This fall will mark the 10th anniversary of the premiere of Lost on ABC. The show holds some sort of iconic status, which is mostly deserved—particularly for whetting people’s appetite for long-form serial TV shows and stringing a mystery along for years. Shows like Game of Thrones owe a certain debt to Lost. (Spoilerish stuff ahead.)

All of that said, I don’t know of anyone who didn’t feel, at minimum, disappointed by Lost‘s conclusion. As series finales go, it was pretty low on the hierarchy of awesomeness. (Compare, for example, the moral closure of Breaking Bad or the world-changing subversion of destiny of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.)

The show also created some interesting and memorable characters, but only a few of them really got a good character arc. Sawyer in particular comes to mind. Most of the time, the characters existed solely in service of the plot, which is not a bad thing when the plot knows where it is going. John Locke, as portrayed by Terry O’Quinn, could have been a legendary television character, but wasn’t. To be fair, Lost was an ensemble show, rather than a character-driven show like Breaking Bad, which created numerous memorable characters in the service of telling one person’s story. Ensemble shows are capable of creating incredibly powerful character arcs, though, as evidenced by The Walking Dead‘s Carol Peletier (Melissa McBride).

Gratuitous scene from Season 3, Episode 9

Esquire has an interview with Lost‘s producers, Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cruse, which purports to answer a bunch of questions about the show. There are some interesting tidbits, like the fan theory that everything was taking place in the mind of Vincent, the dog. Cruse thinks the worst episode was the one that shows when Jack got his tattoos in Thailand. I’m inclined to agree that it was a pretty terrible episode, except for Bai Ling. Also, someone went and re-edited the entire show into chronological order, I guess beginning with that episode with Alison Janney. It sounds to me like it would kill quite a bit of dramatic tension, but to each their own.

Anyway, my point in bringing all of this up is that I really only have one question remaining about Lost, and it’s one that I’ve never seen answered: Why were the Others such complete assholes to the crash survivors?

I don’t care that the crash was an accident caused by Desmond that somehow still fulfilled the destiny of various people on the plane. That’s one of countless total contradictions and/or unanswered questions. I just want to know why they all had to be so damn mean all the time, because not only did it make no sense character-wise (Ben and a few other Others were the only truly “bad” ones), most of the abuse heaped on the survivors by the Others didn’t even serve the greater plot.

A corollary to that question, I guess would be to ask why Fate (or whatever led Jack, Hurley, et al to the island) found the lives of all the non-Candidates so completely expendable.

Anyway, I know we’ll never know, but it bugs me.

Photo credits: All images © ABC, Fair Use intended, via Lostpedia, Imgur.