The Show's Mythology

[RoJoHen]

Goes double for fans.

Why is it impossible to have a debate around here without attacking people?

These characters have NEVER behaved logically. Go back and watch Season 1. This behavior is not new. You can't make this criticism about the finale without making it about the entire series.

 

[AvBaur]

These characters have NEVER behaved logically. Go back and watch Season 1. This behavior is not new. You can't make this criticism about the finale without making it about the entire series.

True, but previously, one could always rationalize that the characters behaved in strange ways because they knew something about the island that we didn't. There was hope that their behavior would make some sense once we found out more about the island and these characters. But towards the end of the series it became clearer and clearer that none of the characters actually knew much of anything (even Richard or Jacob!) and that there really wasn't any good reason for their illogical behavior.

 

[roliver]

No, but they sure as hell believed he was evil and needed to be stopped.

But why did they believe this? The show offers little to nothing to convince anyone that the MIB was of any particular danger to the outside world. This results in characters doing things for very, very weak reasons, or more often than not, simply because someone told them to do something. And then we later learn that the person giving the orders also knows nothing. It's an endless chain of clueless people.

For me it weakens the characters and turns them into mindless puppets. I have no problem with Lost being about the characters, but it needed a strong mythology to properly motivate them and inform their actions.

At no point in season 6 was I ever even remotely convinced that the MIB was a danger and needed to be stopped from leaving the island, yet that is what drove the characters all season long. I never understood why any of the characters would believe it, thus Jack's sacrifice has no weight to it.

It's not about obsessing over little details, it's about wanting a coherent story behind the characters. Lost ultimately did not deliver this.

 

[RoJoHen]

No, but they sure as hell believed he was evil and needed to be stopped.

But why did they believe this? The show offers little to nothing to convince anyone that the MIB was of any particular danger to the outside world.

In the beginning of the season, this is true. That's one of the reasons we have characters going around joining his team for a while. But then he killed a shit load of people at the Temple and made it pretty clear that he was going to kill anybody that stood in his way.

Maybe they don't know what he would do once he left the Island, but they sure he was a force that needed to be stopped from doing any more harm.

Then, of course, he tried to blow them all up on a submarine, resulting in the death of Jin and Sun. I'd say that pretty much solidified his villainy right there.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

I don't think there was any doubt that he was malevolent, just that it was never made clear how much of a threat he really represented.

I mean, even in his most badass swirly-mode in 'The Shape of Things to Come' it was later revealed he couldn't even kill most of a small mercenary team.

So unless he's going to challenge everyone on Earth to a cage match to the death I don't really see how he could be much of a global threat. There are even two countermeasures to stop him.

Of course the real global threat was supposed to be the uncorking of the Island's drain, but we never saw the potential consequences of that either outside of the Island, so they come off as paper tigers in a way.

 

[Python Trek]

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 a mythology lover, and I'm also someone who doesn't need everything wrapped up in a bow for me. Just a liiiittttlllee bit more background on the island, and what the damn thing is really all about, and I'd have sucked it up and said, "Okay this is the culture you live in, Python Trek, so you gotta put up with the syrupy New Age poop at the end".

 

[Shurik]

At this point I was ready for any explanation about the nature of the island and how does it affect the world - magic, aliens, transdimentional beings, Cthulhu, people from the future etc etc etc. But the only thing that this show creators ultimately told about the mythology is "Hahaha, we were fucking with you all along. None of it was supposed to make any sense and we added it because it looked cool, it's all about the characters anyway". Fine, but a pseudo-spiritual new age bullshit about a happy afterlife where everyone goes to meet their loved ones and ascend to a higher plane of existence or whatever is not a good closure for the characters because none of flash-sideways universe is real anyway. All we know about the real characters' fates is that they all died after having a crazy adventure on a magical island. The end, really.

Even if they didn't want to explain anything, they should've at least mention what would happen if the smoke monster ever gets out or what will happen if the magical plug is removed for a long period of time. Something like Jacob telling Jack "Heard about a Black Death in 14th century? That's when some asshole found the magic fountain and removed the plug. Took me a month to get past their camp and reinsert it. Heard about draughts, floods, tsunamis, deadly earthquakes that wipe out half a million people? All of those happened when someone from outside messed with an island. That's why you should protect it at all costs".

 

[Delta1]

Goes double for fans.

Why is it impossible to have a debate around here without attacking people?

I don't know. If you figure it out, you'll have to spoon feed it to me. I'm a mythology lover and therefore incapable of making inferences on my own.

These characters have NEVER behaved logically. Go back and watch Season 1. This behavior is not new. You can't make this criticism about the finale without making it about the entire series.

I thought I just did?

 

[zengoth]

what kept a lot of fans talking during the run of the show was what their own beliefs and theories were. Part of getting caught up in a mythology show is enjoying speculation.

after the show is over, it is the unanswered questions and different interpretations that will keep fans discussing things.

you can infer a lot of answers simply using hindsight - even though no one will be able to tell you if you are correct or not.

example: if it turns out that Widmore was "touched by Jacob" and really didn't mean a whole lot of harm coming back to the island except to stop Smokey using Desmond, I will infer that he wasnt the one who slaughtered the rest of the Ajira passengers.

I can put together pieces myself and not worry about getting a bad grade on the exam later on.

 

[startrekwatcher]

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 don't need to be spoon fed answers--LOST is a show that you quickly learn is very subtle and you have to put a little work into connecting the dots--which I have. Maybe you are referring to other posters--I don't know who actually do seem to have not realized that some of the questions that were asked were answered--but there are several where there are no easy answers or subtle ones to seek out. I can't just pull it from the ether no matter how long I meditate on it.

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.

LOST was set up as a very objective/multi-perspective show where characters never find answers to mysteries they unearthed--although other times they did--but the set-up was less about the characters finding answers and more of the writers using the characters to facilitate pieces of the puzzle that the viewer could pool together and make sense to us. Yes no single character had all the clues, pieces or answers but when the viewer stepped back they did.

Evidence is clear of this very style of the mystery that was LOST when our characters would not ask the follow-up logical question that the audience would have asked in their place. The writers were spoonfeeding how much information the audience could receive in order to keep a lid on the mystery.

 

[RoJoHen]

I'm not saying that there aren't unanswered questions. I just think there are far fewer unanswered questions than a lot of people seem to be implying.

 

[Scout101]

Part of my problem was that they never really spent any time trying to rationalize things, or give us a reason to care about consequences.

Walt is special. Well, not all that special, I guess, because they just dropped him.

Aaron is very special, and it's super important that he not be raised by anyone but Claire. Spent a lot of time on this one, fertility crap, kidnapping Claire, seperating them, etc. WHY? No idea, turns out we shouldn't have given a shit, they didn't come back to it, and nothing bad appears to have happened from Kate raising him instead.

Jacob IS the island, no he's the protector of the island. He's doing all these strange and mysterious things for, uh, some reason. Don't worry, though, he's all knowing and has a plan. Nope, he's just as clueless as the rest of us. NEVER knew what was going on, and passed that lack of knowledge to the next guys.

The Light on the island is super special, and must be protected at all times. Or else, uh, something something something. Jacob didn't even know the answer to that. Could have amped up the drama a LOT in the final season if we had some sort of sense that there were stakes in the game, something to be lost. None of the players had any idea what they were, but felt fine making life and death decisions about it anyway.

Likewise, super-extra important that MiB (can't name him, might give too much away, like the idea that the writers were pulling shit out of their asses) can't get off the island, or else BAD THINGS happen. What bad things? YOu know, bad things.

Flashbacks, flash forwards? Interesting, informative, mostly went somewhere. Flash sideways? Total waste of a season. Instead of half of each episode for an entire season, could have probably been shortened into a single episode, maybe 2. After all, nothing happening there actually matters, happened, or plays any part in the narrative. It's just the characters playing out holodeck fantasies while trying to figure out they're in Heaven's waiting room. Went on far too long, for no reason. End result was fine, but we spent a lot of time trying to figure out how it would relate to the "real" world (is it an alternate reality? Is it what happens if they succeed? If they fail? result of setting off that bomb in the past, creating the Incident?) Nope, just a bunch of dead people waiting around to meet up again, Titanic-style. Thanks anyway...

The characters in this show were great, but the mythology fell apart at the end, which unfortunately means that a lot of the time, the characters were making stupid decisions based on little to no information, and NO ONE knew what was going on. They take the Jacob episode towards the end, have a great opportunity to at least show that SOMEONE has a clue, and make him just as clueless as the rest of the group...

 

[startrekwatcher]

I'm not saying that there aren't unanswered questions. I just think there are far fewer unanswered questions than a lot of people seem to be implying.

Well I deliberately kept a notebook of every running question I had over the course of the series--I knew that with so much minutae and years passing I would never be able to remember everything across 6 seasons given the highly complicated and densely plotted storytelling--LOST wasn't a show with one or two big mysteries you could keep track of.

This spring I went back through everyone of them and yes many were answered--some were a step in answering part of the original question raised, others were more complete-but there were still several unanswered. I have mentioned them several times in several places and I don't want to do that again here but needless to say the Mythology feels only partially finished and therefore incomplete.

I know it is hard for some fans to accept--and you don't have to agree with me--but Mythology, contrary to popular belief, was, unlike BSG for instance, a very important part of what made LOST--LOST. So much so that tv series like Heroes in season one or Flash Forward copied it. Heroes became a mess ultimately, however, I can't get too mad at it since the damage to that series was kept away from season one's brilliance. Heroes' writers wisely set up each season as its own self-contained volume with its own self-contained questions and gave us those answers by the end. There were one or two mysteries left dangling--who is Jessica? What was Kaito's ability?.

LOST, on the otherhand, did treat each season to its own volume in a sense with its own new recurring characters, mysteries, questions etc and did answer them however given the extremely interconnected nature of LOST those seasons were related to the others in a myriad of ways so when certain things aren't answered the damage isn't isolated to one area but spreads in the way it hurts some of the other pieces.

So I know the latest mantra is "it is all about the characters" but a lot of S3-5 was heavily PLOT/Mythology--tons of exposition, pulling threads together etc. Look at season 5-in terms of analysis it would mostly be a synopsis of what happened--there was character work but not a lot in my opinion. Lot of action, lot of teasers--Jacob/MIB, the outer wall of the Temple, lot of filling in gaps, lot of providing dates and letting the timeline of the island's history take shape, Eloise explaining the Lamp Post, mystery of Locke, characters reaction, being moved around, quickly reuniting, searching for answers, who knows who who knows what and when, feverishly advancing the plot, jumping from multiples in a given hour, lots of twists, cliffhangers, explanation of the rules of time travel etc

LoSt was a very complicated series so I shouldn't expect that my analysis is any less clear cut and complicated.