To start with, I want to say I firmly stand by the ‘Lost’ finale and thought they did a surprisingly good job with the end of that show, and I know that is not the majority opinion, and there are going to be plenty of people who disagree with any sentiments I share about enjoying the ‘Lost’ finale here. Alright, with that out of the way, some new facts have come to light in regards to the ‘Lost’ finale, which I found fascinating, and which I think, explain a few things about the ending (the island aspect anyway). Now for those haters out there, do not get your hopes up, this is not going to change your minds about the ending, as it does not answer all those questions that you think ‘Lost’ somehow owed you answers to, or change the whole side-ways purgatory storyline, so if you’re looking for that, I apologize.
Instead, this explains why the heart of the island was a random cave that we had never seen before on the show (that seemingly came out of nowhere), and why some aspects of the heart of the island storyline felt a little off (in my opinion at least). So apparently the heart of the island, the proverbial “cork” holding in all the darkness of the world (and also the creator of the smoke-monster) was supposed to be the island volcano, which makes SO MUCH MORE SENSE now that we know about it. They even hinted at it during one of the Dharma flashbacks. And metaphorically, when it is about to “erupt” that is when the island is about to fall, the smoke-monster is about the win, it just makes so much more sense if it was a volcano than just a cave about to release the darkness. That’s is why there are all those earthquakes and rock-slides in the finale. It’s all based on the volcano idea that got carried over.
So here’s is what happened to the volcano according to Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindeloff. Check out the video below, and then read their quotes here:
According to Cuse:
“We were always looking to cannibalize anything on Hawaii to aid in the visual storytelling of the show. We also thought of the island as a character on the show, so we were always looking for things that would give it more personality….it was something we banked and thought we could use downstream.”
Lindeloff went on to talk about the concept of the volcano in the series and how it would play in the finale:
“The question was always, how do you basically visualize and dramatize the idea that the island itself is all that separates the world from hellfire and damnation? And the answer was the volcano…The volcano had been dormant for the duration of the series but based on moving into this endgame, the island had become unstable and the volcano was going to erupt. We were going to have lots of seismic activity, and ultimately, there was going to be this big fight between the forces of good and the forces of evil, which ended up in the series manifesting as Jack and The Man in Black, in the midst of magma. Magma spewing everywhere!…It would be visually stunning and really exciting for the audience. After six years and around 121 hours of the show, we had shot literally every part of Oahu that we could for island scenes and flashbacks. So the idea that, for the finale, we could go to this new locale that’s going to look new and different and unique, primal and ancient and end-of-the-world-ish, that would be great.”
Yet sadly, according to Lindeloff, the network got wind of the volcano plans, and deemed it far too expensive:
“ABC was like, ‘Guys, we love you, and we’re letting you end the show; we can’t let you bankrupt the network in the process.’”
So ABC cutting the budget resulted in them having to fall back on the cave, but in their defense, apparently Cuse and Lindeloff spent WAY too much on the Temple set from earlier in Season 6, which is unfortunate because the Temple and its storylines were the low-point of the season for me, and the volcano would have made the island part of the finale that much better (for me, the highlight of the finale was always the side-ways/purgatory part anyways). But still, imagine what could have been.
Would the big fight between Jack and Locke taking place in a volcano have made a difference to you for the ‘Lost’ finale? Or does it not even matter because you already wrote it off as terrible? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below!
Source: EW
