"No one can tell you why you're here."
I'm of two minds (and two hearts) about the two-and-a-half hour series finale of Lost ("The End"), written by Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse and directed by Jack Bender, which brought a finality to the story of the passengers of Oceanic Flight 815 and the characters with which we've spent six years.
At its heart, Lost has been about the two bookends of the human existence, birth and death, and the choices we make in between. Do we choose to live together or die alone? Can we let go of our past traumas to become better people? When we have nothing else left to give, can we make the ultimate sacrifice for the greater good?
In that sense, the series finale of Lost brought to a close the stories of the crash survivors and those who joined them among the wreckage over the course of more than 100 days on the island (and their return), offering up a coda to their lives and their deaths, a sort of purgatory for found, rather than lost souls.
But it's that very ending that's dividing viewers. For some it was a somber and lyrical ending, but for others (myself including), I found it to be sentimental and cliched, as Lindelof and Cuse offered up the very plot contrivance that they fought so hard not to fall into in the island-set storyline.
My broad thoughts about the divisive nature of the ending can be read over here at The Daily Beast, but I also want to dive deeper into the specifics of "The End" and the symbolism of its ending as well.
So how did I feel about the series finale of Lost? Let's make our way to the church, open the coffin one last time, and discuss "The End."
I tried to lower my expectations when it came to Lost's series finale. I'd been burned somewhat by quite a few episodes this season and majorly by the two exposition dump episodes, "Ab Aeterno" and "Across the Sea," which seemed to point towards Lindelof and Cuse's way at the very tail end of Lost's journey to providing answers to the many swirling mysteries that have become intrinsically linked to Lost's narrative over six seasons.
Those episodes, particularly "Across the Sea," seemed to signify the answers that would be given here to the questions that Lindelof and Cuse thought were most vital: who were Jacob and the Man in Black? What was their relationship? What is the island and what is the duty of the protector? Just what is he protecting? How did the Nameless One become a murderous pillar of black smoke? We got answers to those questions but so many others fell by the wayside.
Cuse and Lindelof have been upfront about the fact that they wanted to answer the questions that were important to the Losties, not necessarily the audience. Why pregnant women were dying, who built the statue, what the Source really was, why Walt was "special," etc. weren't part of that equation.
I'm all right with that. I wasn't expecting Lost to tie up loose ends about these long-dangling plot threads or delve into an eleventh hour introduction of Alvar Hanso or the Dharma Initiative's status in the present day. I didn't go into "The End" expecting answers, really. Nor did I need them: Lost has chugged along for six years on the brainpower of its devoted viewers, for whom the mysteries have provided all manner of puzzle. Leaving these things ambiguous leaves the door open for further thought and analysis, for further conjecture and discussion. For all of the things that we who watch Lost have loved doing.
But what depressed me about the series finale was that it veered towards the Feel Good Ending as lovers reunited, mothers gave birth to sons, and friends hugged one another in a church that had a stained glass window decorated with symbols of many of the world's religions... before the crowd--which included most (but not all) of the many diverse characters that have been the focus of Lost over the years.
Many viewers have struggled this season with the late-to-the-game introduction of the Lost-X timeline, or the Sideways world, and how it connected to the narrative of the island and what was unfolding there. In the end, while what happened on the island had huge significance to what happened in that world, the reverse wasn't true. This world wasn't a world at all, nor a divergent timeline that explored what happened when the castaways didn't crash on the island. It wasn't a prism through which to explore their early days and what might have been.
It was, in the end, an epilogue of sorts. An epilogue of the most final kind. This world was a self-created purgatory for the passengers of Oceanic Flight 815 and their loved ones, a place were they could repeat old patterns (with one significant change) before being pulled together once again by bonds of fate.
Like Desmond, we were wrong about the nature of this place: it wasn't an alternative universe, it wasn't an earthly escape from the pain and loss that many of the castaways had suffered through, but a heavenly one. A celestial kingdom where the dead could finally let go of the issues that had plagued them in life and cast off those repeating patterns, finally accepting their death so they could move on to a true afterlife, joined by those they loved in life.
Which is fine on a thematic level, even if I didn't feel as though the Lost-X timeline had earned that ending. It was purgatory, after all, which Lindelof and Cuse had promised the island would never be and it felt like a cheap trick for that very reason. Yes, the series dealt with life and death in so many ways but the symbolism of those final scenes at the church just felt too easy and pat: after all of your struggles, your death isn't the end but the start of a party with all of your friends and family. It seemed to cast off much of the more challenging Dharma-oriented principles to offer up a glossy Judeo-Christian take on the afterlife.
Which, to me, might be the ending that people wanted but it wasn't what I needed. Yes, death is an inevitability for us all, even these characters, who all made their way here eventually and stood on yet another precipice. (Even Hurley and newly installed second-in-command Benjamin Linus, eventually freed from their duties at some point down the line, turned up here.)
To me, the end of Lost's narrative is the final scene of Jack in the bamboo grove, his story having come full-circle to the place where it began, a lone sneaker dangling solemnly from a bamboo tree, its laces now rotten and old where once they were new. Time might heal all wounds but it's also a killer. Laying down his burdens where the series began, Jack stares up at the sky to see the plane--carrying Kate, Sawyer, Claire, Lapidus, Richard, and Miles--arc overhead as Vincent the dog comes to lay down next to him. While the story began with Jack opening his eyes, here we finish that thought, seeing the good doctor, the all-too-brief champion of the island, close his eyes for the last time, leaving behind the metaphorical and literal wreckage as he himself soars through those blue skies.
Which isn't to say that the purgatory that the characters created didn't give us some powerfully evocative moments, because they did in "The End." The moments of joyous reconnection between the characters--between Sayid and Shannon, Charlie and Claire, Sun and Jin, and Sawyer and Juliet--were beautifully rendered both by the actors and the subtle score of composer Michael Giacchino. While the ending left me cold, it was these moments that stirred some genuine emotion within me.
Our many star-crossed lovers got their moment in the sun, a final reunion at which they communed with one another and their collective experiences, of lives lived and lost, of loves conquered and stolen all too soon. But the final ten minutes of "The End" took this thematic reunion to a new level that it needn't have gone, with Christian Shephard (whatever did happen to his body on the island, BTW?) spelling everything out to his son as Jack finally comes to realize what the others already have: that they're long dead.
The self-awareness glimpsed throughout this season--the cuts on Jack's neck, the sense of frisson from reflections in the looking glass--all point towards this conclusion in the end. They were coming to terms with their deaths just as the island provoked them to come to terms with their lives. However, while I think this works on a thematic level, I found the ending to be so heavy-handed, clunky and maudlin at the same time, that I couldn't give in to the post-life love fest going on in those final scenes.
Lost-X. My frustration with the series finale may have been the fact of how the Lost-X timeline--or lack thereof--was presented, introduced in the final season and glimmering with possibility of how it directly connected to the narrative we'd seen unfold over the five previous seasons, the island trapped at the bottom of the sea. By revealing it to have been ethereally connected, it removed much of the drama that had been contained in that storyline. What did it really matter if Jack had a child there or Kate proclaimed her innocence or Locke was confined in a wheelchair once more, if none of it was "real"?
They were variations on a theme rather than a full-blown narrative in their own right, offering a sucker punch of emotion that, while moving during the episode, felt entirely false after the fact.
What should we make of the fact that Walt doesn't appear at the church at the end? Or that Michael too isn't there? While we know that Michael's soul is trapped on the island, chained to the rock as one of the Greek chorus of whisperers damned to remain there, that's not true for Walt. We could argue that many of the others absent from that final scene--Faraday, Charlotte, Mr. Eko, Ana-Lucia, and others--weren't ready to let go and move on, still needing to work things out in this intermediate state before they could achieve a heavenly release. (That fact was stated by Hurley in "What They Died For," whose title makes more sense now.)
But what then of the fact that Eloise Hawking seems all too aware of what this place is? That she is somehow self-aware of the fiction of this world yet has been included in a perfect world created collectively by the will of the dead castaways? I understand why Eloise might want to cling to the son she killed in life, but why was she even a part of this landscape to begin with?
I can't quite wrap my head around that one, I'm afraid. For a purgatory that was created by a group of people who wanted to reconnect, they certainly brought in quite a few people who had made their lives miserable in the process and their travails in this purgatory brought them together with other people from their lives as well. What should we make of the fact that Sayid "ended up" not with his one true love, Nadia, but with Shannon? Hmmm...
Or that Jack isn't at all perturbed by the fact that his son doesn't really exist and is instead a fiction created by his own subconscious? It's fitting that the original skeptic is the last to come around to a belief in the profound and divine at the very end, and only when faced with proof of this existence: by coming face to face with his dead father. A father whose coffin is once again empty and devoid of a body. But here, the two finally get a chance to say their farewells and share their true feelings in a way that the messy chaos of life and death doesn't usually permit.
The Incident. The actions that Jack and the others took at the end of Season Five (in "The Incident"), detonating the hydrogen bomb at the future site of the Swan Station never resulted in a divergent reality at all. So what to make of Juliet's final conversation with Sawyer at the bottom of the shaft, the one where she whispers, "it worked" and seems to indicate that their actions did have their intended consequences? Well, her words were taken at face value then, the "worked" element of that statement taken to mean that reality had split and they had managed to ensure that they had never crashed on the island in the first place.
But not so. Jack and Juliet's actions didn't seem to do anything other than cause the very Incident that they were looking to avoid, an action that resulted in the creation of the Swan Station, a button that had to be pushed every 108 minutes, and at the end of that string of causality, the crash of Oceanic Flight 815. (And, yes, sent them back to the present day.)
So what was Juliet speaking about? Had she gained a multi-dimensional awareness, cognizant of the existence of another world? Not quite. She was dying in those final moments, oxygen already depleted from her brain, her synapses firing one last time before fading out. And in those moments, she connected to that place of purgatory, one where she was the ex-wife of Doctor Jack Shephard (I do feel vindicated by that fact) and where she crossed paths with a handsome cop named James Ford and helped him obtain a trapped Apollo bar from a vending machine in the hospital by telling him to turn off the machine and then turn it back on.
The candy bar does drop from its holder. "It worked," Juliet says as the power goes off.
Juliet's words in "LA X" then refer to this specific scene, to the first--and last--meeting of lovers Juliet and Sawyer, achieving the union they couldn't have in life.
The Cork in the Bottle. The Final Battle between Jack and the Nameless One began the moment they set foot in the bamboo grove, the very heart of the island, with Desmond Hume, each hoping to achieve something impossible: that the Nameless One would be able to destroy the island and send it plummeting to the bottom of the ocean and that Jack would be able to kill his adversary. In order to do so, they both needed the help of Desmond Hume, the time-tossed survivor who had a resistance to the island's electromagnetic energy as a result of his proximity to the Swan Station's fail-safe procedure. Des got lowered into the cave, over that precipice--in a scene that evoked the final shot of Season One as Jack and Locke gaze into the abyss--and found himself in yet another grand, man-made cavern that this time contained a literal cork in the bottle.
Believing that by removing the stone stopper he would allow the castaways to travel to the other side that he had glimpsed (which wasn't a divergent reality but a purgatory), Desmond entered the Source and pulled out the cork... resulting in the water draining right out and volcanic heat swelling through the cave as the island began to shake to its core.
Just what is this place? Who built it? What is its actual purpose? I'm glad that the finale didn't seek to answer these, instead leaving the mythology tantalizingly abstract. In the end, the specifics of this place or the nature of the island don't really matter. Like Oz or Narnia or any number of magical realms, there's an inexplicable and unknown quality to their very natures.
That's a wonderful thing.
I don't want everything spelled out for me. I'm quite content knowing what we know about the island (particularly as any further answers just start a new cycle of further questions) and I am happy with it remaining something unknowable and mysterious, something eternal and impossible.
Desmond. Just what was Des' purpose then? Widmore brought him back to the island because of his resistance to the electromagnetism that was the same energy as the Source itself. He was, as Jack put it, a weapon to be used by either side. While it seems as though Desmond's entire purpose is thwarted--his actions, too, don't lead to another reality--he does serve his purpose all the same.
He's the only one who can safely enter the Source without being altered by its powerful energy and the only one who can remove the cork from the bottle. Whether it will sink or swim all depends on what happens next: will the island plummet to the bottom of the ocean? Will someone make the ultimate sacrifice to recork the bottle and keep the island safe?
Desmond was a weapon in the end, a weapon for either side. But the ultimate outcome depended not on fate but free will. Could Jack end his own life in order to save the world? Yes, of course. He had made a solemn pledge to defend this place and protect the Source, which could go off and on. (Just like, as people, we can make good or bad choices and still correct ourselves before the end.)
As for who rescued him from the well, the answer was the appropriate one: Rose and Bernard (and Vincent!), who had long since withdrawn from the battles for the island, preferring to live out their final days away from the others in retirement. "We don't get involved," she tells Desmond. But they did get involved, of course, by saving Desmond's life. Desmond, however, repays the favor, forcing the Nameless One to leave Rose and Bernard alone and not harm them in any way, before he turns himself over to the Man in Black.
The Final Battle.Desmond's actions result in the island nearly ceasing to exist but they also lead to something else entirely: to the Nameless One regaining his humanity. Or at least his corporeal nature. His powers as the smoke monster were derived by the Source. Once its light flickered out, he was human once again. A final loophole that Jack took advantage of.
The showdown between Jack and the Nameless One on the cliff's edge was a thing of staggering beauty, a face-off composed not as a series of close-up shots at first but a long shot that framed the action as a diagonal, a literal image of the scales, long since tipped over to darkness. (Watch again: you'll Jack up in the top left corner and the Nameless one at the bottom right.)
It all comes down to these two men, a man of science who has become a man of faith and a greedy deity who has stolen the face of a man who was willing to die for what he believed in. Their struggle is bloody, brutal, and messy (as is life itself, really). Locke cuts Jack's neck (that unstoppable bleeding in the Lost-X timeline) and then stabs him in his side. It's a mortal wound and Jack really does die then. He just doesn't let go, not yet. It's ironic that the Nameless One's death--in the body of Locke--follows yet another pattern. Just as Anthony Cooper had pushed Locke from a great height, so too does Jack do the same to the man wearing his face, as the Nameless One plummets onto the rocks below, his neck broken, his legs dangling uselessly.
The Candidate. It was too easy that Jack would step up and elect himself as Jacob's replacement ("the obvious choice"), and I had a sinking feeling last week that his oversight of the island would be short-lived. The responsibility falls to the most selfless of them, the one who didn't want the position at all and therefore is most worthy of it: Hugo Reyes, whose time on the island has been characteristic of his altruistic nature. He's been marked for this role from the very early days: he had an advance knowledge of the numbers, managed to survive every scrape without dying (or even coming close), never fired a gun, and saw dead people. He was special in every sense of the word.
Ben offers up a fitting chalice here, a water bottle that works just fine, thank you very much, as Jack makes do with a very different kind of transference ritual. No words, no blessing, just the drinking of the water, and the words, "You're like me now." A message of collective identity, of shared experience, of belonging. The magic circle is complete once more, a new protector for a place that needs protection.
But being protector means making rules. And Hurley's rules don't need to be the same as Jack's or Jacob's. It's fitting that it's the newly redeemed Benjamin Linus who tells him this fact. He needn't rule in the way that Jacob ruled. Desmond can leave the island, he can make his own ways, create his own legacy. Desmond might, after all, be able to finally return home to his waiting Penelope after this long odyssey.
Jack. Jack, meanwhile, fulfills his destiny: he makes a leap of faith into the unknown, recorking the bottle and saving the island from catastrophe. I thought his laughter and solemn joy at the bottom of the cave was a beautiful note to end the Final Battle on as the light of the Source reignites once more, before Jack finds himself at the bottom of the cave's output, the same place where Jacob stumbled onto his brother's body.
But Jack hasn't been transformed by the Source (I'd wager it's because he was already dead when we entered there and his motives were pure) and he instead makes his way back to the very beginning, where this story started, taking us with him one last time into the unknown.
Fly Away Home. I'm more than happy that I was wrong about the final fates of Richard Alpert and Frank Lapidus, both of whom survived their fates in "What They Died For" and "The Candidate" respectively. Lapidus managed to survive the sinking of the submarine and was reunited with the others so that he could fulfill his purpose: flying them off the island and back to the mainland. ("I am a pilot," Frank says with a hint of frustration.)
There was a beauty and triumph to seeing a plane take off from the island, defying the odds, rather than crashing to the rocks, the motley crew of final survivors safely heading away from this place of mystery back to the "real" world, their lives there lost to the mists of time. (Or a fitting choice by Cuse and Lindelof to leave things with Jack at the very end.)
That the plane was flown by the man who was originally meant to pilot Oceanic Flight 815 is no mere coincidence either. Frank Lapidus finally fulfills his purpose, the plane at the ready, soaring majestically overhead as Jack closes his eyes one last time.
Aboard that plane, those who are leaving are heading home, back to a world that they thought was long forgotten. Even Claire, who was so terrified of being a mother, of Aaron seeing her the way she was, that she was willing to remain behind. But she wasn't alone in the end. She might be meant to raise Aaron alone according to some prophecy but she isn't alone at all: Kate is by her side, squeezing her hand. The two mothers, united finally in space and spirit, setting out to raise their shared child together.
"There are no shortcuts, no do-overs," says Jack. "All of this matters."
And it does in the end. The journeys that these characters made over the last six seasons have led them in the end to this place. Which is why what followed left me so cold. I would have loved Lost to have ended on this note, with Jack's sacrifice and the departure of those he loved, those whose lives hadn't been lost and could therefore go on.
I didn't hate the Lost series finale, but I didn't love it either.
However, I did love every moment within the two-and-a-half-hours that was set on the island with the characters we knew and loved by taking it--and the Lost-X storyline to such a sentimental place, to an afterlife of rewards and happiness didn't make me feel good in the end. It made me feel sad that something Lindelof and Cuse clearly intended to be lyrical and magical felt to me instead like it had fallen to earth with a deafening thud.
If Lost has been about mysteries, it's been mostly about the mysteries of human existence rather than mythology. And some mysteries are better left unknown and unsolved. For a series that dealt so lovingly with multiple philosophies and beliefs, with the breadth and scope of literature and the nature of story, to come down to a singularly Judeo-Christian view of the afterlife (despite, yes, the ham-fisted presence of those symbols in the stained glass) felt like a bit of an easy way out to me, a reductive explanation of Season Six and an opportunity to give these characters a happy ending in death that they didn't have in life.
But that's not realistic when viewing the complicated messiness of life. Sometimes endings are happy but often they're just endings.
I'm curious about how you felt about the series finale and the sixth season as a whole. Did the ending make the flash-sideways (or, as I dubbed it early this season, the Lost-X timeline) work for you? Do you feel that the destination was worth the journey? Are you happy with the way the series came together at the end? Surprised? Sad? Feeling cheated? Melancholy? Was your mind blown?
I want to hear about your own thoughts to the very end of Lost and how you felt Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse managed to pull it together at the end of the road. Head to the comments section to discuss, analyze, and debate the very last episode of Lost. Ever.
See you in another life, brutha.
Continue reading full story...
It's time once again to invite HBO's gloriously addictive vampire drama True Blood, returning in just a few weeks' time with its third season, back into our homes. 
