Fans have spent almost six years discussing and obsessing over every little mystery surrounding the island. Now suddenly, after the finale, it's all about the characters' journey as if little or nothing of the show's mythology matters. That's quite a shift. What's up with that?
The Show's Mythology
- Thread starter Agent Richard07
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I don't feel like there was a shift. The show was always about the characters first and foremost, and the mythology of the island was there to serve the characters. It's the fans obsessing over the minutia the put the mythology ahead of the character arcs in their own minds. Not that the producers aren't guilty of introducing story arcs they never followed up on. There are certainly a few of those, but that's different from obsessing over "what happened to all the hair brushes?" 
A bit of revisionist history I would suspect. Most of the threads in the forum centered on speculation surrounding the mysteries raised each week--character discussions were few and far between. The LOST characters were likeable enough but with the unique structure of this series--the fast pacing, the dense plotting, the expansive cast--I didn't feel I was able to connect with them because there was just so much going on and just so many characters coming and going. Looking back now the mythology comes across as sound and fury detracting from the character focus Lindelof and Cuse talk of. Frankly, I just say go back to the old style serialized primetime dramas with a modest ensemble and do pure character-driven drama and forget the extraneous mythology--it is just too much baggage. LOST really soured me on it.
The funny thing is people bitched and moaned about ENT's TCW which had a lot of unanswered questions and ill-defined motives and was nowhere as fundamental to that show as the mythology was to LOST yet everyone seems to be giving LOST a pass. Frankly a lot of the character stuff this season wasn't that great and the rest of the time they were chesspieces jumping from camp to camp. Season one in my opinion was really the only season that was pretty much focused on characters. S3-5 were pretty much all Story and Mythology.
I find it astonishing that the writers are surprised fans expected more in this area than we got. I'd also point out that Plot/Mythology often overshadowed the characters.
The funny thing is people bitched and moaned about ENT's TCW which had a lot of unanswered questions and ill-defined motives and was nowhere as fundamental to that show as the mythology was to LOST yet everyone seems to be giving LOST a pass. Frankly a lot of the character stuff this season wasn't that great and the rest of the time they were chesspieces jumping from camp to camp. Season one in my opinion was really the only season that was pretty much focused on characters. S3-5 were pretty much all Story and Mythology.
You make it sound as if the importance of the mythology was something dreamed up by the fans which was not the case at all. Lindelof and Cuse were stoking the fires and were enablers in that regard with their cheshire grin and "wink, wink" attitude--hidden clues within scenes, easter eggs, overanalyzing everything--a lot of that was their doing giving false hope for those of us who actually believed they learned the lessons from TXF or TwinPeaks.It's the fans obsessing over the minutia the put the mythology ahead of the character arcs in their own minds. Not that the producers aren't guilty of introducing story arcs they never followed up on. There are certainly a few of those, but that's different from obsessing over "what happened to all the hair brushes?"
I find it astonishing that the writers are surprised fans expected more in this area than we got. I'd also point out that Plot/Mythology often overshadowed the characters.
If the characters' arcs were sparked by (and built around ) the mythology, then even the anti-mythology crowd must admit that the mythology is important, yes?
In Twin Peaks defense they were canceled by the network after the final episode had been shot. The final episode was supposed to be a season ending cliffhanger, not a series ending finale. So I do believe that they would have gone on and answered a bunch of stuff if they had been given more episodes/season to do so.
The mythology was important insofar as it served the characters.
The "women can't have babies" storyline served as a looming threat to Claire, then Sun, and served as a hurdle or challenge to Juliet. Once it no longer served any characters, it was dropped. We can speculate on it, but if I can understand why it was dropped; it no longer served any of the characters.
The problem with the fans is that, more than any other TV show fans, they became suspicious of some special meaning in every little thing that happened. Why did John grin like that? There must be a reason. Wait a minute, Jack never eats Captain Crunch, he eats Wheaties. There must be some explanation!
I'm not saying the writers didn't take us down some dead ends. There are some doozies. They told us in season one that Aaron couldn't be raised by another. Since he was -- by Kate -- what are the consequences? But waiting for the payoff of the big missing hairbrushes arc is taking things a bit far.
Some fans. Don't speak for all fans.
No. I disagree. A lot of say season 4 and 5 was about plot, plot, plot. Lots of exposition, plot twists, pulling pieces together, raising questions, dropping clues. I'm not saying there weren't character elements but a lot of the time they were exposition facilitators and action figures.
Blame the writers--they encouraged this.
As someone who got into LOST because of the mythology I was totally satisfied by the way it wrapped up.
The thing I don't get about the Mythology Lovers is why they seem to need to be spoon-fed answers. The important mysteries were explained, albeit not all at once and not necessarily in order. Not everything has a totally solid answer, and yes, you have to infer quite a bit, but the pieces are there.
I'm the type of person that doesn't necessarily need to know things that the characters don't also know. Did Jack know exactly what the Light was? No, but he believed Jacob when he told him it needed to be protected. Were the characters 100% clear on MiB's motives? No, but they sure as hell believed he was evil and needed to be stopped. I don't need to know any more than that.
I'm the type of person that doesn't necessarily need to know things that the characters don't also know. Did Jack know exactly what the Light was? No, but he believed Jacob when he told him it needed to be protected. Were the characters 100% clear on MiB's motives? No, but they sure as hell believed he was evil and needed to be stopped. I don't need to know any more than that.
This is absurd. The characters don't understand what's going on, or only in the most superficial manner, but they believe what they're doing is important, so they do it. The viewers don't know what's going on, but we are told that it's important, so we are supposed to be invested in the outcome. And in the end people are doing bizarre things for nebulous reasons to accomplish questionable goals. And that leads straight into the absurd. But instead of waiting for Godot, we're protecting his magic geothermal light. We never learn why Godot is worth waiting for, and we never learn why the light is worth protecting and/or extinguishing. All we've got is some decent actors declaiming and emoting about it without really saying anything that makes sense or asking each other why nothing about it make sense. The characters just aren't interested in the light qua light, and I guess we shouldn't be, either, as long as the light motivates them to do something emotive or dynamic.
Lost could've ended on a parade of zebra-striped kangaroos chanting the digits of pi on a beach and a bunch of Lost fans would cheer because those kangaroos sure as hell believe pi needs to be chanted, and bugger all the mythology-lovers who dare question why there are kangaroos on a beach. Besides, it's all about the characters.
Because, much like Locke in the early seasons and Jack in the final season, I have faith, and I think that was possibly the main point of it all. It was certainly the point of Jack's entire journey. Sometimes you just have to use what you know and take a leap of faith. After all the crazy stuff the characters had been through, why shouldn't they believe in what they're doing?
And honestly, the more I think about it, the less I can figure out why people are upset. I really don't know what questions people were expecting to have answered that haven't been answered already.
And honestly, the more I think about it, the less I can figure out why people are upset. I really don't know what questions people were expecting to have answered that haven't been answered already.
This. A thousand times this.
I'm as curious about mythology stuff as the next guy; well, some next guys anyway. But it doesn't make or break the show for me. And it never has.
It's a bit of a fallacy to try and separate answers from character anyway. Any mystery or answer we ever got was filtered through the perspective of one of our characters. And what was the most interesting thing that happened next?
How our character reacted to that reveal.
The relative facts were never as important as, say, whether or not Jack or Sawyer believed those facts.
And if not a single one of our characters knows the answer to something (the Light, etc.)? Why do I need to know the answer?
Exactly. This wasn't some novel with an omniscient narrator who could explain what was going on. This show made it damn near impossible to learn anything beyond what our characters learned, and that's why I liked it. The drama would have been far less intense if we knew what the characters should be doing. Instead, they reacted to things according to what they know at the time, which is really all you can expect from anybody.
It's fine that you were satisfied with the ending and explanations (or lack thereof) for the mythology elements that were introduced, but it's kind of obnoxious to say that people are wrong to have expected some of the larger questions to have been addressed beyond vague mysticism at best and nothing at worst.
I think if you introduce giant Egyptian fertility statues, temples, stone butt plugs blocking all the evil of the world, and so forth, you should address who built the stuff. Especially when you had entire episodes of people jumping back and forth through time. Otherwise it just looks like you're introducing it for the cool factor instead of having it be meaningful to the plot.
I say this as someone who has loved the show from the start and who is not angry about it in the slightest, so please don't dismiss people so lightly because their complaint doesn't match with your impression of the series or finale.
I was riffing on Locke, but I'll run with this.
"After all the crazy stuff the characters had been through, why shouldn't they believe in what they're doing?"
Because "having been through crazy stuff" is not motivation. If anything, it's demotivation. Rose and Bernard reacted realistically to the nonsense of the Island: they retreated and constructed a universe that made sense. Jack reacted unrealistically: he became personally invested in the most nonsensical part of all. He dropped any sign of human curiosity, critical thinking, or self-preservation and said, "A lifelong duty to protect magic and a smoke monster will be trying to kill me? Sign me up!" Any real person would have serious doubts about this: about the nature of the light, about the importance of protecting it, about the feud with Smokey and the best way to resolve it, about Jacob's truthfulness and the true scope of his knowledge, etc. Any real person who had been a member of the Dharma Initiative and tooled around with Daniel Faraday would have dismissed Jacob as a superstitious ancient who misinterpreted the significance of exotic matter and laughed at his equally ancient brother's attempts to "put it out." They might even offer to help him, since the stuff has caused nothing but problems since Dharma first dug it up. But this is Lost, and characters aren't allowed to point out obvious leaps of logic or ask questions. Goes double for fans.
I was merely responding to the ridiculous post before that.
It's fine that people want more things answered. It's obvious that there are still a lot of mysteries of the island that could be explained. I just don't need them explained. They were irrelevant to the specific story being told in this show.
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