Lost (Possible Spoilers)

No I never said I did.


If they were in a sort of limbo in the flash-sideways (and that was supposedly real-life) then how and when did everyone die is the question. I mean we saw certain people die on the island -but as for the others when did they go? And Ben and Hurley are still on the island. If the island was supposedly real life, and they're still on it then how are they in the alternate universe ...and dead?

Jack's dad mentioned at one point near the end that they'd all died at different times.
Some before Jack, some long after.

Still a lame excuse for a series finale, IMO.
Too many unanswered questions.

It seems like someone made a (bad) decision and made this their ending.
Why was old lady Faraday there concerned about her newly revived son? If they're all just dead and waiting, then what's the worry?
I think that scene was obviously meant for a different ending.

Why did Des know about being on the plane next to Jack?
What happened to Kate, Sawyer and the others on the plane that got away?
What happened to Hurley as the new keeper of the island for the next thousand years or whatever as well as Ben and Desmond who were left with him?

I do think Jack dying with his eyes closing was the best way to end but the cheap-out on the flash-sideways was lamer than hell.

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Well unfortunately the writers won't explain the finale anytime soon. They made it clear they made the finale and won't say a word or explain anything. Which sucks. But anyway, I just read a recap of the finale on CinemaBlend and I have a better understanding towards the Jack/losties/ dying ordeal.


Jack: How are you here right now?
Christian: How are you here?
Jack: I died too. [Sobbing realization of the truth] Are you real?
Christian: I'm real, you're real, everything that's ever happened to you is real. All those people in the church, they're real too.
Jack: They're all dead.
Christian: Everyone dies sometime kiddo.


But I still think the ending was a terrible mess.

What a bunch of hooey.

I think the people at this forum could have brainstormed a better ending than that.

I wonder why though they didn't go through keeping the scene with Walt in the finale. It was shot and he was on set. If he was there I surely didn't see him. He probably didn't fit into the story and his part got cut. Too bad, it would have been nice to see him one last time.

i knew they would do a awful ending, i love the show series 1-3 but once they done series 4 and series 5 i knew they wouldnt know what to do to end it.

even if I haven't seen the ending

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See? You did say that YOU thought they were in purgatory. But that's merely a side point right now...

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Sci-Fi Guy ... I think Eloise was worried that Desmond was going to take her son to the afterlife and away from her. Obviously she wasn't ready to move on, and she (selfishly) didn't want her son to move on yet either. So, that scene did make sense in that context.

Also, jrs, they are not "still on the island." The flash sideways stuff was WAY in the real-life future, after every last one of them had died. It gives the impression that it was concurrent with island time but it never was. And it also gives the impression that it was shortly after JACK died, and we see that he died early ... but it never was.

I think the point to remember is that the flash sideways/limbo stuff is way in the future (in terms of earth time), and that the real point of it is that even by the time the last Lostie died, none of them had been able to move on in the afterlife. This was showing us the domino effect kicked in when one of them (Desmond) figured out it was time to move on and then collected all his island friends to move on with him.

And Jack just happened to be the last one to "get" it -- which, at least, was in character for him. He always was the stubborn one. The only thing that doesn't make sense is that, in real life island time, as we watched him die, he seemed VERY much aware of it and at peace with it. So what changed? Was Christian telling us simply that NONE of them could move on until they were all dead and all ready because they meant that much to each other?

If so, then why didn't Ben go with them? Or Daniel or others? So, that wasn't entirely true either in their grand scheme of things.

Again, the ending was trite -- in a show that pushed the envelope of reality ALL the time, they settled for an ending a third grader could have written. And they didn't do it well. To see a "this is the future and they're all dead" ending done well, watch "Six Feet Under." An amazing series finale for that show -- and since the topic of the entire series was death, it was also not trite but fitting.

In here, it still feels like a huge cop-out. And, like others, I'm bummed we didn't see anything of what transpired for anyone once the smoke monster issue was sorted out. I'd have loved a glimpse of Hurley and Ben running the island. (Who would still be living there, exactly?) And Kate helping Claire raise Aaron. And Sawyer doing whatever he'd end up doing.... And why couldn't we have seen Miles "talking" to a few of the first Losties who died?

You know -- stuff that would have made sense to us and STILL given us a sense of peace about the characters. I got no real sense of peace with their flimsy nondenominational, one-size-fits-all theological ending. It wasn't even a clever take on the afterlife...

Well, enough said... for now.

Wow, I think I am the only one in the world who thought the ending was brilliant. I think everyone is sadly betraying themselves and a show we all loved, because we forgot to do what the show taught us; LOOK DEEPER!

To me, when you view the show as everyone's preparation for death, it becomes much more about the characters than it ever was about the actual Island, and I finally understand what Damon and Carlton were talking about.
I also agree with Jimmy Kimmel. We saw Jacks preparation. And honestly, I think it was a beautiful scene to see.

All the scenes where the Losties experience something from their past on the Island have a new meaning for me. They all needed to let go, forget their pasts, and move on. I don't feel cheated. I actually truly believe now that the ending was planned from very early on in the show's run. The whole scene in the church with Jack simultaneously laying back down to the spot he was at in the Pilot and him laughing....Damn.....sorry but that was a pretty amazingly executed ending.

The show itself is telling the audience "Let go of your expectations, nothing will be exactly the way everyone wants it, and move on" I'm glad they never said any words like "heaven" or "purgatory" and that makes it all the better. I thought it was a logical conclusion to the show (which is a twist in itself because the whole show has been pretty illogical from the start).

I'm fully satisfied, and in the end, I didn't give a **** about why Walt was special or what was up with Aaron. It was never all about them. It was never all about the mystery. It was always about the journey, and IMO the ending did the entire show justice.

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" I see in your eyes, the same fear that would take the heart of me. A day may come when the courage of men fails, whe we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day. May and hour of wolves and shattered shields before the age of men comes crashing down, but it is not this day! This day we Fight! For all that you hold dear on this good earth, I bid you stand men of the west!!"
-Aragorn: The Lord of the Rings the Return of the King

You know, I get what you're saying, but it just doesn't actually WORK that way for me. Sure, I loved the characters, and that's what made it worth watching, but you can't tell a story about a crazy magical island, spend several SEASONS trying to explain it, and then just have all its quirks be largely irrelevant because "it's all about the characters."

Well, it was no more about the characters than ANY good story is. What made Lost unique was that it was set on this crazy unpredictable island. To use an ending that sidesteps that and all its qualities and leaves us as unenlightened about the island as ever is a disservice.

And remember: the island scenes were all real-life. They weren't the purgatory or limbo. Only the flash-sideways stuff was limbo-esque. So, as for all that island stuff happening in real life -- well, a gal just wants some explanations, ya know? Not all of them -- but certainly a few more than we got.

Let's face it: That ending could have been tacked onto virtually ANY show with minor adjustments, because it wasn't about the island at all. And yes, you can say that was precisely the point. But to pull that sort of sleight of hand NOW, in the last TEN MINUTES of a six-season series, felt cheap. And we'd heard all the talk about the characters being "lost in their own lives" for years now. So it's not like we didn't see THAT coming either.

I think I would have preferred to see the resolution to their "lost" conditions via the ISLAND and not via death and limbo (which, I'm sorry, is trite and a cop-out, especially the way they did it). There truly is nothing new under the sun.

I suppose some will say that they DID conquer their "lost" conditions via the island, but not really. If they had, none of them would have been in limbo -- they would have moved on. Or, if their point is simply that these people couldn't move on without their friends, then that's extremely trite too. If they were so important to each other, did they keep in touch over the years? What happened? To leave their "real lives" hanging the way they did (Hurley and Ben on the island, a few of them leaving in the plane, Desmond leaving in the boat) was *not* satisfying to me.

See, for me, I got a pretty good explanation of the Island. The Island was the ultimate test. It's heart is Life, Death, and Rebirth. All the fundamentals of the show are personified with the Island. Everyone who was ever on the Island was broken in some way. Mother, Jacob, MIB, Losties, Others. They were all Lost in life and searching for something more, or holding on to something.

The Island is the ultimate metaphor for life; Mystery, Challenges, Survival. Just like Life is the ultimate test for all of us, The Island is the ultimate test for everyone on the show. It's something they needed to experience in order to move on to the next step. It made everyone start with a clean slate, and face their fears. To me, this is poetry.

I'm not religious by any means. I'm completely open to every idea about why we're here, and what we're meant to do. I was raised catholic (although i don't really follow any of those beliefs) and I remembered hearing that when you reach heaven, everyone you ever cared about gets there at the same time, regardless of when they actually die. I thought the flash-sideways was a certain execution of that Idea. They all created this one moment together and made each other remember everyone they loved, and they all moved on together. Whether that means they are going to heaven, or hell, or a new life, is open for interpretation. You really have the choice to make the ending mean what you want it to mean for you.

I understand peoples qualms about the ending though. I remembered thinking "if they don't explain Aaron or Walt, I'm going to be pissed". They didn't explain either of them. And coming into the finale, I wanted to hear about them more than anything. I was surprised when several minutes after it ended, I thought "I completely forgot about Walt and Aaron by the end of that". That's because I believe the show was always about Jack's transformation from a man of science to a man of faith. It was about him letting go. And, it was about everyone he cared about. A good alternate title for the show would be "The Life and Death of Jack Shepherd". Once you say to yourself "you know they made too big a deal about a lot of the other mysteries, but that really wasn't what the show was about anyways" then you might understand what I'm talking about.

Regardless, I'm satisfied. I understand why some people aren't. I just truly feel that if you take the show into your own hands, you can make it satisfy you.

Oh sure, I can make ANY show or movie satisfy me ... if I start writing my own theories and endings and side-stories and stuff. But isn't that the job of the writers? Who's telling this story? If they want me to do their work for them AFTER the fact, then I should get a cut of the action, you know what I mean?

Seriously, though, I AM "religious" (boy, I hate that word), and their attempts at theology were embarrassing at best. None of it was original -- and again, for a show that braved being original in ways that defied logic for years, it was disappointing to see that they opted for an ending that neither tied up enough loose ends (they ended "real life" stories midway, except Jack's and Sun's and Jin's, etc.) nor reminded us of the great craziness that was Lost.

And yes, I get all the metaphors-for-life stuff. And loved it. And still do. But that doesn't save the ending for me at ALL. The ending felt tacked-on.

And I didn't really forget about Walt and Aaron and others.... I distinctly recall my first thought when Christian said, "Why are YOU here?" because I breathed it out loud: "No!"

I still have that same gut reaction to that ending. I shouldn't have to "make" the ending work for me. I was perfectly fine for six years letting the writers carry me along on this amazingly unbelievable journey. To cast all that aside for a cheap, QUICK ending disappoints me.

Well, I'm sorry you weren't satisfied. I like stories open to interpretation, and I've never let the writers just take me along for the ride. The whole time I watched the show, I was always thinking of how I think things will go, or how I want them to go, or how I interpret all the different ideas.

Lost was able to tackle a lot of philosophies, and myths by NOT delving into them. It's proven by the thousands of fan theories online. It's not like it was going to explain every religion the show made reference to. It's just always been one of the most interactive (if not THE most interactive) shows on television. It just doesn't make sense to me that people thought that would change.

The ending did its job. It has people talking and discussing like they've always done. This will allow the show to live on. The mystery lives on. And that in itself is an accomplishment even if some people thought the ending was a cop out and tacked on. Even if it was, I thought it was a pretty damn good cop out.

I don't mind open to interpretation, but that ending wasn't open to interpretation. Oh sure, the ISLAND was, and frankly, I'm fine with that. And I did theorize along the way in the manner you described right here. But I didn't MIND if my theories were wrong. For the finale, I went into it perfectly willing to see where they were taking me because for the past half-season or so I had hope that it all had some purpose WITHIN ITS OWN MYTHOS.

And yet, in that final TEN minutes, they dropped all of their mythos, forgot about it, and opted for an ending that could have come with any show with mortal characters in it.

And I don't buy your assertion that Lost tackled a lot of philosophies by NOT delving into them. They may have ALLUDED to a lot of philosophies, but if they didn't delve into them, they by definition didn't tackle them. Tackling is a lot more active than that. And I didn't want them to explain ANY religion. I wanted them to explain their OWN mythos with that island. That was largely the point. (Not entirely, but largely.) Do you honestly think everyone was watching that show solely because of the themes of redemption? Or was part of it that, right from the pilot, there's an unexplained polar bear and a monster made of smoke?

Remember first seeing the light come on in the hatch? Remember the Dharma products? Remember the ceiling of the hatch lighting up in the dark? All the training films? Remember all that mystery? Wasn't that a LOT of what kept folks coming back?

To end it with "we all die and we work out our issues in limbo" still feels cheap and casts aside the coolness and bravery that was Lost.

I understand what you mean, I just think it's all about the way you look at the show. So you have a right to be disappointed because you loved it for the mystery. Don't get me wrong, so did I, I just feel that there is a bigger picture that they wanted to tell, and that is what captivates me most.

But hey, different strokes for different folks. Good debate though.

Wow. Quite a bit to digest here; some good, some bad, and a lot in-between. I'm sure I'll be double and triple posting all over the place, but some basic likes/dislikes:


Things I Liked:

• Obviously, it was beautiful at times. The central conceit allowed us to have what almost felt like a clip show, without the monotony of one. It was a nice way to look back on the series as a whole and it emphasized the show's journey in a lovely way.
  
• The idea that they have to remember lessons learned in life to move on makes for some wonderful thematic symmetry. Throughout the entire show, we've seen flashbacks, and they've always informed the current situations they were confronting on the Island. And in Purgatory, they flashback to their real life to move on from there. It's the same concept -- how your past helps you move into the future -- but pushed back another level. From past informing the present, to the present (for us) informing the distant future.
  
• The idea of Hurley becoming protector of the Island, and Ben's redemption coming full circle. Finally, Ben is special, and finally, he's given a choice. The idea that he can run the Island differently from Jacob is intriguing, though it's more a tease than anything else.
  
• The idea that people like Ben and Eloise want to stick around a bit to make up for lost time. Ben, to have the life with Danielle and Alex he never had before, and Eloise to give Daniel Faraday the life of beauty and music he never got to experience.
  
• The idea that the ending is both an ending and a loop, in a way. Clearly, the Island still needs to be protected, and Hurley presumably chose a successor at some point. But we still see the end of it all for our characters. We get an end for the characters, but the process of protecting the Island continues indefinitely.
  
• As much as it feels a little cheap, I have to acknowledge some cleverness in swearing up and down that the Island is not Purgatory, only to introduce another timeline that is Purgatory. They played on the assumption of most viewers that, once they'd told us the Island was not Purgatory, therefore nothing in the show would be. It's a fair trick, I think.

Things I Didn't:

• Jughead was nothing but misdirection. It didn't detonate fully and didn't create a new timeline at all, and the only reason it was introduced is to make us wonder about the causes of the Flash-sideways; to give us a few non-Purgatory possibilities to preoccupy ourselves with. That's a long way to go just to keep us guessing.
  
• The Island sinking in Purgatory. Showing us this isn't quite cheating, but it implies an objective point of view that really doesn't exist in that world, given that they apparently manifested it themselves so they'd have a place to meet up and move on together after they died.
  
• I can accept the idea of Purgatory, and even get over some of the convenient time-related mechanics of it, but the idea that they somehow created their own, unconsciously, so they could all move forward together is a bit too convenient. There's no reason for this except as a way to make some lovely images possible. Better writing would find a way to get us the lovely images and the closure without having to construct a metaphysical reality out of whole cloth.
  
  Let's think about that for a second: it's a self-contained Purgatorial universe created by the characters without them consciously choosing to create it where they wait around for each other so they can move forward together...where they don't actually all move forward together, anyway. Convenient doesn't begin to describe the idea of getting a happy ending by constructing sudden metaphysical realities.

I understand that people appreciate the emotional resonance of what happened, and I absolutely do, as well. The way I see it, we got the second-best option out of three. There's #1 (the best): we get answers, and they're clever and fitting. #2 (what we got): we don't get answers, but we get fitting ends for many of our characters. And there's #3 (the worst; the BSG finale): where we get answers, and they don't make sense. I'll take what we got over #3, at least.

That said, I don't think the disagreements are just "I cared about the mysteries" versus "I cared about the characters." The ending has problems that hurts both perspectives (explanation below).

One thing that I think any great show must do is continue to be compelling if rewatched. For example, if you watched a show about an epic struggle, and it turned out to be a dream, rewatching it would have no tension, because you'd know the entire time that nothing was really at stake.


Two Big Problems

So, the ending we get has two big problems, then, no matter what perspective you come to the show with:

1. The characters' ending in Purgatory greatly diminishes the importance of many of the things they've done, particularly in the last season. The struggle with Locke seems a lot less important now. Things are going to end up okay for them, and not because they defeated Locke, but because they grew as people. That's nice and all, but we've been building towards a hugely important confrontation between good and evil. This robs that of significance.
   
2. The ending makes the Island's powers incidental, not instrumental, in the characters' maturation. If you replaced all the science fiction, and all the mythology, with ordinary survival struggles and relationship difficulties, you could have the exact same development and the exact same ending. The fact that the island they were on was THE ISLAND was not crucial to their fate in the afterlife. It could've been a perfectly normal island. The ending we get means that the Island was different just because it was interesting that way, and not because it had to be to help the characters evolve, or learn life lessons.

I think the end result is a finale that is fairly emotionally satisfying, and fairly thematically elegant, but really deliberately abandons total coherence, and almost completely sacrifices its own final season at the alter of the final episode. The writers decided that having a beautiful send off was more important than having that send off make sense, that characters were not just more important than mysteries, but the only thing important at all, and that fitting one more twist, and going for something profound, was worth rendering all the recent drama and conflict on the Island more or less impotent.

I'm sure this is a decision they put a lot of thought into, but let's not pretend it doesn't have huge downsides. I (like many others, I think) had already made my peace with the fact that a lot of mysteries weren't going to be explained. The finale went past merely leaving these aside, by basically saying that the Island was incidental to their fates, and that a lot of what they did over this past season wasn't half as important as they thought. They made the finale about an idea so big that it belittled what came before it, and not entirely in a good way.

More in the days to come, I'm sure, as I peruse other theories and think about it all some more. Would love to hear more reactions, though, particularly from people who liked it as to what they think about the two problems above.

One other thing that I forgot to mention before: it seems a little odd that we never found out what Ben was really up to. I think most of us had assumed that his redemption at the end of "Dr. Linus" was genuine, and that whatever he was doing with Flocke was some kind of con or trick, but we never found out either way.

I can't muster up much energy to waffle too much about it after watching it 2am and then having work at 8am. Pfft, dedication.

First of all, i didn't like it but the more it settles, the more i like bits of it.

I think the whole FS set up was a cheap trick, there were too many suggestions and build ups to suggest it was simultaneous and each time line was informing the other. And i think they purposefully setup those presumptions, irregardless of how they fitted in with the purgatory theme. As far as i'm concerned, i'd have enjoyed the season if they either didn't reveal the FS was purgatory or left introducing until the last couple episode and cut all the build up and centrics.

I had to hold back cheering when Frank was found. Liked the fact he just wanted to get off, sod the others if they made it or not. Was nice after they never cared about him. Similar reaction to Richard, though have to wonder why took them so long to use the plane to escape and not blow it up, which i think most people and assumed would happen anyway.

A lot of self aware dialogue, Jack being the obvious choice etc. It was kinda cheesy but still liked it.

The FS becoming an epilogue with all the reunions got to be a tad corny but couldn't help but smile. I liked the send off they got overall.

The Island and Flocke was a MESS. It was never established what would happen if he escaped, turning 'the source' off didn't seem to have any effect. I can live without Walt being explained and other things but when the whole setup of 'the source' was the precipice for the climax, it didn't work. It didn't need massively explaining but more than 'it's a cork containing evil etc' / 'the light will go outside everyone'. It was never clarified why Flocke couldn't leave, it became a vendetta and removed any threat. Titus Welliver should have been playing him, less of O'Quinn, as calling him Locke all the time was misleading. The set and the source was cheesy. Having a literal cork was stupid and there was no reason why removing would make MiB mortal.

Anyway, main thoughts. If they cut out one half of the FS and explained WTF was going on with the source as it was more than a MacGuffin

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