Damon Lindelof has quite the interesting relationship with his fans. The creator of Lost is one of those people in the industry that fans either really love or really hate, but seems to be more hated than anything else. He’s had to receive a great deal of criticism from the fans for the inconsistencies in the show’s tenure, but also for the way the show ended. Fans dislike these flaws so much that it can affect their judgement on some of his other projects, like last year’s Prometheus. That certainly wasn’t a perfect film, but I think fans have bashed it a little too hard. Lindelof himself has always stuck by his projects and tried to defend them to the fans.
Not too long ago, Lindelof was recently asked to write a morning-after response to Breaking Bad’s final episode for The Hollywood Reporter, and he agreed. He said that he first did so because he was a big fan of the show, and he claims to have been “a zealot of its Church of Awesomeness for years.”
But a funny thing happened on the way to the final moments of Breaking Bad. Damon Lindelof said that he realized that he had a great deal in common with the Walter White character, and this realization led to him writing a very different piece for THR. He did wish Breaking Bad goodbye, and joined the throngs of fans and critics who consider the program to be in the elite pantheon of the greatest television series ever, but also decided to stop talking about the Lost finale.
In a very eloquent piece, Lindelof offered the fans a truce. Knowing how the fans feel about the ending of his own beloved show, Lindelof said that he would let it go, and not try to assert his own opinion anymore. He acknowledged that not every fan would agree to this truce, but he reaffirmed his own vow. “I’m done. I’m out.”
And he closed his article with the following.
“I stand by the Lost finale. It’s the story that we wanted to tell, and we told it. No excuses. No apologies. I look back on it as fondly as I look back on the process of writing the whole show. And while I’ll always care what you think, I can’t be a slave to it anymore. Here’s why:
I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. And I was really … I was alive.”
Although I’ve never seen Lost, I gained a great deal of respect for Lindelof for how he finally put this matter to rest. Any artist worth their salt will put a lot of time, love, and care into their work, and they want that work to be loved and respected. Sometimes the audience disagrees with you, and sometimes they don’t act politely at all with their opinions. It takes a very mature person to restrain themselves the way that he’s now learned to do.
What do you think about the Damon Lindelof truce? Why don’t you just tell us what you think in the comments below?
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
Good for him. It was a good ending. It may not have been what the masses wanted to see, but it was fitting and well done. He doesn’t need to continue defending it to anyone.