Lost Series Finale Review: “The End”
My mind is drowning in so many questions right now, I’m terrified to think about how I’m going to cram them all into one article here, as I don’t know where to start, or more importantly, where to end, because after all, what’s the point in continuing to ask questions now? There are no more episodes to answer them.
But I’ll do my best, and I know you’ve got a lot to say as well, and get it all in while you can, because this is really your last chance.
I’m going to open with a privately held theory I’ve had for some time. I believe when Lost was conceived, it had a very specific plan in mind. The survivors of a plane crash find themselves on a mysterious island with unexplainable powers. Each has a sordid past to some degree, and together they fight and fall in love and work through their previous lives in order to achieve some semblance of peace.
I fully believe that at one point, the island was conceived by the show’s creators to be Purgatory, where everyone was already dead from the crash, and they had to confront and overcome their sins on the island. But something happened, the show got popular, and its mysteries were so intriguing, many people came up with theories, a predominant one being what I just mentioned. Purgatory seemed like an easy fit for a while there, but once the show figured out it had legs, and would be around for a longer period of time, they put all that out the window, explicitly stating that was NOT the endgame, and crammed in four seasons of mysterious corporations, off-island adventures and time travel. But now, looking back, a lot of that seems kind of like filler.
Purgatory did come back, as I don’t think the show wanted to let go of that idea entirely. My much derided alterverse turned out to be a kind of shared consciousness of the 815ers (and a few island stragglers) that they created after they died so they could reunite and all head into the “great beyond” together.
Jack hanging out at the Church of “Coexist.”
This was the main “answer” of the episode, as the entire two hours and twenty minutes before that were merely a series of events, rather than a reveal of anything significant. Jack’s group and Not-Locke’s group meet up, both banking on Desmond to fix their respective problems. As it turns out, Not-Locke wins the bet, and Desmond’s pulling out of a literal cork of the center of the island sends the place into a tailspin, and heading for the bottom of the ocean.
But it comes at a cost. Jack and Not-Locke have both lost their immortality (did Jack ever really have it?) and Kate and Jack send Not-Locke flying off a cliff to his ultimate doom. Jack goes back and fixes the island by reinserting the cork, and anoints Hurley his replacement should he die. Meanwhile, the rest of the survivors take off in the Ajira plane and presumably go off to live happy lives in the real world while Hurley and Ben make sure the island keeps its craziness in check.
I always wanted it to be Hurley in the end.
Enter the main point that irks me about this episode. I think it would have made MUCH more sense for everyone to die on the island, and have the place sink to the bottom of the ocean. This would have tied into the sunken island we saw in episode one of this season, and also would have made the “lasting relationships” speech Christian Shepard gave a lot more relevant.
He says that “their time together on the island was the most important of their lives” and that’s why they were all there together now. But Hurley and Ben talking about their great time on the island implies the purgatory dwellers lived out their full lives after Ajira left and Hurley was left in charge of the island. Did they have no more meaningful relationships when they got back? Couldn’t Sawyer and Kate have ended up together? Couldn’t Claire have raised Aaron to adulthood and beyond? If they all had just died that day, then yes, their last relationships would have been their best, but it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense if half of them got to keep living life off the island for decades after.
I can buy the whole shared consciousness Purgatory of the alterverse, and I actually kind of like that explanation. It actually makes a lot of sense in many ways, as it explains the insane amount of coincidences surrounding the Oceanic 815 crew. It also explains the endless cameos of other figures from the show, because as the world doesn’t exist, these appearances are created in their own minds from memories of the island. Or are they? Is this place purgatory for them too? I would think people like Dogan and Keamy and Ethan might just be memory remnants, but I would have said the same thing about Rose and Bernard, yet there they are in the final scene. What decides who makes the cut? No one was in love with Ana Lucia or Artz, so they don’t get to come? Were Faraday and Charlotte invited? Miles? Lapedus? They’ve felt more like family than Boone or Shannon lately.
How do you get invited to this party?
It was admittedly nice to see all the long-lost lovers reunited, as they had transformed from alterverse parallel weirdos into their actual characters from the show. The reunion was a tearful moment as every dead and gone character was reunited with the friends and loved ones they’d lost. This entire episode was a master class in mirroring of the previous seasons (namely the first one) with different moments and shots ones that we all remembered from years past, and was just very well put together and was emotionally satisfying to say the least. But logically satisfying? That’s another thing entirely, and for all the answers we all wanted, I think the biggest questions are still, and now will forever be, looming.
The island itself is indeed “open to interpretation” as we feared it would be. There’s something vaguely spiritual about it, but that’s never made explicit, and we’re meant to just accept that a large stone cork in the ground is what’s holding the entire universe together.
The best I can figure is that the island is a kind of spiritual doorway, and the light is the afterlife, showing through the cracks, bringing magical powers with it, something that doesn’t exactly fit with Jacob’s previous “wine and cork” metaphor. Who was the wine before the Smoke Monster existed? And there’s a light inside of the cork that must be protected and can’t leave the cork? It seemed like a good explanation at the time, but it seems things are much more complicated than that.
I understand the need for a guardian for such a place that would seem to be a gate to the afterlife, and I once thought that was the Smoke Monster himself (he was named Cerebrus “the guardian of hell” at one point after all). But he turned out to be evil, and I have to say, I never quite understood the whole “the world will end if he leaves the island” concept, and it really only seemed like a plot device to move the last season along.
Don’t question the light.
But the problem with this resolution is that the two pieces don’t seem to go together. Yes, these people bonded during their time on the island, but does the island really have anything to do with the creation of the Purgatory alterverse? It seems like something like this could have happened had they all met at a softball league or if they’d been stuck in an elevator together and ended up being friends and lovers forever. Where does the island fit in here? Did the events on the island last night with the cork and the destruction have anything at all to do with parallel purgatory-verse? I would say no, the two aren’t explicitly tied together. .
I think we’re forgetting that this season opened with the nuking of a hydrogen bomb. We saw the island at the bottom of the ocean, were introduced to the alterverse, and Juliet’s dying words were, “it worked.” But did it? Did the H-bomb do…anything? If it killed everyone right then, it would have made sense for purgatory to snap into existence, but it didn’t and life went on as usual. Or at least as usual as life gets on the island.
That’s the way all the other lingering island mysteries seem to feel now. Irrelevant. Why do people like Hurley, Miles and Walt have special powers? They just do. What was the deal with those numbers? Jacob just happened to like them. A vast majority of the island’s mysteries were based around the Dharma Initiative and the Others, but looking back and realizing they were just some crazy scientists messing with supernatural forces they didn’t understand and a cult-like group of recruits to help an island god do his job, and it all just seems kind of irrelevant in the big picture.
Couldn’t leave without getting Sawyer in here.
But I said it last week, and I’ll say it again now. The fun has always been in the chasing, not the having. If you think last night brought no answers, just look back at the thousands of questions that have been answered over the course of the last six seasons. Most of the mysteries were small in relative scale (“What’s in the hatch?” “What is Dharma?” “Who are the Others?”) though we forget at the time they were incredibly engrossing. But once consumed, we were immediately onto the next mystery and the next, until only one was left. What is the island?
Rather than one big reveal, that’s been slowly explained over the course of the season, and heading into tonight, I really didn’t think that God Almighty was going to come down and say this was all his divine plan, or a mothership of an alien race rise out of the core of the island. So in this case, open to interpretation might not be the worst thing in the world, as we have a decent amount of facts to work with and draw our own conclusions.
A bit cheesy perhaps, but I guess it’s good enough for me.
Yes, a lot of mysteries got lost along the way, but with a show that is literally built on five new mysteries a week, that was bound to happen, and I can’t be too angry about that.
No, I’m not fully satisfied with what I saw last night, but I knew I never would be. I think this story might have been a lot tidier had it been a neat one season with a “they’re all dead” twist, but that wouldn’t have been the fun ride we’ve been having for the last six years. It’s not as much fun looking back on the whole, but when you were getting each new bit of info, piece by piece, and always wondering what happened next, there really was no more exciting or intriguing show in existence. And it’s hard to imagine when there will be again.
How I rationalized the people missing from the church was that their most important relationships were before they came to the island.
If the logic of this purgatory world where loved ones reunite is consistent than it makes sense that people like Eko or Ana-Lucia might be in another place, making the journey with those they cared about the most instead of the island survivors (who they really didn’t connect as deeply with).
Overall, beautiful finally, wish they’d explained a couple of things more clearly over the course of the series but I’m happy with where it all ended.
Great review Paul. I’m still having a hard time putting my own feelings about it in order. I guess I liked it, although immediately after the fact, I was a little disappointed. It seems to me there are two camps of people who watch the show: Those who primarily like the mystery, and those who primarily like the characters. I know it’s not that black and white, as I can say I really like certain characters, but apart from them, I think I’m more about the island mystery. And in that respect, the finale did kind of let me down. But once I’ve given it a few days, I’ll watch it again and I think I’ll find it really appropriate.
That being the case, I want to re-watch the first couple seasons for something very specific. I think the idea that something important had to happen to these people to end up creating their own “Purgatory” is a strong notion…It wasn’t only crashing on the Island, as Michael and Ana Lucia should have been there. And it wasn’t only love, because Locke and Ben were there. I have a feeling something we’re overlooking happened to these people specifically, and because of that they were tied together and ultimately ended up in this afterlife.
Anyway, I guess I should at least be thankful that it left me with plenty of things to think about in the months to come, and I can honestly say I’m sad to see it go.
I was disappointed that Walt didn’t come flying in on a dragon to save the day…. so I totally hated it.
The Wine is probably any human or “monster” who wanted to use it for personal gain, whether or not Jacob or his mom knew who they were. Someone like Ben could have found it, gone down there and become something worse than the Smoke Monster.
And I guess Jacob didn’t know that MiB would lose his powers if the cork came undone so that’s why he said the world would be ruined. There isn’t much he could of did without his smoke powers if Jack could kick his ass and Kate could just shoot him and he’d be done.
I dunno if you watched Kimmel but the guy who played Michael said that he wasn’t at the church because he was doomed to be a Lost soul on the island, and I can see the same thing with Anna Lucia. I don’t recall Libby ever visiting Hurley as a ghost, so as soon as she died she went to the alterverse and had more time to remember the island and stuff…if time even existed there.
I thought it was a satisfying end to the series. I think that definitive answers would have ended up disappointing a lot more people than the “open to interpretation” route. Definately going to miss this show though.
i thought this episode was awful. i just didnt find it all that entertaining, which in my opinion is goal number one of any show. for once the altverse wasnt frustrating. for me it provided a nice remembrance of some of the special relationships that the show provided. actually the episode kind of reminded me of the last hour or so of LOTR, with the very long goodbye. however it was missing the epic battle of good and evil. i know jack and not-locke fought but ive seen better fights over disagreements in the chess club back is HS. i guess i just feel that the things that kept me glued to the show just werent important to the writers. i will miss the show but will be slightly bitter when it is brought up from now on.
Some good thoughts. And you nailed the questions left open. Plus “The fun has always been in the chasing, not the having.” Nice.
One thing I would say is that your thoughts on ‘why couldn’t they have fallen in love off the island?’ etc. are backwards. They weren’t all on the island (and in alterverse together) because they were destined to be together. They were destined to be together because they’d been on the island together. The way it ended (and I can easily buy into your ‘was purgatory but now it’s not’ theory) was that the island was all real. And since, in the Lost world, those relationships were the most important and valuable of their lives- they get eternity together. If they had never met on the island then Kate would have eternity with that doctor with the toy plane, Sawyer with his parents, Jack with his dad probably, etc etc.
Plus they all went back to the age they were on the island together, frozen in that ‘most important time’. I think the survivors all lived their lives, but in death went back to their personal ideals. Aaron is a baby again (sucks for Claire), Hurley and Ben could have lived 2000 years on the island as the New Jacob and new Richard. But they’re back. Blah blah blah.
But it’s all just a lot of theories. Who knows?
But what was Ben going to do in purgatory? I guess his most important relationship was Alex?
Whatevs.
The reason all the answers seemed so small in relation to how engrossing the mystery, is that the answers always came too late. By the time you got an answer, the mystery was no longer relevant. You already had three or four new mysteries to wrap your head around. I am incredibly glad that I never got into this show. My wife loved it and tried to draw me in, but I just couldn’t stand the format.
This is why I go to this corner of the web every day. On your last few posts regarding lost, I was deathly afraid you like many others forgot the point of the show. I was expecting the open to interpretation like everyone else because an exact answer is never satisfying in any case at all. the unknown attracts us greatly, and when something remains unknown to us, it makes it a lasting impression.
You are likely right to say a lot of the series was filler, Time and time again the creators said their focus was on the characters, not necessarily the mysteries themselves, which in my opinion is why lost will still be better then any of its imitators. Mysteries alone never make for a good tv series. look at flash forward. All that show gave was plot holes and characters who acted with the IQ of a stick.
If any other show gave me this ending I would be in all sorts of fits of rage. But how they presented it was what did it for me. Christian put the message in a poetic end retying the live together die alone speech. They all eventually died alone only to live together in their greatest moment of each and everyone of their lives.
What I was disappointed in was Jimmy Kimmel trolling everyone with the “alternate endings”. But what he said in the beginning made it up for me. “If you didn’t like it, you probably didn’t understand the point of the show.” That pretty much clinches how to describe the ending to someone. Also anybody noticed young jacob popping into the background every once in a while? Maybe I’m naive, but maybe they are trying to pull another easter egg or maybe another goose chase for something else?
Either way thats just my little bit. Glad to read your stuff.
Kasinator
Yes, marker, yes! A very long goodbye really explains the show. I was thinking more of Seinfeld’s finale, where they brought everybody back for ‘one more good laugh’. I watched the show, thank you very much, you don’t need to show me what I just watched. Show me something new.
For me, meh. It’s over. The sun came up this morning, and I’m moving on. I was totally wrong about my prediction, and I am pretty sore about being an idiot. So. There.
Final thoughts:
I’m good with the closing, I’m good with the quasi-explainations, I really dug the way it finally went down at the end, and the little tie ins to everything else. I’m really not alright with Vincent coming to lay down. That was clearly a low blow for tears, and it was simply not understandable. Much akin to Jack loving Kate. I mean, really, they do? Since when…
I’m not alright with the pacing. At all. In every other episode it took twenty minutes to travel anywhere. Last night everyone was walking, then Locke turned and was like, we’re here. Bu-buh?! Really? Then five minutes later Dez was down the hole. I ask this: why wasn’t the cliffhanger last week Dez going down? It is sad that there is so much filler when clearly the writers knew how to move things along when they need to.
And the writers know what they are doing! The parallels and visual mirroring and just plain good storytelling that went down last night was great. Jack (representing Jacob and good man) and Locke (repping Esau and corrupt man) lower Dez (who is a blank slate for either) down into the hole where the heart of man is held to see who is right? Oh, oh, awesome stuff. I’m sure there were English teachers just beating their meat the visual storytelling last night.
So I know they know what they are doing, why they got to make six years of second gear to slam it into sixth?
But what bothers me most, about the whole thing, I can put into a couple statements: IF uncorking the well removed Locke and Jack’s powers, THEN how did Jack bless Hurley? IF the bottom of the well kills people and turns them into Smokey (or worse), THEN who built up the crap that is down there now?
This is the shit that bothers me about Lost, and will always bother me about Lost. You can make up the rules, fine, you can make up the mythology or leave it up to us to decide, fine. Smoke Monster can’t cross Jake’s ashes or a sound barrier. Whatever, if you say so, I’m cool with that. I read a lot of fantasy novels, you don’t always know what is going on, and a lot you have to figure for yourself, or take what the author gives you.
But don’t create the rules, create the myth, then simply ignore what you just set up. It would be like if Smokey flew over the sound barrier last night; it isn’t in your own fucking canon and changes everything you just set up.
And thinking back, this really applies to a lot of the moments of Lost that really really sucked. When the agenda of ‘we need to get to the next step’ overtook the laws or setup of what went down thirty seconds ago. Arg! We can’t get Ben out! Next scene: cut to Ben and co. running out of the jungle. Oh no! Jack is dying because he doesn’t have his powers! Jack blesses Hurley using his newfound powers. The list goes on. And on. And on.
Good storytelling and twists are awesome. The writers had it in them. But more often than not Lost was hamfisted and the ‘twists’ simply rewrote a section of canon that was already in place.
Ugh. I could rant about that all day. But, I don’t have to because Lost is over and I’m content.
i must admit, right after the finale i was kinda disapointed. a purgatory afterlife ? um…. lame.
but the more i think about it the more i like it. the island ending was great. and that’s what the show was about, these peoples lives on the island and jacob and MIB battling over god and evil. jacob finally found a group of people to bring to the island that were good people, that would sacrifice themselves for the good of the world. he proved MIB wrong (not everyone is evil) as well as gave these poor sad peoples lives meaning.
the sideways ending… eh, kinda disappointing. i mean, i like how it ended, and i like how the sideways world was just a purgatory type place. but why is so much stuff different there? when you die do you just get reborn in this world and get to essentially live life again until you realized you die and can move on (I think maybe they were trying to show this with young Jacob showing up on the island after he died)? how does love make you realize you died? or a near death experience? and why is the island sunken in purgatory?
as for the answers, i could’ve used a few more answers, but i think all the major stuff has been answered, or we’ve at least been given enough info to figure out the answers.
in the end though, the show was about the characters, not the island or the mythos or the mysteries, it was about these peoples lives and how they were essentially LOST before they got to the island. the finale gave great closure to their story but still left it open enough for some interpretation.
i know the writers said there will be an additional 20 minutes on the dvd, i just hope it’s substance and not more memory flashes.
I have two major problems with the finale:
1. For a finale, it had more or less no action. I expected something different than one short human vs. human knife battle. It was a joke compared to the 5ths season finale, where they fought quite some time next to the hatch which that bacame a supermagnet and juliet was sucked into the hole ect ect. One could sum this point as following:
“The Lost finale was an ending, but it wasn’t a showdown.”
2. In the end the only “reason” for the flash-sideways-world to be a place which is so much like the real world and why they made it that the people ‘do not yet remember each other’ is obviously so it can be used as a plot device for the viewer. It’s so unnecessary that we re-explore Cop-Sawyers life and things like him sleeping with Charlotte and so on if this Cop-Sawyer character gets then overwritten and replaced by the original Sawyer once he remembers who he actually is.
Of course, the writers made this imaginative world so real so WE would think it’s real. I’d be okay with that if they wouldn’t just “pass on” once they remember things and replace the perons who lived a whole different 30 year life with son and wife. In this sense many people died in the last episode. Why that Jacks-piano-playing-son drama, when a couple of days later, Jack realized who he is and that the world of father-Jack is actually completly made up. He goes away into the light and then his left behind son vanishes or what? If Faraday and the others are just “not ready” yet and will just keep living in this world and just leave later, what about Jacks son? Is he an orphan in this world now?
If you do something like starting the season with an underwater island and never come back to that point, you make your life a bit too easy, wouldn’t you agree? Problably this sound a bit harsher then I mean it to, but I think that’s not quite Lost-like.
I don’t say “they ruined it” at all, but they could have come up with something consistent, not as cheap.
What I learned from the Lost finale: all dogs do not go to heaven.
I know everyone will have their own answers… but I have mine I would like to share.
Have you ever had a weird dream? A dream that weird stuff happened and didn’t need explanation? Or if it did, it was explained, but the explanation also made no sense outside of the context of the dream?
So, for some reason no one knows, Fight 815 crashed on an island, not due to Desmond’s failure, but… for whatever. They don’t know. But human memory is fallible and will fill in details. Try to remember some childhood event. What color shirt were you wearing? Are you sure, or is your memory filling in?
Anyway, so these people all die in this horrible plane accident. They go to purgatory to work out issues, blah blah blah, and finally a 2nd version of purgatory is created. All of the characters continue on in the 1st version until they “die” or whatever, and then their 2nd version… oh, I’ve gone cross-eyed.
Anyway, it boils down to the fact that they’re dead, none of the mysteries even matter. Just some fancy dead people dreams.
All I can say is FUBAR. There were plenty of moments over the past five years where I was convinced the Lost writers and producers were making it up as they went along, with no definite end scene in mind. Which wouldn’t be the worst sin, and kind of goes with the territory of network drama. Think back to the X-Files for a moment, which kind of spun mindlessly into cancellation after Duchovny left the show, or Battlestar Galactica, which managed a more satisfying but hardly free of holes final episode..
But the Lost team pulled off a massive bait-and-switch last night, presumably motivated by some misguided desire for feel-good closure. And who knows, maybe the orders for a Hallmark scene came down from the network bigwigs, and the the writers hands were tied, and maybe the network suits didn’t realize that doing so would be a big fat disappointing insult to the intelligence of the core fans of the show, or maybe they did some market research and decided that, when given the choice between logic and chicken soup for the soul, 7 out of 10 viewers reach for the chicken soup. Whatever. I felt like I’d been suckerpunched by those last ten or fifteen minutes and really wish they had just faded to black when Jack opened the empty casket (if not before) or maybe cut to Jack dying on the island, with Vincent curled up beside, then go to black and leave us to draw our own conclusions.
Instead, we get the big WTF hugfest/ who’s ready to walk into the light/ reunion scene. But yeah. Exactly how does one get on that VIP list in the chapel? Why wasn’t Vincent the dog there? Or was he? Why was Penny there? She was never a passenger on 815? Wasn’t she technically alive, the last time we saw her? Why wasn’t Farraday there? Miles and the pilot with rocker hair? Maybe they weren’t dead.. Were we supposed to assume that Ben and Michael were going to hell? Maybe, but what about Walt? Alive or dead? If he’s dead, surely he would have been going into the light… What about the drug-runner/priest from Haiti, Ecco?
The alter-verse made sense if you went along with the idea that after Juliet set off the nuke in 1973, or whenever, the hatch was never built etc and flight 815 never crashed thirty years later. Cool. The passengers go on with their lives in alter-verse, with no memory of the island; meanwhile, most of them are still stuck on the island in original universe. Cool. And then Desmond goes around waking them up so that they remember the island… okay, cool. But if they’re all dead, then what is the point of the whole Jacob choosing the candidates routine, and Jack then Hurley protecting the island? Protecting it from what, exactly? If everyone was killed in the plane crash, then the island is not technically real. Meaning that the Dharma folk and the Others and the crazy French lady were all shared figments of their pre-death purgatory hallucination? Huh?
Wasn’t Juliet originally a Dharma scientist, or an Other? Shouldn’t she have been banned from the chapel? And for christ’s sake, what about evil overlord Charles Whitmore? Not a peep out of him last night, or did I blink? And yeah, I know smoke-monster Locke gutted him last week, but still.. since when does anybody who dies on the island stay dead? And since Whitmore had been on and off the island for roughly fifty years, would he really be rubbed out that easily…
And finally, who cares what Jack’s father has to say in those final moments? He was never more than a minor character, and generally kind of an unredeemed asshole… He gets to go into the light, but Michael is doomed to some eternal halfway hell? I would have almost rather get the big expository speech from Whitmore. I could poke holes in that final episode all day, but they I would just be more pissed off, and might forget that I enjoyed the show more or less for six seasons, and invested god knows how many hours into watching it, without a gun to my head.
I did quite enjoy seeing Hurley drop Charlie with a tranquilizer dart, but still… fubar.
-w. pity
@steve – I feel the opposite. No matter who was on the island, it would still be about Jacob and Esau and a random group of people. It’s not about the characters at all, it’s about the Island.
@lagrange – Exactly. Your #2 is spot on. It feels very swept under the rug, or the writers intent was to misguide us. Either way is weak.
i think a lot of people are misunderstanding the ending.. it is open to some interpretation, however the facts are that everything on the island happened. the island itself was not purgatory, it was the flash sideways that was the stage before the afterlife.
i am satisfied with the ending but really felt something big missing. i can’t put my finger on it, but i needed just one more thing.
Was Walt and his dad in the church? :S
Oh.. read a few more comments, loads of people were missing 🙁
@John & warwick pity
the plane crashed because Jacob summoned them to the island. everything on the island happened. the stuff that “didn’t happen”, so to speak, was the flash sideways which was a group purgatory. normally i wouldn’t tell someone their theory is wrong, but they blatantly said in the show that all the island stuff was real, it happened.
@warwick
“And finally, who cares what Jack’s father has to say in those final moments?”
um, maybe you should, he explained a whole bunch of stuff you apparently missed, you should check it out again.
christian (jacks dad) gets to go into the light because he was a generally good person and moved on. michael did not because he killed libby and ana lucia and never really repented for that (“i did what i had to for my boy”), just like eko, they are doomed to be on the island as ghosts.
again, listen to christian at the end, there is no “now” here. yes, penny and des and a few other characters were alive last time we saw them, but there is no “now” people have died last night (such as jack), some died many seasons ago, and some died in a future we haven’t seen (kate, penny, des), so this purgatory is in “the future”, after everyone has died eventually.
@NY not NYC
yeah, the entire story, the overlying arc is about the island, but LOST is about the survivors of 815. like, for example, their could be a “lost; the next generation” or “lost: the new class” or whatever, a sequel to this series, that would continue on the story of the island and no longer be about the 815ers, but about the new survivors. so yeah, the whole story is the island and good vs evil, but the show we just watched was a chapter of that story, and that chapter was about 815. just my opinion
back @ steve
I’m picking up what you’re putting down. The story is the Island, Lost is just the characters we watched. I can stomach that.
I don’t like it though.
But I like you.
Smiles.
I might just be a prisoner of the moment, or whatever, but that was the best episode of TV I have ever seen. It ended in a way that was very fitting with the tone and mythology of the show and it executed it brilliantly.
In the end the show is about redemption and finding your “lost” self and the flash-sideways were a wonderful way of showing that these characters could be redeemed in some way. Now that we know what the flash-sideways really is I strongly suggest you go back and rewatch season 6. I have started and it really puts everything into a whole new perspective. It truly is beautiful. I think from now on people will be talking about this episode as the best way to end a series.
Incredible ending. Very novelesque. Frankly it was the best ending we could’ve hoped for.
steve,
you misunderstand me. I get the whole concept of “no such thing as now” and the nonlinear afterlife, and it’s been pretty obvious for a while that the island is much bigger than it appears, or periodically expands and contracts, which explains how they continually stumble into unexplored areas, not to mention the past, present, and future tend to overlap or coexist on the island. And I never believed for a second that they all died in the plane crash, though I suspect that Paul’s theory is dead on, that this may have been the creators’ original plan and they veered away from it for various reasons. What I objected to was the implication in that final scene, and elsewhere, that the passengers had been dead all along, and all the island hijinks were the machinations of sorting out your demons in Purgatory. I also preferred to go with the multiverse notion that both story lines, crash and no crash, could be real. As somebody mentioned above, I felt like somebody bent the rules when I realized that Jack’s son apparently got his existence erased around the time Claire went backstage to have her baby.. again. And I guess I just never liked or had any interest in Jack’s father as a character. I thought he made Jack a much more interesting character, and obviously his boozy skirt-chasing ways allowed for Claire being Jack’s sister, a plot development I always thought was a good one. I just didn’t need his spoonfed explanation at the end; if Jack needed that explanation, I would have rather it came from Locke or Desmond. Last thing. I always thought the overt symbolism of his name was embarrassingly lame, so I was really pleased when Kate openly scoffed at it. “Christian Shepherd… seriously?” Anyway, none of this changes the fact that Lost was easily one of the best TV shows I’ve ever seen, and one of the very few that can stand with the best stories of literature and film. It just got a tad unwieldy in places, and no doubt suffered at times from too many cooks in the kitchen.
-w.pity.
Bleh. Where is Eko? Seems like a missed opportunity what with them being in a church and all. I didn’t like how only a few of the characters were in the end scene. They should have all been there or at least there should have been a clearer explanation as to why they weren’t. And the flash sideways still seems pointless. Why did Jack have a son? Is that like his perfect world or something? I really don’t understand. I kinda liked the ending but it didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. I guess it’s open to interpretation but it seems too open. And I really wanted to see Walt have some sort of purpose in the show. He’s had cameos in the last few seasons and it seemed like it was leading somewhere. Another missed opportunity. There were quite a few things they could have done to make this finale a bit more satisfying but I think they did a decent job on the whole. It was quite emotional.
There is a very good video on The TED Website from JJ Abrams. I think it’s worth a look see to better understand some of the thought behind the show. It’s not about “How the trick is performed, or what the trick truly is…that’s magic.” It’s the mystery of wondering about the trick that creates the magic. Also, a lot of the supporting philosophy is Jungian and Eastern and therefore we (in the west) want answers…not more questions. Check out the video on the TED. Then you’ll know that there never will be answers.
Lost is a true philosopher’s wet dream. The whole show is today’s version of The Allegory of the Cave. The plot is a microcosm of a wildly diverse world of ideologies. For the philosophically minded it’s always the questions that are more important than the answers. In that light Lost couldn’t have ended more perfectly.
On another note, one of the writers, a couple of years ago, said that if anyone had read “The Third Policeman” by Flann O’Brien they would have a good idea of the plot of Lost. There were only peripheral similarities until the finale… now it all seems to line up.
Should have been a close up on one of the skeletons in the light chamber only having 4 toes.
The 4 toed statue is the thing that has constantly bugged me as an unfinished mystery.
For season upon season, we’ve been promised an answer to our most important questions. The finale episode answered only one question: the nature of the flash-sideways universe. However, this has nothing to do with all the issues that have been plugging us since season one.
Now, I could understand it if the writers wanted to keep the nature of the island a mystery. I would respect the fact that some questions should remain unanswered or else they would lose their charm. I could understand a “magical” framework around which the characters moved and operated, so long as this framework remained sufficiently mysterious (and the characters sufficiently interesting).
What we got though was sufficient exposure of the mystery so that it lost its charm. If you want to go that way, fine by me, but be ready to draw the final curtain as well, not leave it all to a mysterious light.
Overall, the season finale was a huge disappointment for me. Look to Battlestar Galactica for a show that left unanswered questions, while refusing to resort to cheap sentimentally and obfuscation.
All of your reviews, I have skimmed over and disagreed, but this is excellent. You make some great points and overall I really enjoyed the ending. I think we are supposed to realize it doesn’t matter in the end because we all die. We’ve seen Jack on and off the island, living his life, trying to figure things out, but really what did it come down to? Him being dead, so did any of it really matter to begin with?
All in all i liked the ending. I am sad that not all the questions are answered, but well it’s okay. I’m happy i got to watch the show and all its greatness! And i’ll be depressed for a few days cuz its over. But i’m thankful for all the memories! I teared up a lot during the finale. =)
Sorry i just had to add, that i was sooo (you don’t understand the magnitude) happy that Shannon was there! Like a lot of ppl my heart sunk so deep when she died. And yeah, to see her back really made me smile inside!
I actually liked this episode. I felt it was a nice ending to the series as a whole.
I didn’t like the fact that so many questions have been left unanswered, which I have already gone through in the past few weeks on this site :p.
But, I would like to take this opportunity to say a few positive things about lost as a whole.
It had a production value that I have never seen before on tv.
It had some of the most amazing music I have ever heard, and some of the most wonderfully talented actors/actresses that gave truly unforgetable performances, creating some of the most fantastic characters to ever grace T.V (Ben, Farady, Mr Ecko, HURLY to name a few!)
It managed for 6 odd years, day in day out keep us wondering what was going to happen next, what the hell just happened and what happened before. Even the haters cannot deny that it was gripping t.v at its finest.
In this regard, I think the ending episode was perfect; what better send off to all the characters we have come to love then to grant them eternal happiness? Cheesy, maybe. Fitting, most definately.
Don’t get me wrong, I still am dissapointed (read: pissed) at the total lack of answers to questions (that easily could have been given by the only people who actually KNEW them!) and that this one season basically makes the past 5 seem like filler, but I am at the same time sad that the series has indeed ended.
I do hope to see the cast members on tv again (esp Farady, Ben and Hurly, my all time fave losties) and I do also hope that the end of lost is just the stepping stone to more entertaining, gripping storytelling.
Farewell lost and thank you for the (overall) ride. You weren’t perfect, but you were at the very least enjoyable.
Just one quick note (I loved your review). You mention the part where Juliet said, “it worked”. I think this was another part of the writers’ ingeniousness at work… she isn’t saying the H-bomb worked. She’s saying that her suggestion to unplug the vending machine to get Sawyer’s candy bar worked.
Her exact words as she hands him the candy bar: “it worked”. She then proceeds to say the other words she said at her death. Somehow Juliet slipped into the “afterlife” or whatever you want to call it at her death and led us to believe she was saying one thing when she was actually saying something entirely different.
goddamn can you people just enjoy a show? I know it’s difficult to understand but in the afterlife “purgatory” time doesn’t exist so it doesn’t matter how many years between their times of death they all exist in it forever without ever arriving. you guys are nit-picking I challenge anyone to name a big budget network drama with an on going storyline that can manage to keep it together as well as lost. especially when you consider all the off camera DUIs that must have jumbled up the story line. What was the plan for ana lucia I wonder. What would have happened with echo? last night was a good episode because it answered the REAL questions. maybe it didn’t answer all your hypothetical nit-picking questions. but what would satisfy you?
I quess someone coul have sat down and looked at the camera and explained every facet of the island from the begining of the universe then noone would have to use their own brains.
I think the reason the finale divides so many people is that it comes down to faith. The show provided us few answers, and indeed, few characters on the show had any real answers themselves. Jacob didn’t know what he was doing and many of the “rules” of the island were merely his or his adopted mother’s personal beliefs. The skeletons in the cave show that this cycle continues to happen and that each time it’s different. With Jacob and Smoke Monster, they had a rival dynamic that helped set the tone for that incarnation of the island. With Hurley in charge, I imagine the tone will be much different. I imagine he’ll find a way to release the trapped whisperers like Michael and I’m certain he gets Desmond off the island and back to Penny. And when it comes time for Hurley to pick a replacement, I think the candidates will have much more choice than being crash landed on the island. “Dude, you’re kind of a hermit – wanna live on a paradise away from all other people for, like, centuries?”
Also, the Juliet “it worked” thing – I don’t think she meant the hydrogen bomb. I think she was already seeing purgatory and was telling alt-Sawyer that the trick of unplugging the vending machine worked, since she immediately launches into the coffee conversation we first heard on her death bed. I think the “it worked” was a major psyche out, but I could be remembering the scene incorrectly.
I love the idea that this purgatory place is out of time, that there is no now. This is the time when people pass on and regardless of when they died in relation to the people with them, they have a chance to meet up and move on together. This is a great concept, that even if your soul mate died decades earlier, you could both meet at the same “time” and journey into the unknown together. I love the brief conversation Hurley and Ben have outside the church. While the survivors give no inkling as to their future beyond their escape by plane, Hurley and Ben praise one another for their work. How long did the two of them rule the island? What great deeds did they accomplish? It’s never stated, but their recognition of one another sums up that whatever they did, for however long they did it, Hurley succeeded in making new rules and bringing about a better future for the island. He is ready to move on, too, and we don’t need to know who replaced him or what happened to the island beyond that. Hurley’s as out of the now as the other Losties, so it could have been millenia or 50 years that he ruled as the island’s Protector, we don’t know. But, at his end, he too gets to travel onwards with the people who were also defined and shaped by the island.
Overall, I see the island as a source of mystical power that is as much shaped by people’s beliefs about it as it is its own mythology (how very meta). I see it as a recurring cycle, whereby someone must guard this undisclosed source of power/life. Uncorking the light is bad, so someone must be selected to protect it. In different times, different cultures, the purpose behind the protectorship changed, evolving with people’s beliefs. Each new protector made up new rules, new rituals, to ascribe meaning to an unknown. When the Egyptians found it, they ascribed an element of their mythology to it and built the big statue. With Jacob, he followed an Old Testament style of worship, with strict rules and an even stricter ruler. Under Hurley, I think we’re seeing a more New Testament, Christ style figure, one of forgiveness and love.
@clint
i disagree someone did sit down and look at the camera and explain things. it was jacks dad. what did he explain? he spoon fed us what it meant when they were sitting in a church and he opened a door that had nothing but light behind it. i thought it was obvious without his explanation. i thought there were three big questions leading into the final episode. 1)why were they there? check. 2)what would happen if the smoke monster got off the island? i dont know about anyone else but i was left a little flat about whether i cared if he got off or not.3) what is the island? i dont mind using my brain about this one but the writers at least have to define the basic rules about the universe they created. its like thinking about the shape of jello without taking into account the container.
i didnt need the final to wrapped with a bow but come on they needed to at least acknowledge the other big questions.
why did Kate change clothes?
The island isn’t real. It is the place where souls go to figure out what happened, or “let go” of what needs to be let go. 815 survivors died, and everything else that happened is not real. This includes the 6 returning to the real world. It is all in Jack’s head. The story is one man and all of the people involved were chess pieces for him to figure things out. Jacob’s role is tough to figure out, though he is just as much in Jack’s head as Whitmore. The light in the island is simply the light that you go to when you die. All relationships were rubish, but emotions needed to be felt and experiences needed to be experienced in order for Jack (and only Jack) to let go.
So here is my interpretation.
When Juliet exploded the bomb…it created flash sideways universe…
Jacob’s mom quoted that the light is all about birth, death and rebirth. So the light some how created the new timeline with dead people in it. Thats why they showed the light at the end when the Christian opens the church door.
They frequently say “It worked” so the bomb worked.
Its like the solutions to the equation. We have the real part and imaginary part.
love the side-verse side story. its was really moving and clever. but as stated, it was totally independent of the mistery aspect of the show. its Lost take on the afterlife independent of being or not in the island, everybody goes through there, and moves on when ready.
but then there is the island story. thats where the problems are for me. there were plenty of illogical actions and aside from the lack of answers, I belive there was a lack of closure to this part. jacks death isnt the end of the island story. I thought the end would be way more epic. We now know that esau was the evil guy (I still think jacob was the worst of the two) but what happend before him? and after him? there are thousands of years in this gap to be filled, and no answers at all. we only saw a small portion of the island life and I would die to see more. the thing is, they left so much space open that the things they closed are really small near it.
but Lost always stays by its cast, and focused on them in the end again, perfectly. but they have such a good material there it would be a shame not to return to it after some years to fresh their minds, maybe with a movie. imagine if a REALLY evil guy gets his hands on the island power? or simply answer, wtf is the island? we logic thinkers need anwers
The show is just imagination. The writers can say it’s always been one thing or the other, and that’s great when they can produce the sealed plot summary and points that make it so, we just go along for the ride and hope that it’s not only a good journey but destination as well.
Overall, I loved the series, and I’ll miss it, mainly for seasons 1-4. I did not hate the ending with the purgatory resolution, . . ultimately we all die, and I believe Christian explained it well enough that the scientific thinker and former Catholic in me was appeased on both parts of spirituality and pseudo science. It was a great emotional and character resolution.
I was disappointed initially when I realized the sideways world was not the result of the bomb ‘working’ but a plot device in the way it was paralleled to the island storyline to in the end show the afterlife awakenings of the passed characters and our send off of them, a far conclusion to the tale.
What I found lacking about stopping Flocke was the impact of the island confrontation. For all the bluster over dire consequences for the world and the power of the entity, the battle I got wasn’t of well done super powered entities: white light Jack versus the Flocke/smoke monster, but middle-aged man versus near senior citizen, a knife brought to a gun fight where Annie Oakley shows up. The island shook and fell apart, . . . above par Star Trek shake rattle and role, but at this point in the show’s timer, I already stopped feeling that dire consequences were bound for this earth and it’s inhabitants, . . the afterlife already made me feel like it mattered little this confrontation. It seemed predestined that Flocke would not get away, Hurley would get the job he just recently said he didn’t want, and my only wild card was if Ben would be the new defender or smokey.
Great series, like Battlestar, I weigh the entire experience as great despite my misgivings on the endings.
“It’s not as much fun looking back on the whole, but when you were getting each new bit of info, piece by piece, and always wondering what happened next, there really was no more exciting or intriguing show in existence. And it’s hard to imagine when there will be again.”
You have obviously not watched battlestar
“It worked” had nothing to do with the bomb. It was in reference to Sawyer/Juliet meeting at the vending machine.
I can accept the explanation of the shows intent by its creators, it works for them from their viewpoint. It only ends once, and this was the one path of many that they choose. If they had chosen a different path, it could be that the people of characterization would express their disappointments as vocally as the people of mystery. It would be valid as any opinion, so I don’t have a quarrel with those with opposing view.
For me, it was a show that blended both. People came, people went, mysteries arose and some answered, others shelved or lost, and I placed different importance levels on each. To me though, I would have desired a few more answers to the mysteries, expected a different playout of the sideways (before realizing afterlife), and a more epic empowered good vs empowered evil battle that reflected in off island damages. I think the bait and switch of the sideways left bad feelings that tainted all that followed, for as soon as I early realized that this was a shared afterlife, and knew that the prime characters were dead, it made the real world less important in whether smokey won or lost. We all die, but if the afterlife is presented during the course of island story, does the journey carry the same weight? For me, no, and the island became even less of a mystery and less of a event in all its happenings. It took most of the wind out of the sails.
Maybe cutting the last few episodes differently would have had the same major beats but a better score. As is, I’m fine with the awakenings and afterlife, but meh over the great battle for the planet. And still being the man of science, I would be happy with definitive answers and not just go on faith about the mysteries not explained. Knowing how thunder occurs doesn’t make me less in awe of it than believing Zeus throws some bolts and creates the boom.
End note: I don’t foresee my desire to rewatch the series and/or buy the DVDs.