So after an absurd amount of difficulty we finally managed to download, convert, burn and watch the Lost finale last night.
Ok, so I do understand the ending. I get that the “flash-sideways” was a bit of a red herring in that it wasn’t “real” per se in the physical world sense and that it was really more of a “spiritual” place. Like my friend, Orb said, it’s kinda like a cross between the Nexus from Star Trek and the afterlife from What Dreams May Come. (Which is a good way of thinking about it.) I understand that everything that happened on the Island in “the real world” happened and that there was no real time or place where they all wound up (because one presumes for example, Kate died years later from Jack’s death on the island and had a whole life and experience after leaving on the second plane) and that it doesn’t in anyway negate the events that occurred in the past six seasons.
However… there were several unanswered questions – of course! it’s Lost, what does one expect? – but the one that’s bugging me the most is why did the season open with the Island on the bottom of the ocean? I’ve read through some recap/thoughts/blogs on the final episode and a lot of people have come up with decent explanations for a lot of the other things that never got answered but the scene of the Island on the ocean floor still baffles me. I just can’t figure that one out.
So what were your thoughts on the episode? Love it? Hate it? Somewhere in the middle? I’d love to see what others – not to be confused with Others HA! – thought of it as well.
What bothered me the most about the ending is that it exposed LOST for what it was — not a mastermind drama spanning 6 seasons, but a show working different possibly story lines season to season in an attempt to not be canceled.
You can’t spend 6 seasons creating various island mysteries and then tell me that the whole story was never about the island – just about the people.
I’m sure you’ve seen the link, but there were a ton of questions I would have loved to have answered: http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1936291
At the risk of sounding really ranty and crazy fangirl, here’s an email I sent to a friend —
I have to say that I did not like the finale of Lost. Well, I LIKED it, but I didn’t LOVE it, and while I thought it made a good SEASON ender, I didn’t think it made a good SERIES ender.
I could tell from most of this season, when the writers didn’t appear to have watched the previous five seasons, that the ending wasn’t going to answer any of my questions (why did women who got pregnant on the island always die? How come the Dharma group seemed to know more about how the island worked than Jacob and Smokey did? We keep coming upon enclave after enclave of “others/other others/still more others”… how frelling big is this island that they all don’t keep running into each other? What do the writers have against women and people of color? What about Eko? And WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALT?). There were just too many big mysteries that clearly, as time got closer, weren’t going to be answered. Sure, it was neat to see how the Black Pearl got there, and how the big statue broke apart; but so many other things were left untouched.
It was like, the closer it got to ending, the writers found it easier to just drop many stories by the wayside. And even combine some stories. Like, suddenly Kate, who could have been strong and fascinating and had a great reason to stay on the island (avoiding jailtime)… her only story towards the end was finding and loving Jack? Even the side-story of finding Claire was reduced to a couple lines in a couple episodes. And Sun, who was amazingly strong, cunning, and resourceful… her whole storyline is reduced to finding Jin? And when she does find him, they die in the next episode?! With only a passing nod to their now-about-to-be-orphaned child, who will undoubtedly be raised by Sun’s bastard of a father. That’s happy. Sorry, I know I’m ranting…; it just seemed like all of the women on the show were reduced to walking vaginas, and their storylines were only concerned with babies or men.
I guess it doesn’t help that I never really liked Jack (I can lead! No wait, I can’t! No wait, yes I can! Okay, I can lead, but I’m going to cry about it all the time!) and was hoping that someone complex, like Sayid, or at least someone who always had a good outlook, like Hurley, would get to lead the island (yay, Hurley!) but then in about three minutes of the show they killed off three people with the most interesting and complex roles, and those three people also happen to be of color. Oh, yay, we all thought over here for weeks, once again leadership is down to a choice between two white men. That’s original.
Sigh. I should let it go, right?! I mean, I did love the show! I guess… just after six long years of being told that everything will be explained…. Polar bears on a tropical island? We’ll explain that! All pregnant women die in childbirth? We’ll explain that! How every season we find an enclave of about 50 people who totally didn’t know there was anyone else on this small island? We’ll explain that! How can the island jump through time? We’ll explain that! Why is there a small group of scientists who have lived here for 30 years and they know more about how the island works than the two immortal entities who have lived on the same island for hundreds of years? We’ll explain that! And then the explanation is “the mysteries aren’t important and will never be answered – it has always just been about the people – and that’s why we have so many conflicting events! HAHAHAH!”. Whatever.
OK I’M DONE BITCHING NOW, I SWEAR!!!!