Lost: What Was the Island? (2025)

Lost remains one of the most popular shows in television history despite its exceptional, yet polarizing ending. However, many of the issues viewers had with the ending came about as a result of simply misunderstanding what the story was relaying to the audience.

While it’s perfectly valid to be unsatisfied by the seemingly vague answers offered by the show, or the general direction taken toward its finale, it’s not entirely fair to act as if the final season of Lostdidn’t answer the majority of the mysteries introduced. One of the biggest, and longest-lingering, mysteries was the true nature of the show's now-iconic Island location. While the show's writers did deliver a legitimate explanation, they took the ambiguous route of revealing it -- and this was exactly what anyone should have expected from Lost.

The Island Was the Source of Existence

Lost's Explanation Left Many Viewers Confused

Lost's final season promised answers to the many longstanding questions that had been introduced time and time again throughout the show's 121 episodes. Some fans grew tired of the growing list of mysteries without large payoffs -- but almost every single one of them was answered -- either directly or indirectly, through context. The Island was arguably the biggest mystery the show introduced.

From unnatural healing properties to random polar bear appearances, the Island was always at the top of the list for what fans of the show wanted to be explained. They finally got their wish in the Season Six episode, "Across the Sea." The episode revolved around important characters Jacob and his brother -- the unnamed Man in Black -- as they were children. One scene saw Jacob -- the long-teased Protector of the Island -- learning exactly why the Island needed protecting. The unhinged character known only as Mother -- who had adopted Jacob and his brother after murdering their birth mother -- explained that the Island housed a special light.

Referring to this light as "the Source," Mother explains that it's "life, death and rebirth," that all living things have it, and that all people always want more. In short, the Source is the physical manifestation of time and, ultimately, all existence as humans know it. This is why so many inexplicable events happen on the Island -- ghostly whispers, dead people seemingly rising from the dead, cancers being healed and so much more. This scene also reveals why the Island needs protection in the first place; humankind will always be combative with each other -- destroying most of what they come across for nothing more than ego -- but the Source is the one thing that cannot be lost at all costs. If it's gone, so is everything else.

The Reveal Is Perfectly In Line With the Mysterious Nature of Lost

Lost Famously Refused To Give Too Many Direct Answers

Despite the ambiguity of the reveal in "Across the Sea," which left many people confused and added to the negative backlash, it follows the classic Lost formula in that it doesn't give too much away. Like many of the mysteries in the show, this particular reveal wasn’t spoon-fed to the audience -- leaving them to not only think about what it all meant but, for many, continue to theorize about it to this day.

Using certain context clues, viewers can -- and have -- come to the natural conclusion as to the true nature of the Island. It may not have been satisfying for some, but for others, the revelation that the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 had been taking part in an ancient chess game with all existence at stake was the perfect payoff for the story. Lost was always a story about clashing philosophies through deeply personal stories, told through the characters who weaved in and out of each other's lives. To see these clashing philosophies ultimately needing to cooperate to save everything -- literally -- was something viewers who had taken a fascination in the show truly appreciated.

How the Source Affects Time

Lost's Story Spans Hundreds of Years

See Also

The Vanishing Islands That Failed to Vanish

Best Time Travel or TIme DIsplacement Episodes of LOST

• "The Constant" (Season 4, Episode 5) -- IMDb: 9.7/10
• "Jughead" (Season 5, Episode 3) -- IMDb: 8.5/10
• "The Little Prince" (Season 5, Episode 4) -- IMDb: 8.2/10
• "This Place Is Death" (Season 5, Episode 6) -- IMDb: 8.6/10
• "The Variable" (Season 5, Episode 14) -- IMDb: 8.7/10
• "The Incident Part 1 and Part 2" (Season 5, Episodes 16 and 17) -- IMDb: 9.1/10 and 9.2/10

Because the Island's Source was ultimately time incarnate, it was able to get manipulated in ways that resulted in characters ending up at different moments in time. With an ancient system that allowed the Island's water to be channeled through the Source's light, not only could the Island displace itself in time -- but so could the characters. This was mainly used by the Others -- a group of people who carried out island Protector Jacob's orders -- to keep the Island hidden from those who may wish to invade it. When Ben first turned the donkey wheel at the end of Season Four, certain members of the main survivors -- like Sawyer, Locke, Jin, and Daniel -- were transported back to the 1970s.

This story element has come under fire from detractors, citing the whole donkey wheel situation as too vague to accept. At the end of the day, Lost is a sci-fi fantasy show wrapped up in a character-driven drama. It may not have seemed that way from the start, but it's where the story eventually evolved. While audiences may not have gotten the specific scientific details to explain how the donkey wheel mechanism manipulated time, it's no more far-fetched than Star Wars' Force or the magic present in the Harry Potter world. These things aren't explained in great detail but are still generally accepted despite their minimal explanations -- Lost introducing this element toward the end of the series shouldn't be too bitter a pill for viewers to swallow.

Aside from the literal time travel the show implemented, Lost also used time as a plot element in other ways. The story's primary gimmick throughout the first three seasons was the consistent use of flashback scenes to help flesh out characters and relationships that would prove important later on in the story. Eventually, this storytelling device was switched to flash-forwards -- and then, eventually, to flash-sideways in Season Six. The flash-sideways timeline can essentially be looked at as extreme flash-forwards, as they show the characters reuniting in an afterlife following their inevitable deaths in the real world. At the end of the day, those who helped protect the Island's Source were gifted what Mother so succinctly suggested all people want: more time. In the flash sideways, the heroes of Lost were granted more time to meet back up with each other and move on to the next plane of existence.

While all this was kept extremely vague in the series, there is enough information within the show and context to give audiences a clear explanation. The Island was the place where the source of time and existence itself was stored and thus needed protection for that reason. All the crazy experiments, time-traveling madness, and supernatural happenings had a valid reason for being included in the story, and it all comes back -- quite literally -- to the Source.

Lost

TV-14

Drama

Adventure

Mystery

The survivors of a plane crash are forced to work together in order to survive on a seemingly deserted tropical island.

Release Date

September 22, 2004

Cast

Jorge Garcia , Josh Holloway , Yunjin Kim , Evangeline Lilly , Terry O'Quinn , Naveen Andrews

Main Genre

Drama

Seasons

6

Creator

J.J. Abrahms, Damon Lindelof, Jeffrey Lieber

Number of Episodes

121

Network

ABC

Streaming Service(s)

Crackle , Hulu , Amazon Freevee , Prime Video , Plex