Unless you’ve been living under a rock, in a hatch, or on a strange magical island hiding from a smoke monster, you know that ABC’s Lost is ending its six-year run tonight.
Starting at 7 p.m., ABC will air a two-hour recap, followed by the two-and-a-half-hour final episode, followed by an hour-long special with Jimmy Kimmel and the show’s cast and creators, followed by a week-long 24-hour-a-day retrospective. Well, the last one isn’t real, but would anyone be surprised?
But just in case you didn’t know, late night shows have done their best to remind you about the finale in the week leading up to it.
This week CBS’s David Letterman, host of The Late Show, cracked a ton of jokes, including the following:
I don’t want to break your hearts, but [Lost]’s coming to an end…and I happen to know how it ends. You wanna hear? Their luggage turns up.
…
Gonna be a lot of Lost parties, people get together with their family and friends, their clergymen, their loved ones and they watch Lost. I’ll be watching with Oprah and Jay doing a Tostito’s commercial” he joked, referencing one of the more memorable 2010 Super Bowl spots.
Letterman also aired a two-second series recap: “Plane crashes on island. Weird shit happens. Everybody dies.”
On NBC, Tonight Show host Conan O’Brien Jay Leno showed his own, albeit not-so-funny recap, laden with footage from the reality show Survivor, Gilligan’s Island, Tom Hanks’ Castaway, and a Brady Bunch episode that took place on a beach. Meh.
Also on NBC, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon took Lost jokes to a new level. Fallon’s seven-part parody, Late, finds Jimmy and members of the show’s cast and crew trapped on an abandoned floor inside 30 Rockefeller Plaza. Mick Jagger makes a surreal guest appearance and, in the series finale, the gang finally escapes the abandoned floor only to find themselves in an alternate universe. One where Arsenio Hall is the host of Late Night. Yes.
Then there’s Jimmy Kimmel, the redheaded stepchild of late night television, who has to bring up Lost every night because his show is also on ABC.
“I feel like 12 of my closest friends and their dog are gonna die on Sunday night,” he told his audience.
Friday night on Kimmel’s show, an entire segment was devoted to “audience members” asking Lost-related questions, and who made an appearance but L. Scott Caldwell and Sam Anderson! The two play Rose and Bernard, a sweet older couple who has fallen by the wayside as the show has progressed.
Late night television isn’t just about jokes and gags though. Lost stars have flooded the late night airwaves to talk up the series finale.
On CBS, Matthew Fox (Jack) appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman, and executive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse presented a special “Top Ten List” of Lost spoilers. Evangeline Lilly (Kate) was on the show last week.
Josh Holloway (Sawyer), Jorge Garcia (Hurley), and Lindelof and Cuse made appearances on Jimmy Kimmel Live, and Kimmel will interview the cast following the finale on Sunday night.
Fox and Garcia also made stops on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, and Lilly appeared last week.
Make sure you tune in to the Lost series finale tonight. If not for answers, then at least so you can follow the late night monologues this week.