Lost had fewer abandoned plotlines than almost any other long-running show. This claim may surprise you if you’ve heard jokes about how the writers just made it all up as they went along, but that’s actually how most shows are written. Lost, in contrast, not only planned out its final three seasons in advance but also spent its entire run flashing back and forward to tie plots off. Watch any early episode, and you may find that every scene (sometimes every line) will be revisited before the series closes.
So, don’t angrily ask, “What ever happened to Walt?” Walt received an elaborate sendoff and then nevertheless returned to the show four times in four successive seasons. But Lost‘s surprising devotion to resolving dangling threads makes the plots that it did abandon all the more notable.
10
Products from another dimension
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Image via ABC</figure>
At the start of Season 2, the characters discover a science station, The Swan, stocked with food from an old research initiative. The food is mostly unbranded, marked only with the logo of the Dharma Initiative itself, but there’s also a commercially manufactured candy bar. “Apollo bars?” says Hurley, confused. “Ever hear of these?” No one has. Later, in the same station, they find a record from a band named Geronimo Jackson. “As an expert in all things musical,” says Charlie, “I’ve never heard of these guys.” No one else has either. What’s going on here? Where did this candy and band come from?
The answer turns out to be: Nowhere unusual. Flashbacks reveal that Apollo bars and Geronimo Jackson are widely known back in civilization. They may not exist in our world, but they do exist in the mysterious world of Lost, just like Oceanic Airlines does. There was never any reason for the characters to find them unfamiliar — other than some plans the writers may have had but never followed up on.
9
The supernatural “Others”
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Image via ABC</figure>
Early on, the survivors discover that one man whom they presumed was another passenger is secretly an island native who has infiltrated the camp. This guy, Ethan, once he’s discovered, responds with what looks rather like superpowers. He’s able to single-handedly take down multiple opponents and speed away into the jungle while dragging both their bodies. He slips back into the camp unnoticed past guards and kills more people, breaking every bone in his victims’ bodies. It eventually takes a whole team of men with guns to get him to surrender. Later, we meet the rest of the natives, whom the survivors dub “the Others.” None of them are at all like Ethan. With the exception of one single Other (Goodwin, Ethan’s counterpart in a second camp), none of them ever kill any survivors, and none of them show the slightest sign of supernatural fighting skills.
It’s clear that the show had some initial ideas of what the Others would be like before later going in a very different direction. Lost even ended up providing an explanation for why Ethan is so different: He’s the only one of them to have been born on the Island. The only other people we ever meet who were born on the Island are two figures called Jacob and the Man in Black, who have a few powers of their own.
8
Miles can talk to ghosts
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Image via ABC</figure>
Our introduction to character Miles Straume (Ken Leung) shows him working as a medium. We see him talk to an actual ghost, who listens to him and responds by moving some items around in a house. Later, Miles meets Hurley, who also talks to ghosts. Except, now, we learn Miles can’t actually converse with the dead. His power is only to go to human remains and hear the last thoughts the person had right before they died. Flashbacks now show him using this narrower power throughout his life, and the plot finds a surprisingly large number of opportunities for him to do this as the show continues.
This little contradiction is notable because it’s the only true retcon Lost ever had. Everything else, we can explain away, but this? You watch that first Miles scene now and know that the correct way to interpret it is to say that this thing that you’re watching never actually happened.
7
The cave home
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Image via ABC</figure>
Lost starts out as a survival TV show. The characters struggle for water and shelter, and then they stumble on a source of both: a cave system. For a while, half the survivors live in the caves, while the rest stick to the beach, thinking that raises their chances of rescue. One day, fearing an incoming threat, both groups hole up in the caves. The threat turns out to be fake, and all go back to the beach. They never live in the caves again, and they seemingly forget why they ever wanted to.
For a while, this may be because they get access to that Swan station, but then that blows up, people think even less about rescue, and still, no one shifts back to the caves. The writers don’t forget the caves exist (we return there a couple of times in the final season), but it’s funny how the characters do. It’s probably because when you film in Hawaii, you’d be wise to shoot the beach as much as possible.
6
The sheriff
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Image via ABC</figure>
The episode of Lost that viewers most often call the worst is a Season 3 one called “Stranger in a Strange Land.” It’s mostly mocked for the flashback, in which a vacationing Jack does some stuff that’s either very boring or very unpleasant to watch, and viewers reasonably choose to forget the present-day storyline. There, we see some aspects of the Others’ society that are not explored further, before or after this. These include the news that their crimes are adjudicated by someone they call “the sheriff,” named Isabel (Diana Scarwid).
We never see Isabel after this. The creators later say on a DVD extra that she’s dead by the end of the season, which only raises further questions. The best explanation for how she died is that she was among the Others killed by dynamite when they came to raid the survivors’ camp during the finale. This would mean, somewhat dubiously, that when the Others sent a small party of kidnappers, they included their sheriff, played by an actress just shy of 50 years old, whom we do not actually see during the scene.
- The Wachowskis’ 1999 film won four Academy Awards, including Visual Effects and Film
Editing. - Bullet time was shot with a rig of roughly 120 still cameras firing in sequence around the
actors. - Keanu Reeves trained in martial arts for about four months before a frame was shot,
recovering from neck surgery the whole time. - It opened the same year as Fight Club and eXistenZ, in a run of films about not trusting the
world in front of you.
- Mad Max: Fury Road won six Academy Awards in 2016, more than any other film that year.
- George Miller storyboarded the entire film as roughly 3,500 panels before there was a
script. - The chase was shot almost entirely practical in the Namib Desert, with real vehicles and
real stunt performers. - Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth carried the prequel, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, in 2024.
- Blade Runner 2049 won Roger Deakins his first Oscar for cinematography, on his fourteenth
nomination. - The film also took Best Visual Effects, 35 years after Ridley Scott’s 1982 original.
- Villeneuve shot it on large-format film and kept the fog and rain practical on set wherever
he could. - Three short films by Luke Scott and Shinichiro Watanabe bridge the 30-year gap between the
two movies.
- Denis Villeneuve’s Dune won six Academy Awards in 2022, including Cinematography and
Original Score. - Hans Zimmer turned down Christopher Nolan’s Tenet so he could score Dune instead.
- Dune: Part Two arrived in 2024 and brought in Austin Butler, Florence Pugh and Christopher
Walken. - David Lynch’s 1984 version and Alejandro Jodorowsky’s unmade one are both their
own legends by now.
- The 1977 original won six Academy Awards plus a special achievement award for sound effects.
- John Williams’ score was recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra and became the
best-selling symphonic film soundtrack ever. - Andor took the galaxy somewhere colder and earned Emmy nominations for drama series in both
seasons. - The saga now runs across eleven feature films and a growing shelf of series on Disney+.
5
Kate and Charlie
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Image via ABC</figure>
Most episodes of Lost center on a single character, and we alternate between the current storyline and flashes from some other time in that character’s life. Occasionally, an episode centers on two characters, almost always husband-and-wife Jin and Sun. The very second episode of the show, unusually, centered on characters Kate (Evangeline Lilly) and Charlie (Dominic Monaghan). “I’m glad you came, Charlie,” says Kate, as the two get to know each other. They never speak to each other again, not once again in their whole lives.
Okay, that’s a slight exaggeration. They exchange one or two more lines over the next few seasons, but they almost never interact. This is remarkable, since they’re both main characters and particularly because of how close they both are with Claire and Aaron. One possible explanation is Lilly and Monaghan started dating in real life, and when actors do that, showrunners sometimes figure it’s best to stop putting their characters together. It becomes too hard to get convincing performances out of them.
4
Sun Hwa’s business plans
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After Sun leaves the Island and returns to Korea, she uses the settlement money she receives from Oceanic Airlines to buy a controlling interest in her father’s firm. She scores a victory over the father who’s controlled so much of her life, but the show also hints this means something for the plot to come, as she speaks of future plans she has for the company. Later, she seeks out businessman Charles Widmore to take revenge on their shared enemy, Ben Linus. She does end up pointing a gun at Ben, a gun sent to her by Widmore, but that’s as far as this storyline goes. She ends up on the very same plane as the other survivors and Ben returning to the Island, with her new business role having no further consequences.
The odd part is that, once back on the Island, she is separated from the other survivors (all of them travel back in time, while she remains in the present). As a result, she doesn’t do much of anything until the next season. At this point, Widmore also returns to the Island, through unrelated means, and he and Sun never run into each other. This has given rise to the theory that something else must have been planned for Sun. Perhaps, instead of what we actually got, she could have returned to the Island separately from the other survivors, in Season 6, on her own. Perhaps she and Widmore could have come together. Perhaps she could have been the one leading this voyage, using the resources from her father’s company to locate the Island and reunite with her lost love. It sounds like a very interesting idea, until you realize it repeats what the show already did years earlier, with Penny.
3
Ben’s friend Annie
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Image via ABC</figure>
Lost Season 3 gives us a flashback showing the childhood of Ben Linus. He grew up as part of the Dharma Initiative, and he had one friend there, Annie. They must have been very close because decades afterward, we see he still treasures two handmade dolls she once gifted him. A couple of years later, the characters travel back in time, and we spend half a season with the Dharma Initiative. We meet young Ben, played by the same actor as in that earlier flashback episode. We see multiple other characters from that flashback episode as well, now given greater roles. Completely absent, however, is Annie, who’s never even mentioned.
Back when we saw that earlier flashback episode, there was never any guarantee we’d hear another word about Annie, because there was no suggestion we’d ever revisit the same period that the flashbacks showed. But then we did revisit it, so her absence felt odd. The fanon story on Annie is that she left the Island during an evacuation, and we do actually witness this evacuation, but we don’t see her.
2
Locke vs. Eko
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John Locke styles himself as a spiritual man in tune with the Island, though his own professional background is far more mundane than he lets on. He later meets Mr. Eko, who also styles himself as a spiritual man in tune with the Island, and who has a professional background that contradicts his island persona even more than John’s does. The season ends with the two physically tussling, and the writers revealed they had big plans for the pair as the show went on.
The two were supposed to compete to be the Island’s spiritual leader. But Eko’s actor, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, ended up not wanting to commit to several years of shooting in Hawaii, far from his family. So, the show agreed to write his character off at the start of Season 3. Eko went on to be the only main character to neither appear nor even be mentioned in the final season. They wanted to bring him back for the finale, but once again, plans fell through.
1
The outrigger shooters
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Image via ABC</figure>
Despite all the talk of Lost‘s unsolved mysteries, there’s just one that the writers deliberately set up, wanted to answer, but ultimately did not. It happened in Season 5, when the characters find themselves flashing through time. They land in some ambiguous period that’s post-2004, get into a canoe to travel from one part of the Island to another, and find themselves pursued by another canoe, whose occupants shoot at them. We conspicuously do not get a close look at who the occupants are, and the characters flash to another time before they can find out. Anyone familiar with how scenes work can guess that these identities are a deliberate mystery that will be revealed later. People familiar with how time travel stories work might guess that the occupants are the characters themselves, sometime in the future. We never do return and find out who they are, despite later seeing several scenes in which various characters take trips in similar canoes, as though to tease us.
Though the show abandoned this plotline, one of the DVD box sets included a written answer to the mystery. This answer comes in the form of a journal entry from the point of view of a sailor on the Black Rock, a slave ship that crashed on the island in the 1800s. According to the journal, sailors scouted out the island in a smaller boat, found themselves flashing through time, ended up in the same unknown time period as those survivors, and shot at them. This explanation, authored by someone other than the show’s writers, is utter nonsense, and we encourage you to substitute your own better one in its place.
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