PaleyFest 2014: Lost 10 Year Reunion Panel Recap

It’s been ten years since the show’s introduction to the world and it is only right for the world to go back to celebrate the world of Lost.  This year’s panel was moderated by comedian Paul Scheer (The Hotwives of Orlando) and featured writers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse. Also sitting on the panel were Josh Holloway (James ‘Sawyer’ Ford), Jorge Garcia (Hugo ‘Hurley’ Reyes), Yunjin Kim (Sun-Hwa Kwon), Ian Somerhalder (Boone Carlyle), Maggie Grace (Shannon Rutherford), Henry Ian Cusick (Desmond Hume), and Malcom David Kelley (Walt Lloyd).

It was announced that this panel was the fastest selling panel in PaleyFest history. Also, the show’s cast and crew was featured as panelists for PaleyFest in both its first and final seasons.

After a brief introduction, the audience was shown the full season one episode “Exodus, Part 1,” which was the first part of the two part season finale.

During the panel, Lindelof and Cuse both acknowledged the fans’ requests since the series’ end for answers to certain mysteries of the Lost mythos, but nothing major was really revealed.

Panel highlights:

• During casting, there was no script yet so Kim had read for Kate’s character and from there the character of Sun was made for her. Which lead to the addition of the character of Jin.  The same went for Garcia and his character Hurley, while he originally read for Sawyer.
• The original plan was to advertise heavily with Jack Sheppard before the premiere and then kill the character at the end of the pilot episode but studio executives explained that if they did that, the audience would not be able to trust or make an emotional connection with any of the characters from that point on.
• When asked about the cast’s reaction to reading the finale episode, Garcia points out that his reaction was filmed for the DVD special features (which you can watch here).
• Before the writers received the negative fan reactions to characters Nikki and Paulo, they had already disliked the characters themselves and were trying to write them off of the show by the time filming resumed after their winter hiatus.
• On the ending, Cuse emphasized that everything on the Island really happened and that the plane shots at the end of the episode were just the only shots they had of the beach front.  The network wanted there to be a buffer between the ending of the episode and the commercial break and their solution was to show those shots.
• The writers do know the full story of the  outrigger that shot at Sawyer and his group in season 5. Lindelof revealed that the scene was indeed written but maybe it will come to light in the future as a charity auction.

Throughout the panel, the cast and crew joked around with each other – the main point being how much Kelley has grown up since the beginning of the

show (he was only 14 years old when he shot the pilot).  A major consensus is that Lost was a show that changed the way television shows were seen and in turn, gained a large, loyal fanbase that will continue to celebrate the story of the Island.

All photos copyright Michael Kovac for Paley Center for Media