LOST, The Walking Dead and Community-Building in the Post-Apocalypse
I fell off The Walking Dead pretty hard during its second season but, after diving back into it over the holidays, I’ll admit I was maybe quick to dismiss the show as slow-paced and as forgettable as the mindless hordes it portrays. Sure, AMC’s particular brand of splatterfest & survival drama isn’t for everyone but the more I saw of it, the more it actually reminded me of one of my favorite shows: LOST. However, the more it reminded me of LOST, the more I became both engaged and fascinated with the ideas that both shows tackle when it comes to storytelling, survivalism and the importance of community-building in the post-apocalypse.
And the more it reminded me of LOST, the more I became both engaged and fascinated with the ideas that both shows tackle when it comes to storytelling, survivalism and the importance of community-building in the post-apocalypse.
Like many network shows, LOST operates on a formula. Some episodes mess with the the formula more than others, but generally they conform to it and take on one of three styles of narrative; either the episode will center on a new side of a character we haven’t yet seen, a revelation about the overall mythology of the show or a crisis that affects the existence of the community as a whole. Swap out LOST’s tropical setting for ‘the zombie apocalypse’ and you have a formula that similarly encompasses a lot of the storytelling in The Walking Dead. Though on the surface the situations are quite different, episodes of LOST like “What Kate Did” (where Kate and Sawyer go looking for a horse) don’t really play out all that differently to episodes of The Walking Dead like “Still” (where Daryl and Beth search for booze).
Early episodes of LOST tend to tackle the necessities of survival like food, shelter and sources of freshwater, while later episodes of the series focus more on the characters now that these needs have been fulfilled. A similar shift takes place in The Walking Dead with the discovery and settlement of the prison. Over time, both the prison and the crash site become less of a habitat and more of a home — and this goes beyond an expansion of the sets in the show to include things like showers and pantries. It shapes the the kinds of stories the writers are able to tell. The stakes of the stories in LOST and The Walking Dead are often dependent on the needs of the communities they depict in a way that a lot of other shows aren’t.
However, it isn’t just the settings in these shows that evolve — but also the individuals in them. Each season of both LOST and The Walking Dead inject a handful of new survivors into the mix and while these survivors are initially treated as outsiders, they eventually become a cohesive part of the community. In fact, looking beyond that there’s a lot of interesting parallels in the casts of both shows.
Though the survivors in The Walking Dead are a little more prone to turning on one another than those of Oceanic Flight 815, there’s plenty of comparisons to be made. Jack & Rick make natural, albeit-reluctant, leaders. Kate & Michonne act as their deputies while struggling with their own internal identity crises. Sayid and Daryl are loyal comrades whose utility to the community is primarily driven by their past experiences.
At a more base level, both shows take fundamentally-modern characters and see what it would take for them to survive when society is removed from the equation. Though the key difference here could be described as one of tone, The Walking Dead hopelessness is offset by the thematic conclusions both it and LOST reach: that survivalism without empathy isn’t feasible nor sustainable.
It’s an idea that constantly rears its head in both shows. In The Walking Dead this is implicitly conveyed through the continued survival of the main cast. Rick, Daryl and Michonne all have skills that help them survive — but it’s their ability to rely and trust in eachother that ultimately allows them to triumph over the other groups and factions they encounter. In LOST, this same idea is a big part of what allows the crash survivors to eventually overcome and assimilate The Others — as well as being often explicitly referenced through Jack’s mantra of ‘Live Together, Die Alone’.
The survivors in both shows can lose their food, shelter and weapons — but even when they have nothing, they still are able to count on each other in a way that their adversaries can’t. Interestingly, this message sets them apart from a lot of other post-apocalyptic or survivalist fiction. In these kinds of stories, sentimentality, friendship and trust is often painted as a weakness, disadvantage or luxury that has to be cut loose if you want to survive. However, both The Walking Dead and LOST posit the opposite. They suggest that while society may eventually crumble, empathy plays a role in long-term reconstruction of civilization that can can never truly be replaced by cold pragmatism.
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