Lost (season 6) - Production

Production

On May 7, 2007, ABC Entertainment President Stephen McPherson announced that Lost would end during the 2009–2010 season with a "highly anticipated and shocking finale." "We felt that this was the only way to give Lost a proper creative conclusion," McPherson said. Beginning with the 2007–2008 television season, the final 48 episodes would have been aired as three seasons with 16 episodes each, with Lost concluding in its sixth season. Due to 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike, the fourth season featured 14 episodes, and season 5 had 17 episodes. Season six was planned to have 17 episodes, too. However, on June 29, 2009 it was announced that the final season would feature an additional hour, making the number of episodes 18.

Executive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse stated that they "always envisioned Lost as a show with a beginning, middle, and end," and that by announcing when the show would end that viewers would "have the security of knowing that the story will play out as we've intended." Lindelof and Cuse stated that securing the 2010 series-end date "was immensely liberating" and helped the series rediscover its focus. Lindelof noted, "We're no longer stalling." The producers planned to wrap up mysteries, such as the reason the Dharma periodic resupply drops continue after the purge, Walt's unusual abilities, and the "bird" from "Exodus" and "Live Together, Die Alone". However, these three mysteries, among others, were left unresolved. Matthew Fox said in an interview that in the final season, the characters of Jack Shephard and John Locke "will come head to head." It was also claimed that a third of the way through the final season, the two timelines would be "solidified into one" and "will be very linear – no more flashbacks, nothing;" however this did not become the case. He also claimed to be the only cast member to know the ending of the series, though Lindelof has clarified that Fox only knew things that were relevant to his character.

During the 2009 San Diego Comic-Con, numerous sixth-season reports were made. Carlton Cuse stated both the time travel and flash-forward seasons were over, and they were moving into something different for the sixth season. Josh Holloway stated his character Sawyer would revert to his old self after the loss of Juliet. Cuse and Lindelof stated that the Dharma Initiative would no longer play a large role in the show, but the "Dharma-Michigan connection" would play a significant role in season six. However, this did not happen. Lindelof stated that the producers had a direct hand in the production of the season six promotional poster that was first displayed at Comic-Con, and that everything in it was intentional; he also made a reference to the Abbey Road cover in connection to the poster. Season six was the first and only season of Lost ever to not feature any kind of preview or official promotional material such as sneak peeks and promo pictures for future episodes since the Lost producers considered any single frame from the first episodes to be too revealing. According to Lindelof, "even a single scene from the show would basically tip what it is we're doing this year, and what it is we're doing this year is different than what we've done in other years." Lindelof has also emphasized that the flashes-sideways are important, stating "People are saying don't need these stories and all we can say is they're absolutely 100 percent necessary to tell the story of Lost, and hopefully by the end of the season it will be more obvious as to why." He also noted that the term "flash-sideways" was deliberately used instead of "alternate reality" because viewers might otherwise "infer that one of them isn't real, or one of them is real and the other is the alternate to being real." When asked to describe the last three episodes, Lindelof said "Water."

ABC charged advertisers $900,000 USD for a 30-second commercial during the series finale, in contrast to the standard 2010 season price of $214,000.