The writers met again in July to hash out details of the finale. But the first day or two of writing it were snagged, instead, on a character in plot purgatory. While meeting on episode six, Lindelof had dropped a Damon grenade: He sort of killed off Laurie. Some writers adamantly opposed her suicide; others thought it was time to sacrifice a character. “I didn’t see it as part of Laurie’s story,” says Haley Harris, a young writer who was driven to tears over the plot turn. Somerville and Carly Wray, another senior-level writer, were also against it. Then Nick Cuse, Lindelof’s ally in bomb-throwing, came up with the notion of scuba diving; he had a relative who had died of an embolism after a dive. A scuba-diving mishap, in which, say, Laurie cuts off the flow of oxygen from her scuba tank, could be a way of “camouflaging suicide,” relieving family members of the burden. Or, alternately, it could “push the debate onto the audience,” says Wray. But what it really did was push the question of Laurie’s fate into the last episode.

Several writers only agreed to the scuba scene on the guarantee that Laurie was actually alive. Others felt that her survival would amount to a cheap twist — “schmuck bait,” as Somerville called it. “By day two, morale was very low,” Lindelof remembers. “Also, I didn’t want to be in the room. It just felt like there was a weight there. I think it was separation anxiety. It’s the final episode.” Finally, he realized he had to break the logjam. He stepped into Perrotta’s office and said, “I think Laurie should still be alive.” Perrotta came around, and they went into Spezialy’s office. “And then,” says Lindelof, “the three of us went into the room united, and it was a tremendous relief, and that was the day that everything changed.”