'Lost' Writer Pens 16,000-Word Essay on Show's History

'Lost' television writer reflects on the show's history.

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Complex Original

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If six mind-bending seasons of Lost weren't enough to satisfy your appetite for great TV drama, writer Javier Grillo-Marxuach has written one really, really long essay about the show's history.

"The Lost Will and Testament of Javier Grillo-Marxuach" clocks in at almost 17,000 words, and it's a great read for fans and the uninitiated. In it, Grillo-Marxuach describes the writer's room that dreamed up the backstory for the whole series, leaving enough room for the developments and twists that would come. It's a fascinating look at the high-stakes, often challenging world behind the mysterious island.

Grillo-Marxuach basically wants to answer the question that many fans have asked: Were the writers just making things as they went along? And—spoiler alert—his answer is: yeah, pretty much.


First we built a world. Then we filled it with an ensemble of flawed but interesting characters — people who were real to us, people with enough depth in their respective psyches to withstand years of careful dramatic analysis.


Then we created a thrilling and undeniable set of circumstances in which these characters had to bond together and solve problems in interesting ways. Soon thereafter, we created a way for you to witness their pasts and compare the people they once were with the people they were in the process of becoming. While that was going on, we also created an entire 747s worth of ideas, notions, fragments, complications, and concepts that would — if properly and thoughtfully mined — yield enough narrative fiction to last as long as our corporate overlords would demand to feed their need for profit and prestige, and then, just to be sure, teams of exceptionally talented people worked nonstop to make sure the 747 never emptied out.


And then we made it all up as we went.

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