More than a few Lost fans were kind of upset by the series finale last May. Apparently the Big Mystery they’d been following for the previous six freakin’ years culminated in Covered Dish Night at some cheeseball Unitarian church, leaving five, or ten, or fifty, of the show’s manifold subplots dangling in video limbo. Series co-creator Damon Lindelof wasn’t entirely happy that millions of people hated his guts, but he insisted the series ended in the way they’d originally planned—and, secretly, he thought people who bitched about it so vociferously were never real fans in the first place. But all that changed when he saw Part One of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows last week:

I felt dirty. I felt… taken advantage of. I know, I know, people in glass houses—but, still! Dumbledore told them there were six remaining horcruxes at the end of the last movie. Simple math would dictate that they would destroy, if not locate, at least THREE in the first film. How many do they destroy? ONE. How many more do they locate? ZERO. And do we really need an HOUR of moping in the woods? And I love moping! Now I knew going in there’d be no Hogwarts, but I only get FIVE MINUTES of Snape? Seriously? HOW DARE THEY?!?

In other words, Lindelof didn’t care for the pacing, or the unresolved plot elements. Keep in mind, this longish (nearly three-hour) film is roughly 97 hours shorter than the complete “Lost” oeuvre, and we still haven’t seen the finale. Lindelof at least recognized that he could hate the movie and still call himself a Harry Potter fan, and he apologized to the disgruntled Lost fans for doubting them. But he still thinks the show’s ending was perfectly adequate. Depends on your baseline, I guess. Possibly Lindelof has spent the last few months re-watching all four seasons of Heroes. If you do that, you can wake up in the morning, tell yourself, “Hey, at least I’m not Tim Kring,” and approach the rest of the day with a positive outlook.