How The Walking Dead Universe Honored Lost, Again

The Walking Dead universe ran through the first season of World Beyond with its conclusion airing on Sunday night. As the show is set years into the zombie apocalypse, it came with flashbacks looking back at the early days which shaped its main characters. Many viewers who have had any experience with the revolutionary plane crash series LOST know the ABC show was built on flashbacks used to deepen stories of and connections to its characters. The Walking Dead chief content officer Scott Gimple is no stranger to such info, a professed fan of the island-survival saga. In fact, he has revealed homage to the show in the past, and now has explained that World Beyond was, in a way, taking a page from LOST‘s book.

“I would say, we went kicking and screaming into them because we didn’t want to rip off LOST,” Gimple told ComicBook.com. “We’d try to use them in slightly different ways. But yeah, I love LOST so much. I’m sure they’re different, I’m sure.” You can read our full interview here!

More than trying to pull off an ode to LOST, though, Gimple was trying to dig into the Dead universe and the most interesting corners of its history. “I will say, a lot of people said, I think when we left the Campus Colony, people were like, ‘Oh, man, I really wanted to see that place.’ And we did, too,” he says. “We really did want to keep going back there.”

The Walking Dead: World Beyond showrunner Matt Negrete shared a similar perspective. “It wasn’t designed specifically to be an ode to LOST, but I was also a huge fan of that show as well,” Negrete told Comicbook.com. “I think the comparisons are inevitable, but even in the writer’s room, we talked about some of those flashbacks in LOST, some of those great stories. For us in Season 1, it was using them to really delve into the characters and we really wanted to spend this season having the audience get to know these characters and what they went through the night the sky fell and before and after, and really telling a complete story of where these characters had been and where they are in their present. I think for us for Season 2 now, it’s about where these characters are going. Yeah, I’d be lying if I said that LOST wasn’t an influence, but I will say that in Season 2, we’re really charting our own course in a number of ways.” You can read our full interview here!

Still, the parallels to LOST don’t stop with the flashbacks on World Beyond. Both Fear the Walking Dead and The Walking Dead: World Beyond have pitted the shows main characters, the traditional “good guys” of the shows, against each other. Alicia Clark is at odds with Victor Strand who was recently punched in the face with the butt of John Dorie’s gun. Felix and his longtime friend Huck nearly fought to the death in the World Beyond finale. It’s reminiscent of Rick and Shane having conflicting viewpoints in the early days of The Walking Dead. Gimple also compares such conflict to LOST‘s long-running feud between “Dr. Shepherd and Mr. Locke,” as he refers tp the characters portrayed by Matthew Fox and Terry O’Quinn, respectively.

“You get to see the world through two sides that you both like. Yeah, conflict,” Gimple said. “I don’t think conflict is necessarily the total engine of story. I think change is, but to see it on its feet, it works, and it’s been great. And I will say, last season, season five, it’s interesting. Everybody was trying to be on the same page. These characters all wanted the same thing, which was redemption. And they were doing something benevolent, and it was about all this light, all this positivity, all this brightness. And by the end of the season, they all get totally clobbered for it and destroyed, and it truly does kill Morgan. It kills him.”

The Walking Dead: World Beyond will go into production for its second and final season in early 2021. Fear the Walking Dead will return for the back half of its sixth season following The Walking Dead Season 10C, which begins airing its 6 new episodes in February.

Have you been enjoying The Walking Dead: World Beyond in its freshman season? Share your thoughts in the comment section or send them my way on Instagram!