Netflix streams wrong version of 'Lost' finale, will restore original

Six years after its original airing, the divisive finale of the beloved sci-fi drama Lost continues to cause controversy. But this time, it's not about whether fans loved or hated the two-part closer "The End" — it's about whether they can watch it at all.

Netflix is restoring the original version of the Lost finale after viewers noticed that the version airing on the streaming site was 18 minutes shorter than the 104-minute two-part episode that aired in 2010.

Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof provided a statement to EW  asking Netflix to restore the original version, claiming he was "totally befuddled" by the mistake. He posited that a 42-minute version of the episode, edited for reruns to accommodate commercials, was accidentally sent to Netflix instead.

"Love it or hate it, the finale that aired is the definitive finale and to alter it in any way defies explanation. Something tells me that this isn’t Netflix’s fault … that it’s an honest mistake and something got miscommunicated — I seem to remember ABC had to make an edit for rerun airings that tightened the show into ‘format’ (42 minutes to accommodate commercials), and somehow that [version] mistakenly got sent to Netflix. This sometimes happened with our finales — we’d ask for extra time and ABC would agree to air, but then we had to do another tighter version for subsequent airings and/or international [markets]. We usually left these (painful) cuts to the discretion of our editors… but as the show lives on in DVD form and on Netflix, there is ZERO reason to have the shorter version out there.”

Netflix' official Twitter responded to an EW tweet about Lindelof's comments, writing, "We are in the middle of correcting now, and will have the uncut version back streaming as soon as possible."