In anticipation of Sunday’s Lost series finale, appropriately titled “The End,” I’m going to post a two part column. Here’s part one focusing on anticipation leading up to the finale. Part two will focus on the finale itself.

People talk about living a life without regret. One of the regrets I have, not an important one but it still haunts me, is San Diego Comic Con 2004. It was there that the ENTIRE CAST of this new television show arrived to show fans their new two hour pilot. Having been to Comic Con for the better part of a decade, this isn’t a new occurrence. Almost every genre show does the same thing. What IS a new occurrence is that the show lasts and I fall in love with it. The show in question, of course, was Lost.

Based on the strength of that pilot, the show premiered on September 22, 2004 as the most expensive television pilot ever.

Thankfully, it delivered huge ratings and the show continued. I, like many of you, was watching that night, and my television watching experiences would never be the same. I had been a fan of show co-creator JJ Abrams’s previous show, Alias, so I was almost predisposed to enjoy a show where each episode had a cliffhanger, but Lost took it to a different level.

Who could forget the season one cliffhanger going down the hatch? Or how about the season two cliffhanger of finally seeing something off the island? Or the season three finale of the flash forward? Or the season four finale of John Locke dead in the coffin? Or the season five finale of the nuclear bomb? And those are just the finales.

Each episode of each season (minus, maybe, the first 6 episodes of season three when the whole series was in flux) gave its audience so much to discuss week to week. I’ve never literally ran to my computer after an episode of television to discuss it with my friends, let alone EVERY. SINGLE. WEEK.

And now, come Sunday, that’ll all be over. Or most of it. The talking, discussion and the legacy will, hopefully, endure. But the story, as current show runners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse have conceived it, will be done.

This final season has been kind of a mixed bag. Many of the character’s we’ve come to love have been given a back seat (at least on the island side of the coin) in order to dig deeper into the mythology of the island. And that, itself, has been hit or miss. Some of it totally interesting – like Richard’s backstory – or a little awkward – like the stuff at the temple. Still, this past week’s episode was classic Lost – setting up yet another, memorable, drop dead finale.

And that’s what I’ve come to expect after six years of Lost totally over taking my life. I can’t believe I’m going to have to close the chapter come Sunday.