By the Numbers: “Lost” Creator Explains the Numbers

Having faithfully watched four seasons of Lost to find the answer to the reason behind the Numbers, imagine my surprise when it turns out it was revealed at a comic book con instead. There, Damon Lindelof said:

“Here’s the story with [the] numbers. The Hanso Foundation that started the Dharma Initiative hired this guy Valenzetti to basically work on this equation to determine what was the probability of the world ending in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Valenzetti basically deduced that it was 100 percent within the next 27 years, so the Hanso Foundation started the Dharma Initiative in an effort to try
to change the variables in the equation so that mankind wouldn’t wipe it itself
out.”

Now I knew this because I was once a rabid Lost fan online, and this information is freely available there. But I’ve been waiting for them to put the answer into the show. Why haven’t they? Because, according to Lindelhof:

“That would be the worst thing ever. We have to make the show for the
hard-core fans who care about the numbers, but we also have to make it for
my mom, who just wants Sawyer to take his shirt off.”

So his explanation for why they haven’t explained the Numbers on the show is that the average viewer doesn’t care? Bogus. I don’t know anybody who watches the show that doesn’t watch it primarily to find the answers to the questions it raises. Why spend so much time raising questions on the show if you don’t think the viewer wants the answers? I think this shows that the creators of the show have a rather dismal view of their own audience. Just a bunch of mouth-breathers who are more interested in seeing the characters in underwear than the deeper themes of the show. That’s why the show has been diverted from an entertaining and mysterious show about a ragtag group of crash survivors to an endlessly convoluted and bewildering mess of storylines that never get resolved.