There were probably people with terminal illnesses holding on so they could catch the finale of their most-beloved TV show, Game of Thrones, and who died horribly disappointed.

Good policy.

Spoilers for Lost to follow.

Ok, so in the beginning, there was an Island that existed at the nexus of life and death, good and evil. It was a place of power and magic. There lived an unnamed woman. She was the protector of the heart of the island, which was a magical spring that granted immortality and clarvoyance, along with some additional powers that are never clearly defined.

No one knows how long she lived there, but roughly 2,000 years ago a ship of travelers wrecked near the island and the survivors came ashore, where they started a community. One of them was a woman, Claudia, who was pregnant. The unnamed woman brought Claudia to her cave to help Claudia give birth. Claudia gave birth to a son she named Jacob, and then a twin who was not given a name. The woman then killed Claudia and chose to raise the twins as her own, calling herself Mother.

As the boys grew, Mother tried to teach them right from wrong, teaching them that the island was all there is. Jacob would listen and try his best, while his brother was more rebellious. Mother showed the boys the heart of the island and explained to them that one day one of them would take her place as its protector. She also explained that she had made it so that the brothers could not harm each other.

Some time later, a vision of Claudia appears to Jacob's brother and says that Mother killed her. When confronted, Mother acknowledges that she did, and justifies it saying that Claudia and all of her people from the shipwreck were bad people. Jacob accepts this, while the brother runs off and decides to live with the people in their community. Jacob stays with Mother, but visits his brother with Claudia's people.

Decades later, the people in the community have discovered the healing magnetism of the island, and have learned to dig caves to learn about and access more power. The brother, now known as the Man in Black, begins building a giant wheel underground with the intent of using it to get off the island. The wheel could alter time and space, moving individuals and even the entire island from place to place and time to time. Mother discovered the MiB's plan, and knocked him unconscious. She sealed off the chamber where the wheel was, and killed all of Claudia's people.

Mother then took Jacob to the heart of the island and told him to take her place. He drank from the well, and she showed him a cave of light. She warned Jacob never to enter the cave of light. She said that he would protect the island for as long as he could, but also he should search for his own replacement.

The Man in Black arrives and stabs Mother in the back, for which she thanks him. Jacob is enraged and fights with the Man in Black, eventually throwing him into the cave of light. This kills the Man in Black, and Jacob buries him and Mother in a grave together. However, the Man in Black is reborn as a smoke monster who can change shape and create whispers.

Jacob and the Smoke Monster spend over 1,000 years locked in a stalemate, with neither able to harm the other. They argue about humanity, and whether all people are corruptible or if they can tell right from wrong on their own. Jacob could magically leave the island, but the Smoke Monster was trapped on the Island and desperately wanted to leave. Jacob brought people to the island, by shipwrecks or magnetism or magic, but chose not to intervene while they killed each other or were killed by the Smoke Monster.

In the 1800's, another ship wrecks and a man named Richard Alpert comes ashore. The MiB tries to get Richard to kill Jacob with a special knife, but instead Jacob speaks with Richard and offers Richard long life to act as a leader and intermediary between Jacob and the island inhabitants. Richard led the island residents for over 100 years, remaining young and protecting his people from the Smoke Monster.

Some time in the 1960s, away from the Island, mathematicians and financiers start the DHARMA Initiative. They are studying a mathematical equation (the Valenzetti Equation) that supposedly predicts the end of the world, and hope to prevent the end by adjusting critical constants in the fabric of reality. They research places of magnetism and power, and build research stations. They also made chocolate bars that you could have bought for real during the run of the show.

One of the stations they built in the 1960s was the Lamppost, which used a place of power to locate other places of power. One of those places was the Island, which actually moved around from place to place in the south Pacific ocean. DHARMA launched an expedition to the Island with a well-funded team of scientists, engineers, and support, and started conducting research in the early 1970s. Their aim was to harness the powers of the island to alter one or more of Valenzetti's constants. DHARMA built many research stations on the island, giving them each names like The Swan and The Pearl and The Arrow.

DHARMA created a tentative truce with Richard and the inhabitants of the island they called the Hostiles. DHARMA brought animals, including polar bears, to their Hydra station for experiments. There was also a DHARMA Janitor named Bob who brought his son, Benjamin Linus, to the island. Bob was an abusive father, and Ben ran away to the woods where he met Richard. Ben asked to join the hostiles, but Richard said he would have to be patient.

The Swan was built, under the direction of a DHARMA engineer named Radzinsky, to harness an underground pocket of magnetic magic energy, but in 1977 there was an Incident during drilling. To avert a catastrophic explosion, they dropped a hydrogen bomb into the pocket and detonated it, which released a time-warping amount of magnetic energy.

DHARMA then built the rest of the Swan station underground not to harness the enegy, but to periodically release it in small quantities. Radzinsky was assigned to be sealed into the Swan station and press a button every 108 minutes to release the energy. For security, he was isolated with food and supplies periodically air-dropped to him. To access the button, he had to enter 6 numbers into a computer terminal, 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, and 42 (the Valenzetti constants).

The Pearl station was built to monitor and document the activities of the person operating the Swan. Pearl observers were told that the Swan station was a psychological experiment where the subject believes they must press the button to avoid ending the world. Pearl observers took shifts watching and logging everything Radzinsky did until 1991 when he was joined by another DHARMA member, Kelvin.

Then a bunch of stuff happened, and Nikki and Paulo were bitten by a spider and died.

I thankfully got lost on the plot sometime between S3 and S4, decided there was no possible chance for a satisfying ending and quit.