No, they weren’t dead all the time.
The ending of “Lost” has been a controversial topic for TV fans for a decade and a half — and the conversation is resurfacing now that the hit ABC series is coming to Netflix.
The mind-blowing series, created by JJ Abrams and Damon Lindelof, premiered in 2004. It follows a group of plane passengers who crash land on a mysterious island.
The cast includes Matthew Fox, Evangeline Lilly, Terry O’Quinn, Jorge Garcia, Naveen Andrews, Ian Somerhalder, Maggie Grace, Emilie de Ravin, Josh Holloway, Daniel Dae Kim, Yunjin Kim, Dominic Monaghan, Michelle Rodriguez, Henry Ian Cusick, Michael Emerson, Elizabeth Mitchell, Nestor Carbonell, and many more.
In the series finale aired in 2010, all the islanders reunite after their deaths in a “parallel timeline” that turns out to be a form of purgatory. They reunite in a church and “move forward” together in the series finale.
However, many viewers misinterpreted the ending, thinking that the characters had been dead all along. It didn’t help that the end credits showed the wreckage of the crashed plane from the first episode.
But claims that “they were dead the whole time” have been consistently denied by the cast and creators.
Over the years, people involved with the series have spoken out and defended the controversial ending.
Here’s all they said.
Evangeline Lilly
Lilly, who played Kate Austen, discussed the “Lost” finale at Dragon Con in 2018.
“Art is supposed to, every time without fail, turn the question back on you and ask you to look at what you see, listen to what you hear, experience it, and then look at it in the mirror of your soul and figure out what it means to you,” the now-retired actress said.
Elizabeth Mitchell
Mitchell, who played Juliet Burke, told Entertainment Tonight in 2021 that she was happy with the series’ conclusion.
“I think Damon and Carlton (Cuse) were very happy, and rightly so, with the way they were able to tell their story. The way they were able to have a beginning, a middle and an end. There’s something really magical about that,” she explained.
“It didn’t last any longer than it should have. And it ended a lot quicker than most of us would have liked, myself included,” Mitchell added. “It would have been nice to continue exploring Juliette, but I think the way it unfolded had its own little touch of perfection.”
Jorge Garcia
Garcia, who played Hugo “Hurley” Reyes, spoke about the ending with The Independent in 2020.
“It’s true that a lot of people misinterpreted the ending and thought they were dead the whole time,” he said. “I think there were a lot of factors that contributed to that. One of the reasons they thought that might be because after the ending, during the end credits — in the U.S., at least — there was a B-sequence of the original crash site, which was just meant to let people sit back and decompress while they watched the end credits. But some people interpreted that as, ‘Oh, we’ve been at the crash site this whole time.’”
Josh Holloway
Holloway, who played James “Sawyer” Ford, conducted an oral history of “Lost” for Vulture in 2021 with other cast members, producers and creators.
He admitted he was “still confused” by the ending.
“We could have all been dead. Or we could have been in some kind of purgatory. I always thought that was it, and I still think it was more like that,” the “Yellowstone” actor said. “To me, that makes the most sense. Then they kind of got around it with the parallel life at the end.”
Terry O’Quinn
O’Quinn, who played John Locke, told Vulture that he constantly received “negative” feedback about the ending, but that he “didn’t take it personally.”
“As I was making the show, I often thought to myself that if you don’t get it, you’re not paying attention or it’s not your cup of tea,” O’Quinn said. “It was written well enough that if you had just watched and paid attention, you would have understood what they were trying to say. Or at least you could have come to some conclusions yourself.”
O’Quinn also addressed the ending of “Game of Thrones,” which was also panned by critics and fans in 2019.
“I thought they ran out, put on their clothes and left,” he said of the HBO series. “But I wanted to write them a letter and say, ‘Welcome to the club.’”
Michael Emerson
Emerson, who played Ben Linus, admitted it took him a while to understand the series’ conclusion.
“I don’t think I could have explained the ending to anyone at that point,” he told Vulture. “But I had to revisit it later. And then I started to understand what I thought about the ending, and I was able to describe what I thought about the ending more effectively. And then, over time, I got more and more satisfied with the ending.”
In April 2024, the “Fallout” actor showed some love for “Lost” in an interview with Jake’s Takes.
“The ending is great. And that’s the biggest complaint I get on the street,” he said.
Damon Lindelof
Lindelof criticized fan theories about the ending of “Lost” in the Vulture article.
“This idea – they were dead the whole time – negates the whole show, it negates the whole point of the show,” he said. “I’ve come to believe over time – whether I’m right or wrong, that’s where I find comfort – that the people who really think they were dead the whole time didn’t watch the last season of the show, they just watched the finale.”
Carlton Cuse
Executive producer Carlton Cuse told Vulture that they made a mistake in showing the plane wreckage in the final moments of the series finale.
“The problem was that the Lost audience was so accustomed to the idea that everything had meaning and purpose and intention,” he said. “So they interpreted those images at the end as if they were dead. That wasn’t the intention. The intention was just to create a narrative pause. But it was too prescient. It took on a different meaning. And that meaning, I think, distorted our intentions and helped create this misperception.”
Cuse added: “I think there were things we could have done to make it clear that that wasn’t what we were trying to remove. But one of the great intentions of the show was to create intentional ambiguity and give people the opportunity to digest and interpret ‘Lost’ however they wanted if they wanted. And on some level, you know, you can’t have it both ways.”
In 2016, Cuse said in a “Lost” reunion concert, “Damon and I accept that the show is what it is, flaws and all. It’s all part of it. So, at the end of the day, is there anything I would change? The answer is no.”