Image via ShutterstockCuse gets to the heart of how TV is changing today and where it will go in the future.
Published Jul 26, 2026, 11:54 AM EDT
Therese Lacson is a Senior TV Editor who has been with Collider since 2021. She got started in this business over ten years ago working primarily as an interviewer and critic. At Collider, she works closely with the features team to support the writers and also ideates and develops content daily. She has covered major industry events including Cannes Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, SXSW, Toronto International Film Festival, and San Diego Comic-Con. Although she reviews and covers both film and television, her focus is in television and her expertise is in fantasy and sci-fi genre shows. Her favorite shows to cover include House of the Dragon, Bridgerton, Fallout, 9-1-1, and Rivals.
It's been 22 years since we first boarded Oceanic Airlines flight 815 right before it crashed on a mysterious island in the middle of the ocean, but the legacy of Lost continues to loom large in the television landscape. Often regarded as one of the greatest TV shows of all time, the series garnered attention critically and with audiences at home. It won 11 Primetime Emmys along with hundreds of other industry award nominations. In the zeitgeist, it became the show that everyone had to watch right when it came out, because no one wanted to be spoiled for what happened on the island this week.
Created by Jeffrey Lieber, J.J. Abrams, and Damon Lindelof, the series ran for 121 episodes over six seasons on ABC, with the show being one of the most expensive on the air at the time as it included an ensemble cast and was primarily filmed on location in Hawai'i. But the investment was ultimately worth it as Lost became such a big hit that, decades later, people are still arguing about whether the finale was good or not, talking about the smoke monster twist, and crying over the "Not Penny's Boat" scene. Sitting down with co-showrunner Carlton Cuse at the 2nd edition of Italian Global Series, Cuse reflected not only on the popularity of the show, but how the television landscape was changed by a show like Lost.
How Network TV Shaped the Drama of 'Lost'
Before audiences were being shocked by Ned Stark's sudden execution or Walter White's dark transformation into Heisenberg, Lost was the show that everyone couldn't stop talking about. By Season 3, Twitter had officially been created, setting up a perfect space for fans of the show to scream about the series and discuss the weekly twists and turns. "We happened to be making a TV show that was engaging and also confounding, and the perfect thing to be discussing on social media," Cuse explains, thinking back to the height of Lost. "There was this incredible, inadvertent confluence of those two events, and I think Lost was really propelled by the sudden emergence of social media."
At the time, TV seasons could run for 20+ episodes, and each episode had to be timed to 42 minutes and 30 seconds long. The episodes couldn't have curse words; a new episode had to be made every eight days, according to Cuse, and the flow of the episode had to accommodate the commercials. Cuse recalls the challenges they faced in the writers' room: "The constraints of having to have an act break shaped the way we broke the story, so we thought a lot in the writers' room about, well, what's the teaser out, what's the episode out, what are ways in which we can really ensure that the audience doesn't disappear during a commercial break?"
These constraints, as frustrating as they might be, formulated the perfect environment for the writers of the series. "That narrative structure, I think, really helped shape the way Lost exists," Cuse admits. "We had to find emotional intensity other ways than just having graphic content, whether it's extreme violence, sex, language, and it gave us an opportunity because we were doing things that other people weren't doing, to really be more singular."
Networks like ABC weren't — and still aren't — putting out shows like Lost at the time. Those studios are sustained by familiar procedurals, shows that anyone can drop into and dip out of without losing the plot. Cuse admits that Lost being so different gave the show a leg up in the TV landscape. "There weren't network television shows that were highly serialized, that had a big sprawling cast, where characters had done really bad things, like murder people. So I think that we benefited enormously from doing Lost in a network environment."
22 Years Later and TV Has New Problems That 'Lost' Never Faced
"I will probably end up spending two and a half years making eight episodes of television, all told..."
Image via ABCSince the streaming boom and this new era of television, you'll be hard-pressed to find shows with serialized stories like Lost lasting more than even 10 episodes, and it's more than common to wait at least a year before another season drops. However, the pressure of that type of work environment, which led to Lost's success, isn't necessarily something that Cuse wants to return to. "We made 24 episodes the first season, 23 the second season, 22, and then there was a strike short in a 14-episode season, and then we only made 17, and then 18. I mean, it's insane when I think about it."
"My partner, Damon Lindelof, and I would stay late in the office one or two nights a week until you know one or two in the morning, rewriting that week's script, because we had to put a script out every eight days, and it's kind of baffling that we were able to do it." Cuse calls that traditional format of TV making "mind-boggling" and says that what exists today is completely different. "But I don't really want to go back. I mean, it was just a very different time," he says.
Cuse, who is currently working on a Netflix adaptation of Dan Brown's latest novel, The Secrets of Secrets, which follows Robert Langdon, the character formerly played by Tom Hanks in the three movies, is far happier with the pace of television making today. "I will probably end up spending two and a half years making eight episodes of television, all told, and it's just completely different."
Although this new approach is no doubt far less stressful on showrunners, it also means that extended productions lead to large gaps between seasons. Fans of these shows know firsthand what it's like to feel like you're waiting forever just for a handful of episodes to drop all on one day and then disappear again for another couple of years. HBO's Euphoria had three years between Seasons 1 and 2 and then a whopping four years between Seasons 2 and 3. Netflix is known for its multi-year breaks between show seasons, with shows like Stranger Things and Wednesday having at least two years of a hiatus between seasons.
The problem with these long hiatuses is that whatever momentum is being built up during the show comes to a screeching halt by the finale. "I think I just read an article about how difficult it is for some streamers, how big a drop off there was in the second and subsequent seasons of most shows, and there are a few exceptions, but a lot of shows — even well-reviewed and regarded shows — are dropping off because audiences have lost any momentum they have for that show, because they have to wait a couple of years between seasons," Cuse explains.
Can you imagine what it would be like to wait three years after "Through the Looking Glass," the Season 3 finale of Lost that not only gave us the "Not Penny's boat" moment but also the "We have to go back!" line from Jack? With so much happening on that show in terms of timelines, factions, and characters, waiting three years would take the wind out of the sails of such an impactful final moment, and that would be the case for any show trying to mimic the format of Lost. But, Cuse sees a new path forward for television that takes a more hybrid approach.
The Streaming Landscape Needs To Change and Carlton Cuse Knows How
"I think subsequent seasons of television are going to be more like movie sequels in a way."
When asking Cuse if he thinks Lost would be the same sensation today as it was back in 2004, the producer admits, "I don't think it would be quite as much of a phenomenon as it was back then; everything was so singular at that time." But, in truth, the media landscape and the industry have been completely revolutionized in the last 22 years. How we watch TV is different, how we watch movies is different, and how we engage with media is completely different. While Lindelof and Cuse had to deal with how to get people to tune back in after a commercial break, showrunners today have to deal with how to keep people engaged after being gone from the cultural landscape for over a year.
For Cuse, the best way forward is to keep season stories contained rather than having multi-season arcs. "Personally, for me, I'm at a place right now where I like more limited storytelling," he explains. "I created the show Jack Ryan with writer Graham Roland, and that show we have envisioned that each season was a complete story, and you could revisit it with a character. So, I think subsequent seasons of television are going to be more like movie sequels in a way, where they'll tell an individual story with the beginning, middle, and end."
This doesn't mean that a throughline won't always be there through a television show, but this approach allows for more complete stories to be told that won't disappoint audiences if, God forbid, the show doesn't come back until two years later or is cancelled altogether. "I think streamers will move to a place like in books, you know, there are many novelists who write books like Dan Brown with a certain character, but each story is its own closed-ended story."
This is a pattern we're already seeing in shows like Bridgerton, which is based on a romance novel series by Julia Quinn where each book follows a member of the family, but rather than having to read all the books in the series in order, you can jump in at any time. With the show focusing on one sibling every season, even with overarching storylines, the show becomes easier to keep up with. "I think you're going to see more of that, because the idea of ending a show with a cliffhanger and expecting someone to remember what's going on and pick it back up 18 months or two years later is really tough."
Cuse points out that this method of storytelling will lead to a rise in more limited series, something that we're already seeing more of today, but that doesn't mean that's the only way forward for TV. "On the other hand, I think you're starting to see another evolution, which is someone who's a really great producer, like John Wells, really pushing and reinventing the model with The Pitt, where they're making 15 episodes a season, and they're continually going writing and producing, so there aren't these big gaps," Cuse says. "I think The Pitt is an example of a hybrid model where they've taken the traditional network model, and they're trying to apply it to streaming."
With so much changing in television today, it's hard to imagine a show like Lost surviving, but old stories are being rebooted and revived daily, so what's stopping us from getting a new version of this beloved show? Especially since Lost is still raking in millions of streaming hours even today. Well, Cuse is personally not interested in revisiting the world himself. "In the years following the show, it would get raised by executives at ABC, and they would ask if we were interested in doing it, and we were kind of unhesitant in saying no. We felt like the story we told, we told it, and I think a lot of the reboots of TV shows haven't gone that well, and so I think the answer for us is very much no."
However, don't let that disappoint you if you are champing at the bit for more of those Lost twists. Cuse is fully open to the idea of someone else adapting the series, saying, "I do think and believe that at some point some talented young writer or writers will come to ABC and say, 'Hey, we have a great idea to do another story in the Lost world,' and they'll do it, and that would be great. I don't have a problem with somebody else telling a story in the world of Lost. But I don't see us doing it." One can only hope that if (or more realistically, when) that time comes around, the studio involved will take a bit of advice from Cuse and adapt to this new approach to TV storytelling rather than try and catch lightning in a bottle twice with the old.
Release Date 2004 - 2010-00-00
Showrunner Damon Lindelof, Carlton Cuse
Writers Jim Galasso, Christina M. Kim, Graham Roland, Kyle Pennington, Brent Fletcher, Dawn Lambertsen Kelly, Janet Tamaro, Jeffrey Lieber, Paul Dini, Jordan Rosenberg
English (US) ·