Unraveling the Mysteries of "Lost"

It was a moment without equal in TV history, and it was also a crucial shift: Life on the island was now in fact the past story — three years past, it turns out. Some people made it off the island and others didn't, and misery rather than deliverance had followed for everybody. In between it all lay new mysteries, in which the true meanings of Lost remained hidden. Watching that scene, we realized we could never again imagine what might happen next. We did know, however, that we were in a realm of genius storytelling, unlike any risk that a mainstream series had taken before. While it would be nice to say that it's also the sort of transformation that opens up new potentials in TV's narrative form, no other shows have yet managed anything comparable (though some, like ABC's short-lived The Nine, have tried, and Heroes lurches every which way compellingly). It could be that Lost is a revolution unto itself, or just too radical and inventive to be easily emulated.

Even so, Damon Lindelof acknowledges a key influence on the show's storytelling. "The idea of approaching Lost in a non-linear fashion," he says, "and showing the audience bits and pieces of things out of order — especially this season — Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction was a game changer. When you went to see that movie for the first time, and you watched the narrative style of it, you see that you're starting with the story about a guy who takes a girl out for a date and she overdoses, then that guy gets shot in the next story, but is then remarkably alive again for the final act of the movie — it basically changes the entire way you perceive the story being told. By telling the story out of order, you're able to infuse it with this tremendous amount of thematic reality. You're not just doing it because it's cool."

The true turning point for Lost came in May 2007, when Cuse and Lindelof persuaded ABC to let them end the series with its sixth season. "Before that," says Cuse, "the problem was we had this mythology that we'd built but we didn't know if it had to last two seasons or nine seasons, and it was utterly paralyzing. We didn't know how fast we needed to dole out our storytelling." Actually, the problem might have been a little worse than that. "Over the course of the first three years," Lindelof adds, "the pervasive sort of thinking about the show — even if you were a fan of it — was, ?This show is going to fuck me. No offense, we love the show, but we don't trust you.' By negotiating the endpoint, and by ABC allowing us to do fewer episodes per season, it allowed us to make the storytelling a lot more intensive."