If we’re being completely honest, LOST walked so that Game of Thrones could run.
We’re not exaggerating when we say that LOST changed the way that television was made. Never had such an ambitious project been attempted, and never had it delivered in such a groundbreaking way.
It paved the way for blockbuster series like Game of Thrones, and it’s clear that the latter drew inspiration from JJ Abrams’ innovative creation.
Both series deserve every accolade that comes their way, but in this writer’s humble opinion, LOST is the superior piece of television.
Settle in to find out why…
The dialogue
This is going to get a lot of flak, straight off the bat, but the writing in LOST is better than the writing in GoT.
Don’t get us wrong, the writing in Game of Thrones is a 9.5/10 (final season notwithstanding) but LOST is just that tiny bit better. Monologues from characters like Sawyer, Locke, Jacob and about 50 other characters made for top quality television.
This entire speech from Sawyer is as good as it gets, really.
“You were so busy worrying about each other you never even saw me coming, did you? How about you listen up because I’m only going to say this once. You took my stuff. While I was off trying to get us help – get us rescued – you found my stash and you took it, divvied it up – my shaving cream, my batteries, even my beer.
“And then something else happened. You decided these two boys here were going to tell you what to do and when to do it. Well, I’m done taking orders. And I don’t want my stuff back. Shaving cream don’t matter; batteries don’t matter. The only thing that matters now are guns. And if you want one you’re going to have to come to me to get it.
“[He looks at Sayid] Oh, you want to torture me, don’t you? Show everybody how civilized you are. Go ahead, but I’ll die before I give them back. And then you’ll really be screwed, won’t you? New sheriff in town, boys! You all best get used to it.”
Just look at Ben Linus’ greatest scene:
Clip via Eddy Hansen
The fandom
If Twitter was around when LOST was in its prime, it would have been a far bigger series than Game of Thrones.
Twitter launched two years after the pilot first aired on TV screens, but it was not even close to the beast it’s turned into in 2019. If you’ve been on Twitter in the past couple of weeks, you will have seen it has been inundated with chat about Game of Thrones; hilarious memes, fan theories, lengthy prediction threads, (lots of) complaints, the whole lot.
But LOST paved the way for this sort of thing, and it did it the hard way.
There were dozens of message boards, where fans of the show would join forces in an attempt to try and piece together what the hell they had just witnessed in the previous episode.
LOST did what has made Game of Thrones so special, by completely playing up to the obsession that fans had for the show.
They knew fans would watch each episode three times just to see if they missed anything, so they intentionally included things that you’d miss on first watch. Small bits of foreshadowing, or Easter eggs that you felt like a genius for understanding. This is what made the show so special.
A massive, diverse cast
You see the third word in that heading, GoT show runners? DIVERSE.
We won’t slate Game of Thrones for the fact that you can count every non-white character on one hand, or the fact that the majority of people of colour in the series are slaves, because it’s been done to death already.
What we will say is that Game of Thrones wouldn’t have DARED to try and have so many important characters in one TV series if LOST hadn’t done it first.
The sheer number of characters viewers have to follow has been a source of criticism for both shows, with many saying that it’s too difficult to follow so many characters have so much to do, but it’s also what makes the show so brilliant.
It allows for huge potential for character development, which results in audiences falling in love with what is essentially a whole new world.
For example, throughout Game of Thrones, viewers have to follow events in King’s Landing, Winterfell, Meereen, the Iron Islands, Highgarden and Dorne and that’s not even scratching the surface.
But this sort of thing was nothing compared to what we had to go through as LOST fans. We had to keep up to date with on-island stuff and off-island goings on, as well as 20-year time jumps with little or no warning and even shifts to parallel universes.
But it was always worth it in the end.
Clip via Vitto Amnathvong
Plot twists
Now, we’re not saying LOST invented the plot twist or anything. But come on, it definitely did it better than any other show.
So much so, it actually became a bit of a running joke. Almost every episode would end in a massive reveal, or a bizarre plot twist.
You would be waiting for a surprise character to return, or for someone who you thought was dead to rear their head. You couldn’t blink, or you’d be lost. Sorry.
And although the show may have taken it a little bit too far at times, you could say Game of Thrones wouldn’t have gone down the same route had those involved in the show not seen the success of Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof’s six-season spectacular.
Game of Thrones obviously had a series of books to draw major plot points from, but as those who have read the books will be quick to tell you, they had to transfer all of it to the small screen, and definitely drew some inspiration from the folk on the island.
Clip via Brandyn Horsley
Big moments
One of many things that both LOST and Game of Thrones executed excellently. Moments that just left your jaw hanging wide open. Completely frozen in shock.
Think The Red Wedding, or Joffrey’s death in Game of Thrones, that sort of thing. But we reckon that LOST just about edges it in this department too.
The iconic ‘Not Penny’s boat’ moment, or ‘We have to go back’ would have absolutely shut down the internet, if the current online landscape was the way it is now a few years ago.
Clip via silentsymphony77
Unanswered questions
A major issue many observers have when it comes to both shows is that a number of the loose ends created by the show weren’t answered in the end.
With Game of Thrones, there’s a whole host of things we still don’t know the answer to. Why did it appear that Jon Snow and The Night King had some sort of connection? What did Varys see/hear in the fire? To what extent can Bran see the future? These are all things we need to know!
But this isn’t necessarily true. With LOST, most of the supposed “unanswered questions” were in fact answered throughout the show!
Look at The Others, for example – essentially the White Walkers of LOST. They were introduced as these terrifying, otherworldly beings, and we knew absolutely nothing about them apart from them being really cool and really scary.
Fast forward to the final season and we know absolutely everything we could have wanted to know about them, in a completely satisfying way.
Whereas with the White Walkers, we’re basing all of our knowledge of them on one throwaway line from Bran in the most recent season, where he says that The Night King wants to wipe out people’s “memory”, whatever the hell that means.
LOST set up these bizarre plot points too, but they actually bothered to answer them.
Clip via George Chalhoub
We were told over and over again that Game of Thrones is about “the politics, man”, and not the mystery. But come on. Why introduce the White Walkers if they can just be killed with the swing (albeit extremely cool swing) of a dagger?
Maybe it’s an exaggeration to say that Game of Thrones wouldn’t have had the same impact if it had to compete with LOST, but we’re fairly confident in saying the series would have ended up quite differently had they not had it to draw from in the first place.
They even went as far as to copy the disappointing ending…
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