LOST Series Finale = WTF???

[Sindatur]

This. The show spent the better part of four or five seasons dishing out mysteries, clues, hints and overall bullshit. Only to have it all not matter. I don't recall while watching the show wondering what the greater meaning of Jack's journey was and what questions he would ask himself as he died and went into the afterlife.

No, I wanted to know what the fuck was going on with the island!

They did answer an awful lot of those questions throughout the final seasons...... they just weren't the answers most people wanted to hear apparently.

Yea, they didn't "Scooby Doo" spoon feed the answers to us, but, yea, most answers are there. About the only thing I think they didn't approach an answer on, was the Kids being conceived on the island dying in the Womb, and taking the mother along with them. Lots of possibilities (Ben's Curse, the Broken Statue, the radiation from the bomb, etc), but, no actual attempt at directing us to an answer.

 

[FPAlpha]

Maybe I should rewatch the entire series from the start. Maybe it'll make more sense that way? lol

I wouldn't.

As someone who was a glowing fan of Lost in the first season i left somewhere around 3rd season when it became apparent that the writers and producers didn't have a clue as to what kind of story they wanted to tell.. Lost fell apart and became a jumbled mess.

If you would rewatch the show to try to make some sense out of everything i believe you're only inviting a major headache.

 

[Keith1701]

Well, I think everything I would have said here has already been covered.

I agree.

 

[Lindley]

Maybe I should rewatch the entire series from the start. Maybe it'll make more sense that way? lol

I wouldn't.

As someone who was a glowing fan of Lost in the first season i left somewhere around 3rd season when it became apparent that the writers and producers didn't have a clue as to what kind of story they wanted to tell.. Lost fell apart and became a jumbled mess.

If you would rewatch the show to try to make some sense out of everything i believe you're only inviting a major headache.

The show changed direction a bit after season 3, certainly. Season 3 wrapped up most of the original flashback storylines, and there was a real sense of closure to it.

I wouldn't say it became a mess after that, though. Seasons 4 and 5 were some of the best parts of the show IMO.

I wasn't a huge fan of season 6....not so much because of the flashterlife, but just because what should have been a natural denouement felt more like connecting the dots between things they hadn't covered yet. There was no purpose to the Temple scenes other than finally showing the Temple, for instance.

 

[RoJoHen]

Yea, they didn't "Scooby Doo" spoon feed the answers to us, but, yea, most answers are there. About the only thing I think they didn't approach an answer on, was the Kids being conceived on the island dying in the Womb, and taking the mother along with them. Lots of possibilities (Ben's Curse, the Broken Statue, the radiation from the bomb, etc), but, no actual attempt at directing us to an answer.

This was explained, albeit not directly, with the birth of Ethan in the 70s.

Sawyer says something like, "Maybe whatever causes babies to die hasn't happened yet."

Then a few episodes later we have "The Incident." I don't know if it's the bomb or the pocket of electromagnetism, but it seems pretty obvious that this event is what caused the pregnancy issues.

The finale of LOST is so easy to follow that I don't understand why people don't get it. Christian tells us exactly what was going on.

The reason certain people aren't present in the Church at the end is because a) they've already moved on (I'm guessing Miles and Frank fall into this category), or b) they're not ready to move on, like Ana Lucia and Ben.

 

[Scout101]

No, I predicted that the show would end with them revealing they were all dead and in the afterlife.

Kind of an important nitpick here, but the way you describe that, it sounds more like you got accidentally lucky than anything. They weren't dead and/or in the afterlife when on the island (nor in purgatory, which was the most common guess), so while the show did end with them ending up there, nothing on the island appears to have had much to do with that, outside of developing a bond which led to them meeting up in the afterlife, or something.

Your prediction was that 'they're all dead', and while they all DIED later on, they weren't dead when you were predicting they were. So while you maybe said the right words, you were 100% wrong with what you meant by it. Don't feel bad, i'd bet the WRITERS were just as wrong with how they predicited it would turn out

Which is what I thought was going on when I made my first post. And that is what I predicted, personally don't care if you believe it or not.

And again, to be clear, you are claiming your prediction (before the first episode, somehow. What does that even mean? Based on watching the trailer?) was that "nothing on the island mattered, they were just unlucky on a strange island, everyone eventually would die on the island or escape and die in the real world, they'd all experience an alternate reality in some sort of purgatory, then go on into the afterlife together like in Titanic?" THAT'S what you predicted? got any lottery numbers for me? (please skip the LOST lottery number joke, too obvious!)

Not trying to "win the internet" or whatever the hell that means. I would hardly come on here going "Duh, I don't understand the ending", if I was trying to "win the internet".

In this context, it would claiming to be so smart you knew something even the writers didn't, claiming that knowledge after the fact, and attempting to do the 'I was right all along" dance. Especially when in order to be 'right', you'd have to have guessed something that barely makes sense when said out loud.

Besides, what's so hard to believe about me predicting something that the writers hadn't come up with yet?

What would you have based the prediction on, if the writers didn't even know it yet, so couldn't leave you any clues? Not sure you get a prize for a guess way out in left field that turns out to be tangentally related to a couple of the words in the right answer, but not the way you meant, though...

Also, I knew the last episode was going to have an "eye" shot the way the first episode did. Is that me "winning the internet" again?

Kinda, actually. Again, you're providing your guess after the fact, so hard to say, but as far as trying to claim credit for easy things, something as obvious as the final shot being on jack's face/eye isn't much of a stretch. It's a pretty obvious bookend to the series, and had been predicted by a lot of people for the last season or two.

I guess the only way your prediction (sorry, you KNEW this one, right?) would be impressive is that the writers had planned on killing Jack off almost right away, so you knowing the show would end on a character the writers hadn't planned on keeping ON the show for more than an episode or so would be pretty impressive...

 

[davejames]

Also that they copped to the purgatory ending after saying for years they would not do that. Wimps.

Um, people were asking them if they all died in the original plane crash, and if the island itself was purgatory.

That's not even CLOSE to how things ultimately played out.

 

[Klaus]

It wasn't my favorite ending, but I liked it more than most people seem to have... and I'm willing to have some mysteries unexplained, it can be better than way in many cases.

And as noted above, the writers only said the island wasn't the afterlife... which it wasn't. The Internet remains unrewarded.

Any anyhow, my mom saw Star Wars in the theaters and came home and said that Vader was Luke's dad. So she won it before Al Gore invented the frakking thing, sonny. I didn't agree at the time about Vader, but I did predict that Luke and Leia were brother and sister.

 

[Greylock Crescent]

I don't recall while watching the show wondering what the greater meaning of Jack's journey was and what questions he would ask himself as he died and went into the afterlife.

Just to provide a different perspective, those were exactly the questions (among others) that interested me the most about Lost. I loved the show's initial symbolism, as well as the thematic and character work. I actually found the incessant plot twists and "Major Revelations of the Week™" to be rather more of a nuisance and fairly superfluous to the main story: That of the character arcs.

So I found the finale to be utterly compelling and visceral.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

I liked the ending, but since I gave up around season four on the possibility that they'd ever come up with any single coherent answer to all the mysteries that would answer everything in a single, scintillating burst of insight, my expectations were not as high as some. I was looking for a good ending to the characters' stories with a bit of a tear-jerking element, and I was not disappointed.

No, I predicted that the show would end with them revealing they were all dead and in the afterlife.

Kind of an important nitpick here, but the way you describe that, it sounds more like you got accidentally lucky than anything.

Not even lucky. Any of us could have predicted that all the characters would die eventually.

Sawyer for instance probably died at the age of 99 1/2 after living for decades being the neighborhood grouch, chasing kids off his lawn. Generations of kids could have grown up and went off to college, telling stories about that douchebag next door, Old Mr. Sawyer. Finally, he croaks, and then the writers can tell us how the story ends.

 

[Talosian]

I agree that the Jacob and Man in Black plot seemed discordant with at least the first three seasons. The series began to decline in the second season, but held up until the season three finale. That should have been the end of the series. Instead the tone of the show shifted, starting again from the second season but continuing through to the fifth and sixth, progressively becoming both less serious and more baroque.

Lost worked best with the present day/flashback format which allowed the show to be a combination adventure and character study. In addition, each major character death and major character introduction left an inferior cast to what came before - in no small part because the new additions were never fleshed out over three full seasons of flashbacks. By the end of the series the characters mattered much less than the mythology, which is part of the reason why the finale struck a false note.

 

[sidious618]

I adore the final episode of LOST; it's pretty much perfect in my book. I never understood the idea that they didn't answer everything either. They answered almost everything! The only outstanding issue for me was the cabin.

 

[Obiwanshinobi]

In hindsight, i thought the giant stone cork was kind of lame.

 

[RoJoHen]

In hindsight, i thought the giant stone cork was kind of lame.

It is kind of lame. Really, it just looks dumb. I love the conclusion to the show and revelation of the flashsideways, but the cork that Desmond pulls out of the hole...it's just silly.

 

[Idran]

In hindsight, i thought the giant stone cork was kind of lame.

It is kind of lame. Really, it just looks dumb. I love the conclusion to the show and revelation of the flashsideways, but the cork that Desmond pulls out of the hole...it's just silly.

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fg1qikMstEA[/yt]

Okay, only kinda related to what you said, but it was hilarious enough that I had to post it.

(The two of them filmed that as a joke on the set of some production they both happened to have been working on and showed it at the 2011 Comic-Con, if I remember right)

 

[coolghoul]

The whole island thing was left explained. The powers are left unexplained. It's ok to say magic where magic has some logic behind it. It's ok to say the force is all around us, made by living things -> we can accept that. But that stupid water flowing with a cork and uncorking it and letting it flow... It had no meaning... They might as well have created a dam to deflect the water. They might as well have had a statue, which got turned around and somebody turned it back to the way it was. That whole thing was .... just lame.... beyond lame. It was just ---- ugh!!!

 

[Agent Richard07]

Great clip Idran.

No, I predicted that the show would end with them revealing they were all dead and in the afterlife. Which is what I thought was going on when I made my first post. And that is what I predicted, personally don't care if you believe it or not. Not trying to "win the internet" or whatever the hell that means. I would hardly come on here going "Duh, I don't understand the ending", if I was trying to "win the internet".

Besides, what's so hard to believe about me predicting something that the writers hadn't come up with yet? The ending sucked BECAUSE the writers' took the easy way out and chose what I see as the too obvious ending. Sure, they added a twist by saying the characters were alive the whole time on the island, but seriously, you didn't know the afterlife was gonna figure into this somehow? It was so obvious.

Thinking about the show after it ended, I got the impression that the characters were indeed supposed to have died in the crash. But since people on the internet as well as the actors themselves thought of it as a possibility and didn't like it, the writers changed course, made the island real and used their original idea for season 6. I mentioned this last year and someone responded, saying that they didn't think the plan was for them to be dead all along, but it would probably have been a quick explanation had the show been cut short.

 

[davejames]

I agree that the Jacob and Man in Black plot seemed discordant with at least the first three seasons. The series began to decline in the second season, but held up until the season three finale. That should have been the end of the series. Instead the tone of the show shifted, starting again from the second season but continuing through to the fifth and sixth, progressively becoming both less serious and more baroque.

I agree the show probably overstayed it's welcome a bit. Even if there were still some great episodes in the later seasons (I'd hate to lose that first amazing flashforward episode), the novelty of the island had definitely worn off by that point and it was getting to be a struggle to care.

 

[Eddie Roth]

I still think the writers did a decent job of explaining the major mysteries of the show. As for the final season's flash-sideways, I reserve judgment as to whether this actually contributes to the show or whether it is just a stalling tactic until I have watched the season once more. Back then, I wasn't entirely sure how I felt about it. The idea of Desmond "waking up" people was great and seemed to lead to some sort of collision between the two realities (they obviously were just that).So when that didn't happen in the finale, my impression was that Season Six had ultimately been just one half of a season with the rest being some unrelated "what if" scenario.

The sideways stories did say a lot about what the characters were about in their very core - what would their lives have been like under different circumstances. That sure was interesting. I'm going to have to see if that is all there was to it, or if there is more. In any case, the finale did not change my opinion that Lost was one of the best shows that was ever on TV.

 

[Freman]

In hindsight, i thought the giant stone cork was kind of lame.

It is kind of lame. Really, it just looks dumb. I love the conclusion to the show and revelation of the flashsideways, but the cork that Desmond pulls out of the hole...it's just silly.

Okay, only kinda related to what you said, but it was hilarious enough that I had to post it.

(The two of them filmed that as a joke on the set of some production they both happened to have been working on and showed it at the 2011 Comic-Con, if I remember right)

Haha. This was brilliant.