Lostpedia
Register
Advertisement
DEUTEROCANON
This article/section contains information officially created to be part of the Lost mythos
but ultimately rejected. It may be endorsed by ABC, or feature cast members.

Throughout Lost's six year run, the writers considered several storylines that eventually didn't make it on the show for various reasons. These abandoned storylines are listed here.

Abaddon in Season 5[]

Originally, Matthew Abaddon (portrayed by Lance Reddick) was set to become a series regular in Season 5. But Reddick was offered a deal to become a regular on Fringe while guest starring on Lost simultaneously, with his role on Lost still maintaining its prominence:

Lance Reddick: If I think about it too much, I'll get pissed off. When I was cast on Fringe, I was told that I'd be able to continue recurring on Lost. And then, the very first episode that I did on Lost in the middle of Fringe season one — they killed me. So, that was annoying. Don't get me wrong, it was a great episode... But, it was like, 'What the fuck, guys?'.

Reddick further stated:

  • "To be perfectly frank, before I was cast on Fringe, the intention was to have the character [Abaddon] become a series regular and major character in season five," he said. "And then being cast on Fringe just threw a wrench in it."[3]

Annie and Olivia[]

Executive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse stated both Annie and the schoolteacher Olivia had importance to the endgame in the DVD commentary track for "The Man Behind the Curtain". They described Annie as having a "huge part" to play in upcoming storylines stating: "Annie is going to prove to be very significant in Ben's life," and that even the island's volcano will be "slightly less important than Annie, but still seismic".

Also, the same DVD commentary alludes to the idea of the swing-set's importance, where Annie gave Ben their dolls to stay together forever. The "The Man from Tallahassee" depicts the swing-set originally, where Sayid was chained to it as a prisoner. This was symbolic.

  • "That idea of this was just a beautiful, sweet childhood moment. But later, when he moves into New Otherton and sort of takes it over and becomes the leader, that swing set is no longer used for kids, because they can't have kids. The only purpose that it would serve is to restrain somebody. I thought that was a nice touch."

The Season 4 episode "The Economist" teases the swing-set further with Miles commenting on it.

However, they amended their statement on Annie in the March 11, 2010 podcast. This was stated during the final season during the last batch of episodes; plans evidently changed. Additionally, Samantha Mathis was never asked to reprise her role as Olivia.

Background survivor storylines[]

Richard & Marybeth: According to the original script, a couple named Richard and Marybeth would be introduced as two survivors in "Confidence Man". Richard was 50s, and Marybeth was 40s. Marybeth was to have an asthma attack, and her husband Richard would then pillage Sawyer’s stash to find her asthma inhaler. But this storyline was changed, giving Shannon an asthma attack, with her brother Boone attempting to pillage Sawyer's stash.[1]

Arthur & Sullivan: Sullivan, introduced as a red herring in "Solitary", and another new character Arthur, were supposed to accompany Locke in discovering The Hatch. This was changed in favor of Boone, utilizing the main cast over guest stars yet again. This became the genesis for Boone becoming Locke's acolyte and the first major character death of the series.

Nikki & Paulo:

Nikki and Paulo were introduced in Season 3 to be the face of the background survivors who were never involved in any main storylines beforehand. Nikki was supposed to be a solely new character on her own, but they wanted a new male character to emerge from the background cast as well, thus Paulo was invented.

Both were supposed to be part of a longer story arc. One episode would devote flashbacks to Nikki's fictional television show, Exposé, to end with a surprise twist (presumably revealing that those "flashbacks" were merely part of a television show Nikki was acting in).

Faced with the negative fan backlash to the two characters' abrupt introduction, however, the producers, already facing declining ratings for the show, decided back in December 2006 to trim down the story arc and kill off the two characters in a single episode.[2]

Ben and Desmond's limited roles[]

Michael Emerson & Henry Ian Cusick

A promotional shot of Michael Emerson & Henry Ian Cusick for Season 3 after they were promoted to series regulars.

At the start of season 2, both Ben and Desmond were characters that were supposed to appear for only three episodes each. Following the extremely positive response to Michael Emerson's and Henry Ian Cusick's performances and characters, both were expanded.[3] Ben appeared in five more episodes that season,[4] and was promoted to a season regular the following year.[5]

The writers decided to bring Desmond back for the finale of season 2 (Official Lost Podcast/February 20, 2007), in which he was also granted centricity and flashbacks detailing his arrival on the Island. For this, his backstory with Penny and Charles Widmore, two characters whose importance to the show grew in the following seasons, was created.

Caesar's role[]

Caesar was originally intended to become a regular in the fifth season, along with Ilana. However, Saïd Taghmaoui could not commit to an entire season, and thus his character was abruptly killed in his fourth appearance. Afterwards, he was offered a star billing in the sixth season, with his character having a big role in the flash-sideways and the series finale, though Taghmaoui once again refused and his character never reappeared after his death in "Dead Is Dead".[6]

Characterization adjustments[]

Claire's surrogate pregnancy: Claire was originally intended to be a surrogate mother for her friends Ruth and Stewart, though at some point between the casting of Emilie de Ravin and the start of production, this was changed to her being pregnant with her own baby. (Before They Were Lost)

Sawyer & Charlie: Originally conceived as a suit-wearing con-man and an older "has-been" rock star, the characters of Sawyer and Charlie were changed to better fit the actors cast in their roles. Sawyer was made more feral based on Josh Holloway's appearance, and Charlie was made a younger "one hit" rock star, based on Dominic Monaghan's age. (Before They Were Lost)

Ana Lucia & Libby: Ana Lucia was originally conceived as closer to Jack's age, in her mid-thirties. She was made younger based on Michelle Rodriguez's casting and age.[7] Libby was originally written to be in her late forties to early fifties, easy on the eyes, amicably maladjusted, and a compulsive liar so good at what she does, most people will not know she is not what she seems.[8] There is evidence of the idea that Libby is a compulsive liar throughout her tenure on the show. But the storyline wasn't developed after they decided to kill the character off, and Cynthia Watros was unavailable afterwards to tell her backstory in flashbacks.

Mr. Eko: Eko was originally a very passive character named Omeka or Emeka, written with The Wire actor Lance Reddick (who later portrayed Matthew Abaddon) in mind to take the role. Because he was unavailable filming The Wire, they pursued Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje. The character morphed into a drug lord who assumed his brother's identity with his casting. He further explained, "Once they saw me on the screen without a shirt, all 6 foot 2 and using a stick beating three guys up, they knew this guy wasn't going to be just a passive priest".[9]

Cindy's death[]

Cindy was supposed to be the crew member whose body Shannon cried over in "Pilot, Part 1". However, this was ultimately scrapped. This later worked to the advantage of the writers, who needed a crew member to tell the Tailies they were flying off course before the crash in Season 2. They chose Cindy as that crew member. [source needed]

Desmond & Faraday in Season 5[]

The season sets up Desmond's reluctant Island return. Faraday was also supposed to have a plot in Ann Arbor, where Pierre Chang was aware of The Purge. A 2008 Comic Con tease of this storyline was shown for fans. One reason given was the cancellation of a second ARG due to the 2008 recession, making the story link unfeasible.

There was also set-up for a different time travel storyline in the Season 4 finale with The Orchid's orientation video. In the video, Chang discusses the Casimir effect of paradoxical time travel. This time travel story element was never introduced into the series, however, after it was addressed.

Desmond never re-entered the main storyline after "316" until "Happily Ever After" in the following season.

Desmond in Charlie's past[]

Season 3: In the lead-up to Charlie's death, there were hints alluding to Desmond's involvement in Charlie's past; possibly even his childhood. The nature to this has never been explained or addressed by the producers.

Given the time-travel element to the storyline, it is generally assumed Desmond may have been linked to Charlie via time-travel.

Several episodes in the season detail this:

  • In "Flashes Before Your Eyes", Desmond first meets Charlie busking in England, sometime before the Island in the 90s. His consciousness has gone back, and he tells Charlie they'd been on an Island.
  • In "Catch-22", Desmond tells the monk, "One might argue God may not have asked Abraham to sacrifice his son in the first place." The monk replies, "Well, then it wouldn't have been much of a sacrifice anyway". This ties into Desmond's storyline with Charlie, who he must sacrifice.
  • In "Greatest Hits", a flashback to Charlie's childhood learning to swim is shown. In the scene, a voice of a child saying Desmond's name is heard.
  • Also in "Greatest Hits", a flashback to Charlie's first meeting with Claire has him joke, "First plane crash?" and Claire responds "What gave it away?" He replies, "Ah, you can always spot the newbies".
  • Similarly, the finale of Season 3, "Through the Looking Glass: Part 2" implies the musician who programmed the signal jammer's code was Charlie himself. Bonnie gives Charlie a look of familiarity. (It's also not explained how Bonnie asked what Charlie's name was, but later addressed him by it without him saying it.)

The implication of a then-yet uncovered link to Charlie's past via Desmond sparked several theories, though none can be considered abandoned as they have not been officially corroborated by any member of production.

Season 5


Fanon
(Fan created content. Distinct from hoaxes and parodies)

Because the writers' choose a father/son Biblical allegory in "Catch 22", a popular fan theory ignited that Desmond was Charlie's father via time travel means. The idea regained popularity in the first half of Season 5.

  • In the episode "The Lie", Simon's Butcher Shop is located in Los Angeles. Charlie Pace's father, Simon Pace is a butcher. While he is from Manchester, his wealth and status at this point after the Oceanic 6 rescue are unknown. The Butcher Shop is the locale for Ben to store Locke's body inside. This alludes to Charlie's story being unfinished, but the storyline never developed.
  • In the episode "Jughead", Desmond and Penny become parents to a son named Charlie Hume, born in 2005. He is named after Charlie Pace who drowned in 2004.

However, Desmond never joined the others on Ajira 316 to time travel to 1977 with his son Charlie. His storyline never developed further at all in Season 5 for unknown reasons, and he was never reintroduced in the main storyline until the following year in the Season 6 episode "Happily Ever After".

Eko's path[]

Eko & Charlie Together

Charlie's acolyte role for Eko would have been expanded.

The producers intended to have Mr. Eko on the show for at least four seasons, in which he would have discovered his spirituality and represented another spiritual force on the Island, playing a major part in the show's overall story and mythos. They had to write out the character after Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje decided to move out of Hawaii following the death of his parents and dislike of living in the area.[10][11]

After his departure from the show, some of the elements from his arc were moved to Locke's and Desmond's. For Season 3, Desmond's psychic visions were originally planned to be Eko's. This is where Eko would foresee Charlie's demise. Originally, the psychic visions were spiritual in nature, but were reworked to be time travel-oriented with Desmond. Akinnuoye-Agbaje's decision to leave left the writers with a feeling of uncertainty with Charlie's storyline in Season 3 as a result, because the two characters had formed a relationship in Season 2. This led to bringing Desmond back full-time.[12][13]

The storyline is teased in Season 2. Eko's precognitive ability was first alluded to as a storyline in his second centric episode "?"; he receives a dream of the deceased Ana Lucia. She appears ghostly pale, with visible gunshot wounds to her abdomen. The scene occurs after her death scene in "Two for the Road". But Eko would not have foreknowledge of her death or gunshot injuries unless he became informed of this off-screen. But as the audience finds out later, the dream evidently precedes his discovery of her gunshot-wounded body inside The Swan.

Akinnuoye-Agbaje was also in talks to return for the series finale, but the producers could not meet his salary demands.[14]

Freighter folk individual flashbacks[]

Prior to its shortening due to the writer's strike, Season 4 was supposed to feature three more episodes, focusing on the science team's members Daniel Faraday, Miles Straume, and Charlotte Lewis.[15] After having their individual centric episodes cut, the trio shared a centric episode with non-main characters Naomi Dorrit and Frank Lapidus. ("Confirmed Dead") Later, Miles' and Daniel's full flashback episodes were moved to Season 5, while Charlotte's past was explored through dialogue and time travel.

Jack's death & Kate's role[]

Michael Keaton Image

Keaton was in talks for the part of Jack when it was a one-off part.

In the show's original draft, the character of Jack was intended to be played by Michael Keaton, and he was supposed to be killed by the Monster in the Pilot. The role of the survivors' leader would then be taken over by Kate, who was conceived as a woman in her late twenties/early thirties whose husband was in the tail section. However, the studio executives expressed disinterest in this, guessing that the audience would feel betrayed by investing in a main character, only for him to be killed.

However, once these changes were incorporated into the script, Michael Keaton backed away from the offer, not wishing to take on a full-time television role. Subsequently, Matthew Fox auditioned for Sawyer, but the producers instead casted him for the role of Jack, with the pilot dying in the first episode and some of the ideas originally intended for Kate's character moved to a new character, Rose, whose husband Bernard was in the tail section. (Before They Were Lost)

Jacob's child[]

After being promoted to a main character, Ilana was supposed to be revealed as Jacob's daughter, a plot line eventually dropped by the producers due to lack of time.[16] Instead, she was made a person to whom Jacob acted as a father figure, explaining her emotional reaction to his death. She was killed-off mid-season after recruiting some of the candidates and explaining Jacob's and MiB's plans for them, "once the island was done with her".

Klugh's death[]

Ms. Klugh was originally intended to be the one Sun shot in "The Glass Ballerina". For some reason, likely due to actress April Grace's unavailability, Colleen Pickett was created and killed in her place.[17]

Michael & Ji Yeon's paternity[]

Throughout Seasons 2, 3 and 4, the father of Sun's unborn baby had two explicit candidates: Jin, and Sun's English language teacher she had an affair with, Jae Lee. However, there was also evidence for the possibility that there was either a third father candidate, or the second candidate (Jae Lee) might have been a red herring through an incompatible timeline. The timeline of Jae Lee's suicide in "The Glass Ballerina" is left unclear.

  • In "D.O.C", Juliet reveals her baby was conceived on the Island 53 days ago. This would place the timeline around the time they stopped speaking to each other and broke up, around the events of "...In Translation".
    • Jin was jealous of Sun's relationship with Michael; he believed there was something going on between the two of them. A mutual romantic connection between Sun and Michael is alluded to several times, but nothing was made explicit on-screen.
  • In the Missing Pieces mobisode "Buried Secrets", shot before Season 4, Sun is seen in the same bathing suit she wore during the events of "...In Translation", where she and Michael almost kiss, before they are interrupted by Vincent. This mobisode was a callback to the romantic flair between them in Season 1 that sparked Jin's tantrums.
  • After much speculation about the episode where Michael would return, he reappears for the first time since Season 2 in an episode titled "Ji Yeon".
  • At the beginning of Season 3, in "The Glass Ballerina", a pregnant Sun claims to Jin she followed him on Sayid's risky A-mission op on the Elizabeth sailboat where he intended to mass-kill and take two hostages because she simply "couldn't be without him". In the same episode, a recurring theme is Sun's need to lie. Some have proposed this to be Sun wanting to seek out Michael to inform him about her pregnancy.

In the episode "Ji Yeon", Juliet revealed the affair to Jin. But it is not made clear whether the man referred to is Jae Lee at all due to the conversation Sun and Jin have about it later. In the last flash-forward scene of the episode, Hurley says Ji Yeon looks like Jin after he visits Sun before they visit his grave, Sun makes a strange, doubtful expression.

In "There's No Place Like Home: Part 1" and "Part 2", Sun is carrying Aaron on the freighter. She looks back at the boiler room from outside intently where Michael is situated. She makes a conscious effort to work up the nerve to tell Michael she is pregnant. After the closing moments of the episode, it is left unresolved. In the second half, she does it. Michael's immediate response is awkward, and there is quiet tension between them as he congratulates her.

However, after this, the story thread was dropped entirely in Season 5 & 6, as they evidently decided Jin was Ji Yeon's father. Though the implication that Juliet was speaking about Michael and not Jae Lee as the other father candidate remains.

Outrigger chase[]

In Season 5 episode 4 "The Little Prince", there is an outrigger chase. At the beginning of 2005, Sawyer and the other beach dwellers were time displaced. He formulated a group on the Island, consisting of Juliet, Locke, Charlotte, Faraday, and Miles. They were pursued by another group on an outrigger shooting them. Juliet fired back two accurate shots to subdue her assailants. It sparked many fan theories.

Damon Lindelof admitted the answer could not be given because they already killed off half the people intended to be on the other end of the outrigger by the beginning of Season 6. Some suggest this means that the outrigger chase was intended to be the same people, chasing the other through time travel means, possibly Locke, dead in the future, now mistaken for the Man in Black. In addition, Rebecca Mader stated that if she were to survive Season 4, she was told she would be part of the show until the end, giving credence to this idea.

Romantic pairings[]

Original series outline

  • Sayid was the original choice to have a romance with Kate that would rival her one with Jack's. Elements of this story can still be seen in the chemistry testing scenes of the series' early episodes. Sawyer was chosen instead. Ironically, Sawyer is the character to comment on the original idea by asking Kate what it's like to have them fight over her.
  • Shannon & Sawyer, and Boone & Claire were other romantic pairings outlined. However, neither storyline panned out. Some fans suggest that the David LaChapelle March 2005 filmed promo shoot for the show's UK release teases the initial romance pitch of Boone & Claire. Though promotional material for TV shows are also often intentionally misleading.
  • Sun was to abandon a hostile marriage with Jin in favor of one with Michael. Jin's characterization had not been settled yet. The writers even considered killing him off to set up the romance. However, one writer Monica Macer advocated to keep him, and redeem his characterization. Despite this, elements of Michael and Sun's romantic connection are teased throughout Season 1. A mobisode shot and released before Season 4 was a callback to the storyline.
Jack Kate Ana Triangle

A promotional shoot for Season 2 featuring Michelle Rodriguez (Ana), Evangeline Lilly (Kate), and Matthew Fox (Jack). (promotional still)

Later series ideas

  • Ana Lucia and Juliet were both conceived as possible new love interests for Jack's character to embark a love triangle for his relationship with Kate. They would also serve as a foil for Kate. However, the writers cited a lack of chemistry as a reason for both of these threads being dropped.
  • In Season 2, the producers also teased a romance for Ana Lucia with the most "unexpected" person that would precede her romance with Jack. Neither storyline panned out. It may have been Sayid, based on his behavior towards her in "The Whole Truth".

Rousseau flashbacks[]

Originally, it was reported that Danielle Rousseau, a recurring character in the first four seasons, would have a flashback in the fourth season. However, after she was killed, Rousseau's backstory was instead explored with time travel in the show's fifth season. (Official Lost Podcast/August 2, 2007)

"Tampa job" flashbacks[]

Tampa Job Backstory

Deleted footage from the original second episode of Season 2.

Before being changed to a Michael-centric episode, "Adrift" was written as a Sawyer-centric episode, with a flashback focusing on the "Tampa job," featuring a second appearance by Hibbs and a character played by Jolene Blalock, with whom Sawyer falls in love after meeting her in Florida. These flashbacks were shot, though later removed.

The producers claimed at the 2008 Screenwriting Expo in LA that their extreme dislike for the flashbacks led them to scrap the episode.[18] However, in 2023, Harold Perrineau was interviewed for Maureen Ryan's Burn It Down (2023) book and revealed that his dispute with the producers on the treatment of his character in the wake of his on-screen son's abduction led them to rework the episode to focus on his character over Holloway's.[19][20]

Volcano[]

The volcano set-piece for the series finale was scrapped for budgetary reasons. It was conceptualized as The Heart of the Island. This was reworked as a yellow-glowing cave. It would have explained the origins of the smoke monster as well. In addition, there was supposed to be "magma spewing everywhere" as Jack and MiB face off, due to the forces of good and evil being unbalanced.[21]




References[]

Advertisement