Why has Lost disappeared from pop culture?

I reject your premise.

Because its more than 20 years old

Of the shows you listed only The Wire is older than Lost. And all but The Wire have gotten spin offs and prequels since their original show ended. And I don’t really think The Wire dominates cultural conversation more than Lost, really. At least not outside online circles.

All those shows are either still airing or have spinoffs airing. Better Call Saul ended very recently. Lost ended and the only brand extension was a crappy video game. People still talk about The Wire because it genuinely is the best show ever.

Shows like Dexter and Game Of Thrones that still have new episodes or spin offs.

It's very much still pretty relevant I would say. Especially being 20 years old. Yeah it doesn't come up in the convo with "best tv" like Sopranos or The Wire, but it definitely feels like people quote it and make references to it more than any other show from that time period (at least from my perspective).

This is like asking why nothing from the 80s was still popular in the 2000s. New media has come out since Lost that is more relevant, or have shows that spun-off. Most of the actors from Lost aren't wholly relevent anymore, or active. For example, Evangeline Lily has retired due to health.

* People have heard that many of the original fans didn't like the ending. * Lost was a long time ago, young people haven't watched it (people who are ~25 now were toddlers when it was on). * With fewer people talking about it now, fewer people are inspired to go watch it. Shows either balloon in popularity or they dwindle. (And I say that as someone who loved it.) * It's not really culturally relevant in the way that Sopranos or The Wire are. Or Mad Men. * Watching it requires a pretty serious investment, there are 121 episodes which add up to more than 90 hours of content. That's more than The Wire, GOT, Sopranos, GOT, or Mad Men.

I literally see "Lost" brought up in this sublistnook multiple times a month. For a 20-year-old show that captured the public zeitgeist when it came out, folks still discuss it about as much as I would expect people to. It hasn't disappeared nor been completely forgotten.

I don’t know but Lost fans now have From to talk about!

Game of Thrones was popular in the era of social media. Lost's biggest fans congregated on message boards, not on Twitter. It was only really a phenomenon during the first season. 2004 was a long time ago.

I tried watching it recently and I realized that (1) it seriously benefited from being released on a weekly cadence, and (2) the final seasons were worse than Game of Thrones. It’s a f****** brutal slog to get through, and the big draw WAS trying to figure out what the hell the island was. 

It didn’t become a franchise.

I think it's because LOST was one of the biggest "water cooler" shows ever, but one that also wasn't on any streaming, DVRs hadn't taken off yet, While tivo was out, it was $400 for the unit and like $15/month. So the show aired in kind of an inbetween time. It was also a show with hidden clues, at least one ARG, and solving the puzzles and finding the hidden symbols in each episode was a thing we all did together. Work basically stopped the morning after each episode aired. It was a cultural phenomenon that doesn't hold up when you are watching solo.

Some of the crew from Lost now work on From with The Russo Brothers, I know weird combo, and that show is great.

WE HAVE TO GO BACK!

Bad reputation from an ending that isn't the shows ending. I swear every year a new list of "wrost TV show endings ever" comes out and every time they spill the same "they were dead this whole time" bullshit. Also it has a very unique episodes structure. 20-24 episodes were the the first seasons have a vertical structure but as the series progressed it becomes incredibly horizontal. That episode quantity, with that kind of horizontal structure, was hard to follow for the TV audience of the time. Just like the quantity of vertical episodes of the first seasons is hard to follow for the current audience.

It spent a long time asking questions and gave only some underwhelming answers.

Didn’t stick the landing

I watched it when it was airing and I tried a rewatch a few years ago but fell off because I know they don't give many answers and the ending is exactly what everyone guessed from the beginning but they told us over and over again was not the case.

They blew the ending, and a lot of the later seasons really dragged as they struggled to pull together all of the disparate plot threads. I’d say that most people these days would lump it together with GoT as another show that blew the ending and then everyone stopped talking about.

Partially because it aired before meme culture was all over the internet. So you get folks never really checked it out.

Last episode of Lost was 2010. 16 years ago. Dexter had a new season last year and another season coming. GOT had a new episode last year and new seasons coming. Breaking Bad had its last season in 2022. 4 years ago. For the most part every series mentioned other than The Wire is still talked about because it’s still topical. Dexter and GoT still have seasons being put out. Breaking Bad only ended a few years ago franchise wise. Wire is really the only true comparison and it’s IMO just because it’s a better show but I also very rarely see it mentioned.

Let's examine the premise. If we take a snapshot of everything that is talked about today and assume that is proper what is supposed to happen 5 years from now?  There is only so much time in the day to be talking about things. So where do new shows fit in? Do you have to just never talk about new shows so that there is what you consider an acceptable amount of talk about the old shows? Do we have to talk about every good show that has ever existed every single hour of every day? Do the works of Shakespeare stop being good if you aren't bringing them up in conversation every single day? Or is it perhaps possible for a show to be good and for it to only be brought up when it is relevant and the rest of the time it just sits in the background and that isn't a slight against the show but just a practical reality?

I think one important reason is that most of the shows you mentioned come from the hbo style premium subscription tv style pioneered by shows like the sopranos. Lost is different for a few reasons. It was maybe the pinnacle of 2000s "appointment" network TV. HBO is a lot more popular now but back in 2004 way fewer people had it but basically everyone could watch ABC. Lost is a big ensemble show that explores the backstories of many different characters. The actual on-island plot was secondary in a way and mostly served as a way to reflect how the characters wanted to break from their past. For this reason it is actually harder to discuss the way more focused and limited shows are. Even shows like GOT with big ensemble casts have a more clear and conventional narrative structure. Lost's storytelling is very diffuse and scattered, but people were just watching it week to week and discussing it with friends and coworkers that week then forgetting about it. You didn't have a wiki page or ability to rewatch on demand so people were less able to review the story and characters as much as we do these days.

Well, I was big into the show when it was running. It lost me, no pun intended, around season 4. From what I understand, it really failed to stick the landing when it comes to the ending on what was a great mysterious premise.

I talk about Lost on r/television all the time. It's a widely discussed show for how old it is. Shows that actually disappeared are stuff like Desperate Housewives.

Lost has no spinoffs afaik, is a show with a famously disliked ending, and is a long show with buttloads of episodes, which younger audiences do not like/want mostly. You would not believe how many times my nieces and nephews have asked me about a show I like like Supernatural or 2005 Doctor Who or so on about "can you make me a list of like 5-6 episodes to watch a season so i can skip the rest? its too long".

I feel like Lost was HUGE its first season but was already fading by the end.

The last few seasons and the ending were a hot mess. They should have wrapped it up sooner. The other shows you mentioned knew when to stop.

I think the ending killed it for most people. But honestly, GoT still gets talked about way more than Lost does. So there's something else going on there too...

cause the show is too smart for the ADHD Gen Z audience

OP, I’ve never actually seen a single episode of this show. My response to you query is simple … older shows live on in our memories, and our HTPCs (or streaming services). I’m just now rewatching the original Frasier series.

It's just a lot. For all people say that 20 episode seasons were better, there's a ton of cruft in there. The first season is really good but pretty much every season after is uneven, and I'd say a massive chunk of season 6 is a waste of time. Once you get to the end there's not a huge amount to say. Lots of the characters have fundamentally changed / are no longer themselves, a bunch of people die, and the end confused people who weren't paying attention. I think about it a lot, but it's not on the same tier as the Wire. Personally I think it's a show that could be remade. And edited, a lot. Explore some of the characters whose actors wanted out early, have a plan for Walt so you don't write him out when he starts aging. Be more consistent with what the island is and what it can do. Fewer red herrings that seemed cool and go nowhere.

I think it's because the show was terrible. But I obviously wasn't a fan so I'm probably not helpful here.

I have strong feelings about LOST. Here's my take on LOST: I loved LOST. I was there for every episode, as they aired. I was there for every up and down, every character death (they way they killed Boone still haunts me and pisses me off). LOST was simultaneously some of the best (the episode where Desmond says "I love you, Penny" before turning the key is probably my favorite) and worst television I've ever seen. And then in that last season it became apparent that the writers had no idea how they should to end it, that they'd wrote themselves into a corner, and we got that metaphysical circle jerk of a finale. LOST stole six years of my life. F*** LOST.

"Lost" ended up with some rights issues. The guy who created it-- Jeffrey Lieber, who is listed as the show's creator-- had to sue to get his rights. The network execs saw Lieber's pitch and then decided to rip his ideas without paying him. That entire incident probably makes derivative shows less valuable to ABC. They might have to give him a chunk of the money off the top.

Mystery Box has yet to drop a satisfying ending, and I don't think it can. Like in a cohesive narrative, you can't just keep doing buildup and skip out on answers. Mystery is one thing "We decided not to focus on that" is not. It's bad writing.

It joins the pile of popular shows that don't have lasting power 

That is because Lost was terrible

Because people hated the final seasons and ending and anyone saying anything else is pure revisionist history.

Why has everyone abandoned a show that pissed off its fans every season and then again at the finale? Complete mystery to me. Don't get me wrong, I loved the characters and even the individual episodes of the show, and I'm very aware of all the apologetics that make sense of the twists and turns... But the average viewer is not going to want to think that deeply about it, and will just remain pissed off about the infinite number of bait n switches in the show's run.

121 hour long episodes seems like a lot for someone to commit to

Because no matter how many people say that the show answered all its questions, we all know it’s not true. The show was amazing at the beginning and then it went completely nuts. Hardly anything made any sense.

Then maybe it wasn’t the biggest show on television.

Hot take: lost was the squid game of its time. Very exciting premise with a disappointing pay off. And then they added way more seasons because it was printing money.

Because Lost is a NARRATIVE PONZI SCHEME.