Collider·United States·Saturday, October 31, 2026 at 05:01 PM UTC

10 'Lost' Plotlines That Were Completely Abandoned

Translate

Ryan Menezes

Published Oct 31, 2026, 1:01 PM EDT

Ryan Menezes has written and edited for Cracked.com for 12 years, has written for Mental Floss, and has edited for Listverse and Grunge.com. His longest and most in-depth articles have covered movies and TV shows, with a special focus on how they changed between conception and when they reached the screen. That includes comparing adaptations to their original works, comparing finished movies to their screenplays, and documenting various disasters that popped up during production.

Lost had fewer abandoned plotlines than almost any other long-running show. This claim may surprise you if you’ve heard jokes about how the writers just made it all up as they went along, but that’s actually how most shows are written. Lost, in contrast, not only planned out its final three seasons in advance but also spent its entire run flashing back and forward to tie plots off. Watch any early episode, and you may find that every scene (sometimes every line) will be revisited before the series closes.

So, don’t angrily ask, “What ever happened to Walt?” Walt received an elaborate sendoff and then nevertheless returned to the show four times in four successive seasons. But Lost’s surprising devotion to resolving dangling threads makes the plots that it did abandon all the more notable.

10 Products from another dimension

At the start of Season 2, the characters discover a science station, The Swan, stocked with food from an old research initiative. The food is mostly unbranded, marked only with the logo of the Dharma Initiative itself, but there’s also a commercially manufactured candy bar. “Apollo bars?” says Hurley, confused. “Ever hear of these?” No one has. Later, in the same station, they find a record from a band named Geronimo Jackson. “As an expert in all things musical,” says Charlie, “I've never heard of these guys.” No one else has either. What’s going on here? Where did this candy and band come from?

The answer turns out to be: Nowhere unusual. Flashbacks reveal that Apollo bars and Geronimo Jackson are widely known back in civilization. They may not exist in our world, but they do exist in the mysterious world of Lost, just like Oceanic Airlines does. There was never any reason for the characters to find them unfamiliar — other than some plans the writers may have had but never followed up on.

9 The supernatural "Others"

Early on, the survivors discover that one man whom they presumed was another passenger is secretly an island native who has infiltrated the camp. This guy, Ethan, once he’s discovered, responds with what looks rather like superpowers. He’s able to single-handedly take down multiple opponents and speed away into the jungle while dragging both their bodies. He slips back into the camp unnoticed past guards and kills more people, breaking every bone in his victims’ bodies. It eventually takes a whole team of men with guns to get him to surrender. Later, we meet the rest of the natives, whom the survivors dub “the Others.” None of them are at all like Ethan. With the exception of one single Other (Goodwin, Ethan’s counterpart in a second camp), none of them ever kill any survivors, and none of them show the slightest sign of supernatural fighting skills.

It’s clear that the show had some initial ideas of what the Others would be like before later going in a very different direction. Lost even ended up providing an explanation for why Ethan is so different: He’s the only one of them to have been born on the Island. The only other people we ever meet who were born on the Island are two figures called Jacob and the Man in Black, who have a few powers of their own.

8 Miles can talk to ghosts

Our introduction to character Miles Straume (Ken Leung) shows him working as a medium. We see him talk to an actual ghost, who listens to him and responds by moving some items around in a house. Later, Miles meets Hurley, who also talks to ghosts. Except, now, we learn Miles can’t actually converse with the dead. His power is only to go to human remains and hear the last thoughts the person had right before they died. Flashbacks now show him using this narrower power throughout his life, and the plot finds a surprisingly large number of opportunities for him to do this as the show continues.

This little contradiction is notable because it’s the only true retcon Lost ever had. Everything else, we can explain away, but this? You watch that first Miles scene now and know that the correct way to interpret it is to say that this thing that you’re watching never actually happened.

7 The cave home

Lost starts out as a survival TV show. The characters struggle for water and shelter, and then they stumble on a source of both: a cave system. For a while, half the survivors live in the caves, while the rest stick to the beach, thinking that raises their chances of rescue. One day, fearing an incoming threat, both groups hole up in the caves. The threat turns out to be fake, and all go back to the beach. They never live in the caves again, and they seemingly forget why they ever wanted to.

For a while, this may be because they get access to that Swan station, but then that blows up, people think even less about rescue, and still, no one shifts back to the caves. The writers don’t forget the caves exist (we return there a couple of times in the final season), but it’s funny how the characters do. It's probably because when you film in Hawaii, you’d be wise to shoot the beach as much as possible.

6 The sheriff

The episode of Lost that viewers most often call the worst is a Season 3 one called “Stranger in a Strange Land.” It’s mostly mocked for the flashback, in which a vacationing Jack does some stuff that’s either very boring or very unpleasant to watch, and viewers reasonably choose to forget the present-day storyline. There, we see some aspects of the Others’ society that are not explored further, before or after this. These include the news that their crimes are adjudicated by someone they call “the sheriff,” named Isabel (Diana Scarwid).

We never see Isabel after this. The creators later say on a DVD extra that she’s dead by the end of the season, which only raises further questions. The best explanation for how she died is that she was among the Others killed by dynamite when they came to raid the survivors’ camp during the finale. This would mean, somewhat dubiously, that when the Others sent a small party of kidnappers, they included their sheriff, played by an actress just shy of 50 years old, whom we do not actually see during the scene.

COLLIDERInteractive

Long-range scan active

Movies/Science Fiction/Survival Assessment

Collider Survival Assessment Which Sci-Fi World
Would You Survive? 8 questions · 5 worlds · one honest verdict

Five of the great screen futures, and not one of them is built for comfort. Answer eight questions about instinct, loyalty and the line you would cross, and the scan will tell you which one you would still be standing in. Worlds in range

▦︎The Matrix

◈︎Mad Max

◑︎Blade Runner

▲︎Dune

✦︎Star Wars

Begin the scan

Signal lock01 / 08

Question 01 of 08INSTINCT

The world as you know it ends overnight. What is your first move? No wrong answer. There is a wrong hesitation.

AFind out what is really going on behind all of it BGrab a vehicle and as much fuel as you can carry CKeep your head down and show up to work anyway DLearn the rules of whoever is in charge now EFind other people and start organizing