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Way before the hatch, the Dharma Initiative and the Tailies ever showed up, “Lost” almost lost one of its pivotal figures in its very first episode.
According to Alan Sepinwall’s “The Revolution Was Televised,” series creators Damon Lindelof, J.J. Abrams, and Jeffrey Lieber set to deliver one of the all-time great TV deaths by killing off Jack Shepherd (Matthew Fox) in the series’ premiere, only to change their minds after an ABC executive told them that they risked losing the audience’s trust.
Keeping Jack alive was probably the right call, as he is one of the most important characters in the genre-mashing drama, which chronicles the lives of a group of people who get stranded on a bizarre island after their plane crashes. Jack subsequently becomes the island doctor and essentially serves as the group’s de facto leader, all the while getting involved in the show’s main love triangle with Kate (Evangeline Lilly) and Sawyer (Josh Holloway).
Kate would have replaced Jack as Lost’s main hero in the pilot episode
As fans of the show know, Jack eventually dies in the polarizing finale, with the beloved character sacrificing himself and receiving a hero’s demise. But if Lindelof & Co. had offed Jack in the premiere, Sepinwall writes, Kate would have stepped into his boots and became the show’s hero.
Keeping Jack around arguably elevated Kate’s character in the grand scheme of things. After resisting the urge to kill him off, the show’s creators realized that her backstory wasn’t strong enough, so they reimagined her as a sympathetic criminal who was on the run from the authorities. (Viewers will recall that Kate was being escorted back to the United States by a lawman when the plane crashed on the island).
If the show’s creators stuck to the original plan, though, Kate would have been married and searching for her husband, who got separated from her when the plane went down. That storyline ultimately went to another couple — Rose and Bernard — and the rest is history. Jack lived, and he and Kate both became central characters with meaningful, long-term story arcs.
