An eye suddenly opens wide: a man awakes in a tropical forest, where the sounds of nature soon give way to the wrenching screams of the survivors of a plane crash. Scenes follow each other until the pilot closes with a question dropped by one character: “Guys, where are we?”. As one of the creators later recalled, this ending line had to express spectators’ feelings and set the mysterious tone that would characterize the show. In around 40 minutes, Lost‘s debut on September 22, 2004, had already changed the game’s rules.

The show, produced by ABC and resulting from the six-handed writing of Damon Lindelof, J.J. Abrams, and Jeffrey Lieber, is the intertwined past, present, and future story of a group of plane crash survivors who land on an unknown island and slowly try to find their way back home. In 2004 – on the verge of a new social media and streaming-dominated era – there were other popular shows, such as The Sopranos, The X-Files, and Twin Peaks. However, thanks to its combination of subgenres, non-linear timelines, and complex characters, Lost became TV’s first real mainstream phenomenon.

The series posits fundamental dualist questions about good and evil, presence and absence, life and death, and rationality and impulse. It reveals different sides of mankind in both complex and relatable ways. Twenty years later, Lost keeps attracting new generations of spectators and raising questions and curiosities, as demonstrated by the 2024 release of the documentary film Getting LOST on Netflix.

A survival story through wilderness and mystery

Number 815 of Oceanic Airlines should be a regular Los Angeles to Sydney flight. Unless it never reaches its destination. The plane crashes on the shores of a mysterious island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Only a few dozen people miraculously live through the disaster. Among them are Jack Shephard (Matthew Fox), a skilled surgeon, Kate Austen (Evangeline Lilly), a criminal on the run, John Locke (Terry O’Quinn), a paralyzed middle-aged man, and Sawyer (Josh Holloway), a reckless con man. They realize they have landed in an uncharted place far from the usual flight route, so rescue won’t be as quick as hoped.

Collaborating to survive in the wilderness, the group discovers that the island conceals more than meets the eye. A monstrous presence felling trees as it passes, a mysterious radio signal interfering with any attempt at communication, and eerie whispers through the tropical vegetation raise a conviction in the survivors: they are not alone.

From the movie Cast Away (2000) to the many adaptations of Robinson Crusoe (1719) and the novel Lord of the Flies (1954), the general public was already quite familiar with survival stories set on a supposedly desert island. Lost reworked all these insights, along with some from other genres, into an “addictive blend of action, sci-fi, suspense, spirituality, and character-driven drama.”

The beginning of a new era for TV shows

Appreciating Lost’s groundbreaking scope is hard for today’s public. However, in 2004, TVgoers immediately knew they were in front of something new. From a technical perspective, everything, from the 35 mm film to the accurate camerawork and direction style, recalled movie-quality standards without mentioning Michael Giacchino‘s haunting soundtrack. Indeed, the estimated cost of the pilot comes between 10 and 14 million dollars.

Moreover, mindful of the success of David Lynch‘s Twin Peaks and similar to the coeval Desperate Housewives, the show presents a running plot developing seamlessly over 6 seasons. Each episode tends to take on the subjective point of view of one of the characters, exploring their backstory through flashbacks, flashforwards, and flash-sideways. Such an entangled, non-linear structure, combined with mind-boggling mysteries and killer cliffhangers – does “We Have to Go Back” ring any bell for those who watched the show? – created the ultimate mixture to keep viewers glued to their couches.

The show may bear some marks of a bygone way of making TV shows, when a season counted a minimum of 20 episodes and aired every week for at least 5-6 months. Yet the intermingling of tradition and innovation makes Lost a fundamental junction between two TV eras.

A choral narration and group dynamics in Lost

Apart from extras, the first season relies on at least 15 properly active roles, which would constantly increase with the following installments. Each character ideally embodies an archetype of classical tales and receives a psychological insight through dedicated flashbacks. Collectively, they represent a reliable slice of early 2000s life, similar to the way Sex Education‘s characters depict the contemporary teenage universe.

Charlie (Dominic Monaghan) is the heroin-addicted frontman of a British rock duo, inevitably recalling Oasis. Claire (Emilie de Ravin) is a pregnant girl scared to death of being a single mother. Hurley (Jorge Garcia), a lonesome overweight guy, became even more lonely after becoming a millionaire with a lottery win. Moreover, the show experimented by introducing an Iraqi character, Sayid (Nour A. Jazeem) only three years after September 11th, 2001, and a couple, Jin (Daniel Kae Kim) and Sun (Yunjin Kim), speaking in Korean with subtitles for most of the show.

Of course, a soap opera component could not be missing. Although blatant and predictable from the very first episodes, the love triangle between Jack, Sawyer, and Kate contributes to the anticipation.

Leveraging its multifaceted storytelling, Lost vividly portrays the “human condition and how the people around us play such a critical role in our lives.”

Apollonian and Dionysian in the series

Some characters play a more prominent role than others as the show progresses. This is the case, for instance, of Jack and Locke, two charismatic figures sharing leadership attributes. Yet they couldn’t be more diverse. Being a doctor, Jack has a pragmatic and strictly empirical approach to reality: as his last name, Shephard, suggests, he is born to guide others. On the contrary, Locke often acts irrationally and according to a vision that transcends the material realm: he thinks their plane crashed on that island for a reason: they have a mission to accomplish.

This is my destiny! Don’t tell me what I can’t do!
John Locke in “Walkabout” (Season 1, episode 4)

Such divergent attitudes will lead the two characters to collide repeatedly in a confrontation that personifies a dualism that has always marked human action: the one between science and faith, reason and heart, logic and instinct – a dichotomy that German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche theorized with the categories of Apollonian and Dionysian.

When you talk about something like faith and science on a meta-level, it doesn’t matter what the show said. When the show ends, there are still all these questions that are going to exist. Is there always a scientific explanation for everything in the natural world? Is there a God? The show isn’t going to be able to answer that.

One island, many symbols

In addition to characters and philosophical dilemmas, the setting represents one of the series’ highlights. The island where the unfortunate passengers of flight 815 are blocked appears from the very first episodes as a place full of mysteries and threats. Delving into the jungle, the protagonists trigger a never-ending cycle of puzzles, whereby each secret revealed gives rise to other questions. This domino effect, later adopted by many different shows – Dark, Sense8, and From, to mention some – created an addictive net of enigmas, eventually becoming an almost inextricable skein for screenwriters.

All in all, the issues remaining open contribute to enforcing the image of the island as a metaphorical space, the quintessential representation of the unknown and its timeless allure for men. It also symbolizes the antithesis of modernity, a place that obliterates every social structure and regresses people to a subsistence economy. One element connects all the Losties: in everyday life, they had hard times, lived at the fringes of society, or were stuck in toxic relationships and uncomfortable roles. The island gives them a second chance to erase their mistakes and start afresh.

It doesn’t matter, Kate, who we were, what we did before this, before the crash. It doesn’t really. Three days ago, we all died. We should all be able to start over.

Jack Shephard in Tabula Rasa (Season 1, episode 3)

And here comes again the reason-faith contrast: the island is both a treacherous site and a promised land, a frightening yet fascinating mystery, a place of death and rebirth.

Lost‘s disputed finale a impact beyond TV

The impact of Lost on the television industry involves not only production and creative aspects but also the way the audience used to experience TV shows. The hype it generated was unprecedented—so much so that viewers couldn’t help but mull and debate its crazy puzzles and cliffhangers for days, waiting for the upcoming episode.

As the Internet began breaking into everyday use, the emerging social media, online blogs, and forums became the natural landing place for theories and real-time exchanges of opinion of what, by all accounts, was the first worldwide fanbase. In 2008, a group of fans created a Wiki fandom section, Lostpedia, featuring more than 7.380 articles exploring all the show’s inside elements. ABC cunningly fostered this trend by implementing a cross-media marketing strategy. For instance, they launched Lost Experience, an alternate-reality game that engaged fans in a virtual treasure hunt between blogs, TV commercials, and YouTube videos.

As the controversial Game of Thrones finale sparked the uprising of millions of dissatisfied fans on social media, Lost‘s last episode split the audience. Some found it a perfect closure; others blamed it for excessive superficiality. Even today, there is no clear-cut verdict: an all-time masterpiece or a great regret? Either way, the hallmark of Lost on TV history is unambiguous.