The two-part series finale of Lost, as it originally aired in 2010, checked in at a grand total of 104 minutes, thanks to ABC super-sizing things a bit from the standard 42-ish-minutes-per-episode for an hour-long drama. The version of the two-part finale that appears on Netflix, however, comes in at a sleeker, non-super-sized 86-ish minutes, with a number of scenes nuked from existence. (Please acknowledge the restraint I showed here by not making an awful “eaten by the smoke monster” joke.) Reddit, as Reddit tends to do with these kinds of things, has been on it. And now, so is Lost showrunner Damon Lindelof, who provided this statement after Entertainment Weekly brought the missing scenes to his attention.
“I am totally befuddled by all this. Love it or hate it, the finale that aired is the definitive finale and to alter it in any way defies explanation. Something tells me that this isn’t Netflix’s fault … that it’s an honest mistake and something got miscommunicated — I seem to remember ABC had to make an edit for rerun airings that tightened the show into ‘format’ (42 minutes to accommodate commercials), and somehow that [version] mistakenly got sent to Netflix. This sometimes happened with our finales — we’d ask for extra time and ABC would agree to air, but then we had to do another tighter version for subsequent airings and/or international [markets]. We usually left these (painful) cuts to the discretion of our editors… but as the show lives on in DVD form and on Netflix, there is ZERO reason to have the shorter version out there.”
According to EW, both ABC and Netflix are looking into exactly what happened and why. Netflix’s policy, apparently, is to only show the version provided by the rights-holder, so maybe Lindelof is right and someone at the production company accidentally sent over the version that was shortened for reruns instead of the full-length one. Or, maybe — just maybe — the production company sent over the full 104-minute and the missing 18 minutes were actually eaten by…
No. I’m not going to do it.
I refuse to.
I can’t.
I…
I…
Maybe they were eaten by the smoke monster.
Dammit.
(Via Entertainment Weekly)
