(Credits: ABC Television)

Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, the creators of the hit television show Lost, which is streaming on Netflix, have revealed the alternate ending for the show, which was scrapped due to budgetary constraints. 

The show’s ending has been endlessly discussed since its release, with the finale remaining one of the most misunderstood episodes of television. However, this was not always the original plan, and there was a clue to their mislaid ideas in the third season.  

In the episode The Man Behind the Curtain in season three, there is a flashback in which viewers see Ben being informed about the island’s volcano by the Dharma Initiative. The show’s creators recently revealed that this was a hint towards their final plan. 

Lindelof and Cuse revealed to EW that they initially thought of including the volcano at the end of the series after visiting Hawaii’s Big Island with their family. Later, they imagined that it would become the site of a climactic confrontation between Jack and the smoke monster, incarnated as John Locke.  

Cuse expanded on this by saying, “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.”

The sixth season of the show created the idea that the island itself was a ticking time bomb and if it were to come to a head, it would cause mass destruction and chaos.

Lindelof explained, “The question was always, how do you basically visualise and dramatise the idea that the island itself is all that separates the world from hellfire and damnation? And the answer was the volcano. The volcano had been dormant for the duration of the series but based on moving into this endgame, the island had become unstable and the volcano was going to erupt”. 

However, the creative duo ran into problems when trying to bring this idea to life, saying, “We were going to have lots of seismic activity, and ultimately, there was going to be this big fight between the forces of good and the forces of evil, which ended up in the series manifesting as Jack and The Man in Black, in the midst of magma. Magma spewing everywhere!”

The idea of a volcanic explosion was deemed too expensive by the studio heads, and the series instead ended with a battle on a cliff as the island fell apart. “ABC was like, ‘Guys, we love you, and we’re letting you end the show; we can’t let you bankrupt the network in the process’,” said Lindelof.