My first thoughts on the LOST finale (spoilers!)

Spoilers … spoilers … spoilers … Go away if you haven’t seen the finale yet …

I was enjoying it well enough, until Christian told Jack that they were all dead.

No, no, no, no, no! That’s not the ending I wanted. It doesn’t even make any sense. If they are were in heaven or wherever, why did they all have the same shared experience — or maybe I should say seemed to have the same shared experience — of being on Flight 815, landing in L.A., and having these alternate lives?

And they never did explain the Island light — and I had been sure that they would. Okay, I can live with that — thinking of it as just something that has to be in place to keep the Island afloat. Maybe that stone that Desmond removed was the Island equivalent of duct tape, holding it all together (great line from Miles, btw) — but I had really been hoping, and expecting, a coherent explanation of the sideways world.

I can see where the Island stories presented unsolvable problems for the writers. But why would they actually introduce the whole idea of the sideways worlds unless they had somewhere specific they were going with it?

Am I perhaps missing something? These are just my first thoughts — it’s less than 20 minutes now since the show ended.

I mean, it’s nice that they all love each other, and that they all got together in the end. There will several spots in the finale where I did cry. But does it really come down to they will all meet in heaven? That’s almost as bad an ending as saying it was all a dream.

I guess it’s not heaven, exactly. Or at least not the angels and harps in the clouds version. Christian said it was the space they carved out to meet each other again.

And what’s with the light at the end? And all their talk of leaving, and then Christian said they weren’t leaving, but moving on? Were they in limbo? Sigh.

Well, one thing’s for sure — there will be millions of words poured out, in pixels and in print, on the ending. If I did, in fact, miss something, I’ll find out soon enough.

Great show, LOST — up until the last ten minutes. Well six good years, ten disappointing minutes — balanced on the scale, the white stone weighs much more than the black.

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8 responses to “My first thoughts on the LOST finale (spoilers!)

  1. It’s not that they were all dead. Think of what Juliet says before she died, or what Desmond says in two near death experiences. Christian is saying all you need to know, “some have died before you and some will die long after your gone. It’s about helping you move on. The flash sideways they have been showing us this season is merely a plain of mental existence. It is what they are seeing before they die; a way of reconciling there intersecting lives like a flash bulb before they pass. This is not taking place in real time as some would get there later than others i.e. those that flew off the island; however, they all meet up in the end. Look at the exchange between Hurley and Ben outside the church, “You were a good number 2″…..”You were a good number 1”. They lived out there life as protector and guide on the island after Jack died. To pass on they have to remember those they loved and were connected to.

  2. If the flash sideways is just something they are seeing, then why are they all seeing the same thing? Or is it supposed to be just what Jack alone sees? But there were lots of scenes in the sideways world where Jack wasn’t present. Is he watching it like a movie?

  3. And here’s another thing. Remember in the first episode of the season, we saw the Island underwater? But then tonight we saw that it didn’t sink. So what’s up with that?

    The more I think about the finale, the *less* sense it makes.

    Oh, and I was half-expecting Christian, after he got done talking to Jack, to climb into his coffin so they could have a proper funeral.

    That would have been weird and interesting, and therefore LOST-like — not like the schmaltz fest that they actually gave us.

    • Dang, Ms Terri–I was hoping you’d have the explanation for me so that I would have liked the final 10 minutes as well! I’m right there with ya on your first thoughts of the show.

      I said to my Lost watching guests, “Well, at least it wasn’t as bad as the last moments of the Sopranos,” and then we watched the Jimmy Kimmel show with the Sopranos spoof and all had a nice laugh.

  4. Okay, I’m glad I’m not the only one who went WTF? Watching the Kimmel episode, it seems that they can put forward all sorts of complicated, spiritual reasoning for it, but I’m not into writing a whole plot for myself from the outline they’ve given me. I’ve always felt the “decide for yourself” ending was a cop-out, especially since this wasn’t just a “will he or won’t he?” type question at the end. It was a whole 6 years of plot that weren’t explained.

    They talked on the Kimmel show about the pholosophy of having to remember your life and all the people in it before you can move on, so I guess the speculation could be made that this is all in Jack’s little purgatory/mind/experience. But that’s not how I viewed it, because we saw scenes of it w/o Jack, and they kept saying certain people weren’t “ready” yet, like Faraday’s mom didn’t want to let him go.

    If they wanted to go for a “walk toward the light” scenario, I would have much preferred our earlier notion that the Sideways world was the heaven that they’d earned for their sacrifices. To have that just be some head trip or second purgatory or “meeting place” as they called it–what? And Sayid with Shannon? What about Nadia? Argh. I could go on, but it’s too annoying.

    I personally would have liked to see everyone in the Sideways world going along happily, and then see a glimpse of how Hurley and Ben were going to run the Island. The moment between those two was probably the best part of the finale.

  5. I only watched about half the Jimmy Kimmel special so far — didn’t yet see the things that you (Mags and Val) mentioned — but I’ll watch the rest tomorrow.

    It’s getting very late here, and I’m not coherent, but I’m becoming convinced now that the ending was a total cop-out. Darlton had been warning us for a long time that they weren’t going to anwer all the questions, but I thought that meant only that they weren’t going to address every detail — such as the exact significance of the individual numbers, or why Claire’s psychic changed his mind — but I think they didn’t really address anything. Val, I agree — a whole six years of plot left unexplained.

    The premise of this blog — and I had felt sure, of the show — was that the LOST-ies had all been brought to the Island for a reason. But we never did find out why *these* particular people were brought there.

    Because they were flawed, is what we were told. Well, who isn’t? Out of the billions of flawed people in the world, why them?

    Never answered.

    And what they were there for — and Jack’s ultimate destiny — was just to plug up the hole in the light well?

    Not much of an answer.

    Also, if they just needed Jack (and a couple of back-ups), why bring a whole airplane full of people? And was it really “brought”? It seems like it was an accident that the button wasn’t pushed at the time it was flying over. Was Jacob controlling that? It doesn’t seem so.

    Argh. Doesn’t make sense.

    No wonder Darlton said they would go into virtual hiding after the show, and not discuss the ending. 😉

    Another one: If Smoky was the evil that Jacob was protecting the world from, then why did the Island need protectors (Mommy Dearest and her predecessors) before Smoky even came into existence? And why did Jack need to replug the light sink after Smoky was already dead?

    Are we supposed to assume there is an infinite line of Smokies, of which our SmokyLocke was only one manifestation? (But to assume that would be writing our own plot from an outline, as Val says — if that even was in the outline.)

    I’m pissed.

    One of the biggest questions of the show was why did the LOST-ies paths intersect so often, pre-Flight 815. Not answered.

    What bothers me even more than the lack of answers is the triteness of the they-are-in-heaven (or purgatory, or limbo, or whatever it is) ending. And also, as I said before, that it seems to undermine the whole validity of the sideways-world scenes.

    Arggh. Well, more tomorrow when I’m more coherent and when I’ve seen the rest of the Jimmy Kimmel.

    For now, I’m just going to have to chalk it up to the writers being brilliant story tellers who can’t come up with decent endings. They’re hardly the only ones.

    Mags — I decided that the ending of the Sopranos was shown from Tony’s point-of-view, and that he had been shot dead, and that’s why everything went blank mid-sentence. Works for me, anyway. 😉

  6. P.S.

    Val: If they wanted to go for a “walk toward the light” scenario, I would have much preferred our earlier notion that the Sideways world was the heaven that they’d earned for their sacrifices.

    Yeah! That would have at least made sense, and been have been emotionally satisfying, and tied everything together with some cause-and-effect logic, albeit of a spiritual bent.

    To have that just be some head trip or second purgatory or “meeting place” as they called it–what?

    Yes, “what?” Exactly!

    And Sayid with Shannon? What about Nadia?

    OMG yes! Sayid with Shannon was so wrong!

    It’s like they brought in new writers for the episode who had never seen the show before!

    Argh. I could go on, but it’s too annoying.

    Meanwhile, I can’t stop ranting.

  7. I can’t wait to see the ending of No Country For Old Lost Sopranos.

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