Lost Mega Post
Okay, so I’ve thought about it….probably going to rewatch it tonight….but I need to rant about this.
The Lost finale.
The episode of all episodes.
The End.
(Just a warning, this post will contain a bazillion spoilers!!! And probably also 90% incoherent ranting)
I WAS SO READY TO CRY BUCKETS when this series ended. But not only did I sit there staring at the screen for a few minutes with a look of despair and frustration all at the same time, I was shocked. Shocked at how for 6 seasons, there had been a sense of mystery, a sense that not all was as it seemed, a sense of intrigue, a sense that there was something deeper behind why and how they all got on this random island in the first place….and then it was all shot to hell in ten minutes with the purgatory/nirvana BS.
No idea what I’m talking about? Well…you’d probably need to have seen all the episodes to fully understand just how much of a letdown this finale was. In fact, the whole of season 6 was a bit of a letdown, but I’ll get into that later on.
If you want a summary of season 1-5, you can watch this clip which sums it all up pretty well (although it is pretty confusing…probably even more so to people who don’t watch the show regularly):
Basically, in the final episode, it is explained that the alternate timeline introduced in season 6 was actually a ‘purgatory’ in which everyone was dead, and looking for each other so they could ‘move on’ to the next plane/dimension/heaven/whatever you want to call it. Everything that happened on the island until Jack died was REAL, but they all died at different points in time during the series and the alternate reality was a way for everyone to meet each other and be together. Once they had found each other and remembered their time on the island in the sideways reality, they congregated at a church where Jack was the last one to realize they were all dead. And then with Jack’s father leading the way, all the cast members are engulfed and beamed up in white light.
Final ten minutes of Lost:
I have to say, the end scene WAS beautiful and I really liked how the writers brought everything full circle with the same opening and closing shots of Jack just lying there in the jungle. I really liked the Sun/Jin and Sawyer/Juliet scenes, but honestly……the entire episode was also very corny. I remember just sitting there watching during the middle and thinking ‘man….this feels like Im watching the epilogue of Harry Potter‘. And at times it felt very forced too, especially the Jack/Kate scenes. Ughhhhhh. Talk about deus ex machina overload.
As a whole, the ending just wasn’t very satisfying. Perhaps on an emotional level, we get to see the characters have a bittersweet ending in that they DO find each other, even though they are all DEAD, and they all go to heaven…but COME ON. It’s all well and good to portray how important friendship, love and togetherness is, but on an intellectual level…it was horse shit. It was seriously a really bad M. Night Shyamalan ending. One of those really disappointing types of endings where you find out it was all a dream at the very end.
I knew from the start the writers would never be able to answer EVERYTHING, and yes, some things are better left to the imagination. But there are just so many unanswered questions, so many things that don’t make sense, so many things that are now pointless….I think the biggest problem I had with the ending was that it made Season 1-5 seem like a huge joke. Like everything that happened before the alternate timeline was just irrelevant.
One of the things that made Lost such an epic TV show was that it was a constant cliffhanger, a constant mystery, and that there was constant speculation on the various red herrings/clues in relation to the characters and what was happening on the island. I really admire the writers and their ability to just weave the storylines like they had planned it all from the start, and their use of various pop culture references like Watchmen and Star Wars. The writing definitely set the show out from everything else, and I still think it is one of the best written tv shows to ever have been made.
Which is why I thought the ending was so disappointing. The build up was ok…but the ending. Overall, it just seemed like the writers had completely kicked the most important questions to the curb. Ones like:
- What is the Island? Why could the Dharma Initiative get there in 1977 but no one came to rescue the survivors? How does the island time travel?
- What IS the smoke monster and why/how does it project images of dead people?
- What happens when Smokey leaves the island?
- What was the deal with Claire? Why did she just suddenly disappear in the jungle and leave Aaron?
- What did Kate’s horse dreams mean?
- Why can women not give birth on the island?
- Why does the island seemingly cure people of their illnesses?
- Why did Jack give the guardianship of the island to Hurley and not Ben!?!?!?!?
- How did Jacon make up his list of candidates and how did he build the lighthouse?
- What was the significance of the hieroglyphs/tawaret statue?
- Why were the numbers such a big part of the show??
- What was the deal with the temple? Sayid rising from the dead? Yeah..
- Why did MIB turn into a smoke monster when he went down the cave of light but not Desmond or Jack?
It’s just FRUSTRATING and I know you could argue that the writers have left all these ‘up to the imagination’, but it just feels so cheap. Like everything that happened in season 1-5 meant nothing. And the temple in season 6 didn’t even impact on the main crux of the story AT ALL. Sayid’s rising from the dead and becoming all weird? Claire’s crazy talk??? WTF!?!?
WHY.
WHY THROW IN SO MUCH IRRELEVANT SCENES AND SECRET CLUES AND UNANSWERED QUESTIONS WHEN YOU CAN’T ANSWER THEM.
As soon as I saw Jack’s father at the end I was just like ‘Whaaaat the heeeelll….what is this?!’ And the whole religious symbolism – season 6 was FILLED with christian metaphors to the bible. And finding out at the end the alternate timeline was a ‘purgatory’, that Michael was still atoning for his sins and everyone else that didn’t matter were busy sorting their own lives out….it just kind of discounts all the mystery with the whole destiny/chance thing which was constantly brought up within the series. Don’t know if it was just me but Jack getting stabbed in the side and being the ‘chosen one’ to kill fake Locke totally reminded me of the resurrection. Or maybe I’m just looking into it too much.
The fact remains……the finale was cheap and it was very unsatisfying. It wasn’t badly made by any means – I mean the stunts were awesome and Jack flykicking Locke on the cliffface was pretty cool.
It’s just…the writing was crap. And I think the writers knew it because they were defending it even before the finale came out saying ‘oh its always been about the characters and what happens to them blah blah blah’.
What was even worse than the Lost finale….the Jimmy Kimmel Lost special after the show aired. Seriously lame jokes and lame cast questions.
I really need to find a new tv show to watch now that Lost is over!
I will end this post with the Answers song – because it is awesome and it further proves how much of a sucky ending Lost had.
Oh and this Lost rap video…just coz….;D
