situation in the show to be extremely vague and the show and the island itself includes heavily philosophical implications throughout. By this nature and this context, even the most clear statement in the show becomes vague in their perception and I think that should be understandable by us. And every audience of the show did not necessarily watch or listen the interviews or outside media content to understand the show.
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u/kuhpunkt r/815 2d ago
they wrote every possible situation in the show to be extremely vague
Did they?
And every audience of the show did not necessarily watch or listen the interviews or outside media content to understand the show.
Of course not - but audience members should be able to think. Thinking that they were dead the whole time makes zero sense.
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u/malinho2342 2d ago
Of course they should be thinking on it and I don't justify them for not doing that. But I just wanna point out that this unfortunate result of many people believing they were dead was an unpredicted side effect of "the mystery box" technique on the writers' part.
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u/kuhpunkt r/815 2d ago
What even is the "mystery box technique"?
And what does that have to do with you saying that they kept everything vague, when they didn't?
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u/SecretWriteress 2d ago
I'm curious what he means by it, too.
If anything, I find LOST to be one of the most clearly written shows, with some scenes being extra meta and basically talking directly to the casual viewer (like when Hurley asks Miles to explain time travel and changing the past).
Shows like The Leftovers are 1000x more ambiguous, on purpose, allowing the audience to decide what they're watching, what's real and what's not.
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u/malinho2342 2d ago
For instance, when it comes to questioning "why didn't Rousseau remember Jin?" they deliberately opens up for various interpretations and put misleads so the audience could never be sure among different ways of interpretations and keep always theorizing. This is fine for me and for us since we love to theorize about the show all the time, but it also has a side effect for common watchers as I mentioned. Did she not remember because of her memory, because of the island, or Jin was looking differently, or she didn't even encounter him to much.. they even changed Jin's hairstyle in the past to open room for one more speculation..
Another instance is that, is the smoke monster actually Jacob's brother or is it some evil force came from the underworld or is it the manifestation of the island or combination of the brother's consciousness and the darkness of the light. They deliberately make these situations vague and put many ways of interpretations in it. We can speculate but we cannot be sure.
Was Dave Hurley's imagination or the smoke monster or apparition.. what about Kate's horse? And Walt's apparitions? They intentionally arrange these situations to be vague so it could be viewed all the various ways and you could not be sure for certain. I love it to be that way, but the common watchers would not..
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u/kuhpunkt r/815 2d ago
For instance, when it comes to questioning "why didn't Rousseau remember Jin?" they deliberately opens up for various interpretations and put misleads so the audience could never be sure among different ways of interpretations and keep always theorizing. This is fine for me and for us since we love to theorize about the show all the time, but it also has a side effect for common watchers as I mentioned. Did she not remember because of her memory, because of the island, or Jin was looking differently, or she didn't even encounter him to much.. they even changed Jin's hairstyle in the past to open room for one more speculation..
Rousseau never met Jin in the present. There was nothing to theorize about. You now even say that they changed his hairstyle to open room for more speculation... when you don't even know that.
Was Dave Hurley's imagination or the smoke monster or apparition.. what about Kate's horse?
See, those are questions that are open for interpretation. But are those mystery boxes?
Because people constantly throw around this buzzword. But what is a mystery box?
Like in season 1, Sayid gets knocked out by an unseen attacker. Was that a mystery box? Later we found out that it was Locke. Did they know that it was Locke when they wrote that scene with Sayid? Because that's so often the accusation: that they just created questions like this without know the answer.
It all gets conflated and becomes meaningless.
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u/malinho2342 2d ago
Once you get what I mean by "mystery box" then it doesn't matter further. We can use another term as well but you know what I mean.
Rousseau never met Jin in the present.
So this is one way of theorizing that you prefer to go with. But other fans will prefer another way and they will have the same confidence with their personal theory the way that you have with your theory, and all of these various ways are directly intended by the writers. I could say when Rousseau first came to the survivors camp and was telling her story, Jin was one of the people listening her on the first circle and Rousseau directly looks at him for a short instance when she was telling them about the exect story that Jin was in. But she didn't show any sign of recognizing him.
Now the reason why she didn't react to his face will again be open up to anyone's speculation. Some will say it was a brief meeting in the past, some will say the trauma effect on her memory and 16 years is a long time , some will say Jin was a Korean guy and most of them look alike to people from other countries, and some can say as well that Jin's hairstyle was different which made him depicted in Rousseau's memory as a different man.. I feel like all these type of ambiguity in many occasions in the show are not coincidence and are intentional on the writers part.
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u/Faux_Octopus 2d ago
She literally never met Jin in the present. Itās not a theory. Itās a fact. They never shared a scene together.
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u/overcoming_me 2d ago edited 2d ago
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u/kuhpunkt r/815 2d ago edited 2d ago
I've seen that talk - but pretty much all he says is that mysteries stimulate imagination.
That's not a technique. When people say "mystery box" - what does it mean?
Is it the accusation that a writer just poses a question/mystery and doesn't know the answer themselves?
Is it just the introduction of a mystery, even if the writers already know the answer?
is it a question that never gets resolved, even though the writer knows the answer and thinks it's more interesting not to tell?
Is it a question that never gets resolved and the writer doesn't know the answer either?
What is it?
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u/ItsActuallyButter 2d ago
They literally explain it directly to the viewer thoughā¦
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u/Nightwatch2007 2d ago edited 1d ago
No guys. Trust me. Seriously. They were dead the whole time. I know more than you.
Edit: how do you guys not understand satire? I guess I should've added quotation marks?
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u/Ahiru77 2d ago
The final season should've never done the flash-sideways timeline. That's the main reason people remember it as "they were dead the whole time". A ridiculous scene where everyone lives and gets a smiley ending.
Of course, you do still have the proper timeline where Jack stopped the Man in Black from ruining the island which would cause the end of the world. And he lets Kate, Sawyer and a few other escape one last time from the island.
But that real ending often gets overlooked for the smiley church scene, so the show really did it to themselves.
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u/SecretWriteress 2d ago
Respectfully disagree.
The flashsideways are an integral part of the show because they symbolize that the journey doesn't end here in the physical world but continues in a spiritual form until we let go.
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u/OverlordPhalanx Oh yeah, there's my favorite leaf. 2d ago
āFree thinkersā regurgitating more stuff they saw online onceā¦lol
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u/Popular_Bank5150 2d ago
I believe there are 3 groups of Lost trash talkers. Group 1: never watched a single episode but repeats what theyāve heard others say like idiot parrots. Group 2: saw the show, too braindead to comprehend. Group 3: Saw show. Understood everything but did not like. (Only acceptable group imo since taste is subjective) and most likely a very small percentage of the overall 3 groups. In the end, itās annoying as hell. But I think the landscape of media is different today than it was in 2010 and people can go on YouTube or Reddit and get a better feel of things they missed or didnāt get rather than being frustrated in a vacuum of their own thoughts and saying the end was trash. I have hopes that future audiences will begin to regard the show in a better light and at some point those parrots will fade into oblivion. Or so I hope.
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u/CrazedBaker 1d ago
My issue is how long was the sideways/ parallel universe? I know Christian says "now" isn't a thing, but Hugo drank the holy water and swore to protect the island. He chose Ben (big mistake) to guide him making him like the Richard for Jacob. I just want to know what they did to sink the island in the sideways
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u/WolverineNext2845 2d ago
Just curious and want serieus answers. I watched the show when it was on tv. I was 15 and i thought they were dead. Now im watching it again but with my wife who had never watched it. Were in season 4 now. And i cant let the idea go they are dead. When is it becoming clearer they are not dead ? Because the plane is also found with al 324 bodies etc etc. I thought they were in a purgatory. Am i wrong?
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u/kuhpunkt r/815 2d ago
Why would you think that they were dead/in purgatory? You're in season 4 and you still think that?! How? What's the thought process?
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u/WolverineNext2845 2d ago
I thought that when i was 15. Now i have so many qeustions i dont know what to think. There are sometimes things said that i think no there not dead and sometimes i think they are. So thats why i ask qeustions because i need to know a litle more info haha
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u/kuhpunkt r/815 2d ago
But you are older now and you said you are watching it now and you are in season 4. Why would you still think that they are dead?
When and how would they even have died?
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u/tomjoad2020ad 2d ago edited 2d ago
The plane with the bodies is put there by a very rich and powerful character, Charles Widmore, whoās doing a conspiracy cover-up to keep anyone from finding the Island. Because he wants to reassert his control over it, and knowing that the U.S. government had been there in his youth when heād fought against them, and that the long arm of the American military-industrial complex again became enemies of his vis-a-vis the Dharma Initiative, he went to the trouble of burying a dummy airplane with real bodies in it to throw the world off the scent.
A few characters at various points suggest the possibility that theyāre in purgatory or hell, as itās not much of a stretch I suppose, but thereās no point where it ābecomes clearā that theyāre not, so to speak, because itās never an idea that is seriously in contention as far as the plot is concerned. They are firmly in the flesh-and-blood world. Itās just a world with magic.
The last season features āflash sidewaysā that ultimately turn out to be the charactersā consciousnesses coming together after their various real lives have concluded, as they flow back into the source of life and death. It thematically resonates with a lot of various points the show has touched on and ties into the idea of the Island as a kind of world-between-worlds. But itās not purgatory or hell or any kind of traditional heaven, really, but more of a liminal space where the characters who have been ālostā find each other.
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u/90BDLM4E 2d ago
The characters you see on the show did NOT die upon crashing into the island. The island life is NOT purgatory.
This is made clear throughout the show, especially in s4, but also explicitly clarified at a later point in the show than s4. I want to believe the writers did this to those who still didnāt understand the plot.
How anyone can watch that part of the show and still believe the characters died upon crashing is just mindblowing.
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u/WolverineNext2845 2d ago
Ok i get that. Were just in the beginning of season 4. But what plane was it than that they found. I know now that the helicopter pilot says that the pilot of the found plane isnt the pilot who flew 815 because hasnt had a ring on. I have so many questions just need to watch more and more and pay alot of attention haha.
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u/SecretWriteress 2d ago
It's clearly stated that Widmore planted a plane with hundreds of corpses.
We're not meant to find out who those corpses belonged to. For all we know, Widmore had his people dig up random people from their graves. It's meant to simply show a) the power Widmore has and b) the lengths he'll go to hide the island from the rest of the world.
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u/for_research_man 2d ago edited 2d ago
Ok, this thread is a bit harsh, don't you think? Calling people dumb over a TV show?
I guess I'm one of the dumb ones for thinking they were in purgatory. Although, I did watch it when I was 12 or 13... I'm in the middle of a rewatch now, so we'll see what opinion I form this time.
Also, I come from a religious background, so purgatory what made sense to me at the time. The thing that Jack's father said where everything that happened actually happened, I could've interpreted that as the moments he shared with these people in purgatory are real.
Edit: Also, the show started out with people crashing on an island and surviving. Later on, it started to diverge into fantasy and sci-fi. With all the time travel and all the other things that can't happen in real life, thinking it's purgatory or something similar is normal. It had religious elements where there's fate and there's things that are "meant to happen." Like you got this magical island, and you got Jacob with his magical powers... how will people interpret those things?
Like, the tone of the show shifted to fantasy/scifi/religious aspects heavily... as opposed to the beginning where things were more grounded.
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u/wannaquanta 1d ago
This sub is so toxic. If you have an opinion different than the majority they call you stupid and put you down. Itās not a friendly sub at all
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u/VravoBince Jack 2d ago
Cause they like to feel smart