LOST - Series Finale

[island911]

Originally Posted by Wyvern

it was a bit disappointing .. If Jack was in his suit at the end it could have just been HIS dealing with letting go ... that would have made sense.

My daughter made an interesting point that Hurley said Ben WAS a good #2 and Ben said Hurley WAS as good #1 ... so is Ben finally #1 and going back to the Island ?

n'no... what you must understand there, is that actually, Hurley was clearly telling Ben that Ben was a big poopyhead. ...and then Ben retorted to Hurley to piss-off. --clearly.

[Head416]

Originally Posted by cwiert

Everyone died at different times. Apparently Hurley and Ben watched over the island for some time... probably a very long time. THat's why Hurley said Ben was a great #2 and Ben said Hurley was a great #1. They may have watched over the island for 10 years or 1000 years. Who knows. I forgot the term Jack's father said, be her referred that there is no "when" or "time" in the afterlife... so that explains how everyone could have died at different times and they all agreed to meet up there (in the church/purgatory) because everyone was such a big part of each other's life. But that train of thought brings about another problem... Aaron. Why was he a baby? He should have been able to live a full life and grown up. Maybe the writer's thought that would be too confusing to bring Aaron back as an adult.

One last thought... if all those people in the church were dead... including Hurley... then who was watching the island???? Maybe Mr. X and Walt since the writers just ignored those guys in the finale. Ha ha. Just kidding.

That was my understanding. Jack's dad said some died before him, some long after him. Hurley and Ben seemed like they spent a long time together.

Aaron being a baby didn't bother me - everybody looked the same as when they were all together. Otherwise people that lived many years after Jack would have looked like they were 80.

I assume protection of the island passed from Hurley to somebody else just like it had before. We never met that person, and the person wasn't part of this group.

[Pazuzu]

Originally Posted by Head416

Aaron being a baby didn't bother me - everybody looked the same as when they were all together. Otherwise people that lived many years after Jack would have looked like they were 80.

Bah! you're only supporting him because you have some LOST fanboi need to think that they named him after you.

[911boost]

What everyone is failing to mention so far is how smoking Kate looked in that black dress! Wow...

I enjoyed how they brought everyone back together as well, folks that had died in the first year, etc. My wife and I were disapointed that Michael wasn't there, since he did play a part in this season.

I also agree that Hurley (who I liked having a bigger role this season) and Ben had stayed and watched over the island for some time.

The bit at the end with the credits showing the plane pieces and no survivers quietly summed everything up.

All in all not a great series finale, but worth watching.

[Pazuzu]

I have to admit...Having Vincent play his role in the final moments kinda sorta made me almost tear up. In a manly way, of course.

[gsmith660]

Didn't the show start the same way it ended with Jack laying in the bamboo with vincent by his side?

[Pazuzu]

I think that Vincent ran out of the bamboo to him after he woke up. I know there was at least one scene like that.

But we all love Vincent, and coulda done without Jack.

[pavulon]

Originally Posted by LubeMaster77

I can't remember a show (save M.A.S.H.) that had a decent ending - Sienfield, Lost, the Sopranos all sucked azz for their finale. Can't think of any others worth even mentioning...

Coen brothers' films must be pretty unsatisfying for you...as well as many others.

[VaSteve]

Bah. Kate looks better in a tank top than that dress.

One question I never got answered was why was Dharma still dropping food. Why just abandon the Numbers....though they were at table 23 at the concert.

[Pazuzu]

At some point they decided to make it not a supernatural show anymore...probably as they lost viewership.
They dropped the numbers. Why babies died. Where the Others came from. Who built the Donkey wheel after Nemesis was murdered? How in the heck did the Island flashy? Who and why were the Temple and Statue built? Why was Aaron so damned important during the first two seasons (with the psychic and the dreams and such), then suddenly...hey, lets drop him off with grandma and ignore that character from here on out.

Also, what happened with the bomb?

[Heel n Toe]

I said in other LOST threads that I decided fairly soon I was just gonna go along for the ride and wasn't gonna expend a lot of effort to analyze it by visiting a lot of the obsessive fan sites and going down a lot of the rabbit holes. Or was it rabbit trails? Anyway, real life was more important... there was some difficult stuff going on in my life during parts of the run of the show, and I couldn't justify the time required. I got out of it exactly what I put into it. Basically some pretty cool entertainment.

Last night, I was thinking that if the finale didn't satisfy me, I wonder if I would be sorry I spent all that time watching it. At this point, I'm still sort of undecided on that, but I know I won't be getting or borrowing the DVD set and rewatching it and trying to figure it out. It's just not worth it to me... never was. I enjoyed the subtle humor and inside jokes and personalities more than anything else about the show.

And I don't think the writers have it all nicely wrapped in consistency, and no one can hold their feet to the fire on that... they did a lot right, and they let the mystery reign on things that some see as loose ends. They claim that everything that happened on the island really happened.

I was kind of thinking last season that most of the entertwined story was some sort of mismash of 1) the waning consciousness of all the people dying as a result of the crash along with 2) their "life flashing before them as they plummeted to their death." I kinda felt like the scene of Jack dying and the crashed plane during the closing credits validated that, but I was pretty sure it was at least meant to be more than that.

One of the reasons I thought it was the mishmash mentioned above is because of the way they used the sound of jet engine as a transition between so many scenes.

But after the finale left me the way it did re: whether I wish I had all that time back, I decided to look for an unofficial fan site and see what the comments were. This is the one I stumbled across... I read the last several pages of this thread (last night, it was pp. 60-65... I haven't checked back and don't know how many pages it has now) and enjoyed hearing what was inside these peeps' heads regarding the finale and the show overall:

S6 EPISODE 17/18 THREAD 23-MAY-10 : "The End" (Series Finale) - MyMedia-Forum.com

Those are people that were deeply invested in the show and they varied on their level of frustration re: loose ends, Walt, Aaron, etc., but overall, most of them indicated they were satisfied with the show.

And here's a reflective piece about the show that someone on that MB referred to that's worth reading, IMO:
'Lost' finale: Redemption as 'The End' justifies the journey - USATODAY.com

Just my two cents.

Hugh, are you allowed to weigh in?

++++P.S. Don't bother reading any of that thread on the fan site until page 57... everything before that is people commenting on the show as they watched it. Page 57: http://www.losttv-forum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=68841&page=57

[ramonesfreak]

i read the threads. seems that we all have the same basic questions and criticisms...the only way i can accept the unanswered questions is to believe that perhaps the series was meant to be realistic in the sense that there are mysteries in real life that we may never solve...life is full of questions that never ever get answered...and even when they do, the answers are often irrelevant

[Hugh R]

These may be the strangest comments on the show. I worked on "Lost" for six seasons, I can't comment on Damion or JJ's story lines, but you should know that the end point of the show was predetermined six years ago. They had a concept, and how it would sort of end, and everything else in the middle was a variation of "Survivor". I'm not trying to detract from them, it was a briilliant concept. If its a good show or not, I had nothing to do with it.

I work on my shows sort of like the guy on the assembly line making porsche's he may not think of the end result, but what he does on the assembly line. I read the scripts, I llook for key words like "crash", "flood", "cliff fight scene", etc. and go from there, I don't really care about the storyline (I have 20+ shows, I can't get wrapped up in the drama). BTW, those cliff fight scenes were 1/2 and 1/2 done on location and with green screen. None of the talent was even close to anything dangerous. Lots of fall protection issues for the cast and the crew. The really knarly scenes were done green screen.

[Heel n Toe]

Originally Posted by Hugh R

These may be the strangest comments on the show.

Strange in what way?

(No one here minds being referred to as strange... I'm sure you know that.)

Originally Posted by Hugh R

...everything else in the middle was a variation of "Survivor".

That's a strange comment... "Survivor" is a reality show.

[rattlsnak]

this is a great explantion:


The black and white symbolism is Faith(white) and Science (black). They must be in balance with each other. Too much science and you destroy God and eternal life in heaven. Too much faith and you never make progress and advance your soul. The argument on the beach by MIB and Jacob make way more sense when you think about it this way.

The island is the source of faith. Faith in God, heaven or whatever your belief is. Science (the black smoke) is always trying to disprove or destroy faith. The faith source of the island represents all religions. It’s carried by the wormholes that connect all over the globe to the island at it’s center (see those portals near the cork). If the light is extinguished then people would lose faith and no one would go on to eternity. Just eternal darkness. This goes exactly to what Widmore was saying about never seeing your loved ones again if the light goes out. As they said on the show: there is at least a little light (faith) in all of us. The Lost characters had to learn to trust each other (have faith in each other) (notice NO fighting or disagreements between them this episode. They were all on the same page). They were all flawed as Jacob said (re: no faith) and they were brought to the island to gain faith and become candidates to protect the island.

I think the skeletons in the cave were men of science that ventured to close to the source and were made into smoke monsters. The cycle of different smoke monsters and “Jacob” has been going on throughout all history. Dharma, the army, the viking “smart men” (the "Bad Guys") were all destroyed by the Others (crazy mom, Richard’s 1954 group, Ben’s lead Others: “the Good Guys”). They were the foot soldiers or pawns in the battle (or game) between Faith and Science. I would imagine that Smokie was on the side of the Army guys and Dharma when they were there as they would have been helping him with locating the light.

Some thoughts on Alt-World (or the Waiting Room). I think this can be explained by the quantum physics many worlds theory (so maybe it really could be explained by science). The idea is that there are parallel worlds existing in time and space with our own. So you have your life in this world. When you die your soul goes to the next world and you have another life. It’s almost the same as the previous one but little differences crop up (can explain Jack's son). This is progress in your soul. You continue to have these lives until your soul is finally ready to “move on”. So the Lost characters died at different times but some came to enlightenment in less worlds than others (hence Kate saying she had been waiting for Jack for a looong time. These people were all destined to be connected with each other forever. They may have had little changes here and there but no matter what world they are connected (this explains the flashbacks and all the weird cross over coincidences - these could very well have been flashes to different lives along the path to enlightenment). The Alt-World show we were seeing was from Jack’s time to awaken but since there is no real time anymore we also saw everyone else’s awakening simultaneously (so for example Kate’s awakening could have been many many parallel lives ago and her soul has been waiting in the Church since then for all the remaining Lost friends souls to arrive so they could all move on together). As MIB said “ they come, they fight, they destroy, they corrupt. It always ends the same”. Then Jacob says “it only ends once. Everything else is just progress”. This was The End.

[Schumi]

What really bugs me is, at the end, Jack's father tells Jack that yes, everything was real. The island did happen. And then implies that that whole flash-sideways was the beginning of the afterlife. It's where they all came together and shared those memories.

But this really gets to me as nothing of this actually explains the island. The island can be 'real' but we need an explanation as to how the hell it can be 'real'. I thought we were going to get all of that around season 5 and the beginning of this season because they were hitting on the science stuff really hard- the electromagnetics, the physics, Faraday's stuff, etc....

But all of that was for nothing. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. Because none of it meant anything, as it all just 'happened' and the real result of the show was all really just this last episode. Everyone dies eventually and all meets up in these weird ways in this manifested afterlife where the plane landed safely. But now you all remember what really happened. And you're dead. So congratulations,. Oh, and remember that CRAZY F*%#%$#ING ISLAND? No.. screw that we're dead. That was REAL.. but let's not question how the HELL WAS IT REAL?

Here's my way of ending it:

The nuke that was set off split their consciousnesses in two- two universes that were interconnected very closely. In one, things on the island get hardcore and pretty much wind down the way that we saw them happen in the last episode. In the other, they all have those freaky remembrances of each other when they meet, and this is mostly due to Desmond's doing.. because he is special. Due to Widmore's magnet experiment he sees both worlds nearly simultaneously. When they all come together in the church, they all are able to recall all the events of both worlds, and then are subconsciously able to choose how their lives are supposed to turn out- with each couple ending up in a world where everything went the way it was supposed to. This is the ultimate power of the island and explains all the electromagnetics, the time shifting, why the Dharma people and Widmore and that old gray haired lady wanted to get to it so bad and F with it. It all explains itself here, and then everyone's in their own world and happy and no one stays on the island. Except maybe Jack, because he's F'ed up. Or Ben, because he really has no good happy ending.

Bam, done, over.

That would have made it a LOT better, IMO.

[island911]

Thanks rattle, Schumi

So then, the island is a metaphor for uncharted technology. --some find themselves there, working as drones, some just crash into it (like a fish w/ a bicycle) and some want to completely control and dominate it.

[UconnTim97]

I got all your answers right here:

[Hugh R]

Originally Posted by Heel n Toe

Strange in what way?

(No one here minds being referred to as strange... I'm sure you know that.)



That's a strange comment... "Survivor" is a reality show.

Strange, in that I'm the onlyt one not commenting on the content of the show at all. I don't care about the content of the show, in fact, since I read so many scripts, I can't really follow any one show.

Sure Survivor is a "realiity" show, (nothing "real" about it, IMHO) and it is scripted to a certain extent as to what they will have to do, but not the outcome. By "Survivor" what I meant is that I believe Damon and JJ didn't have every single thing written out from the beginning, in fact they were writing scripts every week for the next episode, and put out page changes like every other show even up to the day of shooting. Since I've never watched "Survivor" it may not be a good analogy what I meant was there putting stuff in the scripts each week that they don't necessarily have to tie together at the end. As was the case with "Lost".

[Schumi]

I almost was hoping they would do something really awesome with the ending.. something that would have more people talking. I think they took the normal way out.

It would have been cool to do something St. Elsewhere - ish just to d^ck with people. Have all that happened with the man in black happen, and then Jack stumble around the island and realize he still can't get off of it and he can't seem to die, and then flash sideways to a new place- with Jack being wheeled around a mental hospital with a little snowglobe with the island in it. Cut to black. The end. DUN DUN DUUUUUUN

People would go apes*#$.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Westphall