Lost's Shocking Death!

And you thought the next grave was going to be Juliet's... Wrong!

Time-traveling expert Daniel Faraday (nicknamed "Twitchy" by Sawyer) has become the latest Lostie to bite the big one, leaving the 1970's Dharmaville outcasts to fend for themselves just when they need him most.

Executive producers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof commend Jeremy Davies for pulling off an increasingly bizarro role--and taking the news of his firing better than any of their previous island victims.

“For us, Faraday really was the cornerstone of the fifth season--he really shined,” says Lindelof. "I can’t imagine what Season 5 would have looked like without Jeremy Davies. When you think about all the crazy stuff that had to come out of that guy’s mouth, for him to be as interesting and emotional and poetic as he was is really extraordinary."

Lindelof and Cuse say they were impressed by how gracefully Davies dealt with his dismissal. While disappointed to be losing a paycheck, the actor saw his departure as essential to their storytelling. Lindelof says, "When Carlton and I called Jeremy to explain what was going to be happening with Faraday, we’ve never had a more awesome exit interview with somebody on the show.”

“It was an incredibly painful thing to kill this beloved character," Cuse adds, "but we feel that’s what this show has to do. His death is kind of the culminating event in the entire season. It really ends one chapter and commences the start of the final chapter of the entire series. Once we explained that to Jeremy, while he was personally saddened that his full-time status on Lost was coming to an end, he put the story above his own personal self.” (Hmmm...notice Cuse's wording: "full-time status".)

So why was now the right time to do him in?

"When we kill off a character we want the audience to say, ‘How dare you!,’ not, ‘It’s about time,’” explains Lindelof, who was particularly impressed with Davies' final scenes. “He has never been better than he was in 'The Variable.'"

Michael Emerson, who plays Ben, praises Davies as “a great sensitive guy who got deep into his character. He really lived it.” (And died it!)

Around the set, Terry O’Quinn (John Locke) will miss Davies and the music that always accompanied him. “Most actors walk around with headphones, but Jeremy would walk around holding a miniature boom box," recalls O'Quinn. "He always wanted to provide music for everyone--whether they wanted it or not. Everybody would go, ‘What’s up with this dude?’”

O'Quinn remembers the time Davies brought his boom box out into the water during an action scene. “We were out paddling in a canoe with me, Ken Leung (Miles), Josh (Sawyer), Jeremy and Elizabeth (Juliet) and we ended up flipping a half mile out to sea. The first thing I thought of when I came up was, 'I hope Jeremy’s f---ing boom box went to the bottom--and it did. But he replaced it real quick.”

Davies won't be so easily replaced. Do you think Faraday was killed off too soon? Or were you tired of his time-traveling jargon?

Source: TV Guide Magazine