It’s impossible to discuss the merits of Lost without mentioning the show’s infamous finale, which awkwardly sidestepped the show’s many unsolved mysteries and instead offered an emotional payoff that basically boiled down to watching all the characters hug. But while plenty of digital ink has been spilled debating the merits of that decision, I’m not here to talk about Lost’s finale (which is bad, for the record). Instead, I’m here to tell you about Lost’s secret true ending that you’ve maybe never seen.
Two decades after the show’s premiere, it’s time to talk about “The New Man in Charge,” a Season 6 DVD extra that quietly sewed up some of Lost’s most blatant loose threads.
Spoiler warning: While I normally wouldn’t bother worrying about spoilers for the plot of a 20-year-old show, there’s a decent chance that even if you’ve watched all of Lost you’ve never seen its 12-minute epilogue. So I recommend watching it now via the video embedded just below before reading any further.
If you don’t feel like watching the video above for whatever reason (or if you’re reading this in the future and that extremely legit YouTube account has been taken down for... reasons), here’s a quick recap of “The New Man in Charge.”
The video is broken into two parts as Ben Linus (Michael Emerson) makes two trips on behalf of the new ruler of the island, Hurley (Jorge Garcia). The first of these trips takes up most of the epilogue’s runtime as Ben visits a far-flung Dharma Initiative facility in Guam where two men clad in company jumpsuits are dutifully filling boxes with Dharma-branded granola bars and other food and shipping them to a seemingly random list of locations. (Reminder: the Dharma Initiative was a science expedition to the island in the 1970s through the ‘90s meant to research its bizarre electromagnetic properties.)
Ben basically shows up to fire the two workers, offering them a generous severance bonus while casually admitting that the work they’ve been doing hasn’t mattered for years. When they demand answers, he gives them each the chance to ask one question. First, he explains that all the food has been going to the island, which changes locations for reasons that, if I’m being honest, I’ve never fully understood. Ultimately, Ben shows them one of the Dharma Initiative tapes, which explains the project while also opening up countless more questions that he doesn’t have time to answer.
For the audience, however, this brief scene reveals a lot. For one thing, it explains why Dharma Initiative-branded food kept showing up on the island. Perhaps more importantly, it suggests that Ben and Hurley have decided to officially wind down any lingering remnants of the Dharma Initiative now that the island is under new management.
In a second, shorter scene, Ben visits a mental health institute where Walt (Malcolm David Kelley) is committed. Ben offers to take Walt back to the island and hints that they can still help Walt’s dead father, Michael (Harold Perrineau). The two of them leave the building and get into a Dharma van where Hurley is waiting before they agree to go back home to the island.
This scene reveals less, but does provide some much-needed closure for Walt’s character, who basically got brushed aside in the latest seasons of Lost. The fact that it also provides a hint at some closure for Michael is an added bonus.
While “The New Man in Charge” seems to tease the possibility of more Lost beyond the official series finale, that was never the plan. Back in 2010, a TV Guide article citing an anonymous source revealed the existence of the 12-minute epilogue and offered an explanation.
“Damon and Carlton wanted to offer fans answers to additional questions they couldn’t get to in the body of the final show,” the source said.
In an interview later that year, Emerson confirmed as much.
“There’s a couple of procedural mysteries that get cleared up,” he said, “and I was happy to have that. The writers weren’t dealing with procedural mysteries in the finale. They were bringing the show to kind of a spiritual conclusion, and that was the right emphasis, I think.”
Ultimately, though, while “The New Man in Charge” might feel more mechanical than Lost’s official, more “spiritual” ending, this epilogue also offers something that the finale couldn’t. To quote Emerson again from the same interview:
“We do have the satisfaction of seeing what happened to some of the people whose storylines were not resolved in the finale.”
