The Lost Spinoff Begging To Revive The Golden Age Of Television
It has been 14 years since Lost went off the air, and diehard fans like myself still have unanswered questions we love to discuss, as well as finding ourselves hoping for some sort of revival or spinoff of the classic series. Casual fans of the series might not be aware that the season finale, “The End,” was not the last thing to be filmed in the Lost universe. For those of us who bought the final season on home media, the special features contained a twelve-minute epilogue entitled “The New Man In Charge,” which sets up the perfect Lost spinoff featuring the dynamic duo of Hurley and Ben.
The New Man In Charge
In “The New Man In Charge,” we see Benjamin Linus (Michael Emerson) visit a Dharma warehouse in Guam with the purpose of shutting the site down. Turns out the two men working there have been dutifully packing food pallets for shipment to The Island all of these years. This explains the pallet drop in the second season episode “Dave.”
Even Dharma Was Confused
The men act as a surrogate for the audience, asking Ben to give answers to questions we had asked over the series run. Thankfully Ben has a collection of Dharma training videos. After his visit concludes, Ben then visits Walt (Malcolm David Kelley), who is still in the Santa Rosa Mental Health Institute where both Libby (Cynthia Watros) and Hurley (Jorge Garcia) were once admitted.
Give Us The Adventures Of Hurley And Ben
Ben convinces Walt to leave with him and brings him to a Dharma van waiting outside with the new man in charge—AKA Hurley—inside. Hurley tells Walt that the three of them are going to return to The Island because that is their home, and they still have work to do.
So here we have a ready-made Lost spinoff. In the flash sideways purgatory, Hurley and Ben converse in the finale, with them telling each other that they had made a great number one and two. But what was the work that still had to be done, that needed Walt’s aid?
New Characters Could Answer Our Biggest Questions
There are still many questions concerning the supernatural aspects of The Island, and surely, there are other groups of people in the world who know about The Island. One of the strengths of Lost was the massive cast, and it shouldn’t be difficult to find enough of them willing to film a spinoff, and can easily be supplemented by new additions.
Other Potential Spinoffs
New material in the Lost Universe ripe for a spinoff doesn’t necessarily have to be set in a post-finale ending either. We have already been given glimpses of several time frames of The Island’s past. They could run an anthology-style show a la American Horror Story or Fargo, with each season focusing upon one group of The Islands inhabitants in time. Given that the show already introduced a time-traveling element, this style of storytelling would not be a stretch by any means.
All I ask is that the writers finally give us an origin story for Karl at some point.
