Yesterday also marked the 20th anniversary of the premiere of LOST on ABC.  Official premiere, that is.  If I remember correctly, because I was there, the first two episodes of the show actually premiered a few days before down in Waikiki.  There were food trucks.  There were ABC gifts (like hand-held fans) and LOST-specific gifts (I still have my season one cast picture and my “I’d Rather Be LOST” license plate holder).  It was a great evening, and a nice picture of how the show would contribute to my own life on the island for the show’s duration.

To mark the occasion, The Ringer did a nice piece of “the nine biggest loose ends” from the show.  I didn’t remember all of them, but at some point the show stopped being primarily about the island’s secrets for me.  Entertainment Weekly put a few pieces together, too.  Here’s there list of the top ten episodes from the show.  Here’s a “where are they now” piece about most of the main cast members.  Here’s a long piece by Jeff Jensen about his own relationship with the show, particularly in his role as “the guy trying to put the pieces together.”  And here’s Dalton Ross’s piece defending the series finale, which I agree is much better than many fans give it credit for.

I was hanging out with some neighbors a few nights ago, before the 20th anniversary, and our conversation turned to LOST.  I asked them if they had seen the official “epilogue” of the show; they said they had not.  For those who might have missed it, here you go:

Finally, I still bring LOST up in class at least once a year.  True, my students hadn’t been born when the show premiered (and they have little to no sense of it, which makes me sad), but the first five minutes of the pilot episode set up a great ethical dilemma: if you were Jack, what would you do next?