In celebration of its 10-year premiere anniversary, Lost took over PaleyFest last night, descending upon the annual television festival and once again answering questions about the controversial series finale.

Were the castaways all dead all along?!?

"No, no, no. They were not dead the whole time," Carlton  Cuse insisted, acknowledging that the footage of the plane wreckage that played over the closing credits contributed to this false belief.

"At the end of the series finale, [an ABC exec] thought it would be good to have a buffer between when you have the end of the show and when they cut to say, a Clorox commercial," he explained. "And when people saw the footage of the plane with no survivors, it exacerbated the problem."

Cuse also addressed why the final season didn't answer many pressing mythology questions, saying producers decided awhile beforehand that the series needed to end on a "spiritual" note because issues of "meaning and purpose" drove the show from the outset.

"We would have long discourses about the nature of the show, for many years, and we decided it needed to mean something to us and our belief system and the characters and how all of us are here to lift each other up in our lives."

Damon Lindelof added that the team decided to answer a question no one was asking in forums or in chat rooms: What's the meaning of life and what happens when you die?

Cuse also admitted that there is an answer to one of the drama's more frustrating loose ends - who was on the outrigger that shot at Juliet, Sawyer and company? - though it may never be revealed.

The writers penned a scene that didn't make the final cut, but "we will probably auction [the script] off for a great charity cause a few years from now."

In conclusion, Cuse summed up the producrs' vision for the show as follows:

"We felt like Lost was sort of The Big Bang Theory and every question would only beget another question. But what we cared about most was the emotional journey of each character."

Matt Richenthal is the Editor in Chief of TV Fanatic. Follow him on Twitter and on Google+.