I have no doubt that without a lot of the pointless chases through the jungle and frequent distractions of greater character-centric arcs, supposed mysteries would become clearer – like that “The Incident” causes the pregnancy problem on the Island and the Sickness is an infection of the Dark/Man-In-Black influence. However, would they have any degree of resonance without the character work done throughout the series? Of course not.
In terms of a complete narrative, I’m fine admitting Lost was ultimately about the characters and their relationships to each other and themselves. That’s the story that the series told in its entirety, which means it’s the broadest definition of what Lost was. Yet there are still the pieces of the mythology left scattered throughout the series, nested inside larger narratives, even if the full picture wasn’t presented by the time the story had reached its end.
In the end, I think I have more questions about the mechanics of storytelling than answers about Lost.
I was delighted to learn that certain scenes in Lost consisted of a core that was just enough to satiate a momentary craving. Then I got curious about what lead to those scenes and came to an arc. Then I got curious about that arc and moved on to two other episodes…that lead to a season…that lead to a series.
And that’s a re-watch motivated by pure storytelling curiosity–not an initial viewing lead by the ephemeral high of a mystery show.
Another thing that was made very clear is that the questions I had at the end of the series existed for a reason: the questions I thought were “unanswered” were simply not completely answered.
At the end of my selective re-watch, I had the same questions as I had after my first viewing of Lost, but I also had at my disposal all the context clues from the Island scenes in an easily digestible, linear format. In an attempt to directly address the questions I had at the end of my initial, real-time viewing of Lost, I only needed to use pieces from 22 episodes.
To connect the gaps of the context clues, I used post-series interviews with showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse and series bonus material from the Alternate Reality Game “The Lost Experience” and the Complete Series Blu-Ray pack of delicious extras. All this just seems to reinforce the idea that the storytellers of Lost were living in a time of narrative transition. It’s possible they were just as surprised as the rest of us with the television storytelling environment become more complex, as their show (or possibly because their show) was forced into more plot-based backflips.
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