Oooh, thanks for that. Didn't I say MiB was the First? ;)

Oddly (for me) I don't ship anyone on Lost. Well, except me and Sayid.

redeem147 | April 06, 16:13 CET

Was this posted already? I think there's been a rash of these kinds of articles...lots of LOST/Verse comparison articles in general.

I personally dont think they had a clue where they were taking the show until this season finally approached.

alexreager | April 06, 16:25 CET

It's obvious they have known exactly where the show was going. In both blatant and subtle terms, this season is the resolution if so many themes and arcs.

Andy Dufresne | April 06, 16:39 CET

Interesting comparisons. I never thought about the Jack/Angel stuff before, but it makes sense. Maybe that is why Jack and Angel are my two favorite fictional characters (after Wesley, o'course).

Wyndam_ | April 06, 16:44 CET

I know I shouldn't be so picky, but I just stopped reading the second I saw the possessive written as Buffy Summer's instead of Buffy Summers'.

There's a few obvious character comparisons to make. Angel = Jack (screwup alpha male with daddy issues) and Spike = Sawyer (secretly sensitive bad boy and ostensible leader's leadership/romantic rival) are obvious, but then it seems more sensible just to pin them as Cyclops and Wolverine or whomever, considering how many instances of the trope there are. Hurley = Xander, broadly. The reluctant alpha with a chip on his shoulder, the bad boy with a soft spot and the viewer representative/nice guy are the most obvious ones, anyway.

WilliamTheB | April 06, 17:04 CET

Lost being like Buffy is about like that article being like Reed Richards... because they're both an amazing stretch. Name a sci-fi / fantasy series I've seen and I can probably draw similar types of lines.

jgsugden | April 06, 18:36 CET

I still don't buy into the whole MiB is completely evil thing, and thus these First Evil comparisons are lost on me. And as WilliamTheB said, the Archetypes being compared are so broad, that it's easy to compare it to anything. Sure, take away Jack's absolutely control freak nature, and you have a character similar to Angel. Take away Hurley's massive amount of weight, and billions of dollars, and you have a Xander-like character. And for the bad-boy argument, if you want a character that people can relate to, they have to have positive points. Even Dexter cares about Rita!
For a positive note though, the Benjamin Linus and Maggie Walsh thing is eerily similar.

clubsilencio | April 06, 20:00 CET

Yeah except Andy, David Fury has publically admitted they have no master plan.

Rhodey | April 07, 00:31 CET

Yes, Rhodey, but David Fury hasn't worked on it in ages, and he was working at a time when they were treading water (before the end date was set.)

I don't think they knew when they did the pilot, but I think they've known for a long time.

redeem147 | April 07, 01:53 CET

I think this was posted on here some time ago. (Maybe two months ago?)

Nebula1400 | April 07, 05:48 CET

They've admitted to not having it all sketched out when they began, but since at least mid-Season 3 (around when they got the commitment from the network to let them end it three years later, definitively at a sixth and final season), they've had the beats of the story down. Some details were filled out along the way, if you believe Cuse and Lindelof. One (or both?) of them's mentioned that they at least knew where they were going to end up by the end of Season 2, I believe (I can believe that, since both Ben, the further revealing of The Others, and two characters making it off the island pointed to answers and a direction, for me as a viewer. I was worried that it'd become another X-Files, and it still might--even despite all the answers and emotional pay-off we've gotten from Season 4 onward--but IMO the show's only gotten better since it started, excepting that slump in mid-Season 2...DVD viewers might not know what I'm talking about, but a lotta viewers were losing their patience at that point or just plain worried that the showrunners had no clue what they were doing).

It's nice when showrunners have things planned out from the beginning (although it doesn't do them or the audience a whole lot of good when, just like in Dollhouse's case, they don't get the space to tell the story they wanted to tell), but I think a showrunner that has things planned out mid-way through their series, for three remaining seasons, is also doing pretty well (so long as he respects what went down in the first three seasons).

David Fury only worked on Season 1, he can only speak for Season 1.

I hope the Man in Black doesn't turn out to be too much like The First Evil (or close in tone/objective to it at all). The First Evil was exceedingly lame, in the end.

Kris | April 07, 09:43 CET

That was an interesting read. Sure, you can stretch and compare almost all SciFi/fantasy big picture themes, all the way back to the Greek myths. But this summed up the basics of the parallels between two specific TV shows, in a thought provoking way.

I'm a late comer to Lost fandom. I thought season 1 was boring, season 2 was both boring and irritating, so I gave up. Then I caught a season 4 marathon and realized how much the show had improved.
Since then, I've been playing catch-up, and loving the final season.

Shey | April 07, 13:13 CET