In an extensive interview with the New York Times’ Lorne Manly, "Lost" showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse hint that although there may be some story lines tied up in the show’s finale, the series’ last episode — a two-and-a-half hour program — will also spark debate.

(Spoiler alert: The following information may reveal plot developments to those viewers not up to date with the series.)

The ending has apparently been in the works for years. "The literal last scene of the show was something that we concocted very early on in the first season of the show," Cuse says. "But the last episode is an amalgam of ideas that started with our first mythology conversations in the first season when we realized after the pilot came out and the ratings were huge that the show was going to go a long time."

So what about that parallel world that was created by the hydrogen bomb explosion at the end of the fifth season? "To answer that question would be to spoil the show, and that’s also one of those questions that we feel is going to be a really healthy and cool debate when the show is over. There is a conclusion to the sideways story, but it’s one that we feel will provoke discussion," Cuse adds.

But while the last scene has been planned for years, the pair also discuss how the show also evolved organically, with some characters taking off in directions they hadn’t foreseen. Mr. Eko, for example, was killed off the show because the actor playing him didn’t want to be in Hawaii, where "Lost" is filmed. "We had all these fantastic intentions for this character," Cuse says. "It’s not like J. K. Rowling; we don’t control every aspect of our world."

The duo also add there are some episodes they’re not proud of, such as the flashback that shows how Jack got his tattoos. "At the end of the day we made 121 hours or something like that of “Lost,” and I would say that probably only like 15 of them were subpar/stinkers. That’s not bad. If you’re going to have 15 stinkers, that means that 15 of them are actually going to be awesome. You cannot have awesome episodes without stinkers," Lindelof says.