So, Lost ended, and I sobbed. I, for one, found the series finale to be pretty satisfying. I don't think any television show could actually hold up to the kind of scrutiny Lost fans will be putting the finale, though I can certainly see that it all doesn't fit together quite perfectly. But saying that, there was mostly greatness going on last night, especially with the character beats/emotional moments. We'll get to that in a minute, but FIRST, let's talk about what mysteries the show actually solved for us and where it left us hanging. (I think that the big stuff has pretty much been revealed, but leave your biggest Lost questions in the comments if you disagree!)
What is answered:
What is the Island anyway?
This one, in my opinion was made fairly clear in the show and stated explicitly in these leaked pages from the script. It's a cork keeping the world out of hell. So it's pretty damn important.
What was up with the Dharma Initiative?
It totally baffles me that people still ask this question. They were a research group studying the Islands unique properties. They were sort of weird, but mostly in a human, explainable way.
Why can't ladies have babies on the Island?
Because of "The Incident", whether that incident was the electromagnetic even caused by Dharma's drilling or the hydrogen bomb set off by Juliet. Ethan was the last child born on the island, not long before this.
What was up with The Others? Why did they do such weird and awful things?
Hmm a group of the faithful doing awful things in the name of a peaceful dude? Weird, that never happens.
Why does Jacob bring people to the island?
Because the Smoke Monster wants to kill him, and he needs to find someone to replace him.
Why them?
Their lives sucked. They were, well, lost.
What happens when the Smoke Monster leaves the island?
I think he needs the light to be out to leave the island, so pretty much, the world gets sucked into hell.
Questions where they left us hanging:
A lot of the purgatory world.
I think there a lot of weird things going on over there in purgatory world (Why did Jack have a son? With Juliet? Since when did Christian Shepard get so great that he leads people into heaven? Where did Faraday, Miles, et all end up?) but I think most of it is kind of purposely left open for interpretation. I get why that annoys some people, but it doesn't annoy me. (Jack had a son to work out his daddy issues, Christian spent time in the purgatory world redeeming himself, Faraday passed through with his family, etc.) and as a subset to this:
What was the deal with the shot of the Island being sunk in the beginning of this season?
Maybe there's no hell in purgatory world so no need for the island? But we know Ben and his dad at least remember the island existing in that world so...is that a false memory? Are they only living the time loop from 815 landing to going to heaven, and the rest is just fake memories? Or did they actually live these lifetimes in this world getting ready to move on? And if the second one is true, what happened to the island?
Waaaaaaalt!
Okay, it was a mistake. Casting a kid on the cusp of puberty to play someone the same age for years on end was a mistake. I get why people want to know about Walt, but I guess I am cool with it because he isn't the only character on the show to have unexplained magical powers. Hurley can see and talk to dead people. Miles can hear the thoughts of corpses. Jacob can make people immortal. We never saw the origin of any of those powers, and I am satisfied to say that Walt had some supernatural abilities, and he was trying to use them help his friends on the island.
"Raised by another"
Aaron seemed fine being raised by Kate. Maybe Claire's mom just paid that psychic to convince her not to give up her baby for adoption or something.
The numbers.
How did the lighthouse numbers end up in so many places? How did the Dharma people get them? I guess they didn't mean anything more than the degrees on the mirror in the lighthouse. We did win at Keno playing them on Saturday night though, so I think they must mean something.
What's the deal with the four toed statue? Who built it?
Jacob maybe? I don't even really have a theory for this one.
Time travel?
Narrative-wise I think the time travel story was enormously successful. It explained a lot about Dharma, Widmore, Ben's origins and gave us Sawyer/Juliet. I still don't really get why the Island time traveled though. Or why it stopped. The time travel thing seemed so important in Season 5, and even though I think it delivered in a lot of ways, it seemed not to mean much this season.
Did the hydrogen bomb make the purgatory world thing?
And if so...huh?
Libby.
Some people really want to know more about Libby, why she was in the mental institution with Hurley and why did she give Desmond the boat. I am not one of those people.
What happened to everybody not dead?! (before they were dead)
Did Desmond get home? Did Kate, Sawyer, Claire, Miles, Lapidus and Richard make it?! Did Kate and Claire raise Aaron together? Did Desmond and Penny get another awesome reunion that I was deprived of? What did Hurley and Ben do on the Island after everyone left? How long were they on there for? Is Ji-Yeon still super cute? I of course know they did this on purpose, but still, I want to know.
So there are questions unanswered, plot holes that can only be filled with crazy theories and narrative threads dropped. I admit that. But I still think that finale was pretty much amazing. The character stuff just worked for me totally, and I am a huge sap so I cried a lot. The reunions and flashbacks were pretty much uniformly amazing. The best ones?
Sawyer and Juliet- This is pretty much what I have been waiting for all season. I know some people don't watch this show for love stories and character studies, but those people need to stop being such robots and have a heart. The Juliet/Sawyer love story in Season 5 was one of the best and most surprising storylines, and it was so amazing to see them together again. Had I been alone, when he said "It's me baby, I'm here." I probably would have made the most terrible sobbing noise. Josh Holloway and and Elizabeth Mitchell sold it. Even the doubters knew at that point, Juliet and Sawyer belonged together.
Jack and Locke- To see John Locke again! The real John Locke, whole, with all his memories. That kind, gentle smile he gave Jack from the hospital bed made me so happy. I think that the purgatory/heaven angle of the story was most satisfying for me because of Locke. I needed to see him find out that he was right all along, and that he was special. Terry O'Quinn is an amazing actor, and if some network doesn't pick up his buddy cop show with Michael Emerson, I'm gonna take out a loan and film in my parent's backyard or something.
Charlie and Claire-This is where the full on crying started. They have been apart for so long, and Charlie dying to try and rescue them was so sad. I was just really happy to see them together again. And the way Charlie looked at Aaron...with such love. I am choking up right now! Right now!
Other moments that destroyed me emotionally:
-Jack and Kate saying goodbye on the cliff. Sniff. Jate forever!!!
-Jack passing on the mantle of Island protector to Hurley.
-Hurley asking Ben for his help, and Ben accepting beautifully. Michael Emerson is so good.
-Jack telling Desmond that he had done enough and he needed to go home to his family.
-Jack dying with Vincent by his side, looking so happy that his friends had made it off the island, and completely ready to go. Great work by Matthew Fox in that scene. It was brutal, and I am actually kind of crying again thinking about it.
Best Cinematography goes to:
Jack jumping at the Smoke Monster on the cliff. Sometimes the visuals can be cheesy on Lost, but that scene made up for it, because it looked awesome enough for pretty much the rest of the series.
For me this show was always about the characters first, and the mysteries second. Despite the unanswered questions, I think the creators served the characters they created incredibly well. From the joy on Jin and Sun's faces when they realized who they really were to the fact that Jack was the last to accept he was dead, the characters were spot-on. For a show with such ambitious plots, Lost never lost track of who the people we were rooting for really were. It's not a perfect show, but that's a rare achievement in such a long running TV series. So yay Lost!
P.S.
I seriously could not pictures up on this, because it was making me sad looking at them.
10 comments:
Oh and one more thing: I LOVED that Kate was the one who shot the Smoke Monster and saved Jack! "I saved a bullet for you" was so badass. And she really wanted to shoot him.
Nice recap!
I think they could have gone a lot of ways with all of this, and I'm happy with the ending. (I'm a sap, and that Sawyer and Juliet were able to have their moment was enough for me).
I think that the prior two episodes kind of set this one right up, and if you liked those two, you were probably okay with the finale.
I thought the finale was just OK. There were maybe 30 minutes of conclusion stuff and 2 hours of reunions and flashbacks. It felt more like a reunion show that we should be watching 10 years from now. I would have liked the reunions to resolutions ratio to have been flipped.
I'm OK with some mysteries not being solved, but the Walt and Aaron story lines really bother me since they were important for so long during the show. I'm mostly bothered because the show never really picked a direction. The different seasons were never really tied together. Each season was really its own show.
I think there are definitely two camps of people on this: character camps vs. plot camps. I disagree that each season stood alone because the characters were consistent and some of the point of the show was showing how these people would react to these circumstances. Also, a good amount of stuff carried through the entire show, from plotty stuff like Jacob, The Smoke Monster and Dharma to thematic stuff like daddy issues, redemption arcs, and being the best version of yourself.
I agree with you a lot... and you know it pained me that Sawyer and Kate didn't at least have a hug, and were pretty much just like buddies in the end... and while I looove Sawyer and his scene with Juliet made me cry, I can't get over my dislike of Elizabeth Mitchell. I get that she played the scene well, I can even admit she is a good actress, there is just something about her that rubs me the wrong way... That slow measured way of talking with the slow eye blinks. Their story was sweet, but his story with Kate was on FIRE! But Kate and Jack makes sense too, and when they said goodbye on the cliff it was pretty heart-wrenching. I was super surprised that she chose Claire over Jack. I really thought she was going to insist on going with him back to the cave. Kate never took Jack saying "No" lightly and always grabbed a back-pack and went with.
But I do understand why people are mad. It is comforting to me that they all reunited before going to heaven. They have redeemed themselves, and they couldn't have done it without each other. They lived together and they die together. But... they set us up so many times, with so many mysteries, so many details, and they should have answered some.
To me the show got away from them, they didn't managed their time well, they should have solved some mysteries sooner.
But when I loved the show the most, it was about the people, and how they were helping each other. And so I couldn't hate this ending, because every where you looked they were saving each others lives, and saving each others deaths...
First of all, to anyone who heard me exclaim "lame" when the big alt reality reveal was made, I apologize -- it was uncalled for, and it wasn't as lame as I thought. Second of all, a great post with a lot of insight.
I've been thinking about the finale quite a bit today. I was content with the conclusion on the island side. In some ways, the direction things went irked me, but overall I felt to go from the beginning of the first season to this point made sense, despite some missteps, and woefully horrendous planning, along the way. The final scene with Vincent by Jack's side was a well done tear jerker (BTW, any theories on how Jack gets to where he is? And, the lifeless plain debris during the credits?) -- it was the only truly emotional moment of the finale -- strange, but oddly natural, especially to this old dog lover.
Which brings me to the bastion of forced emotion that was the alt universe. My biggest gripe, and piece of evidence that this was a contrived, manipulative arc, is Shannon + Sayid. I still remember when that relationship appeared, as if haphazardly forced by some need to explore a certain dynamic. Fine. I thought it was awkward when it happened, but Shannon died, no big deal, it was really Nadia who Sayid sacrificed for and dreamed of, anyhow. It should have been Nadia that Sayid ended up with in the magical mystery church, but, they needed to force the relationship, do the flash thing, blah, blah, blah, so the final collection would be a familiar trip down memory lane. Maybe Shannon being the pure blonde brat somehow purified Sayid tattered soul. Of course, for Penny, whose relation to Jack is the same as Nadia, and who never was on the island, they made an exception to the rule. Plus other characters who didn't appear for I'm sure a variety of reasons. That doesn't matter, though -- it was not going to get any less lame.
In the end, I will remember the final scene of Jack, resting peacefully after seeing the plane, airborne, successful in defeating the evil force and protecting the island. Hopefully I will soon forget the alt reality arc altogether...
Two things: I know how to spell plane, as in airplane, but my brain doesn't.
And by alt reality, I mean "purgatory" -- the old nomenclature still stuck in my head. It is purgatory, with the story line in limbo, that I wish to forget
You what I was just thinking about though... The whole time traveling thing. Are we to assume that the island was skipping through time because Ben moved it? Or was it because Jack and the gang got off the island? Either way, why didn't Jacob scratch their names off when they did get off the island? And not only were they still candidates but he made their lives awful back in L.A. so they would want to come back. Kate and Jack have a failed relationship and Jack becomes and alcoholic, Hurley ends up back in the mental institution, and Nadiya gets hit by a car and gets killed so that Sayid will want to return. Jacob was not a good guy!
Perhaps Jacob didn't cross off the names because he knew he would get the candidates back somehow? I guess Jacob would argue that the ends justify the means, with protecting the island being of utmost importance. He also was only human, albeit a godly human, but a human with human failings nonetheless.
It is safe to say that with the hell brewing after the stone cap was removed, the MiB certainly was less scrupled and concerned about those whom he would harm. I'm guessing that Hurley was probably the most just, friendly, funny and fair protector the island ever had -- good for Hurley!
I loved everything about the Lost episode. And don't forget Jimmy Kimmel's show after. They are great actors doing the alternate endings that were sooo funny (SSB)
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