Damon Lindelof, one of the talented writer’s for TV’s LOST sat down with The Hollywood Reporter this past week to talk about the show’s 2-hour finale. The full text and video interview can be found here, and I thought I’d spend a few minutes going through the cliffnotes, and adding some of my own ideas and wild theories.
The Finale Will Leave Us With Questions
Lindelof said that the finale won’t end in The Sopranos style of leave-the-whole-audience-hanging but he said it will necessarily leave some questions unanswered. He said that some fans will walk away wondering, “What did they mean by this?” But, he also added, that a “very, very large part” of the finale was part of the original plan of the show. This is good news, and puts to bed the notion that this last season has departed sharply from their original game plan.
The Flash-Sideways
Lindelof comment on the flash-sideways bits, saying he knew it was going to be controversial introducing a new literary technique in the last season—opening up more doors when they’re supposed to be closing them. But if this is all part of the bigger plan, like he said, then it’s all well in hand.
On this note, he made an interesting acknowledgment. He said that people got really upset when they thought that the whole series leading up to the flash-sideways wasn’t important. He said that people now realize, as the characters remember their experiences on the island, that what happened on the island was important. I want to run with this for a second.
I’ve long held that character development is an integral part of this show—maybe even the most important part. I’ve said that an ending which ended in the flash-sideways world would negate all the character development which took place on the island. However, now that the characters in the flash-sideways world are remembering what happened to them on the island, an ending in the flash-sideways world could make a lot of sense. Lindelof acknowledged this. He said that fans were initially upset that the show could possibly end in the flash-sideways world because if the island never happened, then the first 5 seasons of the show would be irrelevant. But Lindelof has allayed our fears and as the characters begin to remember what happened on the island, those five seasons of character development become important again.
Is Lindelof hinting that the show will end in the flash-sideways reality? It seems like it to me!
Secrecy Abounds
One really interesting tidbit from the interview is how and when the finale was filmed. Instead of waiting until the very end of the Season 6 shooting schedule, Lindelof tells us that the finale was actually filmed in the middle of the season in order protect the secrecy of the final chapter. I had heard before that in order to protect the show’s ending actors were only given information pertaining to their particular character, but I hadn’t heard about this before. It’s kind of neat, and you know that a show takes itself very seriously when they slip the filming of the finale into the middle of the shooting schedule in order to throw everyone off.
Desmond is Missing
The final bit that the interview touches on which I think is worth exploring is the interesting absence of Desmond in the cast photo for the season finale. I guess this has been stirring up some questions around the Internet, and Lindelof’s response doesn’t exactly dismiss the claims. The video interview explains it well, but in case since you’re reading these cliffnotes let me elaborate. Apparently Desmond is missing from the cast photo for the finale. When asked, Lindelof said that he didn’t want to ruin the fun for fans and that a character missing from a cast photo is something that’s out of his hands—but you have to wonder. Everything, and I mean everything means something in the LOST world so a major character being conspicuously absent from the finale promo picture is very suspicious. The fact that Lindelof says that he doesn’t want to ruin it for fans, before going on to say that it was out of his control definitely alludes to something. Did Sayid really kill Desmond? Or, if not, does he die a different way? You really have to wonder.
All in all, a pretty interesting interview and you can see why LOST is so well written and such an incredible series. There’s obviously great care that goes into this show. Thank goodness there’s an episode this week! But what are we going to do when it ends?
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