Twenty years is about to complete one of the last series that revolutionized not only television, but the Internet. The Internet forums where users could share every plot, every character, every detail, every principle or… end of the season.
And we're not talking about 'Game of Thrones', HBO's adaptation of the unfinished saga 'A Song of Ice and Fire', written by George RR MartinAt its peak, that series was watched live in the United States by over twenty million viewers. Count the number of people around the world who watched it legally or illegally.
We are of course talking about 'Lost' (2004-2010), the fiction of the ABC channel ('Desperate Housewives', 'Grey's Anatomy') created by JJ Abrams (writer of 'Alias' and 'Luck') whose double pilot episode, filmed in Hawaii, was at the time the most expensive in television history.
The idea came from ABC boss Lloyd Braun: he wanted a mix of 'Survivor', the 'reality show' what it is based on 'Survivors'with the novel 'Lord of the Flies', the film 'Castaway' and the comedy series 'Gilligan's Island'. To JJ Abrams, who later sponsored another science fiction series: 'Zoom' and continuing film sagas like 'Star Wars' and 'Star Trek' accompanied him in that gigantic task Damon Lindelofwhose torment as a screenwriter on 'Lost' made it another fantastic television series, 'The leftovers'.
That double-length pilot episode of “Lost” managed to introduce all of its characters and throw them fully into the conflict: their plane crashes on an island that seems to be ruled by a supernatural force. Over six seasons (at the end of the third, when it was announced that there would be three more to complete the story) and 121 episodes, “Lost” spoke of the tension between science and faith, of the battle between good and evil. Some viewers were left out by the lack of answers to the lingering mysteries, and others were disappointed an outcome that he couldn't please everyone (the same thing happened years later with 'Game of Thrones'). And no: they weren't all dead.
In Spain, 'Lost' never enjoyed great popularity (the first seasons were broadcast on Fox and TVE) until 2009, when Cuatro rescued the series to broadcast it from Monday to Friday after dinner before the premiere of the fifth season, which was not published in our country, and from the sixth and final season. Since 2020 it is available in Disney+but there is good news for those who don't have this platform.
All six seasons of 'Lost' will be available from August 15 Netflix Spain after it was released into the U.S. catalog on July 1. It will be a chance for those who have never seen the series and for those who, as has happened 'Sex in New York' and other legendary HBO series, want to see it again.
In the case of 'Lost,' with so many episodes per season and a story that combines 'standalone' or misnamed 'filler' episodes with episodes that focus on the mythology of the series, it fits both the binge (watch multiple episodes at once) and watch weekly (one episode per week).