In a new interview with The Mirror, Michael Emerson stood up for the ending of ‘Lost.’
“I thought it was all great,” the actor started his words. “I thought the writing was smart, as smart as it can be when you’re having to do so many episodes.” He added, “I love the ending. I can’t think of a way in which it would be improved for me.”
In another interview with Radio Times, Emerson again talked about his support for the ending. He said, “Oh, I adored it when we shot it, and I like it even better with the passage of time. I think it’s a wonderful conclusion.”
The actor continued, “I always say, every show dictates its own ending by the form of its narrative, by the way it was constructed. So a show like ‘Lost’ can’t have the same ending as something more linear or conventional.”
“It was a fantasy and an allegory exploding out from the centre,” Emerson also shared. “So to end it, you must bring all the parts back to the centre, I think. At least, it seems to me, that that was what they were attempting to do.”
The actor played the villain Benjamin Linus in the drama about a plane crash, which recently turned 20 years old. The series is getting a new audience on Netflix, as all six seasons were added in August.
Season six of the show said the island was like a cork, keeping bad things trapped. If those things got out, they could cause big problems. Showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse told EW in 2017 that they wanted to end the show with a big volcano eruption, but they couldn’t do it because of budget issues.
Cuse explained, “We were always looking to cannibalise 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.”
In the series finale, the islanders meet again after they die in a ‘sideways timeline’ that is like purgatory. They come together in a church and move on in the last scene. Many viewers thought this meant the characters were dead the whole time. The ending credits showed the plane wreckage from the first episode, which confused people more.
The Emmy-winning series ‘Lost’ first aired in 2004 and ended in 2010. Its main cast included Evangeline Lilly, Elizabeth Mitchell, and Josh Holloway.
