Lost Rewatch: Why It Enhances the Experience

Since Lost first aired, the unlikely hit show has attracted many new viewers through streaming platforms. It built a passionate fan community that continues to this day. Although the show’s lasting impact remains debated, I believe fans who discovered Lost on streaming tend to enjoy it more than those who watched it weekly on ABC. The series seems almost designed for binge-watching.

For new fans to understand the ongoing debate, they needed to know about the pop culture frenzy it created. Some of its biggest controversies might not even seem that significant to viewers today. Many of the least-liked episodes, and the divisive finale itself, show that watching week to week was more frustrating than binge-watching all at once.

Lost Fans Were Extremely Passionate (and Angry) During Its Time on Air

Image via ABC

Lost premiered on Sept. 22, 2004, but about two weeks before that, I began my deployment with the US Army to Iraq. By the time I returned home for good, the third season was set to premiere. I took a job in downtown Pittsburgh, and my first exposure to Lost came from overhearing my colleagues discussing the show. They went on about polar bearsmonsters made of smoke, and “the Others.” To an outsider, it barely made sense, but every Thursday, Lost was all they talked about.

As a geek born and bred, I immediately recognized that Lost was a genre show, which was a rarity on network television at the time. Out of context, the mysteries they discussed made the show seem nonsensical. Nonetheless, I was intrigued by how all that sci-fi and fantasy fit into a series about the survivors of a plane crash trying to escape a deserted island. The only thing that stopped me from immediately seeking out the series and diving in was that — for all the passion — everyone who talked about Lost seemed inordinately angry at the show.

Lost Season 3 began in October 2006, late in the Fall TV season, and after eight episodes, the series went on hiatus until February 2007. While I didn’t pick up any spoiler-y details, I distinctly recall outrage from Lost fans because the characters barely “got out of those cages!” Their raw passion intrigued me because any show that could make people feel that strongly had to be worth seeing.

Still, I resolved not to watch Lost until the show was over, to spare myself that frustration. Then, showrunner Damon Lindelof and his co-showrunner Carlton Cuse played a dirty trick.

The Way ABC Canceled Lost Was Unprecedented on Network Television

Going into the Fall 2004 season, ABC was the fourth-ranked network and hadn’t had a hit in years. That changed with both Lost and Desperate Housewives. Naturally, any broadcast network wants its hit shows to continue until ratings fall off, and they end up canceled. Yet, without an end date, the writers couldn’t enter the series’ endgame. This led to a string of questionable episodes, culminating in “Stranger in a Strange Land,” whichwith Bai Ling’s help, demystified Jack Shephard’s tattoos.

In fairness to the producers, the decision to allow Matthew Fox to keep his tattoos was meant to be intentionally incongruous with Jack’s life as a surgeon. In the commentary for the pilot episode, Damon Lindelof teases this story, saying “eventually, for reasons which will be revealed…that tattoo ends up being…crucial” to his character. However, the reception to the episode was so negative that ABC was persuaded to negotiate an end date for the series. Originally, they wanted 10 seasons, and Lindelof wanted to end it after 4.

Unaware of the details, I heard the show was ending. I learned that every season of Lost was available on the relatively new streaming service Hulu and decided it was time to start watching. I enjoyed it so much, I regretted waiting as long as I did. When I got to the “cages” episodes, I was baffled by why fans were so upset by them. One of my favorite episodes was Season 3’s brilliant “Exposé” for how it revisited past moments. Only later would I learn that fans who were there from the beginning hated it.

Jack Shephard back to camera arms out to at his side challenging a group of Others looking at him in the polar bear cage form the Lost series — Stills from the Lost series showing the polar bear cages on Hydra island.

In the same amount of time it took people to watch a single season of LostI caught up midway through Season 5. While long-time fans were hesitant to embrace the time-travel elementI was all for it. I assumed the castaways’ plan to change the future and prevent the crash would be successful, since I believed it was the show’s final season.

Naturally, I was as shocked as everyone else when the finale ended on a cliffhangerand the screen flashed to white. I immediately went online, thinking ABC had perhaps reversed its decision, only to discover there was one more season to go.

Over the next seven months, I finally got the true experience of what it was like to watch Lost. I desperately wanted to know what happened next, so I listened to podcasts, read lengthy blogs, and visited websites that published set photos and other spoilers. Thankfully, the final season of Lost aired in 2010 without interruption.

Nonetheless, waiting a week to see new episodes changed the way I felt about them. Episodes I adore now, like “Ab Aeterno” and “Across the Sea,” were frustrating at the time. After an entire season spent teasing an alternate reality, I was very disappointed that the “Flash-Sideways World” was the kind of purgatory-like existence people had been theorizing about from the beginning.

After the finale, ABC aired silent shots of the crash set as a kind of tribute. Viewers were incensed because they assumed that meant everyone had been dead the whole time.

Binge-Watching Lost Is a Better Experience Than Weekly Viewing

Still, I loved more about the series than I didn’t, so I bought the complete Lost box set as soon as I could. This led to an immediate rewatch of the series with my child, and the second time around, my feelings about the final season changed.

I had time to sit with the revelations of the big mysteries and the narrative resolution. I also recognized the endings were earned more than I gave the producers credit for. The realization hit me that the show itself wasn’t disappointing; watching it week to week was.

For an excellent case in point, it wasn’t that I didn’t like the episode about Jacob, his brother, and the mysterious “Mother.” I was angry that Lost told that story immediately after Sayid, Sun, and Jin received the show’s worst ending. With hindsight, I realized everything from the cages to the final scene in the church was frustrating to viewers because they had to wait for it.

Viewers who stream Lost spend about as much time thinking about the show as they do watching it. Those who watched the show while it aired spent considerably more time during hiatuses and season breaks.

The reason Lost is considered a better series now than when it originally wrapped up its six seasons is that viewers now get the whole story all at once. Even Lost’s darkest episodes play differently as part of a larger whole. The delayed gratification of its mysteries is just tantalizing instead of frustrating.

Viewers who still have questions after the series finale can now turn to the internet and find thousands of words explaining what it all meant. The experience of watching Lost as it aired was unlike anything before or since, but it wasn’t the best way to watch the show.