Lost Series Finale: "The End"

[auntiehill]

I loved the finale. I liked how the flash-sideways was wrapped up; it made sense, in a weird LOST kind of way.

The last shot of Jack, going back to the clearing in the bamboo, and Vincent coming out to join him---that really moved me.

I also liked knowing that Hugo and Ben protected the island together. Hugo would be the perfect person for the job, and now Ben takes over for Richard.

So, they all lived their lives and they all meet up in the afterlife for the big move to whatever is next.

They were all there, ready to "let go," which is pretty much in line with the show's underlying theme of redemption and forgiveness. All the characters are flawed and they have to overcome these flaws to face whatever test they have to face. They all have to work together at some point to survive, to escape, to save the island, etc.

It really worked for me, and I was crying my eyes out at the end. Yes, I know, I'm just a big sap, but all played out beautifully for me.

That's my two cents.

 

[ThunderAeroI]

I think that is Hugo and Ben really were such awesome island leaders, then Ben should have earned his spot in the church. Now he can self-depricate if he wants, but if Hugo says your good.

By god your good!

now, let me dream on ways in which Hugo finally died.

 

[davejames]

I don't see the ending as religious, spiritual yes, but not religious.

Agreed. For all we know, this could just be the island's own special version of an afterlife-- completely separate from anything having to do with the God of the Bible.

Maybe instead of going off to heaven, they were simply becoming "one" with the island or something.

 

[Trippy]

Ben had a lot of shit to go through first-probably waiting to find Alex, for one.

Hurley was always good

 

[RoJoHen]

I think that is Hugo and Ben really were such awesome island leaders, then Ben should have earned his spot in the church. Now he can self-depricate if he wants, but if Hugo says your good.

By god your good!

Yeah, but I have a feeling he wants to spend more time with Alex.

 

[Trippy]

I don't see the ending as religious, spiritual yes, but not religious.

Agreed. For all we know, this could just be the island's own special version of an afterlife-- completely separate from anything having to do with the God of the Bible.

Maybe instead of going off to heaven, they were simply becoming "one" with the island or something.

Or becoming the 'light' on the island

 

[Trippy]

I think that is Hugo and Ben really were such awesome island leaders, then Ben should have earned his spot in the church. Now he can self-depricate if he wants, but if Hugo says your good.

By god your good!

Yeah, but I have a feeling he wants to spend more time with Alex.

We are on the same page, posting at the same time again!

 

[ThunderAeroI]

I think that is Hugo and Ben really were such awesome island leaders, then Ben should have earned his spot in the church. Now he can self-depricate if he wants, but if Hugo says your good.

By god your good!

Yeah, but I have a feeling he wants to spend more time with Alex.

Probably. But if everyone in the sideways is already dead, what point would there be in breaking the news to her. If he just wants to play parent, find, but he still knows everything about the world he is in, is false.

I see him going mad any time now.

 

[shapeshifter]

I cannot find the "It Sucked!" option in the poll.

 

[coolghoul]

I went with Average.

Awesome montages. Loved them. Loved the circular nature of the ending being Jack's eye - as soon as he reached the bamboo grove, I knew that they were going to end with his eye as the final shot.

I disliked the fact that nothing really made sense. In a sense, this was like Lady in the Water (M. Night Shyamalan's movie). Good meets Bad. Bad resolves to do bad deeds. Good resolves to do good deeds. Both confront each other. Good wins, Bad Loses. (In Shyamalan's movie - it was a linear narrative where the hero is told what he has to accomplish and he does that and the movie ends). Very straight and no explanation.

That was very frustrating to me.

It's all well and good to say that I should make up my own ending for the characters. Or that the ending doesn't matter, "closure" does. My point is that I did not achieve closure on several outstanding items. It's like watching the creators go "Move along now. Nothing to see here" whenever there's an unexplained item. eg. Something as simple as how Kate knows that Locke has become vulnerable and human-flesh again.

And all I see on the table are the efforts of other fans trying to find an explanation. Some of it is plausible and some of it is implausible (from my point of view of course). I had more aims for the finale in terms of explanations of some of the basic framework of LOST.

Don't get me wrong tho'. I like the characters and was interested in the character development. But I didn't want a finale that was limited to just that.

Again - beautiful evocative montages. Nice circular self-referencing touches. Even a feel of LoTR's Gray Havens and moving on... But this is not going to be the favorite finale for me.

 

[TheGodBen]

It didn't blow me away, but I enjoyed it. Well, I enjoyed the on-island stuff, the purgatory stuff I'll leave for later.

Okay, so there wasn't many answers to the huge pile of questions they had built up over the years, but that's good because it meant the episode had very little exposition. With all the questions left hanging going into the finale I feared the writers would dedicate the whole 2 hours to answering them, but instead they chose to finish the story and leave us to figure it out on our own. I'm good with that. There's only one question I still want an answer to; why couldn't the MiB leave the island? He just seemed to be an ordinary guy that wanted to see the rest of the world, why was it so imperative to stop him? That still doesn't make much sense.

As for purgatory, that was a weak ending to the flash-sideways. The fundamental problem I have with it is that it's not important, it's a coda that doesn't really mean anything. If I rewatch the series in the future, and I still plan to do so, I could easily skip those segments of the episodes and not miss anything "real". That was really weak in my opinion, but it's not enough to piss me off and leave me bitching and moaning about it across the internet. (Yes, I'm talking about you, random nerd. I fear this is going to be even more annoying than the bitching about BSG.)

So I enjoyed it. Yes, I still have burning questions, such as why the writers allowed Kate to survive, but I'm okay with it.

 

[Brent]

^ Well, it was "real" for the Losties anyway, a means to reconnect in death, the emotions and feelings were real, so who is to say what is real and what isn't, to them it was.

 

[Delta1]

"Real" is something that still exists when you close your eyes. Real people are people who have independent consciousness and thoughts. The consensus here seems to be that the alt universe did not exist apart from the losties' perception of it, and that the people were just constructs to help them with some kind of roleplay therapy. So the alt universe was not real. It was just a convincing communal hallucination. A phenomenon.

 

[DarthPipes]

I'd love to see a gathering of the annoying B-island survivors. Arzt, Frogurt, Nikki, and Paolo, etc. I think that would be funny as hell.

Still not sure why Michael is trapped on the island. He did a terrible thing no doubt about it but he did come back to help those left behind. Kate, Sawyer, Sayid, and Ben have done terrible things before and after they left the island.

 

[Brent]

"Real" is something that still exists when you close your eyes. Real people are people who have independent consciousness and thoughts. The consensus here seems to be that the alt universe did not exist apart from the losties' perception of it, and that the people were just constructs to help them with some kind of roleplay therapy. So the alt universe was not real. It was just a convincing communal hallucination. A phenomenon.

Well, I disagree, it was real to them, death is real, and they were certainly going somehwere beyond death, the afterlife if you will. So who is to say they haven't ascended to a higher plane, and are very much "real" just not on our level anymore. That is certainly what seems to have happened anyway in the story.

 

[Brent]

I'd love to see a gathering of the annoying B-island survivors. Arzt, Frogurt, Nikki, and Paolo, etc. I think that would be funny as ****.

Still not sure why Michael is trapped on the island. He did a terrible thing no doubt about it but he did come back to help those left behind. Kate, Sawyer, Sayid, and Ben have done terrible things before and after they left the island.

yeah, that one kinda bugs me, Micheal having to just be stuck as a ghost on the Island, heh, kinda sucks for him!

 

[coolghoul]

So I enjoyed it. Yes, I still have burning questions, such as why the writers allowed Kate to survive, but I'm okay with it.

I'm one of those angry nerds you reference, I guess but it's ok! Vive la difference!

 

[Delta1]

No one is saying death is unreal, or that the characters and their destination was unreal. I'm saying that Los Angeles, etc., was not real. The fact that they perceived it does not make it real. Dreamers perceive unreal things all the time. I believe the losties were real, because they were capable of thinking. Cogito, ergo sum. I don't believe the wheelchair was real, or the church, or the airplane. They were phenomena, and when the losties no longer needed them, they stopped perceiving them. At the end, they stopped perceiving anything outside the church. The universe wasn't there when Christian opened the church door--because it wasn't real.

 

[Brent]

No one is saying death is unreal, or that the characters and their destination was unreal. I'm saying that Los Angeles, etc., was not real. The fact that they perceived it does not make it real. Dreamers perceive unreal things all the time. I believe the losties were real, because they were capable of thinking. Cogito, ergo sum. I don't believe the wheelchair was real, or the church, or the airplane. They were phenomena, and when the losties no longer needed them, they stopped perceiving them. At the end, they stopped perceiving anything outside the church. The universe wasn't there when Christian opened the church door--because it wasn't real.

It was more than a dream though, they were physically in this other plane of existence at this point. Ascended if you will, waiting for the next step.

 

[Shurik]

I absolutely love Lost, second season not included. It was a great rollercoaster ride of a series with a great bunch of characters and crazy stuff happening non-stop. I hoped for at least some sort of an explanation about the basic mythology question - what is the island and how it affects the world outside. All the rest can be explained as a stuff that island can cause and all the ancient temples, statues and such are remnants of a very old civilizations that found the island and tried to use it, eventually failing. I don't really need everything spelled out for me.

Having said that, I thought that the episode itself was average at best and as a Lost series finale - simply awful. The flash-sideways always felt kinda pointless to me and this episode proved it. So they all die eventually (no surprise here) and most of them go to heaven. This is not a closure for the characters because the actual characters are dead and we don't know how those few who survived the finale lived out the rest of their lives, this is a pointless pseudo-spiritual nonsense. Nothing new was explained and it looks like I was right in thinking that the "mythology" was made up on the spot and was never intended to be explained, causing this show to have a zero rewatchability factor. I actually wanted to rewatch seasons 3-6, but now it looks like a complete waste of time.