It has been 22 years since one of the most-watched sci-fi dramas premiered on television, and it has since become both beloved and criticized by fans after the ending didn’t seem to completely stick the landing. When it comes to the 2000s, the decade was full of incredible sci-fi television shows. Battlestar Galactica returned and proved that even the Sci Fi Channel could produce quality television, as it was one of the smartest shows on TV during its run. Firefly remains one of the greatest shows to ever get cancelled before even finishing its first season, and it is still considered a minor masterpiece.
However, a sci-fi drama series that hit the air in the 2000s blew everyone away with its pilot and ended up as the most-watched sci-fi show of the decade, by far. The first episode of Lost, “Pilot, Part 1,” premiered on September 22, 2004, and it drew such massive ratings that the show continued to thrive through its six-season run. The show included mysteries, tragic deaths, flashbacks, flash-forwards, and an ending that reached for the impossible. However, what it remains known for today is that finale, which not everyone seems to understand.
Lost opened with a huge moment, and it swept audiences in like no other. The first scene showed a plane crash on an island, with people dying and no one knowing what was going on. The first scene focused on Jack (Matthew Fox), who woke up in the woods and then walked out to see the devastation before rushing into action, trying to save people. A doctor, Jack went between different people, most of whom became main stars on the series, and the show introduced everyone as explosions rang out and fire rose around the survivors.
The two-part pilot cost more than any other in the network’s history, costing between $10 million and $14 million to make, while most hour-long pilots only cost $4 million on average. Disney fired ABC head Lloyd Braun for ABC’s low ratings and for greenlighting such an expensive and risky show. What happened next was that Lost became one of the biggest critical and commercial successes of the entire 2004 television season. Thanks to Lost, Desperate Housewives, and Grey’s Anatomy, ABC turned its fortunes around, and the network fired the exec who was partially responsible for it.
Lost had an unusual format, as the survivors realized there was something almost supernatural about the island itself. Each episode focused on one of the survivors and included several flashback scenes to their life before the plane crash, which usually tied into what they were going through on the island at the time. This is one of the big reasons that fans began to theorize what the island really was, where these survivors really were, and what the ending was going to be. These theories were partially correct, but the ending still didn’t satisfy everyone.
The biggest theories early on in Lost were that the survivors were not on an actual island at all, but that they died in the plane crash and were all in purgatory. That was a good theory, and it pretty much played into a version of how the finale of the series played out. The problem is that the series lasted a couple of seasons longer than it should have, and by the time the ending came, most people had changed their minds or already decided how they wanted the finale to play out, and many claimed the show dropped the ball and screwed up the ending.
The truth is that the ending was perfect. The show ended with the idea that the survivors were in a type of purgatory. The island seems to be real, or at least as real as it can be, and Hurley was left in charge of protecting it in the end. However, the idea that the island is the waiting point for the survivors moving on to the other side was dismissed by the show’s creators, who said they were not dead the entire time, but they did meet up after they died. The final scene of Jack on the island was masterfully executed. In the pilot that came out 22 years ago, Jack woke up, lying on the island, and found Walt’s dog and the plane crash. In the finale, Jack had just saved the island and lay down in the same position as in the pilot, where he then died with Walt’s dog lying beside him.
The series ended with Jack joining the other survivors in a church, and then when he was there, they all stood and left together, walking to the door, which had a bright light outside of it, where they seemingly traveled to the afterlife. This was the exact type of scene that fans theorized when Lost premiered. While the survivors didn’t die before the first episode, they did have to find out their place in the world before finally moving on, and this was the best way the show could have ended, whether some fans liked it or not.
