It seems to me that this final season of Lost took the show to an entirely new realm. That was cool, but at the same time the show claimed that this is where it was meant to go the entire time. I don't buy it. I feel like I was baited and switched. For six years, we've watched a group of survivors from a plane crash on a supernatural desert island get their asses handed to them by smoke monsters, polar bears, "others", immortals and mysterious research scientists. Now we're rallying behind the "it was always about the characters' journeys" flag? Really? As Sawyer would say, "That's one hell of a long con, Doc."
I love sci-fi. The appeal that Lost had for me was the epic amounts of weird shit mixed up in the complicated stories of the castaways. The characters were great, but for Lost, it was also about the mysteries surrounding the island. Four toed statues and tattooed sharks. Why the hell did the Dharma initiative need polar bears?! Entering a series of numbers into a computer every 108 minutes to keep the island from blowing up seems like a serious design flaw, so why do it? Temples in the middle of the jungle and time travel. How did the group manage to get back to the island, but with one half landing the present and one half landing in 1977? These are some of the questions left unanswered by the finale, and some of the reasons that I'm not completely satisfied with what we got. All I needed was for someone to give some kind of goofy "Doctor Who"-esque explanation like "there was a rift between time and space running through the center of the island and the high volume of naturally occurring electromagnetic radiation allowed us to manipulate it". That's all they needed to say (they never said it). That would have validated the Dharma initiative AND the time traveling as well as one of the reasons why Whidmore was so freakin' interested in the island's goodies. He's like the Dr. Claw of Lost... he just doesn't quit.
I thought a lot about the finale today. I read a couple of opinion articles, which is not something that I normally do, but I wanted to see how some other "professionals" reacted. There was a wide spectrum of emotion: anger, joy, inspiration, disappointment. If you're looking for a constant in all these, it's tears. Seems like everyone cried for one reason or another. I wasn't moved to tears, but that's not for lack of good storytelling. It's just because I'm not a weenie. Here's some of the articles I read today and the short version of what they thought:
Salon.com thought it was irrelevant
Sci-fi wire believes we were "tricked into liking it"
NY Times says it's a "cop-out"
LA Times likens it to "It's A Wonderful Life"
No one that I have read is calling the season finale of Lost a great triumph. One of the things I most agreed with is that it seemed like a funeral for a favorite show. We were told repeatedly to "let go" during the finale, as it repeated one of the more-recent themes several times. The montages of fond memories the characters had with one another was cheesy, yet heartwarming. Just like at a funeral, you forgive the show its transgressions and glorify it's successes. Speaking of funerals, that's where we all happened to end up in the final scene. Coincidence? There are valid points to be found in what has been written about the Lost finale, but on the whole a lot of it seems to be journalists posing and fronting about how they were too intelligent for the heaps of fluff it dumped on us. It is easier to find fault with the things that the show didn't do, rather than with the things it did. At the end of the day, I am satisfied with the wrap up of the characters.
What the finale DID do was give us a sense of closure. Character arcs were wrapped up in neat little packages of redemption and forgiveness. If the island is purgatory, then Jacob is a collector of wayward souls. He brings them to his island of good and evil to be tried and tested and he helps them to forgive themselves for whatever wrongs they may have committed in their lives. The man in black is a force that must be stopped. He is a tool to help the castaways overcome their adversity. It's no coincidence that Jacob shares his name with the biblical character. From wikipedia.org: "According to the classic Jewish texts, Jacob, as the third and last patriarch, lives a life that parallels the descent of his offspring, the Jewish people, into the darkness of exile...". Jacob on the island is prone to mistakes and communication errors. He kills his brother and condemns him to life as the smoke monster. He is the leader of purgatory island and his followers are not always in agreement with him. In the bible, Jacob had a fraternal twin brother, Esau, whom their father commands to swear not to kill or attack Jacob. Yet another strong connection between the show and the bible. Heavy-handed religious references are not rare for Lost. The themes of faith vs. science and good vs. evil are woven throughout the series. This is why the discovery of the "heart of the island" being a light that needed protecting didn't bother me. What I did love is that Desmond, our constant, knew exactly what it was. As long as we're getting all bible-y, perhaps that makes Jack "Abraham" (come on... SHEPHERD) and Hurley "Isaac". It's worth pondering.
The shots of the wreckage and the end of the finale suggest that the castaways were killed in the initial plane crash. It's not an idea that I like, but it is one idea that helps the entire last season make a little more sense. It was revealed that the "flash-sideways" universe was created by the dead castaways as a place to meet up and literally "go into the light" together. On the island, characters died when they were finally at peace with themselves. Charlie got over his addictions and sacrificed himself to save everyone on the island. Sayid came to terms with his deeds and... sacrificed himself to save all his friends. Jin and Sun died together. Sun, because she was trapped in the wreckage of a submarine, and Jin because he refused to leave her side. Their rocky marriage and all the crap they had gone through in the past was pushed aside and they realized how important to each other they were. Probably the most dramatic of all was Jack, the doctor with a God complex and daddy issues, who takes the weight of the island on his shoulders once again and SHEPHERDS everyone to safety, knowingly and willingly sacrificing himself so that the light would be replenished (he died for their sins), with a very Jesus-like wound in his side. I'm amazed they didn't add the crown of thorns in there, just for good measure.
In the "flash-sideways" verse, our heroes are living relatively un-thrilling lives. They seem to be neither extremely happy nor extremely sad. Locke is engaged to Helen, but is still in the chair. Jack has a son with Juliet. Sayid's lady, Nadia, is alive, but married to his brother. Sawyer and Miles are cops. Hurley is the luckiest man on Earth and everything works out for him. Sun and Jin are lovers with no prospects to get married, and she's still preggers. Their past life hangups are still following them around in the universe they have created, however, and it is not until they are fully able to let go of these hangups that they are led to the multi-denominational church of the omni-God. When the characters come to terms with themselves and make peace with whatever it was that was haunting them, they are touched by a loved one (or in Locke's case, Jack) and experience a moment of revelation followed by nirvana. Locke's moment of nirvana came when he was able to move his legs after his operation. He was able to let go of the guilt of the plane crash that he piloted with his father inside that left him paralyzed when he let Jack operate. Chain reaction style, the characters are relieved of their suffering and reunited with the ones they love. Sayid is reunited with Shannon. Sayid associates Nadia with his old self, guilt and pain. He met Shannon when he was on the island and she accepted him for who he was. He was able to become a new person, a good person, and that is the man whom Shannon fell in love with. Shannon was able to let go of the petty, spoilt-brat lifestyle she had led before when she was on the island, and in the sideways verse when she saved her brother from the muggers. They touched when Sayid jumped out of the car and saved her. Sawyer ends up with Juliet because he was able to really love her when he made a new life for himself in Dharmaville as the responsible head of security. Kate reminded him too much of his old self, he loved her too, but his heart really belonged with Juliet. Just as Kate reminded Sawyer of himself, Sawyer reminded Kate of herself. He was the bad boy whom she'd doubtlessly dated several times in her old life and in Jack she found her redemption. When she was with Jack she would try and do good, to help people like he did. When she was with Sawyer, she was under his selfish influence and acted rashly. Jack had flashbacks when he met Kate and Locke in the sideways verse, but his real redemption came when he touched his father's casket. He came to terms with his father and really forgave him for all his faults. When he was able to do that, he entered the church with his dad and rejoined all the people he loves. His father able to forgive himself and was therefore able to love Jack and show him the emotion that he never could while he was alive.
The island brought the castaways there to sort out who they really were, and it gave them a reason to be who they wanted to be. The finale did a beautiful job of sculpting these character lines so that the audience was happy with the result. It all makes sense, character wise, nothing is left out, and hardly anyone was forgotten. Even Vincent the dog got screen time during the finale, as it wound down full circle. The opening scene in the pilot, Jack wakes up in a bamboo forest to Vincent's barking. In the closing scene, he is in the same location, but this time, his eyes are closing and he is dying. Vincent lies down with Jack in a (kinda cheap) pull-at-your-heartstrings moment.
The character development in Lost was superb. I would say, some of the best on TV ever. The intricate storyline and wacky twists were relevant to each character's growth. I would have liked to have had more concrete answers to some of the sci-fi related questions the series brought up, but then, when did they ever answer those? I think the show could have done with one more season to more thoroughly wrap up some of the questions they left hanging. There are loose ends, a few too many for my taste, and it seems kind of sloppy when all is said and done. The finale finally told us definitively what Lost was about and did a great job of making it biblical and spiritual, but not preachy. The message was one of redemption and salvation. Lost's message said it was okay to make mistakes, nobody's perfect, and it is never too late for second chances.
yes. i like your explanation
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