Acclaimed drama series LOST ended its run on ABC back in 2010. Here are 5 characters that could return, should the rumoured LOST reboot come to fruition.
Lost first premiered on September 22, 2004, airing on ABC. The series followed survivors of a plane crash, Oceanic 815, who became stranded on a mysterious, isolated tropical island. Threats to the characters’ lives included a polar bear and hostile inhabitants, known as ‘The Others’. As Lost was an American show, many of the characters were from the United States despite the plane itself departing from Sydney, Australia. A doctor named Jack Shephard (Matthew Fox) led the stranded passengers and gained both friends and enemies among them.
The series was created by JJ Abrams and Damon Lindelof and largely written by the latter and Carlton Cuse. After six seasons, Lost came to an end in May 2010, with the main storylines of the show being wrapped up.
Almost a decade later, in 2019, ABC Entertainment president Kathy Burke commented on whether a reboot would likely happen, “Yes, I would like that [a reboot] very much. That is a reboot I would be interested in seeing. It’s literally at this point just what I dream about when I go to bed at night I have not spoken to [executive producers] Carlton [Cuse] or J.J. [Abrams] or ABC Studios about it. But I do often get asked the question what show would I reboot and often my answer is Lost — sometimes Alias. Nothing to report yet. Maybe ever. But it would be a fun thing to have a conversation about.”
Co-showrunners Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof have also separately speculated on the possibility of their hit show being rebooted.
Cuse, who has since gone on to produce Bates Motel, The Strain and Locke & Key, told Entertainment Weekly in 2014 that, “I think it’s likely that at some point, ABC will want to reboot Lost because it’s a valuable franchise, and there will be some young, bright writer or writers who will come up with a great idea that the network responds to, and that’ll be great”.
Meanwhile, Lindelof, who has developed HBO dramas Watchmen and The Leftovers opined in 2017, “Carlton and I always said that we welcome any future crack at the [intellectual property]. Lost was bigger than us and bigger than [co-creator] J.J. [Abrams]. There’s something really exciting about the fact that George Lucas sold the Star Wars universe and now the people who grew up watching it are making it. Maybe the same thing could be said for Lost.”
With that being said, if the LOST reboot were to ever happen, would the series focus on entirely new characters? Or, despite how the show ended, could any familiar faces make a comeback? Here are 5 characters that could return to Lost in a potential reboot.
Richard Alpert (played by Nestor Carbonell)
Actor Nestor Carbonell (Bates Motel, The Dark Knight trilogy) joined Lost in its third season. He portrayed the character of Richard Alpert, a centuries-old resident of the Island with apparent agelessness. Alpert also serves as an advisor to the leader of The Others, namely Benjamin Linus.
By the end of the series, Richard had become an ally to the plane crash survivors and left the Island with the surviving passengers from Flight 815, now aging normally. However, how would Richard cope living full-time in the outside world, after being on the Island for so long?
Carbonell also reteamed with showrunner Cuse on Bates Motel, on which he was a main cast member. While it seems unlikely that Richard Alpert would be a main character in this potential reboot, he’s in one of the best positions to make a cameo appearance.
Desmond Hume (played by Henry Ian Cusick)
Scottish-born Desmond, a former soldier and monk, first appeared as a minor character in the second season. By season three, his actor Henry Ian Cusick had been promoted to a series regular, expanding Desmond’s role in the show.
Although, like many of the characters, Desmond was shown to have died by the end of the show, this was potentially as far as decades later. In actual fact, Desmond was one of the few major characters still alive in real-time.
In May 2020, Cusick expressed his thoughts on Lost ending too soon and a potential reboot, “I felt we ended too soon. They could have done another season. I just felt sometimes the ending became a little bit… it just became all about Jack [Matthew Fox], and we could have known a bit more about the other characters.”
Furthermore, Cusick continued: “I think a reboot would be really cool,” he said. “I’d be really excited to see what they did if any of us got asked back. I’d imagine they’d go with the island being the star. But you never know. It was a cool show and things are getting rebooted all the time.”
Walt Lloyd (played by Malcolm David Kelley)
Malcolm David Kelley, then 12 years old, was a starring cast member on Lost from its pilot episode. His character, Walt Lloyd, appeared as a regular throughout the entire first season and near the beginning of Season 2 before being written out. This was somewhat due to Kelley, who was older than his character, going through puberty when less time was passing on the show compared to real life.
Over the course of Lost’s run, Kelley made occasional guest appearances as Walt. Sometimes he was an hallucination on the Island and on other, rarer occasions, it was the actual Walt interacting with another character in present day.
Although Kelley did not appear as the character in Season 6, Walt returned in The New Man In Charge, a 12-minute epilogue which was released after the show had ended. This revealed that Walt being taken back to the Island (by choice) to take up an unspecified job there.
Considering that a reboot would likely return to the familiar location, it would make sense for Walt to be present. Especially since he was not seen in the Afterlife depicted in the final season.
Benjamin Linus (played by Michael Emerson)
Michael Emerson (allegedly) crash landed into Lost season two as “Henry Gale”, a frightened man from Minnesota who had been travelling with his wife in a hot air balloon. However, this was later revealed to be a masterful facade from a skilled liar. “Henry” was actually Benjamin Linus, leader of The Others.
Ever since Ben’s true personality was revealed, he served as the main antagonist of the show, causing the deaths of multiple heroic characters. However, Ben gradually becomes a better person himself throughout his 5 seasons on the show, eventually standing with his former enemies as an ally against The Man In Black (Titus Welliver/Terry O’Quinn).
Ben was not only still alive when Lost ended but he, like Walt, was in an important position of power on the Island. This makes it highly possible that Ben could return in a reboot.
Hugo ‘Hurley’ Reyes (played by Jorge Garcia)
Hugo Reyes – better known as Hurley – was one of the original main characters and among the first of the survivors to befriend Jack Shephard. While Lost could be dark at times, Hurley was relied upon to provide the levity and comic relief that the show needed during those moments. Alongside Jack, Kate Austen (Evangeline Lilly), John Locke (Terry O’Quinn) and Sawyer (Josh Holloway), Hurley is one of only 5 characters to appear in 100 episodes or more of Lost.
During most of his time on the show, Hurley was following someone else’s lead – mostly Jack and also briefly John Locke. As a main character, he was always not too far from the particular issue that the survivors were facing at any given moment. By the series finale, however, Hurley becomes the new leader of the Island, succeeding long-standing predecessor Jacob (Mark Pellegrino) as well as Jack, who had briefly held the position.
Much like Ben and Walt, the Island was the last place that Hurley was seen in present day. Should a new crop of characters find their way there, they would surely appreciate a friendly ‘Dude!’ much more than being shot at or put in cages, to name just a few hardships that Hurley and his friends went through.
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