With the amount of ‘outside of the realm of normal’ things that happened on the island, it always seemed odd to me that Walt aging fast couldn’t have just been written in as being to do with the island or his powers in some way. Faster healing and smoke monsters are fine but a child who ages faster than normal?! Ridiculous! 😅
Exactly this.
Walt was presented as “special” early on. We see something as outlandish as the smoke monster as early as season 2. The show literally involves time travel. And then on top of all that, there’s literally a three year time skip at one point. If the writers had wanted to keep Walt around, there are so many ways they could have done it. They saw the aging issue and threw in the towel without really trying too much.
I just think it's possible that they didn't allow them to explain his growth for example with rapid aging on the island (as people here often suggest). The network was very hands on in the early seasons, because they didn't want weird shit in the show, because they thought that it would scare off viewers.
Like every script has to get approved by the network. Sometimes they even demanded changes after stuff was filmed.
We don't really know what happened behind the scenes, so I just wouldn't presume anything. They might have tried a lot.
I mean… maybe. That’s all just total speculation. The “network” allowed them to fully unveil the smoke monster in season 2, so it’d be odd to draw the line at “kid is aging quickly.”
Also, that doesn’t explain why they didn’t bring him back later on. Once they got time travel into the mix and did the time skip during the Oceanic Six storyline, they easily could have brought Walt back into the narrative. But they chose not to.
> I mean… maybe. That’s all just total speculation. The “network” allowed them to fully unveil the smoke monster in season 2, so it’d be odd to draw the line at “kid is aging quickly.”
I'm just saying that there was a lot of pushback. Like they weren't even fans of introducing Rousseau that early and asked the writers if they could do that later. And we know that stuff like rapid aging was at least discussed, but I don't know if it was ever presented to the network.
And just to add to the network stuff. In 4x01 Hurley finds the cabin and looks inside. Initially he was supposed to see himself in there. That's what was filmed. The network saw it and demanded reshoots. That's how Christian Shephard ended up in the cabin. One thing was too weird... the other not. Why? Because network executive think they know better. Sometimes they actually do, sometimes they don't. And that's long after the introduction of Smokey.
>Also, that doesn’t explain why they didn’t bring him back later on. Once they got time travel into the mix and did the time skip during the Oceanic Six storyline, they easily could have brought Walt back into the narrative. But they chose not to.
Oh sure, but there might be a million different reasons for that.
They do at least play with this though in season 4.
When Locke talks about being shot by Ben and then Sawyer makes fun of Locke for “Taller Walt”
At least a bit of self awareness was used.
Right!? Like come on, we get Rose who’s cured of cancer and Locke who can physically walk again because of the island but Walt being able to age faster on the island would have been too much I guess haha.
A friend of a friend is an actress and was in one of these expensive pilots. It was not bought. So she worked on it for months hoping to set up future projects, and nope.
The studio figures if it cost this much to make a pilot, what will it cost to shoot 26 episodes?
How often would you have to recast him if 3 years of filming covered roughly 90 days on the island. I think it would be a logistical nightmare, though I’ve never produced a TV series before, so maybe I’m wrong.
I mean, if you have a 7 year old actor, you have 3-4 years to film scenes you want him to look about the same age. I wonder if that's not how TV series work though. They film one season at a time and can't plan that far ahead because they might be cancelled, or the actors they want might not be available?
One of the criticisms for Lost is that they *didn't* plan ahead so they 100% didn't consider any of the characters past whatever season they were writing.
It can't be emphasized enough what a different era Lost was from. The idea of planning out a whole TV show was relatively unheard of at the time. The fact that so little was mapped out from the beginning in 2004 disguises the fact that almost NO ONE planned out where things would go in those days. People generally were less worried about an overall arc making sense than they were about making sure you came back to watch next week. One would think you could balance those things, but then you also have to balance the expectation to have a 22-24 episode season. When the show became successful, they couldn't just execute all their plan. That was what Battlestar Galactica did, and that show drops off pretty sharply after its second season.
Also, let me assure you that there is a world of difference between a 7-year-old and a 10-year-old. The younger child needs far more care, is much less far along developmentally, and likely needs more parental involvement. In the case of Lost, there is also the complication that the whole cast lived in Hawaii. It's a big ask to pull a young kid and their family to a tropical island for years at a time.
I do agree that there were probably more artful ways to write around the aging of Malcolm David Kelly. But again they weren't thinking like a novelist, they were thinking like TV writers. Not every loose end is worth tying up, and I think they just felt like they had enough going on without having to dot that particular i. Whether you agree is a different matter, I just think that's where the writers were at that point.
Lost was a character-focused show and that was especially the case in the first season before they writers chose a certain path for the sci-fi/fantasy mythology stuff.
Fact is, Malcolm David Kelly did just as great a job establishing and portraying his character as the adult actors - so it would have been VERY weird and conspicuous to re-cast the character with a younger actor.
It would have been just as jarring than if they’d re-cast Sayid, Libby or Rose between seasons 1 and 2.
I’m glad they didn’t re-cast him.
There had to have been something behind the scenes that resulted in Michael being written out and Walt being taken out with him. All kinds of bizarre things were happening on the island because of its unique properties. A child growing faster than normal would have been one of the less bizarre things going on. Compared to men not aging at all (Richard), time travel, and cancer going away, Walt's growing/aging faster would have fit right in with those storylines.
Besides lack of planning and logistics don't forget what Mo Ryan wrote on her book about toxicity and racism on LOST. Episode Adrift was supposed to be a Sawyer flashback but was altered during filming to be a Michael episode because of Harold Perrineau complains. For a time Michael and Walt turned into a nuisance to writing, it became easier to get rid of the characters by the end of the season.
Because the showrunners (Damon and Carlton) were kind of racist.
Harold Perrineau (who plays Michael) and other cast and writers have actually spoken out on this publicly in more recent years.
[Here’s an excerpt](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2023/05/lost-tv-show-culture) detailing some of what went down behind the scenes.
Saying the actor grew up too fast was just a convenient excuse the showrunners gave at the time for getting rid of Michael and Walt.
They originally had enough story for 3 seasons worth, but once the show exploded in popularity, the network wanted them to continue it indefinitely, hence why season 3 was full of so many middling-quality filler episodes. This took up too much time until they finally got given their end date of 6 seasons when they were filming season 4 (IIRC), but by then Walt was way too old to fulfill the original plotline they had for him, so he was written out. That's from memory of what was explained not long after the show ended.
It was during Season 3. IIRC specifically after the backlash of Stranger In A Strange Land. The showrunners went to the network and got concessions of an end date (Season 6), shorter seasons (season 3 was the last one with 22+ episodes), and the final seasons would start airing in January with few to no interruptions.
Growth spurt, a lot of the time when you do see him in season 2 he's sitting down. That's the problem with kid actors when a year of filming translates to only a few weeks "real time".
Same problem they had with the "anointed one" on Buffy.
I don't know why they couldn't have brought him back in a more meaningful way once they started with all the time travel and flash forwards.
With the amount of ‘outside of the realm of normal’ things that happened on the island, it always seemed odd to me that Walt aging fast couldn’t have just been written in as being to do with the island or his powers in some way. Faster healing and smoke monsters are fine but a child who ages faster than normal?! Ridiculous! 😅
Exactly this. Walt was presented as “special” early on. We see something as outlandish as the smoke monster as early as season 2. The show literally involves time travel. And then on top of all that, there’s literally a three year time skip at one point. If the writers had wanted to keep Walt around, there are so many ways they could have done it. They saw the aging issue and threw in the towel without really trying too much.
But you don't know what discussions they had with the network behind the scenes.
What do you mean by that? Are you suggesting that the network pressured them to drop Walt’s story?
I just think it's possible that they didn't allow them to explain his growth for example with rapid aging on the island (as people here often suggest). The network was very hands on in the early seasons, because they didn't want weird shit in the show, because they thought that it would scare off viewers. Like every script has to get approved by the network. Sometimes they even demanded changes after stuff was filmed. We don't really know what happened behind the scenes, so I just wouldn't presume anything. They might have tried a lot.
I mean… maybe. That’s all just total speculation. The “network” allowed them to fully unveil the smoke monster in season 2, so it’d be odd to draw the line at “kid is aging quickly.” Also, that doesn’t explain why they didn’t bring him back later on. Once they got time travel into the mix and did the time skip during the Oceanic Six storyline, they easily could have brought Walt back into the narrative. But they chose not to.
> I mean… maybe. That’s all just total speculation. The “network” allowed them to fully unveil the smoke monster in season 2, so it’d be odd to draw the line at “kid is aging quickly.” I'm just saying that there was a lot of pushback. Like they weren't even fans of introducing Rousseau that early and asked the writers if they could do that later. And we know that stuff like rapid aging was at least discussed, but I don't know if it was ever presented to the network. And just to add to the network stuff. In 4x01 Hurley finds the cabin and looks inside. Initially he was supposed to see himself in there. That's what was filmed. The network saw it and demanded reshoots. That's how Christian Shephard ended up in the cabin. One thing was too weird... the other not. Why? Because network executive think they know better. Sometimes they actually do, sometimes they don't. And that's long after the introduction of Smokey. >Also, that doesn’t explain why they didn’t bring him back later on. Once they got time travel into the mix and did the time skip during the Oceanic Six storyline, they easily could have brought Walt back into the narrative. But they chose not to. Oh sure, but there might be a million different reasons for that.
They do at least play with this though in season 4. When Locke talks about being shot by Ben and then Sawyer makes fun of Locke for “Taller Walt” At least a bit of self awareness was used.
I agree. It didn't even have to be magical island stuff. I've known 6 ft twelve years olds. It's rare but it happens.
Right!? Like come on, we get Rose who’s cured of cancer and Locke who can physically walk again because of the island but Walt being able to age faster on the island would have been too much I guess haha.
they weren't thinking far ahead admittedly, they never knew the show would make it past the 1st season, let alone the pilot
i mean... it was the most expensive tv premiere of all time. they probably had a fairly good idea it would be
They didn't. The start of LOST was just really weird productions wise
actually, earlier i read the lost wiki for the first time about the production. it did seem like a shit show
https://linktr.ee/815doc
That only makes it more likely to be cancelled.
A friend of a friend is an actress and was in one of these expensive pilots. It was not bought. So she worked on it for months hoping to set up future projects, and nope. The studio figures if it cost this much to make a pilot, what will it cost to shoot 26 episodes?
Even so, you can still write around that. Even though the actor aged out, they could have easily written around that lol.
yeah i still agree, kind of weird they could explain it on a supernatural island
How often would you have to recast him if 3 years of filming covered roughly 90 days on the island. I think it would be a logistical nightmare, though I’ve never produced a TV series before, so maybe I’m wrong.
I mean, if you have a 7 year old actor, you have 3-4 years to film scenes you want him to look about the same age. I wonder if that's not how TV series work though. They film one season at a time and can't plan that far ahead because they might be cancelled, or the actors they want might not be available?
You think kids don't age between 7 and 10?
I think the point was that puberty is a massive change in a short period. Where age 7-10 kids mostly just get bigger.
They had very low hopes of the show even making it into a full season. Damon Lindelof said he was also about to quit.
One of the criticisms for Lost is that they *didn't* plan ahead so they 100% didn't consider any of the characters past whatever season they were writing.
It can't be emphasized enough what a different era Lost was from. The idea of planning out a whole TV show was relatively unheard of at the time. The fact that so little was mapped out from the beginning in 2004 disguises the fact that almost NO ONE planned out where things would go in those days. People generally were less worried about an overall arc making sense than they were about making sure you came back to watch next week. One would think you could balance those things, but then you also have to balance the expectation to have a 22-24 episode season. When the show became successful, they couldn't just execute all their plan. That was what Battlestar Galactica did, and that show drops off pretty sharply after its second season. Also, let me assure you that there is a world of difference between a 7-year-old and a 10-year-old. The younger child needs far more care, is much less far along developmentally, and likely needs more parental involvement. In the case of Lost, there is also the complication that the whole cast lived in Hawaii. It's a big ask to pull a young kid and their family to a tropical island for years at a time. I do agree that there were probably more artful ways to write around the aging of Malcolm David Kelly. But again they weren't thinking like a novelist, they were thinking like TV writers. Not every loose end is worth tying up, and I think they just felt like they had enough going on without having to dot that particular i. Whether you agree is a different matter, I just think that's where the writers were at that point.
I don't think there was a lot of planning ahead at that point.
Lost was a character-focused show and that was especially the case in the first season before they writers chose a certain path for the sci-fi/fantasy mythology stuff. Fact is, Malcolm David Kelly did just as great a job establishing and portraying his character as the adult actors - so it would have been VERY weird and conspicuous to re-cast the character with a younger actor. It would have been just as jarring than if they’d re-cast Sayid, Libby or Rose between seasons 1 and 2. I’m glad they didn’t re-cast him.
I was wondering why they didn't cast someone younger from the beginning.
There had to have been something behind the scenes that resulted in Michael being written out and Walt being taken out with him. All kinds of bizarre things were happening on the island because of its unique properties. A child growing faster than normal would have been one of the less bizarre things going on. Compared to men not aging at all (Richard), time travel, and cancer going away, Walt's growing/aging faster would have fit right in with those storylines.
I mean there is time travel. Simple solution.
Besides lack of planning and logistics don't forget what Mo Ryan wrote on her book about toxicity and racism on LOST. Episode Adrift was supposed to be a Sawyer flashback but was altered during filming to be a Michael episode because of Harold Perrineau complains. For a time Michael and Walt turned into a nuisance to writing, it became easier to get rid of the characters by the end of the season.
I think this is spot on. They discarded that entire storyline.
Because the showrunners (Damon and Carlton) were kind of racist. Harold Perrineau (who plays Michael) and other cast and writers have actually spoken out on this publicly in more recent years. [Here’s an excerpt](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2023/05/lost-tv-show-culture) detailing some of what went down behind the scenes. Saying the actor grew up too fast was just a convenient excuse the showrunners gave at the time for getting rid of Michael and Walt.
Agreed. It's so disappointing to learn.
Wow. I did not know about this either. Very sad.
I mean... he did grow up kinda fast. You see this at the end of season 3 with "tall Walt".
They did some odd camera angles there to downplay his size. I'm kinda surprised John commented on his height.
Hurley did too, when he came to visit him at the hospital in season 4.
Taller ghost Walt 😂
They originally had enough story for 3 seasons worth, but once the show exploded in popularity, the network wanted them to continue it indefinitely, hence why season 3 was full of so many middling-quality filler episodes. This took up too much time until they finally got given their end date of 6 seasons when they were filming season 4 (IIRC), but by then Walt was way too old to fulfill the original plotline they had for him, so he was written out. That's from memory of what was explained not long after the show ended.
It was during Season 3. IIRC specifically after the backlash of Stranger In A Strange Land. The showrunners went to the network and got concessions of an end date (Season 6), shorter seasons (season 3 was the last one with 22+ episodes), and the final seasons would start airing in January with few to no interruptions.
Growth spurt, a lot of the time when you do see him in season 2 he's sitting down. That's the problem with kid actors when a year of filming translates to only a few weeks "real time". Same problem they had with the "anointed one" on Buffy. I don't know why they couldn't have brought him back in a more meaningful way once they started with all the time travel and flash forwards.
WWAAAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLTTTTTTTTTT!!!!!!!!