“Lost”: What Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse Had to Say about Their Show (and How it Would End) Way Back in Season 3

After two highly acclaimed seasons and numerous honors including the 2005 Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series ABC39s Lost stumbled a bit in October 2006 at the start of Season 3 amp8211 the infamous sixepisode halfseason The show was still inventive surprising and handsomely produced but some of the magic seemed to be missing Viewers weren39t the only ones taking notice Critics the very group that had exhaustively championed Lost throughout the previous two years began grumbling as well This wasnamp8217t the last time viewers and critics would have complaints about the show but most remained happily or grudgingly engrossed right through to the endABC responded at the time by bringing most of the primary cast members to the 2007 January Television Critics Association tour Executive producers Damon Lindelof who cocreated the series with JJ Abrams and Carlton Cuse were also on hand to ensure everyone that many of the questions and concerns expressed by viewers and critics alike would be addressed as Season 3 continuedFollowing the session Lindelof and Cuse sat with me to further discuss their thoughts about the season to date and their future plans for the show Hereamp8217s an edited transcript of that conversation which proves that they did indeed have an endgame in mind many years agoamp160amp160Ed Martin Were you surprised at the level of concern expressed by critics about the direction the story took last fall and their frustration about the many unresolved mysteries on the showamp160Damon Lindelof In my opinion the really good critics embrace the fact that they39re fans I find there is a very rare instance where your fan brain is having one reaction and your critical brain is having another The level at which questions are asked of us is polarizing You can tell it39s personal If they don39t like it it39s like they39re almost offended in a wayamp160Carlton Cuse I39m a big baseball fan and I feel proprietary about the Dodgers I39m not the owner I39m not the manager But I feel passionate about the decisions that they make and I take it personally when they make decisions I don39t like I think you end up in the same sort of position when you are in a position of stewardship on a show like this Damon and I sit in my office every morning over breakfast and make the creative decisions for the day and decide what we39re going to be doing with the show We use our own internal compass and barometer but it39s very hard to find that balance between moving the story forward in a way that we feel is intriguing to us as storytellers and answering the concerns of fans and critics quotAre you diverting off onto a new story tangent Are you getting away from what we like about the showquot It feels very hard to strike the right balance thereamp160DL The critics have legitimate reasons to say quotWe propped this show up From the moment that we saw it we believed in it We got behind it We wrote nice things about it We picked it as the show of the yearquot Not that the critics are responsible for the show39s success in its entirety but they39re a big part of it The fact that so much buzz was building about Lost before it premiered wasn39t just based on the premise I think that same thing sort of continues quotWe have a responsibility as critics because we launched this thing to now make sure that the people we said it was really good to understand that we agree with them as fansquotamp160EM What are the critics39 complaintsamp160DL That maybe the show has now taken a darker turn That it39s too mythological We39re getting either quotWe39re not in the beach camp enough and we39re not with the characters we lovequot or quotYou39re not answering enough questionsquot We find as storytellers you can39t accomplish both goals We have to sort of commit to one or the other Sometimes mistakes are made I would argue in some cases that it39s just impossible to make everybody happyamp160EM I understand you39re going to go back to the beach after the February 7 2007 episode Once you move the characters away from the Others39 camp what will be the narrative thrust of the storyamp160CC The show is still about the Others That39s what Season 3 is about It39s just a question of how and in what form the show is telling the story about these other characters When you39re on the beach you can do lovely small character stories There are some episodes like that coming up beachbased stories much smaller in scope and dependent on just character interaction But we39re not abandoning our mission this season which is to tell the story of the Others We39re going to see that play out in other waysamp160DL The audience has seen that prior to the crash of Flight 815 the Others were all living in sort of an idyllic little Wisteria Lanelike community with nice houses and all that So we also feel indebted to tell the audience when and if they left that place Are all the Others over on the prison camp island Are they going to stay there If Kate and Sawyer andor Jack were to escape would the Others then potentially abandon Alcatraz and go somewhere else Are they more nomadic in terms of the way that they function on the islandamp160CC I honestly believe the next group of episodes is really good and a lot of the criticism of the first six will be ameliorated by the grander view of this yearamp160EM Many of the complaints about the six original episodes that were telecast last fall had to do with all the time you suddenly spent on the Othersamp160CC One of the decisions we made as producers is that the premiere took place exclusively amongst the Others with just Jack Kate and Sawyer Originally the second script that we wrote was a Locke story and it took place almost exclusively outside of the Others39 compound But because of postproduction and needing to do polar bear effects for the Locke Desmond and Eko episode amongst other things we ended up flipflopping the third and the second episodes so the second episode ended up being an Othercentric story told from Sayid Sun and Jin39s point of view So I think right out of the gate the audience started to get the perception of an imbalance We often ask ourselves even though there wasn39t much choice to be made had we just aired the episodes a little differently would that perception have been the same It39s hard to look at the first six episodes and make a judgment about the show in its totality for year three It39s just one chapter It was very specifically designed as the first quarter of the season By the time we get all the way to the end of the season I don39t think it will feel like we diverted wildly from what the show once wasamp160DL Your batting percentage at your first six atbats could be 800 percent but it isn39t until you get to the middle of the season that it begins to even out a littleamp160CC To make an honest statement about it I think we feel like four of the six were good episodes and a couple were not good episodes but that39s what happens when you make a series You39re not going to hit the ball out of the park with every pitch We struggled with a couple of those first six in terms of getting them to work and that just happens There are certain times when you39re making a series over the long run that not everything works It39s amazing how much does work on this showamp160DL The thing about Lost is every season feels like it39s almost a different show in a way I think Grey39s Anatomy while the characters evolve at the heart of it it39s always Patient comes in patient has illness doctors are sleeping with each other It39s a challenge keeping that show fresh in its own wayamp160CC The model for our show has been in a lot of ways the Stephen King novel The Stand In that book you start with a series of characters and they go on a journey and the characters that you focus on change over the course of that journey It ends in a very different place than it started There is a natural progression to Lost and as the story goes forward it39s going to change It39s not a static story The franchise of Lost is not characters sitting on a beach I think sometimes it39s hard for people to accept that because they39re trained in watching television to expect a certain sort of stasisamp160EM You39ve challenged the way people watch TV right from the beginning by starting flashbacks in the second episode and making them part of the fabric of the show We hadn39t seen that beforeamp160CC That39s a testimony to JJ Abrams and Damon39s initial creation of the show It broke a lot of rules The rule breaking is sort of an ongoing process and part of that is it39s a story not a franchise That39s why we feel we need to define what the end point of the journey is It isn39t like ER where you39re in the hospital and you can do 13 years ER is for many people as good an experience as it was seven or eight years ago That39s just a different type of show Lost is driving toward an ending and that ending is Are these people getting off this island What is the nature of this island What is going to happen to them What is their ultimate fate What is their ultimate destiny Those questions need to get answeredamp160EM And you guys know all of the answers to all of the questionsamp160DL We can hand you an envelope right now and we could seal it in a safety deposit box and it would say in that envelope Here39s what the island is Here39s why these people came to this island Here39s roughly what the events of the last episode of the show will be There are certain things that we cannot predict If we add a new actor to the show like Michael Emerson Ben or Ian Cusick Desmond we39re still telling the same story but we want to get to it in a different way because we39ll put it on the backs of the people whom the audience is jelling with How we got there and which characters would be involved might be a little bit vague but the actual answers to the mysteries the nature of the island what the monster is the function of the monster when the Others came here why the black rock is in the middle of the island the explanation for the fourtoed statue those things we know the answers to How we39re going to reveal those answers becomes the slippery slope of the showamp160EM There are probably fans with questions you haven39t thought ofamp160DL Absolutelyamp160CC We just printed out something from a Web site where someone has made a list of what they consider to be the fifty most significant unanswered questions on the showamp160EM Were there any that surprised youamp160DL There were some that we felt we had already answered very satisfactorily like the story of Kate39s toy plane In season one we showed that Kate broke into a safety deposit box to get this little plane We basically said we39re going to tell a subsequent flashback story that connects the plane to a time capsule that Kate and a childhood sweetheart buried together and that will be the end of the mystery But when we revealed it the audience was still saying quotWhat39s up with Kate39s planequot as if maybe there39s microfilm inside it or something So we had to continue and in the finale of the flashback the marshal gives this big speech before Kate gets on the plane You want to know the story of the little plane He breaks it entirely down But there it is on that list of 50 unanswered mysteriesamp160CC That39s part of the frustration because there are certain questions we feel we answered And then there are a lot of questions we don39t feel we can answer until the very end of the show If we did reveal fundamental answers to the underlying island mythology we really don39t think there would be a show leftamp160EM With all the ongoing flashback stories do you ever feel as if you39re writing 25 shows at onceamp160DL Absolutely Two weeks ago we were breaking a Locke story His flashback stories have a very distinctive feel to them And then after that we did a concept episode with Nikki and Paulo which is not unlike The Other 48 Days Days was an episode in Season 2 that efficiently recapped the experiences of the previously unseen crash victims from the tail section of the plane during the seven weeks they had been on the island as of that time It allowed us to think outside the box in terms of what an episode of Lost looked like We felt the Nikki and Paulo episode was amazingly satisfying in terms of paying off what seemingly looks like a mistake in the first six episodes Then we broke a Kate episode and when you do Kate episodes you39re literally writing the show The Fugitive Her flashback stories have an entirely different sort of vernacular feel to themamp160CC Lost is a really hard show to write because there are all sorts of different tonalities You look at shows like the CSI franchise There39s such an immense continuity to the way they are written It39s hard to succeed as a writer on our show but if you do it39s incredibly rewarding You get to do a lot of different stuff We have a Hurley episode coming up which is pretty much flat out comedy If you were to compare episode six and seven with episode ten you39d go quotMy God these things are in a different bandwidth entirelyquot And yet that39s what39s fun for us that we can tell all those different kinds of stories on our showamp160EM As you know fans and critics don39t always agree with some of the story turns you takeamp160DL A really interesting issue is one that creates Democrats and Republicans around it A really boring issue is one where everyone is unified and the answer is clear The audience would never be surprised by our show if it were completely obvious as to how to proceed They would just watch it every week and go quotThat was pretty much what I was expectingquot With NBC39s Heroes Season 1 is all about the discovery of their powers and the characters beginning to be intertwined in the sense that their destiny is to save the world But what39s Season 2 going to be It39s going to be entirely different is all I can tell you because in the finale this season they will save the world They can never again do the story where the cheerleader realizes that her dad adopted her and he39s a bad guy They can never again do the story about the stripper discovering the fact that she is actually a dual personality The show has to become something different They39ll need a hatch And it better be good or else they39re going to become victims of the same sort of rumbling we39re getting We were untouchable in Season 1 because it was so interesting to just come along on the journeyamp160CC In the first year all of the stories were so compelling because fans were so curious to know anything about these characters That39s one of the reasons why Lost has to end because we can39t sit around and envision quotWhat is the flashback for Jack in year ninequot It doesn39t realistically existamp160DL Laughs Jack starts flashing back to what happened on the island in Season 1amp160CC There is an intersection between our plans and viewing the show as an organic entity That39s what I think is most rewarding for us as writers and producersamp160EM I39m interested in the fact that Michael Emerson the actor who plays Ben was originally contracted for only three episodes Now I can39t imagine Seasons 2 and 3 without him You39ve done so much with Ben it39s hard for me to imagine that he wasn39t a huge character in your initial planamp160CC We knew that we were going to catch an Other and that he was going to be a prisoner of war in the hatchamp160DL And that he was going to pretend to not be an Other and then he would be revealed as an Other and then he would escape That was the threeepisode arcamp160CC There was another germ which was it would be cool if once he39s escaped we realized he was the ostensible leader of the Others Then you cast somebody but you have a safety valve If the actor isn39t great you don39t have to play all those cards That doesn39t mean we don39t know there is a leader of the Others and that he has a role in the story It39s just that in this particular circumstance Michael Emerson was so great that after he did the first couple of episodes we were just so engaged as writers we wanted to write more and more and more for him That39s the part of running a television series that I think is the most satisfying because you39re doing it in response to what you39re seeing on film You write to relationships In season one we had a similar thing We were going to make Michael and Jin enemies but they got along so well and there was so much chemistry between them we threw that idea out We decided to buddy them up and they became pals on the whole raft project I think you have to listen to what the show is telling you as you try to guide it One of the things that has been weird about this season is because of the threemonth break we39ve made a lot of episodes without audience feedback to ongoing storylines We39ve had to do it completely based on our judgmentamp160EM When something or someone in the story grows so unexpectedly and beneficially it also takes up a lot of story time Does it displace or delay other stories you had intended to get to sooneramp160CC It39s the dinner metaphor You buy seven things and then you only can eat one We ended up as writers getting really engaged in the story of the Others and Ben That came at the expense of some of the other characters like Sun and Jin and Claire who have had less to do because we39ve been telling that story The book of Lost for Season 3 is Our Characters vs the Others That39s really what the season39s about It sort of necessitated having less stuff for those other guys to doamp160DL I honestly believe that if we had Jack Kate and Sawyer get abducted by these people and had done less story time with them everybody would be grumbling about the fact that we still know nothing about the Others quotWe don39t know why they took Jack Kate and Sawyer Why are you spending time on the beach camp with people arguing about the diminishing food supply when we want to be closest to the story at the centerquot The reality is when we had Henry Gale now Ben down in the hatch he was the most interesting thing happening on the island So as writers you want to write to that It doesn39t mean there aren39t cool character stories happening between the cracks but certain characters like Jack or Kate or Sawyer or Locke or Sayid gravitate towards conflict and other characters like Hurley or Claire or Charlie or Sun or Jin don39tamp160EM A lot has been written in recent months about ongoing concerns or complaints from fans What are the positive things viewers come back with over and over again Is there anything that surprises the two of youamp160CC I think people are really engaged by Ben and Juliet I think people love to hate Ben so there39s this sense of quotWhen is he going to die What39s going to happen to himquot And the mystery of whether Juliet is good or bad is something else that I think people are really engaged in We39ve heard a lot of good feedback about thatamp160DL It always comes down to the characters With people who love the show the feedback always takes the form of quotI love Sawyer Don39t do anything to Sawyerquot Or quotI love Desmondquot The fact that people still think of the show in terms of quotIt39s a Jack episode It39s a Juliet episode It39s a Ben episodequot is very cool because that tells us we39re still character centric

Click to Make Your 2025 Contribution to Support the MediaVillage Education Foundation

“Lost”: What Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse Had to Say about Their Show (and How it Would End) Way Back in Season 3

Author

Publish date

Channel

Ed Martin

"About That with Carl Mayer:" Alaina Donnellon (Episode 6) - By Carl Mayer

More Videos:

Click to Make Your 2025 Contribution to Support the MediaVillage Education Foundation

“Lost”: What Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse Had to Say about Their Show (and How it Would End) Way Back in Season 3

Enjoying This Commentary? There's More to Love

Ed Martin

"About That with Carl Mayer:" Alaina Donnellon (Episode 6) - By Carl Mayer

The payment was successful

Cookies