Spoiler Warning: Is it even necessary at this point? If you have not yet seen the series finale of LOST, the episode entitled “The End,” you’d better not read any further than this sentence. Consider yourself warned. Oh, DOUBLE SPOILER WARNING! Do Not READ the BOLD sentences highlighted in the third-to-last paragraph if you have never watched Six Feet Under. Sorry, Dave!
We are now 24-hours removed from “The End.” Last night’s series finale was — in essence — a big “Fuck you” to Internet theorists across the world. And to be perfectly honest, I’m 100% fine with it. In fact, I’ve watched the episode twice now, and I realized immediately after a second viewing that I actually loved it. Since it appears that many, many LOST fans were disappointed by the finale, I’m going to write a brief post that will attempt to convey all my feelings about the episode, the season it capped, and the series as a completed work.
Okay, so we didn’t get any hard science throughout the course of “The End.” We got action on the island, and emotional interactions in the sideways flashes. The fights were exciting (if a little Matrix-y), and that shot of Jack lunging towards Locke just before the show cut to commercial elicited a thunderous roar from our insane crowd of 30 people watching the episode together. In the very next scene, in a matter of seconds, Kate Austin went from LOST‘s biggest goat to its biggest hero. LA_X was the emotional core of the episode, as nearly every flash brought our viewing party to tears. There were some unexpected reunions between lost loves (Sayid and Shannon), and one very highly-anticipated encounter (Juliet and Sawyer). The touching moment in which Claire and Charlie come to remember one another was the first instance in which I felt myself becoming a bit teary-eyed. The feeling was exacerbated by the next LA_X scene as Locke wiggles his toes and suddenly remembers his own island experience. By the time we got to the reconnection between Juliet and Sawyer most of the people surrounding me were comatose. So overcome with emotion were they, I don’t think anyone heard my embarrassing loud gasp when Juliet first utters “It worked” after the candy bar drops from the vending machine. The good news for my masculinity is, that was the nearest I came to bawling. By the time the final scene played out, I was back in normal LOST mode, trying to discern what I was being told and rapidly trying to process and make sense of it all. To be honest, I couldn’t. So I excused myself from the party, went upstairs to Nicci’s room and watched the entire episode for a second time (she missed the opening so she sat upstairs patiently waiting for the viewing to end). And I cried more, and loved it more.
So what? Since the earliest hours of season six, it was made very apparent by the creators of LOST that doubled-down on faith. It should have been clear that whatever answers were going to be given to the audience over the course of these final hours would only be what was considered absolutely necessary to advancing the story towards its endgame. With no expecting mothers present on the island after the survivors of 815 found themselves back on the island present following “The Incident,” there really wasn’t any reason to explain why pregnant women died on the island. Consider it a missed opportunity that could have been dealt with during seasons 3 or 4, but by no means a reason for frustration. Season six included no shots of ancient Egyptians building statues, no birds that crow “Hurley!” while swooping overhead, no soaking Walt, no history of what the Smoke Monster had to do to bring himself so close to achieving his goal, and no closure for the stories of Cindy, Zach and Emma. I can live with these unanswered questions. I know I panned the sideways flashes early and often this season, but at some point during the last two or three weeks I realized I was becoming heavily invested in their outcome. In fact, I might even go so far as to admit that there were points in the show where I wanted to learn the answer to the LA_X story more than the island story. I might have wanted the story to conclude on the island, and I might have wanted the LA_X plot to be dissolved in favor of the other, but I’m happy with the climactic revelations of this finale.
Now, that said, I don’t believe season 6 will go down as one of the show’s best. It could be debated that perhaps seasons five and six could have been combined to give us both science and fantasy simultaneously. If the DHARMA initiative and science were to be dropped in favor of matters of faith, there was a lot of filler that could have been removed from the show to both speed up the pace and streamline its endgame while satiating the desires of the show’s hardcore sci-fi fans. Really, the only other “mistake” one can attribute to the show’s creators is not so much a mistake as an oversight. At some point during the penultimate scene of “The End” — when Christian Shephard coaxes his son into accepting his fate — he should have said something to the extent of “There was purpose to what you did on that island,” or “The island was truly a special place, and you served it well.” Basically, I think the show needed to address the purpose of Jack’s stay on the island in its finale, address his purpose and the good he served, and remind viewers that the island was a place worth giving ones life for, so that its no one would react harshly to how the island was seemingly glossed over during that important conversation.
The exact placement of LOST in the canon of great television shows remains uncertain. Viewed as a whole, there is no question that it should be ranked among the most influential and groundbreaking programs in the history of the medium. It brought many people joy for over half a decade as they sat down with friends to watch each episode week after week. I thought its finale was very good. It reminded me of Six Feet Under. And by that I mean, everybody died. They didn’t explicitly show us all the deaths, but there was that same sense of finality I had when I watched all the characters on Six Feet Under die. Even better, none of it felt forced. I don’t think as many people complained about that show, but then again it didn’t have nearly as rabid an audience as LOST does.
Here’s what the whole Good vs. Bad series finale discussion boils down to for me. Five years from now…ten years from now, whenever it is I find myself talking about LOST and thinking back on the great time I had following the program, I’m not going to care about or even remember the debate about whether the statue was Anubis or Taweret. I’m not going to mention to someone who doesn’t know the show that I spent a week wondering why Ben didn’t recognize Sayid 30 years after Sayid shot him in cold blood. Those might have been great water cooler conversation fodder, but that’s not what defines the show for me. When I think about LOST, I think about Locke’s toes wiggling at the last moments of “Walkabout.” I think about the phone conversation between Desmond and Penny in “The Constant”. I think about Charlie scrawling “Not Penny’s Boat” on his hand before his death. Those were the moments that defined the greatness of LOST. The more I think about it, the more I realize that my favorite episodes were the character-driven, emotionally-heavy episodes, not mind-fuckingly weird ones. I was invigorated by the insanity of it all. I loved waking up the morning after LOST and devoting nearly an entire day to an e-mail chain filled with dozens of like-minded theorists. It gave me something to talk about it, it introduced me to new friends. It is the attachment to the characters that will prove to be my longest lasting memories of the show, not the mythology or the unanswered questions.
Of course, I’d also really loved to have learned what happened throughout the rest of Miles’ life off the island. I mean, he did survive with all of Nikki and Paolo’s diamonds…Razzle dazzle indeed!
