Well, it’s over, and almost right away juries around the world began to weigh in on what was one of the most hyped series finales in recent memory. The LOST finale: The End. Before the final episode opinions, objections, predictions and criticisms flew left, right and centre. Would we have our questions answered? Would we be left hanging? Would we be satisfied? Would fans feel appropriately rewarded for their six years of loyalty? Since everyone and their uncle is offering their review I, of course, must add mine to the chorus of voices. So, here we go…
In my opinion, the final episode of LOST was satisfying. But you have to look at it from a certain perspective. I think lots of us, myself included, were watching LOST as we’d watch a mystery drama series. I’ve been looking for clues, looking for answers, trying to figure out small and big details and piecing together crazy little puzzles. There’s a ton of depth to LOST, and there are those puzzles there; mystery and—for lack of a better word—the paranormal, permeate every inch of this TV series, but it isn’t a mysterious drama at its core. As we learned in LOST: The Final Journey, the 2-hour recap lead-up to the finale, LOST is a really a character drama. At the heart of the show are writers who are interested, much like the way Stephen King writes, in plunking down a group of people into a new situation and seeing how they react. That is LOST. And I guess we should’ve known that all along.
But it’s clear from the finale that LOST is about its characters, not its mysteries. In the final episode few mysteries were actually cleared up and the action focus heavily on the characters themselves, their development, and the end result of their lives. We didn’t learn a lot more about the nature of the island, the Temple, the ancient mythology, the wheel, the Dharma Initiative, Walt’s powers, the whispers and why Michael has become a whisperer, etc. Instead, we find out what the flash-sideways has been all about, we see Jack and Desmond trying to save the island, Kate kick butt, and Hurley and Ben tag team it up.
In the end, LOST ended in the way that made the most sense, I guess. Whatever all the critics might say LOST has never been about answering questions or explaining itself. Whether or not we realized it, LOST has been about its characters and their choices set in a world that’s mysteries and nature are secondary to the plot and, it turns out, needn’t be explained at all.
For all it’s strangeness, it’s mystery and its unusual properties the Island was real. The island had strange magnetic and supernatural properties. It was protected by Jacob who battled with his brother, the Smoke Monster, and kept him from leaving. Jacob had great faith in people and wanted to prove that they could make good choices. Jacob called flawed people to the island, namely the Survivors of Oceanic flight 815, to help them to redeem themselves, and to find someone to replace him and protect the island when he was ultimately killed. Jacob knew he would be killed and it would only be a matter of time. So he searched for a replacement.
Meanwhile, Jacob’s brother, the Smoke Monster, attempted to escape the island. He was trapped but he eventually found a way he thought might work. The final showdown, his final plan, came to a head in the finale. His plan? To lower Desmond—who is somehow immune to the electro-magnetic energy of the Island—into the “heart” of the Island to cut off its power. But the plan backfires when Desmond literally pulls the plug and the Smoke Monster, in the form of John Locke, suddenly realizes that he can be hurt—and killed.
He is killed, finally, after a battle with Jack, the new protector of the island, when he is shot by Kate. But Jack dies too trying to save the Island by putting back in the plug that Desmond pulled out and harnessing the strange light-energy once again. Before dying though Jack appoints Hurley as the new protector of the Island; Hurley asks Ben if he’d be his “Number 2″. Ben, with a great big smile on his face, accepts. Ben must finally feel wanted and truly useful—it suits him well.
Meanwhile, in the flash-sideways world, our Survivors are coming to realize the true nature of the world they’re living in. One by one and two by two the Survivors are either meeting up, or being set up to meet, people who were important to them in the Island reality. It begins with Juliet’s ultrasound of Sun, mirroring the ultrasound that she performed on Sun back on the Island. As she speaks the same words she spoke then Sun is suddenly taken back to the Island reality, much like Desmond and Hurley and Libby were in earlier episodes. Sun suddenly realizes that this happened before, and Jin realizes too. It’s beautiful, it’s poignant and it brought both the characters and surely the entire viewing audience to tears. When Juliet asks the baby’s name Sun and Jin already know the answer, and it’s beautiful.
Truly, this finale kept everyone on the edge of their seat and the verge of tears, I’m sure. Seeing Survivors who had been away from each other for so long like Sayid and Shannon, Claire and Charlie, and Juliet and Sawyer meet up again and realize who each other really is, and the role they’ve played in each others lives… it’s absolute high drama. For example, you can’t even pretend it wasn’t incredible when Charlie saw Claire, the nameless woman from his flashback dreams, sitting down in the audience from up their on his stage. His reaction is just dumbfounded disbelief and you can feel that emotion, given all the time and energy we’ve put into this series as fans.
And that, in my opinion, is what makes this finale so powerful. It’s a character drama, right(?), and we’ve all put so much time and energy and so much of ourselves into these characters. We have our favourites, our own personal alliances, our own characters that we’ve cheered for week in and week out and as it comes to a head it’s the characters who matter the most—it’s the characters that the writers focus on. Personally, being a huge fan of the Sawyer/Juliet romance I was so happy to see them realize who each other is. It was absolutely incredible to see that the lines which Juliet uttered down in the pit, lying next to the bomb, were actually the words that she said to Sawyer in the flash-sideways that somehow bled through to the other reality. It was so poignant, wasn’t it?
The nature of the flash-sideways reality, the alternaverse, is finally revealed in a conversation between Jack and his dad, Christian Sheppard. The alternaverse, Christian says, is a reality created by the Survivors in order to find each other and to move on together. They’re all dead. The alternaverse was a reality that the Survivors imagined up, their own personal, chosen reality, in order to connect back up with the people who were important to them and to move on to some other world, some kind of heaven, together. Sawyer needed to meet Juliet. Sun and Jin had to meet their baby. Kate and Jack had to meet. Sayid and Shannon, etc. As Christian explains, some of the people died on the Island, others like Hurley and Ben and those that escaped on the plane, lived much longer lives, post-Island, that we as viewers know nothing about. But now they’re all dead and in this place together, waiting to move on.
The finale finishes with the doors of the church opening and the room filing with light. At the same time, Jack, on the Island, is laying down in amongst the bamboo stocks and exhausted after saving the Island and getting stabbed he closes his eyes for the last time. That poignant shot of his eye closing—a mirror image of the opening scene of the pilot episode—marks the end of our beloved series. The end of LOST.
If I can though say a few things about the finale. Much criticism as well as much positive feedback has been leveled at the writers and staff of the show. To anyone who says that we didn’t get enough answers or we’ve been left hanging, I can sympathize, but at the same time I understand where the show is coming from. Like I said before, I think we’re dealing with a character drama—it’s clear now that all the mystery and mythology was secondary. Again, there are lots who didn’t enjoy the finale probably because they didn’t understand a lot about the show in the first place. If you haven’t been following closely enough, especially in the flash-sideways, you were probably just completely confused by the final episode. That’s OK, you can watch it again and pay closer attention this time.
All in all, it was a great finale. I think that the final scene with Jack and his dad could’ve been greatly improved. It didn’t make sense to me to have Christian deliver the news about the alternaverse to Jack. Christian, despite his impact on Jack’s life, has been a fairly inconsequential character in the series. I know, he’s named Christian Sheppard and that’s clever, but I feel like a character with more of a connection to the viewing audience could’ve been the one to explain things to Jack. Then again, maybe they were trying to redeem the relationship between Jack and his father, to show that his Dad wasn’t all bad. I’m not sure.
And how about Desmond. When we find out that the flash-sideways is actually the afterlife that means that Desmond has been moving between reality and the afterlife, conscious of both realities at the same time. Interesting.
Even though LOST is over, I think I’ll still be blogging on the subject a few more times. There’s still lots to say and there’s no point in crowding it all into one article. I’d still like to explore more of the mythology, the history and some of the mysteries of the Island. Like many Losties I’ve talked to, Maria and I are going back and starting the series over from the very beginning. It’ll be interesting to see what we pick up the second time around—I imagine there’s a lot buried there that hindsight will reveal more clearly. Still, when next Tuesday rolls around I know that LOST fans around the world will feel that great big gaping hole in their hearts. At least we can safely say it wasn’t six years wasted, they treated us well and, in the end, it was a great experience.
I’m going to have to disagree regarding Christian Shepherd.
I do agree that scene could have been more powerful.
I disagree that it was a bad choice to choose Jack’s father to tell Jack. Their relationship has been developed through the series, in both flashbacks and flash-forwards and flash-sideways. Jack’s character development as a leader, his strengths and weaknesses, have been regularly tied to his flawed relationship with his father.
I thought it was interesting seeing each of the characters come to remember their life, and what emotional stimulus did that. Characters could interact, one could remember, the other wouldn’t.
Kate knew Jack…but meeting Kate was not the event that took Jack to that next level. That seems very intentional. It was that coffin, and his father, that made him remember.
The show begins and ends with Jack. And his father’s coffin and death really punctuates the series.
I thought it made sense.
Doesn’t it?
but its weird – because while I can see the argument of Jack v. Dad being the most fundamental element of the show it needn’t have been so for so many viewers because there were so many other compelling relationships/stories/developments.
To wit, I understand the book-ending of the series the way they did and thats great and all. BUT – not all people (myself included) always keep the whole series in mind when watching the episode (granted you will if you do all the DVDs straight through). I think if its truly about being a classic TV drama then it needs to narrow its focus a bit – to the season, keeping in mind the development of the characters that you have followed (the things we can remember and hold on to). This worked perfectly for The Wire.
Maybe they were trying to change the paradigm and were setting it up for the DVD experience where all episodes can be watched close together. But maybe that could lead to more frustration given all that was unanswered?
Interesting perspective, Steve. I personally felt that the ending of the show was very season-centric rather than series-centric. Instead of answering a lot of the long-standing series questions, they answered the one huge season question which was what was the flash-sideways all about.
I guess I wrestle with having mild discontentment over how this season was shaped and ended. However, in retrospect, I think I feel better thinking each season as a complete story in some regard. The problem is, they are too different in what they are trying to accomplish, or at least what they present themselves to be. That being said, I can swallow the redeeming and relationally focused aspect of the final season in that context.
As for the unanswered questions, I can live with that. But as you may have seen, at College Humor they can’t (http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1936291). The reason I can live with it is I believe there is a greater narrative in the question and the unknown then would be found in the contentment of answer. And I think J.J. would agree: (http://blog.ted.com/2008/01/jj_abrams.php)