'Lost': 5 Things We Learned From Writer Javier Grillo-Marxuach's Epic Blog Post
Just when you thought that you’d read everything there is to read about Lost, here’s a new piece to obsess over. Lost writer and supervising producer Javier Grillo-Marxuach has posted an extensive and exhaustive account of his time on the hit ABC serial on his personal blog, The Grillo-Marxuach Experimental Design Bureau. Billed as his “Lost Will and Testament,” the article provides a fascinating window into the creation of the show, exploring some of the myths and, perhaps, reinforcing others.
Grillo-Marxuach was among the brain trust that joined the fledgling project after it had been greenlighted by ABC based on an outline, but before a frame of film had been shot. Besides helping shape the show’s mythology, he also wrote several defining Season 1 episodes, including “House of the Rising Sun” (the first Sun and Jin-centric episode) and “All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues” (which launched the saga of Jack and his father). After surviving a first-season culling of the writing staff, Grillo-Marxuach stayed with the show one more year before departing of his own accord, moving on to work on NBC’s Medium, ABC’s Charlie’s Angels reboot, and, most recently, Syfy’s Helix. Packed with behind-the-scenes revelations, his epic post is essential reading for any Lost viewer, even those who fled the Island before the show’s controversial series finale. Here are five details we’re (re)obsessing over.
Nobody Knew What Was in the Hatch
Throughout the piece, Grillo-Marxuach makes it clear that while the Lost writers maybe didn’t have an exact destination in mind, they did have a road map from the very beginning. And the Hatch was an essential part of that, an idea that they came up with at their very first meeting. However, deciding what was inside the hatch took a little longer to figure out. The writers proposed and discarded such ideas as the entryway to a bio-dome where the inhabitants could only breathe carbon dioxide and the conning tower of a nuclear submarine. Eventually, showrunner Damon Lindelof hit upon the button-pushing solution that brought Desmond into the Lost-verse… for better and for worse.
Damon Lindelof Almost Quit the Show
Not long after directing the show’s feature film-quality pilot, Lost’s co-creator, J.J. Abrams, left to helm an actual feature film: Mission: Impossible III. That left Lindelof solely in charge of a highly-ambitious, exceedingly-difficult series and Grillo-Marxuach saw how the demands of the job quickly took their toll. Midway through the first season, he brought on Carlton Cuse to provide him with such much-needed assistance. Then, one afternoon, he bid farewell to the writers and walked out of the office, giving no indication when (or if) he’d be back. One week and a trip to a desert spa later, he was back at the helm.
David Fury Didn’t Want to Put Locke in a Wheelchair
Although he earned an Emmy nomination for writing one of Lost’s best hours, the Locke-centric “Walkabout,” David Fury balked at the episode’s climactic twist: when it’s revealed that Terry O’Quinn’s alter ego was in a wheelchair in his pre-Island life. Fury’s original script simply depicted Locke as a meek, put-upon nobody. Lindelof came up with the wheelchair idea, but Fury continued to fight for his original vision. Eventually, he agreed to rewrite the script and, in the process, created the episode that cemented Lost as a pop culture phenomenon.
Walt’s Totally Psychic… and the Polar Bears Are Proof
According to Grillo-Marxuach, the show’s creative team and the network clashed throughout the first season over how science-fictiony Lost could get, specifically in regards to young Walt’s mental abilities. Case in point: those rampaging polar bears. ABC wanted a practical explanation for their existence on the Island (which it eventually got — the DHARMA Initiative brought them there to use as subjects in their research into electromagnetism), but Abrams and Lindelof built an alternate explanation into the episode, showing Walt reading a comic book that has a polar bear in it, suggesting that his psychic powers willed the beast to life. To this day, Grillo-Marxuach maintains that, in his own mind at least, Walt has psychic abilities.
The Island Isn’t Purgatory, So Stop Asking
It’s a question that Grillo-Marxuach says he’s heard over and over again and his answer is unequivocal: “It was never purgatory. It will never be purgatory.” Even in light of the series finale — the first and only episode of Lost that the writer says he watched since he left the show in Season 2 — he’s adamant that this explanation is the correct one. Of course, then he goes and closes out that answer by saying “Go with God.” C’mon, Javier… is that another clue?
Renew your Lost obsession by streaming the entire series on Netflix. And visit The Grillo-Marxuach Experimental Design Bureau for Javier Grillo-Marxuach’s non-Lost related musings.
