Last season of "Lost" aka WTF?!

[kelric]

Home from work early ...

No more white text... if you don't want to be spoiled, you shouldn't be reading this far anyway...

I think that the whole flash-sideways purgatory thing wasn't just purgatory -- it was *Jack's* purgatory - perhaps the whole flash-sideways and church bit was Jack's passage through the "pearly gates" if you're into that sort of thing. It was definitely centered on Jack, and not so much on the others -- everyone else went in the front of the church, Jack in the back, etc.

Christian told us straight up that some of the folks in the church had died before Jack did (duh), but that some died "long after" he did. And yet every single one of them was aged, and was with, the people whom they were closest to at the time of Jack's death, or as Jack would have seen them at that time.

We know (or at least can be pretty certain) that Sawyer, Kate, Claire, Lapidus (the pilot), Miles, and Richard made it off of the island and survived Jack. We know that Hurley and Ben (and likely Rose and Bernard) survived Jack (probably by a long time, in Hurley and Ben's case) on the island. Some of those were in the church, some were not (I didn't notice Lapidus, Miles, or Richard there). But those who survived Jack and were in the church (Hurley, Claire, Kate, Sawyer) were there with those they were close to in Jack's mind... I doubt that Claire, Sawyer, or Kate died alone, for instance. But Claire was with Charlie, Sawyer was with Juliet, and Kate was with Jack himself. Dead people who yet were central in their minds in Jack's eye.

At the very end of the show, the bright light came into the church at basically the same time that we saw Jack's eye close in the bamboo field -- Jack's actual ascent into heaven? We know that the whole church scene was pretty much set outside of time (Christian told us that, too) -- could the entire flash-sideways have taken place in the instant when Jack lost consciousness? Who wants to go to heaven alone? The alternate reality "timeline" got all of the people who were closest to Jack there with him, as happy as they could be (from Jack's perspective, including with those they loved -- providing a reason for the presence of people like Shannon (with Sayid)) when the end came. At the end, Jack and his friends (but not Ben) all go into the light together.

Total speculation, of course. It's just as (if not more) likely the church was simply packed with characters the writers thought the audience liked and could be retained by ABC for the finale. But anyway, that's what the end was, for me -- Jack wasn't my favorite character on the show, but the ending really seemed more about him than anything.

 

[Ivy]

Kelric's first post pretty much said it all IMO. It seems fairly straightforward plot-wise (I don't think it meant they all died in the original crash, just that they all died at different times and met in the sideways reality, outside of time, on their way to the "real" afterlife), and while it doesn't answer all the questions that had built up over 6 years I'm pretty satisfied with it overall. Not everything needs to be explained.

I tend to think the sideways reality was not just for Jack, but that we saw Jack's version of it since we saw him die.

 

[Totenkindly]

It reminds me of dissecting literature ... trying to ascertain what the writer's message was, what was the symbolism etc. Sometimes sitting there in classes I would imagine the writer rolling their eyes at the imaginative stuff we all cooked up that was never a part of the vision; the author of each work could never even imagine that people centuries later would misconstrue their message so.

I agree with that.

Here though is almost the opposite - the writer's seemed to deliberately obfuscate their message, to make the series last on TV as long as possible. It bugs me and I guess I need to get that off my chest.

As a writer, I disagree. But different strokes for different folks, we've had that discussion before.

So, nuff LOSTIE stuff for me. Not going to buy the DVD's for sure!

np -- You can borrow mine!

Pretty much Kelric's posts capture my view of things too, I don't feel like rehashing it. Some of what was going on was vague, but it does seem we had a marker on Jack's death, and Hurley/Ben sort of confirmed in dialog at the church that they had done a duo thing on the Island for a significant amount of time, and that Kate, Sawyer, and the others got off the island. Everyone dies, and in eternity every moment was Now... so they could all appear together in Jack's version of the afterlife.

Cute nod to "Christian Shepherd" as Jack's dad and sort of spirit mentor to lead him ahead ("Is that name for real?" someone basically said during the episode).

I don't mind it being about Jack, since he was arguably the dominant character in the series -- established in Season #1, then he took a somewhat declining role but he and Locke went head to head as the faction leaders, then he was the one who felt the compulsion to go back to the Island when a few managed to escape. I think he might have also been potentially the one who changed the most; he was one of the most intense characters to start with, and ended up completely flipping and taking Locke's role eventually, moving from being tightly wound and clutching hard to keep what control he had on anything in life, to .... letting go. Which had been his message to Locke in the sideways timeline, and what Locke was hinting at in that he hoped someone could do for Jack what Jack had done for him. He opened the series, it was all viewed through his eyes at the very beginning, and so it ended with him as well -- funnel in, funnel out, that's the writing outline here.

IN any case, I feel like the strength of Lost came mostly through the relationships among the characters, and the ending -- while rationally there were unanswered questions -- where we saw the closure was in the emotional/relational arcs. Everyone who had been separated was brought back together, characters who normally were enemies became united, and in the end it was "everyone is together" and it gave a sense of emotional wholeness. That's the paradigm I think offers the best sense of satisfaction through which to view the finale in. I can definitely say it's the people and characters I'm going to miss, even if some of the mysteries were intriguing. It's always the people who linger, and always the people we grieve.

 

[Randomnity]

After watching the finale, I'm so so glad that I never caught on to watching the show. It was somewhat entertaining, though.

 

[Spamtar]

Hmm so the was a real plane crash and survivors, some got off the island and regardless if they died on the island or no there was a reunion of sorts with their spirits in a timeless alternate reality/purgatory prior to moving into heaven/afterlife.

Jack never had a kid except in a sideways reality/purgatory/limbo? Gotta admit one would have mixed feeling about moving into the final stage of the afterlife if they have to abandon a kid they had (not on earth) but in purgatory.

For TV season final I thought it was pretty good...im glad they didn't try and put all the unanswered questions together (as they were just making a lot of shit up as they went along for most of the series) and despite myself a couple of tears slipped out my eye. Thats me cant cry at a funeral but will get all sappy watching a melodramatic TV show ending.

 

[MacGuffin]

Jack never had a kid except in a sideways reality/purgatory/limbo? Gotta admit one would have mixed feeling about moving into the final stage of the afterlife if they have to abandon a kid they had (not on earth) but in purgatory.

Oh yeah, that was one of the cooler things. Completely negated the kid's entire existence! That's a bit of a mindfuck.

 

[Ivy]

Jezebel has had some great Lost recaps, and I especially liked the one for the finale:

Lost Finale Recap: Case Closed

"After Hurley was inducted into the secret society of Island protectors, Jack replaced the butt plug and saved the world. But he also saved everyone else on the Island, something for which he always had a boner. And thus, he saved himself."

 

[Totenkindly]

Hmm so the was a real plane crash and survivors, some got off the island and regardless if they died on the island or no there was a reunion of sorts with their spirits in a timeless alternate reality/purgatory prior to moving into heaven/afterlife.

Basically.

All the Island shit happened, or at least it happened to Jack, except that Season 6 "sideways" was the group-fabricated reality where they could all meet up together. What's confusing for people is that it started running at the beginning of Season 6, as if it were unfolding simultaneously with the chronological Island events of Season 6... but it wasn't. It was unfolding in the timeless Now instead.

It was a bit confusing as to whether the entire series was imagined or not by Jack, so there were clues to help clarify -- including what CHristian said to Jack in the church, and Jack looking up in the sky and seeing the plane leave. So we know that's an actual factoid -- the plane existed and it got away, and at least some of the six people onboard survived for a good long time. Same thing with Hurley and Ben, their conversation at the church indicated a long working relationship caring for the island; we just don't know what resulted in them in eventually stepping down. But in any case, it suggests that the island existed and Jack did indeed momentarily become its protector.

In any case, in the eternal Now, there is no time; it didn't matter When they died, just that at some point they all would have, and this was their meeting spot in order to rejoin because the bonds they had developed over their time on the island were so strong they wanted to be together again.

Jack never had a kid except in a sideways reality/purgatory/limbo? Gotta admit one would have mixed feeling about moving into the final stage of the afterlife if they have to abandon a kid they had (not on earth) but in purgatory.

I went to Jezebel's page where Ivy linked and she had this to say, which actually matched what I was thinking:

I know that some fans were still confused. Like, why would Jack have a son in the sideways universe? My theory is that the baggage that Jack took with him to the sideways universe were his daddy issues (a common and major theme of Lost). He sorta took care of the needing to fix things thing back when he was still alive. His major issue, in his death cycle, was his relationship with his father. Many people say that when you have your own children, you begin to heal from your own childhood and your issues with how you were raised. (Or at least, that's what Madonna told Oprah after she had Lourdes.) But it makes sense. Once you become a parent, you begin to have a better understanding of what your parents went through. You learn to forgive them of their mistakes and (hopefully) rectify them by putting an end to certain patterns and cycles. And it was at this point—when he found the baggage he'd brought on that second Oceanic flight—that Jack finally let go.

I think that pretty much says it. If you watch Jack's relationship with his son unfold, I was thinking throughout the season that I was watching him heal from his "Dad wounds" -- where his dad had been in his role and he had been in David's role -- and in this way he was finding healing and redemption, not just creating the relationship he wished he would have had with Christian but also getting a whole new perspective on his own father that would allow him to forgive him for his seeming failures as a parent and also realize how he had sometimes failed as a son.

 

[Spamtar]

I think that pretty much says it. If you watch Jack's relationship with his son unfold, I was thinking throughout the season that I was watching him heal from his "Dad wounds" -- where his dad had been in his role and he had been in David's role -- and in this way he was finding healing and redemption, not just creating the relationship he wished he would have had with Christian but also getting a whole new perspective on his own father that would allow him to forgive him for his seeming failures as a parent and also realize how he had sometimes failed as a son.

I share this understanding and thus why it was important for Locke to tell Jack that Jack did not have a son.

Similar to freudian dream analysis on how our unconscious works out a lot of our challenges via dreams. The ending was like each individual awakening from the dream of the "sideways" world.

 

[MacGuffin]

Jezebel has had some great Lost recaps, and I especially liked the one for the finale:

Lost Finale Recap: Case Closed

Awesome link, written better than I could.

Reposting my fave part:

During the credits, we saw the wreckage from the original Oceanic 815 on the beach. And some footprints. I don't think it had any meaning other than that: a footprint. It symbolized that they were there.

Because a part of the shared human experience—which is basically what the entire show boiled down to—is that we want to leave our mark, so that people know that we'd been here. (I mean, that was the point of all the different shit, like the statue, and hieroglyphs and the empty Dharma barracks. They were all just footprints of the people who had been on the Island before.) And a large part of that, of leaving a footprint, or a mark, is to establish a basic need: To know that we matter.

This show was fucking awesome.

 

[FDG]

Let's not even mention how Jack died in the end even after being immersed for hours in the "holy" water, which supposedly cures everything - he should have been at the very least 20 years younger when he got out of it. Storyline writers - a bunch of moronic chimpanzees that can't even be coherent on the most basic aspects of their own creations. Not to mention that "...and they all flew to heaven" was an expedient typical of small-kid stories - I think such a "complex" show needed something slightly less inane.

 

[kendoiwan]

Let's not even mention how Jack died in the end even after being immersed for hours in the "holy" water, which supposedly cures everything - he should have been at the very least 20 years younger when he got out of it. Storyline writers - a bunch of moronic chimpanzees that can't even be coherent on the most basic aspects of their own creations. Not to mention that "...and they all flew to heaven" was an expedient typical of small-kid stories - I think such a "complex" show needed something slightly less inane.

Nooooo, you just don't understand, it makes perfect sense!!! When the rock was moved from the light all the rules stopped applying which is why "Locke" could die and Jack could be hurt... Yeah. Right. It. All. Makes. Perfect. Sense.

Speaking of shit that doesn't really make sense. If TMIB became the SM because of being tossed into the light, how come Jack or Desmond or any of those skeleton dudes down there didn't become one? Meh...

 

[FDG]

Nooooo, you just don't understand, it makes perfect sense!!! When the rock was moved from the light all the rules stopped applying which is why "Locke" could die and Jack could be hurt... Yeah. Right. It. All. Makes. Perfect. Sense.

Speaking of shit that doesn't really make sense. If TMIB became the SM because of being tossed into the light, how come Jack or Desmond or any of those skeleton dudes down there didn't become one? Meh...

MEH.....

MEH........

MEH...........

 

[ragashree]

and they all flew to heaven" was an expedient typical of small-kid stories - I think such a "complex" show needed something slightly less inane.

Deus ex machina - the standard device of weak writers who fail to resolve their own plot lines into anything interesting.

 

[MacGuffin]

Deus ex machina - the standard device of weak writers who fail to resolve their own plot lines into anything interesting.

And yet two days later... still posting about it!

 

[MacGuffin]

Oh I like that link Jennifer posted in another thread, the author even used the same example I did!

Were the bigger questions of the show answered? Not really. Exactly what was the energy source of the island and what was the island itself? Who originally made all the rules? We don’t know. The writers said that they were not intending to answer all the questions.

There had been speculation for years that Lost was based on some kind of ancient mythology, and while there are certainly elements and themes from various mythologies, in the end, the writers seemed to be writing a new mythology for the island all on its own.

So, the energy source becomes something symbolic and not specific.

That will be enough for some viewers, but not for others. Some of the folks who wanted very specific answers will be disappointed. Others, who can live without having every single question answered will be fine and perhaps enjoy some of the debate as to what these things mean.

But what do you really want? One of the most disappointing scenes I’ve ever seen in cinema was the whole “scientific” explanation of the Force as the result of something called “midichlorians” in The Phantom Menace. I really don’t want that level of detail. So, while perhaps I will always have questions over the nature of the island on Lost, I’ll have to settle for the fact that it was simply a magical place where the normal laws of physics and time do not apply.

 

[Lateralus]

And yet two days later... still posting about it!

They just can't let go.

 

[kendoiwan]

Oh I like that link Jennifer posted in another thread, the author even used the same example I did!

My quote > Your quote!

It was clear from the start that the story could not stretch beyond a season or two without being resolved or completely rethought. Admitting that, and pitching the show as a limited series or mini-series, would have meant going to cable or working with much smaller resources, and you can’t blame the show’s creators for not wanting that. But it always made their protestations about how the show threatened to get away from them ring a little hollow.

And on the other hand: the ending was also elegiac and beautiful, with its stately pace, its elegant cross-cutting between Jack’s death on the island and his awakening in the present, its long shot of the cast arrayed in the church pews like passengers in an airplane. The actors seemed relaxed and genuinely happy, and Matthew Fox, as Jack, underplayed nicely (in a scene where shot after shot was ripe for overacting). The final image of Jack’s eye closing, a reversal of the show’s opening moment six seasons ago, was just right.

As it so often had been, “Lost” was shaky on the big picture — on organizing the welter of mythic-religious-philosophical material it insisted on incorporating into its plot — but highly skilled at the small one, the moment to moment business of telling an exciting story. Which is to say, the picture that actually fit on the television screen.

Television - No Longer

 

[MacGuffin]

^^^
I like that.

 

[MacGuffin]

But wait, there's more!

Damon Lindelof (creator/producer) back in 2008:

There are some questions that are very engaging and interesting, and then there are other questions that we have no interest whatsoever in answering. We call it the midi-chlorian debate, because at a certain point, explaining something mystical demystifies it. To try and have a character come and say, "Here is what the numbers mean," actually makes every usage of the numbers up to that point less interesting.

You can actually watch Star Wars now, and when Obi-Wan talks about the Force to Luke for the first time, it loses its luster because the Force has been explained as, sort of, little biological agents that are in your blood stream. So you go, "Oh, I liked Obi-Wan's version a lot better." Which in the case of our show is, "The numbers are bad luck, they keep popping up in Hurley's life, they appear on the island." ... But if you're watching the show for a detailed explanation of what the numbers mean—and I'm not saying you won't see more of them—then you will be disappointed by the end of season six.