Lost Abandoned Plotlines: How the Show Resolved Most Mysteries Lost had fewer abandoned plotlines than most long-running shows, planning its final three seasons in advance while resolving dangling threads across flashbacks and flash-forwards. Lost had fewer abandoned plotlines than almost any other long-running television show, despite popular jokes that its writers improvised the story as they went along. The ABC series not only planned out its final three seasons in advance but also used flashbacks and flash-forwards throughout its entire run to tie off plotlines. Watch any early episode and every scene, sometimes every line, may be revisited before the series closes. This devotion to resolving dangling threads makes the plots Lost did abandon all the more notable. The show even gave Walt an elaborate sendoff and then returned to the character four times across four successive seasons, so viewers need not angrily ask what ever happened to him.Lost mystery food and the Geronimo Jackson bandAt the start of Season 2, the characters discover a science station called The Swan, stocked with food from an old research initiative. The food is mostly unbranded and marked only with the logo of the Dharma Initiative, but there is also a commercially manufactured candy bar. Hurley asks whether anyone has heard of Apollo bars, and no one has.Later in the same station, the survivors find a record from a band named Geronimo Jackson. Charlie, who calls himself an expert in all things musical, says he has never heard of the group, and no one else has either. The question of where the candy and band came from turns out to have an unusual answer: nowhere unusual.Flashbacks reveal that Apollo bars and Geronimo Jackson are widely known back in civilization. They may not exist in our world, but they exist in the world of Lost, just as Oceanic Airlines does. There was never any reason for the characters to find them unfamiliar, other than plans the writers may have had but never followed up on.The Others and their supernatural introductionEarly on, the survivors discover that a man they presumed was another passenger is secretly an island native who has infiltrated the camp. Once this man, Ethan, is discovered, he responds with what looks rather like superpowers. He single-handedly takes down multiple opponents and speeds away into the jungle while dragging both their bodies.Ethan slips back into the camp unnoticed past guards and kills more people, breaking every bone in his victims' bodies. It eventually takes a whole team of men with guns to get him to surrender. Later, the survivors meet the rest of the natives, whom they dub the Others, and none of them are at all like Ethan.With the exception of one Other named Goodwin, Ethan's counterpart in a second camp, none of the Others ever kill any survivors, and none show the slightest sign of supernatural fighting skills. It is clear the show had initial ideas about what the Others would be like before going in a very different direction. Lost even provided an explanation for why Ethan is so different: he is the only one of them born on the Island. The only other people ever met who were born on the Island are Jacob and the Man in Black, who have a few powers of their own.Miles Straume and the ghost communication retconThe introduction of character Miles Straume, played by Ken Leung, shows him working as a medium. We see him talk to an actual ghost, who listens to him and responds by moving items around in a house. Later, Miles meets Hurley, who also talks to ghosts, and the show reveals that Miles cannot actually converse with the dead.His power is only to go to human remains and hear the last thoughts the person had right before they died. Flashbacks show him using this narrower power throughout his life, and the plot finds a surprisingly large number of opportunities for him to do so as the show continues. This contradiction is notable because it is the only true retcon Lost ever had. Everything else can be explained away, but that first Miles scene must now be interpreted as something that never actually happened.The cave home and a survival premise left behindLost starts out as a survival television show. The characters struggle for water and shelter, then stumble on a source of both: a cave system. For a while, half the survivors live in the caves while the rest stick to the beach, thinking that raises their chances of rescue. One day, fearing an incoming threat, both groups hole up in the caves.The threat turns out to be fake, and all return to the beach. They never live in the caves again, and they seemingly forget why they ever wanted to. This may partly be because they gain access to the Swan station, but then that station blows up, people think even less about rescue, and still no one shifts back to the caves. The writers do not forget the caves exist, returning there a couple of times in the final season, but it is funny how the characters do.