Lost: Bad Mystery: Walt Lloyd

Lost:  Bad Mystery: Walt Lloyd

Lost continually asked its audience for trust and patience with mysteries. The idea was that if you kept watching and paying attention, you would be rewarded with answers to the significant mysteries that kept you watching. In some cases, our patience paid off, but in the case of Walt, it definitely did not. Early on, Walt was shown to have supernatural abilities that even he was unaware of. In a flashback, we saw Walt doing research on an exotic bird moments before that exact bird crashes against his window. On the island, we saw Walt reading a comic book about Polar Bears shortly before getting cornered by a real Polar Bear. We were shown that something was definitely up with this kid, right before he’s literally kidnapped off the show. Walt spent the entirety of the second season as a prisoner of the Others before he and Michael left the island behind, along with our chances of getting any answers.

I know the production reason for getting rid of Walt was that actor Malcolm David Kelly was aging too fast. He was a young kid going through puberty and he was growing faster than the show’s timeline. The reason I don’t accept this as an excuse for lack of answers is that they kept the Walt mystery going. Shannon saw visions of Walt in the jungle. Locke saw a vision of Walt that stopped him from committing suicide. They kept bringing Walt back for one or two mysterious scenes per season. I was hopeful that this was all building to something. That in the end, Walt would come back into the story somehow. Not to mention creators Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof publicly said that there were plans for Walt.

I was especially hopeful when we skipped ahead 3 years in Season 5. I was absolutely convinced that this was part of their plan to re-integrate Walt into the plot. He was the correct age again. He had short scenes off the island with Hurley and Locke, so he clearly hadn’t been forgotten. It all made sense until the entirety of the final season went by without ever addressing Walt at all. I was pissed. They kept stringing the audience along every time we saw Walt. It was as if they kept reminding us not to forget about him. Everything pointed to Walt being a key figure in the series, just like Desmond. In the end, we were left disappointed. Yes, I will acknowledge that we saw Walt in the epilogue, “The New Man in Charge”, getting recruited back to the island by Ben and Hurley. It’s not enough. I see that as an afterthought by the creators once they realized we wanted more to Walt’s story.  As Hurley would say, “Uncool, dude”.

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