Great Fake LOST Alternate Endings on Jimmy Kimmel One-Up the Haters

Say what you will about the ending to LOST — and yes! we will say many things about it in the morning — but you can’t fault the show for lacking awareness. One of my favorite lines in tonight’s finale could have easily been cut without taking anything away from the plot, but seemed so necessary: Flocke’s quip that it seemed rather “obvious” that Jacob would pick Jack. Meta! The three LOST alternate endings that debuted on the Jimmy Kimmel Live! extravaganza following the show further highlighted the self-awareness and good humor of the folks behind the show:

For as long as a LOST finale has been on the horizon, we’ve heard the same few tired jokes about how a show so famously full of tricks and turns might end: The most popular being that it was “all a dream,” the second-most being some comparison to the head-scratching ending to The Sopranos, and the third being a crossover reference to some other island-based television program, such as Gilligan’s Island or Survivor. (Heck, when David Letterman interviewed Evangeline Lilly earlier this month, he touched upon the first two.)

Well, the show’s EPs Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse rolled with the punches on Jimmy Kimmel: In a much-promoted unveiling of alternate LOST endings that will be the last waking image of the show for millions of fans, they teased — you guessed it! A Survivor ending, a Sopranos ending, and a dream ending.

While these could’ve easily backfired (and the Survivor ending came the closest to doing so), they pulled through thanks to their not-too-snarky execution, the awesomeness of seeing the real LOST actors and in-jokes tossed into such wonderfully hackneyed situations (love the Dharma Initiative diner menus), and, not least of all, because of Lindelof and Cuse in pajamas.

You’ll see what we mean: