Would it surprise anyone to know that ‘Lost’ was a hotbed of racism?

I watched Lost during its original network TV run. While I still believe the premise of the show was great and some of the backstory episodes were beautifully done, the show went off a narrative cliff in Seasons 2 & 3 and never really recovered. Even back then, we knew that certain characters and actors were being consciously sidelined in favor of Evangeline Lilly, Josh Holloway and, of course, Matthew Fox’s Jack Shephard. The three white leads. Although I would put Terry O’Quinn in there too, there was a lot of focus on his character. It wasn’t even that Damon Lindelof didn’t know how to land the proverbial plane (ha), it’s that he bungled whole seasons and huge plots and storylines. Well, would it shock you to learn that the whole show was a hotbed of racist crap? There’s a new book called Burn It Down: Power, Complicity, and a Call for Change in Hollywood, and the behind-the-scenes stuff on Lost was very bad:

In an excerpt of Maureen Ryan’s new book Burn It Down: Power, Complicity, and a Call for Change in Hollywood published by Vanity Fair Tuesday, actors, writers and others behind the scenes claim racial pay disparities, stereotypes, offensive humor and demeaning actions on the set of the TV series. Lost showrunner Damon Lindelof acknowledged issues on set and partly blamed them on his inexperience and pervasive issues in the industry.

When plans to negotiate for equal pay as a cast fell apart, Harold Perrineau, who is Black, and an unnamed actor claimed the group was divided into different compensation tiers with the top level being held by White actors only.

“That affected relationships,” said the unnamed actor, who Ryan nicknamed Sloan. “A lot of us grew very close,” Sloan said. “The thing that kind of created a rift in the cast was money.”

Perrineau, who played Michael Dawson on the series before he was written off in 2008, also alleges that his White counterparts received more screen time during the show’s first season. “It became pretty clear that I was the Black guy. Daniel [Dae Kim] was the Asian guy. And then you had Jack and Kate and Sawyer [who received more screen time],” he recalled, according to the book excerpt.

A writer on the hit series, which ran from 2004 to 2010, claimed they were told Locke (Terry O’Quinn), Jack (Matthew Fox), Kate (Evangeline Lilly), and Sawyer (​​Josh Holloway) — who are all White — were the “hero characters.”

“It’s not that they didn’t write stories for Sayid [an Iraqi character] or Sun and Jin [Korean characters],” the insider told the author. The writer alleged they would receive feedback including, “Nobody cares about these other characters. Just give them a few scenes on another beach.”

Perrineau claimed that he brought up the issue to a producer and asked why the story was centered around the White character. According to the excerpt, he was told, “Well, this is just how audiences follow stories” because the characters were “relatable.” In one specific instance, Perrineau took issue with the original draft of the second episode of season two because his character showed little concern about finding his kidnapped son. He made the decision to speak up about worries he could be “another person who doesn’t care about missing Black boys, even in the context of fiction.”

He alleged his phone conversation with showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse — on which he was told the episode was not about Michael — ultimately led to his character being written off the show. Multiple sources claimed that following Perrineau’s exit, Lindelof said the performer “called me racist, so I fired his ass.”

“Everyone laughed,” writer Monica Owusu-Breen said of the incident, according to the book. “There was so much s—, and so much racist s—, and then laughter. It was ugly. I was like, ‘I don’t know if they’re perceiving this as a joke or if they mean it.’ But it wasn’t funny. Saying that was horrible.”

[From People]

There’s much more at that People link, and even more here at Vanity Fair, which published the excerpt from the book. It’s so painful to think of what could have been, what kind of stories that show could have told but didn’t because they needed to endlessly film Evangeline Lilly running around in a dirty tank top. I absolutely believe Lindelof said racist sh-t and wrote from a perspective of “how can we center everything on the white characters.” This was not some old-school TV show from the 1970s either – Lost debuted in 2004 and ended in 2010. There are still people who host podcasts about the show and do big rewatches and talk about Lost as if it was an important cultural moment of the early 21st century.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

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95 Responses to “Would it surprise anyone to know that ‘Lost’ was a hotbed of racism?”

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  1. Lexilla says:

    He doesn’t owe it to anyone, but given what he and his daughter have gone through in Hollywood, Perrineau’s story is the one I’d want to read.

    • Flower says:

      Aurora’s story is TRULY shocking.

      Did anyone ever get charged ?

      • JP says:

        DA declined to press charges, citing delays in reporting and “inconsistencies.” What Lena Dunham did to Aurora Perrineau was unforgivable.

    • Barrett says:

      Perrineau was excellent on the show. I was interested in his story line and invested in all of the storylines. I did not need no white relateable heroes BS arc. I’m mad, I feel the actors were gypped and so was the audience.

      • MrsBanjo says:

        I agree with your overall point but “g****d” is an anti-Roma slur, and it’s concerning that you’re using a slur to make a point about racism.

      • Nerd says:

        MRSBANJO thank you for the information. I hadn’t heard that word in awhile and had no idea it was a slur. Not that I used it often but it was a slang used in my preteens decades ago and I had never even realized the offensive nature of the word. Thank you for informing us and not being mean or accusatory towards the original poster, as they likely were unaware as well. I honestly had to look the word up and was horrified to find the word OFFENSIVE next to the definition.

  2. JP says:

    Maybe Lindelof has genuinely grown since then. His work on the Watchmen mini series was excellent, and featured Regina King and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as primary leads.

    • Kim says:

      People in the business was saying how bad it is too work for lindelof in addition to the race bias stories. This started in “lost” first season. The writers, network, and agents saw how backwards lindelof was before the actors noticed it. But the show was a hit so they couldn’t swap him out.

      Watchmen was his attempt to show he could tell a story with black people.

    • mel says:

      “Featuring” POC actors in a show does not automatically mean you are not racists or even biased fyi. WTF.

      • JP says:

        Did you watch the miniseries? Themes of race were featured heavily in it.

      • Sue E Generis says:

        @JP So Lindelof told a ‘Black story’ to absolve himself, perhaps? He still may regard segregation as necessary – Black people in Black stories, white people in all others.

      • JP says:

        It could be him trying to absolve himself of guilt, maybe it was a preemptively performative gesture. I didn’t get the impression that stories were being segregated, though, especially considering the source material.

    • KFG says:

      He hasnt grown because he really attempted to make the white characters in watchman the center of the show. Regina King just slapped his hand and he wasn’t able to override her.

      • JP says:

        Was there a lot of tension between Regina King and Damon Lindelof? She’s indicated that she wouldn’t return for a second season of the series if Lindelof wasn’t involved.

      • Kirsten says:

        Regina King also worked with Lindelof on two seasons of The Leftovers before Watchmen.

      • JP says:

        There’s also been rumors that Abdul-Mateen will be working with Lindelof again on his Star Wars project.

        I honestly would not be rushing to his defense if I were those two, though.

    • Tanesha86 says:

      “He’s not racist, he hires Black actors” that’s how you sound right now

      • JP says:

        Yeah, the comment was phrased badly, but they weren’t token black leads. It incorporates America’s history of racism into the story, and into the legacy left behind by Moore’s characters, and how it shapes the new characters that were introduced into the miniseries.

      • moi says:

        they always cape for their fellow racists.its so transparent

    • lucy2 says:

      I’d be interested to hear Regina and Yahya’s experience, but even more so the writers and other people behind the scenes on the crew.
      I would HOPE DL has changed, but…how often does that really happen? And it doesn’t change what happened to the people working on LOST.

      • JP says:

        It doesn’t change what happened on Lost, and I don’t love the way Lindelof has responded to some of the criticism, but it either indicates that Lindelof is capable of growth and redemption, or that the toxicity on that set went far beyond Lindelof. Ultimately, it was his responsibility to foster a healthy and safe environment on set, and either he didn’t understand that, didn’t know how to do that, or didn’t care to do that, likely a combination of all three.

      • Debbie says:

        Excuse me but a man who brags, “He called a racist, so I fired his ass” does not sound like someone who “doesn’t understand” his responsibilities around the set environment, or a man who “doesn’t know how” to create a set environment he wants, which reflects his values. This does not sound a wilting flower.

      • JP says:

        I agree, and that’s part of the issue I have with Lindelof’s responses to this. He blames a lot on inexperience, which is valid, to an extent. But, I think there’s this culture where white men with a decent amount of talent are declared to be visionaries, and it leads to this toxic culture where they’re seen as unassailable, and those men start to buy into that narrative. I think that happened with Lindelof and Cuse (Louis CK and Joss Whedon also immediately spring to mind). They lose the ability to reflect on their own behaviors and self awareness. And, instead of looking at the reasons that led a black men to accuse them of being racist (such as their own racist behavior), they fire that man, because how dare Perrineau criticize the genius.

        Lindelof’s case just gives me pause, moreso than those others. Is it possible to break out of that mentality, to grow and mature and to properly take responsibility for your own failings? I’d like to believe so, but I also know enough to know that people are largely putting on a show of growing and learning from their mistakes after suffering the consequences of their bad behavior.

        I’m probably overanalyzing this whole thing, which seems apt since we’re discussing Lost.

      • Deering24 says:

        JP–growth is possible…_if_ the guys in question aren’t scumbags through and through–and there is no sign they ain’t. 😛 One of the reasons Stephen King is a great writer is because throughout his career, he’s made a point to consistently improve his POC/female characters. He got a fair amount of justifiable flack for Miss Abigail being a Magical Negro in The Stand, for example. But he has been able to change because he’s fundamentally a decent person who never bought into white-guy-uber-allies privilege even when he became mega-successful. Guys like Lindelof and Whedon and the Sleepy Hollow guys can’t/don’t change because down deep, they feel they are right in their racist/sexist entitlement–and that their success confirms their biases.

  3. Becks1 says:

    WOW. that is really bad and appalling that they were so open about their racism. I’m glad people are speaking out about it now.

    We watched the whole show….maybe around 2012? So after it was over, I think it took us abotu a month to get through it. It was so bad. I would have been SO mad if I had watched it from the beginning. Premise was great. The idea of “the others” was great. and then it just went downhill.

    the focus on the white characters always bothered me even if I never thought of it in that way before. But Evangeline Lilly was the worst character on the show – she was such an awful person, god I couldn’t stand her – and yet she was the focus of 99% of the episodes. I guess the producers really felt that there had to be a white woman in a tank top running around the island for people to pay attention.

    • Slush says:

      I watched in real time and it was horrible. In addition to the obvious racism of focusing on the white characters, the story wasn’t even coherent. Watching them set up then just completely abandon storylines was infuriating. And the ending? I can’t even get started.

      But after reading this, I’m not surprised. Such a toxic environment would lead to a bad product.

      • Kaye says:

        Writers for Lost: Watch us mess up the story lines and create an ending that everyone hates.

        Writers for Game of Thrones: Hold my beer.

      • Deering24 says:

        Kaye: Creator of X-Files: Hey, give me my due propers for being the first to show how trashing a great longform series is done. 😉

    • Nic919 says:

      I watched the first season but I didn’t keep up after that and then because I went on the television without pity website, I saw that later seasons were being heavily criticized.

      I am not shocked that the non white actors felt excluded because they were already doing that in the shows that I did watch.

      • JT says:

        I agree with everything NIC919 said. I stopped watching Lost midway thru season 2.

    • North of Boston says:

      JJ Abrams was involved on that show too, and I look at what went on with his take on Star Wars, with the marginalization of POC following the idiotic pushback from online-troll bigots and I wonder if there wasn’t just a hive of bigot-bros in the Lost TPTB.

      I kind of recall other stuff swirling around that crowd on other projects, JJ’s Star Trek films, I think Orci (Sleepy Hollow) was in that crowd as well. How many great stories, performances, careers were tossed in the trash bin by these guys?

      • Deering24 says:

        Sleepy Hollow’s destruction was particularly bad. The new showrunners made no secret they hated the WOC lead and the interracial romance between her and Ichabod.

      • BQM says:

        John Boyega’s defense of Abrams still baffles me. Last Jedi had its structural flaws but Rian Johnson tried to introduce other POC like Rose. Abrams completely marginalized her, and Finn, really, in Rise of skyWalker. Especially abhorrent given the hate Kelly Marie Tran dealt with after LJ. Abrams is the one who went all in on Rey and kylo, making them endgame, to the detriment of Finn. But Boyega defends him and is lukewarm about Last Jedi. I know some people blame Kathleen Kennedy for the SW debacle but I can’t believe Abrams wasn’t behind a lot of the problems. Including the treatment of the minority characters.

    • LynnInTX says:

      I watched Lost from the beginning, and I gave up over halfway through (season 4 or 5). It just got so, so bad. I’ve never finished it, and when I read the series ending episode spoilers, it just confirmed my choice not to go back to it.

      Evangeline/Kate was awful – both as a character and an actress – and I got to the point that I despised the focus on her. I got sick of the focus on Matthew Fox/Jack as well; I wanted more episodes on everyone relegated to the background.

      I wish I could say that I am surprised by this news, but it seems to fit with all the other news that has come out over the years about how messy and awful the set was there.

  4. Nubia says:

    Surprise said no one. I don’t understand ‘unnamed’means he was not acknowledged in the credits?

    • Becks1 says:

      No it means they asked the author to not use their real name.

      • Nubia says:

        But they say unnamed and then name them in the same breath? ‘When plans to negotiate for equal pay as a cast fell apart, Harold Perrineau, who is Black, and an unnamed actor’…?

      • Becks1 says:

        ……..They’re two different people. Perrineau is named, he’s not the unnamed actor. There is another actor who is corroborating his story.

    • Steph says:

      @Nubia, the person they are calling Sloan is the unnamed actor. It’s not the actor’s real name.

  5. ThatsNotOkay says:

    Hers the real skinny:
    https://twitter.com/OKBJGM/status/1663562448878866433

    Yeah, even worse than reported. And apparently not isolated events for either man on their various shows. I do hope they can learn from what they did to others and MAKE REAL AMENDS. Lindelof? Maybe. Cuse? From his PR flack’s responses? Not so much.

  6. Eurydice says:

    Well, it kind of was an important cultural moment, in that a good part of the country was watching it and talking about it. OTOH, it was hugely frustrating because the plot was all over the place and didn’t seem to lead anywhere. Even that wouldn’t have been a problem for me if the “hero” characters were at all interesting, but they were generic and Evangeline Lilly couldn’t act her way out of a paper bag. I was much more interested in the secondary characters, but there didn’t seem to be a coherent plan for them, so I finally stopped watching.

    • michyk says:

      Agree with everything, Eurydice. I watched it in real time til the end, and it was sooo frustrating, for all the reasons you say. I remember being so interested in sayid and sun & Jin, and having to watch yet another Kate episode. And Lilly was such a bad actor. I didn’t know anyone who liked the character, so I never understood why they kept showing her.

      But, it was important in terms of how television was made and how stories were told. Before lost, one hour dramas were almost all episodic. Lost really pushed the season long story arc, and it changed how television was made. Season long arcs we’re told before of course, but they weren’t always successful they definitely didn’t last as long as lost.

      It sounds like such an awful workplace. I’m glad people feel they can finally come forward and share their experiences and call out their abusers.

      • Deering24 says:

        “Season long arcs we’re told before of course, but they weren’t always successful they definitely didn’t last as long as lost.”

        Correction–X-Files lasted way past its sell-by date, and it had infamously complicated series-long arcs that never added up to anything.

  7. pyritedigger says:

    The show squandered its potential and was a hot mess narratively. The writers were not as clever as many of the viewers and they should have just chosen one of the good fan theories of how everything tied together instead of the ending they chose that explained nothing and was so bad.

    Josh Hollway’s Sawyer was so incredibly sexy they needed to keep him as a lead and push Matthew Fox and Evangeline Lily back into the second tier. I watched that show in no small part for Sawyer.

    • SarahCS says:

      Also very much here for Sawyer. Sigh.

      I watched in real time for I think the first two seasons then in the UK it went onto Sky/satellite back when a lot of us paid our tv licence and just watched what we got there. Someone gave me a bootleg copy of the next season but I gave up about halfway through. The initial premise that seemed to be we’d get to know all these people quickly went out of the window and the show was poorer for it. It got boring.

      Hearing how awful it was to work on for so many of the cast is atrocious. Good that it’s being called out I guess.

  8. Jais says:

    I only watched the first few seasons but I remember being really upset when Walt lost his son. And it was never really addressed. Did they ever explain what happened to the kid?

    • Flower says:

      The actor that played Walt had a massive growth spurt between seasons and they didn’t address it. Just literally carted him off on a boat.

      • Eurydice says:

        They could have addressed it. That island was so weird, they could have explained anything away.

    • Jais says:

      Wait, sorry Walt was the son! And yes, @flower, he was carted away in a boat but the dad wasn’t. And his dad was yelling his name over and over. He’s a good actor bc I can tell you this was literally one of the only standout memories I have of that show.

    • Colleen says:

      In the plot, Walt ends up back on the Island, helping Hurley and Ben run it.

  9. Chaine says:

    I never forgave them for writing Walt off the show just because the actor got taller. Like, you’re putting all the characters on this island where all these strange, supernatural things happen – – to the extent of the audience noticed him gaining a few inches couldn’t you write something into the script to explain it?

    • Flower says:

      Good point – they could have easily written in some magical regenerative powers. I mean John Locke literally started walking and they had tales of Cain and Abel fighting each other on the Island.

      The whole thing was a mess.

    • Eurydice says:

      Lol, I just posted the same thing above – sorry I didn’t read your post first.

    • Ace says:

      They just didn’t want to bother writing a storyline for anyone that wasn’t their central group of white actors. If there had been a white child who had a growth spurt they would have come up with an explanation, but it was more important for them to write a story about how Jack got his crappy tattoos.

  10. HeyKay says:

    No surprise to me.
    That entire show was a hot mess. I’m certain the behind the scenes was terrible.

  11. Kim says:

    At the time there was a lot of fighting about “lost”. You had the network and you had the TV crew. The TV crew even had factions. Lindelof and someone else had final control over a portion of it. That’s why the story/show was weird. The network would stay “you got to use this idea” and lindelof and his people would then do the next scene their way. Thats how some characters got more screen time but then the story was stupid.

    Lindeloff and Co cannot land a plane. They can’t finish strong.

  12. Kim says:

    I want to speak up for Evangeline Lilly character. Her character was suppose to be the star. She was suppose to be the lead for magazines and commercials.
    Yet the show didn’t want to pay her and trashed her in the press. It was weird.

    They made her character the one to progress the show yet didn’t like the character or her.

  13. girl_ninja says:

    I watched about half of the first season and while compelling I was over it pretty quick. Evangeline was a charisma vacuum and Matthew was boring and weepy and Hollaway was sexy as f!ck but his wink and a smile acting annoyed me. I really did want to know more about the other nonwhite characters on the show.

    Some white people really think if they invite you to dinner that you should be happy to sit at the kiddie table and have chicken nuggets instead of steak. It’s so disrespectful.

    • Eurydice says:

      Yes, I thought Naveen Andrews and Daniel Dae Kim were so much sexier and interesting than Matthew and Josh.

      • michyk says:

        Eurydice, we are on the same wavelength today! Totally agree with everything you say. And Sayids storyline was one of the most compelling and interesting m especially given the time period. Nareen Andrews was one of the best actors in the show.

      • LynnInTX says:

        Eurydice – YES. I kept watching for way too long just for those two.

      • MsGnomer says:

        +3 Daniel Dae Kim and Naveen Andrews characters were the reasons I kept watching, too.

  14. Ace says:

    If you ever watched the show you can’t be surprised by this, it was obvious who the characters the show cared about were. Lindelof and Cuse believed the hype around them being geniuses, when the truth was that Lost was a buzzy show because its gimmick was interesting and caused a lot of watercooler conversations week to week. They had no idea where it was going, so they just stumbled along and claimed it would all make sense. It didn’t.

    I’m really interested in reading Maureen Ryan’s book, the chapter on Sleepy Hollow is going to be enraging/amazing.

    • lucy2 says:

      I’d be interested in that book too – the Sleepy Hollow situation was BAD.

      • Deering24 says:

        Yeah, Sleepy Hollow’s showrunners did everything but run around in Klan robes. Disgusting.

    • TheOriginalMia says:

      I didn’t realize she was also going to delve into Sleepy Hollow. Another show that allowed racism to destroy itself.

    • JP says:

      I always wanted more details on what happened with Orlando Jones on that show.

      • geoff says:

        Sorry as much as I liked Orlando, if there is only one chapter for Sleepy Hollow, I want the focus on how Nicole ended up in worse health than when she started the show. I want the details of how she and her white co-star Tom Mison both got sick and while he was sent home all the way to England to recuperate, she was forced to continue working until she collapsed on the set. Now she is living with an autoimmune condition for the rest of her life. Fair pay and equitable storylines are important, but the Sleepy Hollow debacle deserves a whole damn book by itself because black women’s pain being ignored needs more than one chapter.

    • Jais says:

      The first season of Sleepy Hollow was fun. And then they did the lead wrong and it was absolute shit. Justice for Nicole Beharie.

      • North of Boston says:

        OMG that show became such a disappointing mess. It was like magically perfect at first and then … WTF, like Fox and Co deliberately were trying to make the stupidest show possible.

        And the ONLY thing that made all the random WTF-ery make logical sense was is you looked at it with the assumption that TPTP were racist bro-dude bigots who wanted to sideline the POC on the show and in real life.

        I would absolutely buy this book just to read that chapter.

        (Also, the Jack – Kate – Sawyer triangle was such a stupid dull storyline with 3 of the whiniest performances ever captured on film. )

      • Chantal says:

        @TheOriginalMia and @Jais.
        +1

  15. TheOriginalMia says:

    I felt physically ill reading that excerpt last night. It was just too much. I had to find something light to rid my soul of that crap. I truly felt for the everyone who came forward to tell their stories. I believed every single person who recounted how racist and petty and retaliatory that set was. Unsurprisingly, the set atmosphere reminded me of the behind the scenes of Buffy/Angel.

    As a black woman, I feel awful for not abandoning that show when they did sideline Michael and Walt. I remember having discussions about how awful it was that Michael didn’t seem to care that Walt was gone. It made me dislike the character, and here we have Harold saying that he wanted that changed, so the viewers weren’t left with that very impression. I haven’t watched a single rerun of Lost since it ended. It took days for me to get out of the funk I was in when it ended. 6 years of watching that crap. I decided then and there to never again waste my precious time on a tv show that didn’t bring me joy.

  16. JP says:

    When did it come out that Matthew Fox was abusive and violent? Was it before or after the show ended?

    • Colleen says:

      I don’t remember if there were rumblings before LOST ended, but the bulk of it came out after the show ended. Pretty sure his castmates didn’t exactly enjoy working with him either.

      • JP says:

        I wonder how much slack and accommodation was given to him throughout the series. I only ever remember Dominic Monaghan speaking up about Fox’s behavior.

      • Colleen says:

        @JP All of the slack and accommodation lol.

        Imagine if Michael Keaton had ended up playing Jack and died at the end of the pilot like originally planned.

    • Ace says:

      I think it was after but there were rumblings before because apparently it was well known he was an ass by people in Hawaii were the show filmed. It’s been a long time but I remember something about him being a mean drunk. There was a lot of talk about production of the show working hard for the stories from the locals not to come out when the show was still filiming.

      • BeanieBean says:

        Oh, you can’t hide anything from people in Hawaii! People know & they talk! Those islands are small & the communities are tight.

    • Becks1 says:

      I had no idea he was abusive and violent. Sometimes I feel like I must live under a rock lol.

  17. CC says:

    Harold Perrineau is so good in everything. He should be a bigger star.

  18. Louise177 says:

    I loved Lost for about 1.5 seasons. It got too complicated and confusing but I still hate watched it. I hated that they dropped storylines. It wasn’t that they were trying to make it a mystery but they really did stop writing stories in the middle of it.

    • Roan Inish says:

      @Louise177 – Me too. I loved the first season+. The back stories were compelling for every character (including for those POC.) I was 100% engaged in all of their stories. It started to slip in the 2nd season and I too hate watched it. The ending was an ill thought out mess. So now I rarely watch any series past its third because it most cases the storytelling begins to go south, with the exception of a show like Law and Order in which each week there is a independent story that begins and ends. I don’t want to watch anything with a high concept like Lost, unless they know how they will end from the start. The way Lost meandered and forgot the original premise because a certain peripheral character let’s say was liked by the fans and so got more screen time. Remember Michael Emerson as Ben Linus?
      Hearing how awful things were behind the scenes makes me even sorrier I got sucked into it.

  19. AnneL says:

    Wow. I never watched the show and now I am so glad I didn’t. Toxic racism on set and a hot mess in terms of plot lines and endings? This writer (show runner?) didn’t deserve the success he got from that show.

  20. Colleen says:

    It wasn’t surprising, but it was still really painful to read this article yesterday. I was one of those people who was engaged in the LOST community – message boards, podcasts, watch parties with friends, etc. (The mystery aspect spoke to my X-Files-loving heart.) I was even generally satisfied with the finale, even if I thought the last season made no sense. I’m so angry on behalf of Harold, Monica, and everyone else who was treated so terribly. I wonder what would have happened if all of that had gone down in 2020-23 instead of 2004-10.

  21. Eowyn says:

    They turned the Mr. Eko character into a drug dealer, despite the actor Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje not wanting to play a drug dealer, and discussed the character dying by lynching. What else is there to say. Horrifying.

  22. LM says:

    Watched the show with bated breath when it first aired. Season 3 dropped in quality (I think there was also a writers’ strike at the time). They did course-correct though. Nikki and Paolo, cough cough. Finale was a mixed bag, worked well emotionally, but boy, would I have liked some more answers.

    Naveen Andrews was my MVP, and Terry Quinn. And Emerson!

    However, and this will be wildly unpopular given the actual topic at hand, I hated Michael. One of the most annoying characters on the show. Loved Perrineau in Romeo and Juliet, not so much on Lost. However, Michael bringt left off the finale was weird to me.

  23. Sunny O says:

    I stopped watching Lost after season 3.

    Evangeline Lilly and her Kate character were really grating, and the stories silly.

    Evangeline Lilly is a better actress now, IMO, but on Lost she was horrible.

    Lilly played the Kate character like she was constantly sleepy. Was Lilly trying to infuse a dreamy quality into the character?

    I dunno.

    Whatever Evangeline Lilly was doing I found to be very grating.

    Anyway, Lost lost it’s originality. The ongoing racist and toxic environment behind the scenes explains a lot as to why the quality of the show began to suffer and eventually take hold.

  24. DrFt says:

    Isn’t lost the show where the lily blonde actress had a HUUUGE problem acting as the wife of a black man and let it be known to said black actor….???

  25. Deering24 says:

    Hoo, boy. Another good show trashed by racism–though Sleepy Hollow still takes the prize for the new showrunners’ straight-up malevolence in wrecking the terrific main interracial ship.

  26. EastVillager says:

    The only characters I ever cared about were Sun, Jin-Soo, Charlie and Michael so those execs were wrong, wrong, wrong. Also, Naveen Andrews was the hottest man alive on that show.