Lost Wednesdays - ABC OKs Two Additional Hours

Here’s some great news for Lost fans, those two missing hours of programming from Season 4 of Lost have finally be found. As most of you are aware, because of the writers strike hiatus Lost was only able to produce 14 episodes of the season's originally planned 16. This led fans to ask whether or not those two remaining episodes would be tacked on to Lost’s final two seasons or if the series would just be two episodes shorter than originally planned. Well last week we got our answer.


According to The Hollywood Reporter, “the 2009 and 2010 editions of the hit drama will be 17 hours each – not 16 as previously planned.” (link) As I tried to explain above, “ABC has added two hours to the show’s production plan because the WGA strike knocked three hours out of the current season. To partly compensate, the network recently added an additional hour to Part 2 of the season finale that airs May 29.” (link)

Lost Co-Executive producer Damon Lindelof explained that “we were supposed to do 16-16-16, but we ended up doing 14 this season, so we owe two.” (link) Unfortunately, in the same interview Lindelof “ruled out the show extending beyond the remaining 34-episode order.” (link) While I’m sad to hear there won’t be any last second extending of the series, I think the way ABC and the show’s producers are handling Lost is 100% the right way. It seems to be speeding up the storyline and satisfying both obsessive and casual fans of the show. I’m just glad to hear we’ll be getting those two episodes after all and that the show’s writers know exactly where they’ll be taking the story from here on out. The worst part is knowing that after the next three weeks we’ll have to wait almost a full year until we see new episodes of Lost on ABC.

The Hollywood Reporter article “Lost adds hours” is pretty interesting and I recommend all Lost fans reading it here.