COp out just like BSG.

[davejames]

What didn't we find out?

During season 1 we didn't know anything. We had a bunch of people stranded on a strange island where mysterious things happened.

Now we know what was going on all the time, the picture having gradually become clearer and clearer during 6 seasons. The island turned out to be a mystical source of spiritual energy that is manifested mainly as electromagnetism in the physical world. During history there have been many who have tried to gain control of this energy for their ends, but they have always been stopped by a line of protectors who are in tune with the source

That's the story really. That and the characters, who were lost in their lives, but found meaning in the island and each other. What else do you need to know? The fundamental nature of the heart of the island? It's been made clear that this is mystical/religious, so they could either come up with a whole new specific cosmology for the show's universe or tie it with and existing world view or religion but I'd say it makes a lot more sense to leave it open to interpretation.

Other than that there are just insignificant details that people obsess over. As a whole the story of Lost works perfectly well. They told the story they wanted to tell, and very competently. There's no cop out.

Totally agreed. Like I said in another thread, I suspect most people here are just upset that the show wasn't rooted more in the kind of literal, science fiction world they're used to.

And frankly, I think it's a stretch to say the previous seasons were "all about the mythology." Even then, the little mysteries were always used as a way to explore the larger issues of faith vs reason, or to further explore the characters in some way. I was ALWAYS getting a heavy mystical/spiritual vibe from this show, and I always suspected that's how the show would be resolved too.

 

[Scotty]

I just watched the finale of Lost. And I really am Lost. 'When the end credits rolled I was speechless and didn't know what to think of it. But in the end I could only come to one conclusion. I absolutely hated it. I hated how the show ended and as I started to think about it, I hated the show so much that the whole show has lost its appeal or interest to me.

I have seen many series finales. Some beautiful (Six Feet Under), some thrilling (DS9, The Shield), some staggeirng (Battlestar Galactica). But never in my life have I watched a finale that left the audience hanging like that, offering absolutely no resolution, and making no sense whatsoever. I haven't seen Twin Peaks or St. Elsewhere, but I'd imagine this ranks up there somewhere as being the biggest "fuck you audience" ever.

Immediately I hear people comparing this to Battlestar, and honestly, there is no comparison to be made. Daybreak offered a true conclusion to the BSG sage. Sure, it kept some things mysterious, but the story was resolved and the characters came full circle.

Lost does none of these things. Hell, Lost doesn't answer one of the million effing questions its writers raised during its six year run. What was the island? What was the Dharma Initiative doing on the island? How did they travel through time? What were the sideflashes. What was that damn polar bear doing on the island!

Frankly, Lost is a perfect example of a show where the writers dug a hole for themselves and just didn't know how the hell they were going to get out of it. And instead of trying to climb out, they just kept digging for another exit and the hole collapsed in on itself. It's one of the most infuriating ending in tv history. I really loved this show, but in the end I really feel I wasted hours and hours watching it. A true shame.

 

[RoJoHen]

Lost does not of these things. Hell, Lost doesn't answer one of the million effing questions in raised during its six year run. What was the island? What was the Dharma Initiative doing on the island? How did they travel through time? What were the sideflashes. What was that damn polar bear doing on the island!

Maybe you should go back and re-watch the show, because it absolutely answered these questions. It answered most of them a while ago!

 

[Jax]

I KNEW the ending would suck - there was NO WAY they could get themselves out of it without pissing millions of people off.

Millions

I look over the net and while there are haters they are heavily outweighed by people who liked the finale. Shouting louder means nothing as bashers tend to do so well.

As to say it was a cop out I don't see it, the story of MIB is over, Hurley took the island, Ben got a purpose and we got a few survivors in the end.

Of course they all died, everyone does eventually and the sideway universe could not realy of been used as anything else IMO without becoming OTT to the extreme even for Lost.

The island myth was a tool I don't care for that, I wanted to see smokey stopped and he was. Theres a great blog out there from a supposed member of Bad Robot I suggest reading it.

Lost does not of these things. Hell, Lost doesn't answer one of the million effing questions in raised during its six year run. What was the island? What was the Dharma Initiative doing on the island? How did they travel through time? What were the sideflashes. What was that damn polar bear doing on the island!

Maybe you should go back and re-watch the show, because it absolutely answered these questions. It answered most of them a while ago!

The amount of people who didn't pay attention over the final 2 seasons amazes me.

 

[Delta1]

I still don't know what the polar bear was doing on the island. They obviously went to a lot of trouble training the polar bears to get fish biscuits, and stuffing one into the chamber and zapping it into ancient Tunisia could not have been easy. What was the point? How did fish-biscuit-retrieving time-traveling polar bears advance their research goals? Did they stuff the bear down the hole into the frozen donkey wheel room and use the promise of a fish biscuit to get it to turn the wheel? I know Lost is all about ridiculously complex long cons, but surely there was an easier way to do it.

(And why the sharks? Were they worried the donkey wheel room would thaw out and flood with water? I don't think you can train fish to turn wheels. But I could be wrong.)

 

[Scotty]

Lost does not of these things. Hell, Lost doesn't answer one of the million effing questions in raised during its six year run. What was the island? What was the Dharma Initiative doing on the island? How did they travel through time? What were the sideflashes. What was that damn polar bear doing on the island!

Maybe you should go back and re-watch the show, because it absolutely answered these questions. It answered most of them a while ago!

No they didn't. Sure there were the Dharma videos, Daniel with his technobabble and Benjamin with his vague remarks. But it was never explained. It can't be explained because the writers changed their minds every season. Take the black smoke for example. First it was a monster, then it was a securitysystem, then it was weapon to be commanded from Benjamins basement, but in the end it turned out Jacob's dark immortal twin turned to dust by a pool of light at the heart of the island. WTF!?!

I won't rewatch this series again, probably ever, because to rewatch it would be futile. I actually think that if you rewatch the show back to back, the glaring inconsistencies would start to show even more.

 

[Hunter X]

Lost does none of these things. Hell, Lost doesn't answer one of the million effing questions its writers raised during its six year run. What was the island?

A fair question, and one that's left very much up to interpretation. I think this is the main unanswered question that people are sticking on. The first question of the series is Charlie's: "Where are we?" And that is never answered definitively, but left up to the viewer. We are given clues, but it's not spelled out. I think one's enjoyment of the conclusion to the show's mythology really depends on how much you wanted this question to be answered.

What was the Dharma Initiative doing on the island?

Answered a little bit in season 3, and fully spelled out in season 5. They discovered the Island and found that it had some pretty amazing properties. They decided to do experiments, some fairly innocuous, some way out there, like time travel.

How did they travel through time?

The dark matter around the donkey wheel is some sort of time-manipulating energy. This is fairly spelled out in season 5, as much as time travel technobabble is ever spelled out. In other words, it's no more unreasonable than sling-shotting around a sun.

What were the sideflashes.

A holding place for the Oceanic 815 survivors to find each other, to find their constants, before moving onto the afterlife. In season four's The Constant, Desmond has to find Penny to regain his memories and stop the flashing around the time line. We thought that constants were just an anchor in the event of time travel. It turns out that they are also an anchor for the soul as it goes through the afterlife. An eternal anchor, as it were.

What was that damn polar bear doing on the island!

The Dharma Initiative brought polar bears to the Island for experiments. This is hinted at in season two's orientation video, made explicit by the polar bear cages on Hydra Island that Sawyer and Kate are kept in during season 3, and pushed in your face with a big neon sign when Charlotte finds a skeleton of one in the Tunisian desert during season four...around the same place Ben and Locke to transported to after they turn the donkey wheel.

Lost gave plenty of answers over its run. More examples include what happened to the french woman, what happened to her daughter, why are the Others so interested in Claire, what happened to Dharma that made them leave, what is the Smoke Monster, who is the real Sawyer, who is Jacob, who is Richard, who are Adam and Eve, what are the whispers, why were the Others building a runway, what's down the hatch and who does Kate pick in the end.

It just didn't explicitly answer the big one: "Where are we?"

 

[RoJoHen]

I've re-watched the show (at least up through Season 5) twice since seeing it for the first time, and I learn more about what's going on every time.

The Smoke Monster...yep, still a monster after Season 1. We just didn't know his nature. The security system thing was something that Rousseau came up with; she had no proof, and she was crazy. The thing probably cooperated with Ben so that some day he could trick Ben into killing Jacob...and it worked.

 

[Jax]

The problem with answering big questions is whatever you give will split half the fanbase potentially so on the what is the island, its whatever you want it to be.

Personally the Island is many things Eden for example where the source of everything is and that allows this place to be full of mysterious and fucked up things. The island in the end does not matter but the characters and the journeys that they took.

 

[AvBaur]

I still don't know what the polar bear was doing on the island. They obviously went to a lot of trouble training the polar bears to get fish biscuits, and stuffing one into the chamber and zapping it into ancient Tunisia could not have been easy. What was the point? How did fish-biscuit-retrieving time-traveling polar bears advance their research goals?

That's the thing that bothers me, too. People around here keep saying: "Hey, they did answer a lot of the questions!", but they always just told us how stuff happened, yet almost never why it happened. We know that there's some kind of magical energy at the core of the island, but not why it's there, why it has these strange effects on things that happen on the island or why it must be protected. They showed us how Jacob's brother was turned into the smoke monster, but we don't know why he was transformed. Or why Desmond and Jack didn't turn into smoke monsters when they went down to the plug. I could go on and on...

It's very similar to BSG in that way. In the end, most of the mysteries are explained by the influence of some higher power but we never learn what the higher power is exactly or why it did all these things. That's lazy writing in my opinion.

 

[Delta1]

That's the thing that bothers me, too. People around here keep saying: "Hey, they did answer a lot of the questions!", but they always just told us how stuff happened, yet almost never why it happened.

And in a show ostensibly all about the characters, the why matters. It didn't matter so much in the first four seasons, because the strange occurrences were all artifacts of some historical events to which we weren't privy. But with the Dharma arc, and the season six flashbacks, the characters are now intimately involved in the strange occurrences. They are creating the strange occurrences. But we still really don't know why so many things happened the way they did--or why people behaved the way they did.

Take Smokey for instance. His behavior throughout the entire series is based on his desire to leave the island. What does he need to accomplish to leave the island? He needs to kill Jacob, and then he needs to kill everyone who might possibly take Jacob's place. Why? Who knows. Why not kill Jacob and leave during the sede vacante? Who knows. Why not pitch his case to the candidates so the next protector reverses Jacob's policy and lets him leave? Who knows. He was such a smooth talker he probably could have pulled it off. Why does he immediately put in play the most complex, risky plan he can think of, and draw out the consummation of his success as long as possible? Why does he eschew the easy for the difficult? We're not privy to his thinking, or to the facts that shaped his thinking, so he's not so much a character as a talking plot contrivance.

Or Jack. He decides he needs to kill Smokey. Why? To keep him from getting off the island? He was mortal flesh when the light was extinguished, so even if he did get off the island he'd be no threat to anyone. Why not leave him alive and contain him on the island? It worked for Jacob for two thousand years, and Jacob only died because he was too devoted to his social experiment and one of his subjects stabbed him. Did Jack want to kill Smokey to save the world, safeguard the island, or avenge Smokey's victims? Or maybe he had just wanted to kill John Locke for the past three years? Who knows. The character was full of internal life for five(ish) seasons, but now he's engaging in single combat to the death for entirely ambiguous reasons.

Or Jacob. Why won't he let his brother leave? Is he just mad at him for killing their insane, mass-murdering mother? Does he think his brother will go on a roaring murderous rampage? Does he think his brother is dead and Smokey is something else? This isn't minutiae, this is the core conflict of the entire season. Maybe Jacob's decision was supposed to appear arbitrary and cruel--I can accept that. He was the god of the Others, and they were a bizarre, cruel people. But it's much harder for me to accept Jack buying into that agenda without investigating it.

 

[JarodRussell]

Why is the time travel in Lost not creating alternate realities? Instead it was all one single timeline being altered.

 

[Ryan]

The show took place on a magical island. Anyone who was expecting answers to all of the silly little mysteries and riddles that have popped up over the years were fooling themselves.

Yep. What's Lost without its mystery, after all? Besides, when they try to "explain everything" we get a truly horrible episode like Across The Sea. At the end of the day I doesn't matter where Jacob, his brother, and the donkey wheel of destiny came from.

That being said, the purgatory bit was a huge misstep. Take out the stakes and you've taken out all the drama from the season. It's like waiting for the last big plunge on the rollercoaster only to find the ride's over already.

Plus it makes some of the characters look dumb as hell. Jin and Sun really thought dying together on the sub and having their child raised by the mafioso grandparents was a good idea? With everything Sayid did just for the slim chance to get Nadia back he ends up with freakin' Shannon? How is his wife going to feel about being dumped in the afterlife for a spoiled, rich blonde?

 

[AlanC9]

That being said, the purgatory bit was a huge misstep.......


Plus it makes some of the characters look dumb as hell. Jin and Sun really thought dying together on the sub and having their child raised by the mafioso grandparents was a good idea?

Huh? Jin and Sun's death had nothing to do with the purgatory world. That part was real.

 

[AvBaur]

Why is the time travel in Lost not creating alternate realities? Instead it was all one single timeline being altered.

The timeline was never altered. "Whatever happened, happened."

 

[Scotty]

I still don't know what the polar bear was doing on the island. They obviously went to a lot of trouble training the polar bears to get fish biscuits, and stuffing one into the chamber and zapping it into ancient Tunisia could not have been easy. What was the point? How did fish-biscuit-retrieving time-traveling polar bears advance their research goals?

That's the thing that bothers me, too. People around here keep saying: "Hey, they did answer a lot of the questions!", but they always just told us how stuff happened, yet almost never why it happened. We know that there's some kind of magical energy at the core of the island, but not why it's there, why it has these strange effects on things that happen on the island or why it must be protected. They showed us how Jacob's brother was turned into the smoke monster, but we don't know why he was transformed. Or why Desmond and Jack didn't turn into smoke monsters when they went down to the plug. I could go on and on...

Well said.

It's very similar to BSG in that way. In the end, most of the mysteries are explained by the influence of some higher power but we never learn what the higher power is exactly or why it did all these things. That's lazy writing in my opinion.

BSG was a different kind of show. The heart of BSG story didn't revolve around the handful of mysteries that were left unexplained in the finale. As I said before, Daybreak actually resolved the story of the show. We already knew what happened to Earth and who and what made the human Cylons. In the end it was about these characters, surviving and fighting for their lives. And that's what they did and they finally found peace in the end, not through death but by actually completing their journey.

In Lost, the mystery was central to the story. The second episode ended with one of the main characters asking " Guys, where the hell are we?". We never got to know where or what the island was. We never really know why the Island needed protecting, what it is for or what is represents.

 

[JarodRussell]

Why is the time travel in Lost not creating alternate realities? Instead it was all one single timeline being altered.

The timeline was never altered. "Whatever happened, happened."

Yeah this is what I am saying, it's only one single timeline, with a predestination paradox.

 

[Dar70]

I will not say "I told you so" but, let's just say "Lost" is for this generation(what a friend of mine calls "Generation Stupid")what Twin Peaks was twenty years ago.

It's just today's kids weren't around to experience the incredible demise of such an interesting show, so today they have "Lost".


I KNEW the ending would suck - there was NO WAY they could get themselves out of it without pissing millions of people off. The producers' "Remember, not all your questions will be answered and this was ALWAYS a show about the characters!!!" was a lame attempt at bait and switch before they basically took the money and ran.


INCREDIBLE EPIC FAIL.

How exactly would you end a show of this scale that would please everybody anyway? Even if they had given us everything everybody wanted, there would still be those that would complain it was too predicable.

Since they had no real plan for the series at the beginning there probably was no way.(though Damn Lindelof who just posted at IMDB is acting as though thats not the case now.) Im sure they could have ended the show on a happier note. I would have like a pseudoscience explanation than the crappy religious stuff they shoved down are throats. Also almost every frickin main character died within just over 3 years of the crash. All those struggles for survival and they still die.

 

[exodus]

I will not say "I told you so" but, let's just say "Lost" is for this generation(what a friend of mine calls "Generation Stupid")what Twin Peaks was twenty years ago.

It's just today's kids weren't around to experience the incredible demise of such an interesting show, so today they have "Lost".


I KNEW the ending would suck - there was NO WAY they could get themselves out of it without pissing millions of people off. The producers' "Remember, not all your questions will be answered and this was ALWAYS a show about the characters!!!" was a lame attempt at bait and switch before they basically took the money and ran.


INCREDIBLE EPIC FAIL.

How exactly would you end a show of this scale that would please everybody anyway? Even if they had given us everything everybody wanted, there would still be those that would complain it was too predicable.

Since they had no real plan for the series at the beginning there probably was no way.(though Damn Lindelof who just posted at IMDB is acting as though thats not the case now.) Im sure they could have ended the show on a happier note. I would have like a pseudoscience explanation than the crappy religious stuff they shoved down are throats. Also almost every frickin main character died within just over 3 years of the crash. All those struggles for survival and they still die.

They always had the ending planned out, they said that as early as s2. It just sounds like you're upset because it didn't end the way you yourself wanted it to. Faith has been a major back drop to the show from the start. EVERYTHING Locke did was in the search for it, even going as far as stating: "I'm a man of faith." As the show continued to play out, faith becomes a major part of all the characters lives. Most times on the show when they used pseudoscience it caused something to backfire. Even Jacob's whole explaination on why he was bringing folks too the island was one of faith.

We all struggle with survival in many ways everyday, yet we all still die eventually. Yet most of what we do in life is a learning lesson or at least it's supposed to be. LOST gave us a tale of what we all should know, That life holds no reward with or without struggle and sacrifice nor should we take what we have in life for granted. Happy endings are only in Disney movies.

 

[JarodRussell]

LOL, found this in the other thread. It should have ended with this: