Kristina Murkett

Don’t let Netflix ruin Lost

It doesn’t suit the digital binge era

  • From Spectator Life
(ABC)

It’s July 2024, and Netflix has decided we have to go back. In honour of the 20th anniversary of the pilot, all six series of Lost have been uploaded to Netflix in the US, and now younger audiences get to experience one of the biggest pop culture obsessions of the noughties for the first time. This character-driven, mythologically-rich, Emmy-winning existential island adventure was once so popular (it averaged between 11 and 18 million viewers a series) that the White House pledged not to disrupt the final season’s premiere with President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address.

I even loved the notoriously divisive finale, which didn’t necessarily resolve many of the metaphysical mysteries

I am, and always have been, a Lost super-fan. I loved its flashbacks (and flashforwards, and flash-sideways); its brazen approach to time travel; its extravagantly high concepts; its ridiculously talented ensemble cast; the producers’ complete and utter refusal to answer any questions without generating more ones.

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