Co-created by J.J. Abrams (Star Wars: The Force Awakens), Jeffrey Lieber (NCIS: New Orleans), and Damon Lindelof (The Leftovers), Lost ran on ABC for six seasons and remains one of the greatest network dramas ever made. Following a group of plane crash survivors who wind up on a mysterious, uncharted island, Lost hooked viewers early on with its many compelling mysteries that pushed the show into all sorts of different genres, from the supernatural to science fiction.
Unfortunately, while Lost’s large ensemble cast and use of flashback sequences made it a compelling drama all the way through, the series also gained a reputation in its later years for its numerous loose plot threads and raising too many questions without giving satisfying answers. To their credit, showrunners Lindelof and Carlton Cuse made attempts at providing closure to some of Lost’s biggest mysteries in the final seasons, but there were still quite a few that were never properly addressed by the time the series finale aired in 2010.
Although fans theories and supplemental materials have cleared up a good number of the following 15 Lost mysteries in the years since the show ended, the series itself never bothered to address them and so left them officially unresolved.
12. Why Must The “Rules” Be Followed?
In the shocking Season 4 episode “The Shape of Things to Come,” mercenaries working for Charles Widmore come to the island and kill Ben’s daughter Alex when he refuses to cooperate and leave the island with them. Ben later makes a comment about the rules being changed and at the end of the episode, we flash forward in time to a point where Ben is off the island and paying Charles a late night visit. He tells his nemesis that Alex being killed “broke the rules” and that he will be punished accordingly.
Ben and Charles aren’t the only characters to be bound to these allusive rules either, as Jacob and the Man in Black are prevented from directly interfering with one another because of them. In fact, the driving force of the final seasons has to do with the Man in Black seeking to break the rules and find a way off the island. But what are the rules, anyway? It’s never explained where they came from, what they actually are, or why anyone even needs to abide by them. From what we can tell, the rules were just a writing crutch for Lost to fall back on whenever the show needed to keep its bigger conflicts going and though they were teased as being a big mystery, they really didn’t amount to much more in the end than a series of gentlemen’s agreements.
Source: Screenshot to ABC