I wasn't looking for answers so much as meaning. Like "what is the island" or "why does the light matter" or "has anything that's happened on the island over the last 6 seasons been anything but an action backdrop to keep men watching a character drama?"

Oh, wait, they answered that last one.

I never watched a single episode of it. You diehard Lost fans (Losers?) were freaky enough for me.

KP: You're missing out. Lost has definitely burrowed its way into my shortlist of favourite shows. It has its flaws, sure, but it did so many things so well. You should check out the DVDs (or Hulu it, or however you non-region-blocked Americans watch TV these days).

NetRunner: I don't know, I think the show kind of did answer those questions, in a really roundabout way. The island is... well, we've seen what the island is over six seasons. It's a lot of things. I guess it all boils down to that light, and its importance. As for why the light matters, we didn't really get anything but a vague explanation about it being somehow linked to the survival of humanity... but I kind of like that they left that one vague. I think over-explaining can be just as infuriating as under-explaining, because if the explanation turns out to be disappointing, then it'll really ruin your perception of the show.

That's not to say that I'm a complete Lost apologist -- there are certainly some specific answers that I wished they had answered, along with a few of the broader ones that everyone seems to be bringing up (ie. why were the others so sinister for the first couple of seasons, what was the deal with the whole childbirth thing, etc.). But for the most part I was pretty happy with the way things were wrapped up, and I think there's something kind of neat about the fact that people are going to be debating and interpreting what everything on Lost meant for years to come. Certainly, it's much more interesting than if they had just tied everything up in a nice little package.

I just watched it. I'm a bit irked. What about the hatch?! Seriously?! It felt like another X-Files season finale to me, but I expected that. If you remember, the show creators promised us it wasn't purgatory or the crew wasn't dead. They. Lied.

If you liked it, I think you may be justifying it like the girls who are sexually abused by daddy yet still think he loves them.

@Sarzy I think my main problem is that they never quite managed to introduce a coherent plot for us to get caught up in. They made it seem like maybe there was some master theory that would explain all the weird things that had happened in the show, but there was never anything of the sort.

I understand that they always said it was about the characters first and foremost, and I do think that was the main thing that kept me coming back to the show, I just wish they'd done something with the plot other than constantly use it as a license to use deus ex machina to put the characters into unexpected pickles.

Oh well, I have enjoyed the show over the years, I was just expecting more of a payoff in this finale than what they delivered.

This just shows the problem with X-Files, Battlestar Galactica, Lost and most US TV shows in general. There's no coherent message tying the show together or clear reference material, they simply write as they go along and string it out as far as audiences allow them or to the point where they simply run out of any ideas, at which point they have to find a way to quickly tie together everything that's happened in some 5/10+ seasons. Obviously this ends in disappointment most of the time. If you want a coherent and resolving plot, go watch some good anime TV shows. The fact that they're based on reference material and typically peak at 13, 26 or 52 episodes mean they don't have these issues.

I gave up on the Lost main storyline a long time ago, the sticking point has always been the genuinely interesting back stories and developed characters. In some cases, especially with the series stalwarts which were never killed off, they took them maybe an arc too far into multiple personality disorder, but on the whole this has always been the best part of the show for me. Still can't help feeling dissapointed. It wasn't that they didn't resolve everything, it's that they didn't address anything. And saying that you're leaving things purposely open to interpretation is a synonym for laziness.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

DEM FTL.

Lost ii a character study with a MacGuffin plot line.

RedSky is correct. I seen more animes with better resolving plots then US TV.

I was hoping BSG was not going to be like that, am still pretty mad because it seemed like they did have this master storyline. Ah the waste of time.

First of all, spoiler alert above please.

As someone who viciously hated the ending of Battlestar Galactica, I gotta say that this ending was far better. I gotta gather my thoughts a bit more and watch it again to make more pieces fit, but all in all, I have a good feeling about it.

Lost was always a show that showed and used supernatural elements, so the ending felt natural to me. In BSG the show prided itself on being more "tied to our reality" and turned on its head and fucked us over.

>> ^blankfist:

I just watched it. I'm a bit irked. What about the hatch?! Seriously?! It felt like another X-Files season finale to me, but I expected that. If you remember, the show creators promised us it wasn't purgatory or the crew wasn't dead. They. Lied.
If you liked it, I think you may be justifying it like the girls who are sexually abused by daddy yet still think he loves them.


What about the hatch? I don't think there was anything about the hatch that was left completely ambiguous -- that seems to be one of the few elements on the show that didn't really leave any lingering questions. Am I forgetting something?

As for the show creators lying about it not being purgatory, they weren't. I'm not sure if you're making this mistake, but a lot of people seem to be making the incorrect assumption that the entire show was some kind of afterlife for these characters, which isn't the case. Just the flashsideways.

Look, I can completely understand the complaints from the "not enough answers!" people. But I was mostly satisfied with the amount of answers we got. It probably helps that I've only watched every episode once, when they originally aired. Plus I have a terrible memory. So I don't even remember a lot of the specific questions that were left unanswered.

I don't know, I just thought there was something really satisfying about a conclusion that gave all of our characters such a happy ending, especially on a show that didn't seem to lend itself to such a happy ending for its characters. There was something kind of nice about seeing, say, the Sayid/Shannon reunion. Or the Sawyer/Juliet reunion. I also liked the final moments, with Vincent lying down next to Jack, to be with him as he dies. And of course the last shot of Jack's eye closing. Good stuff, man. I don't care what anyone says.

@Sarzy. Didn't leave any lingering questions? Did we watch the same show?

The hatch, by the way, set up so many new questions. If you remember, they had to enter random numbers (which we find out was the candidate numbers on the list, sigh), then the room would freak out with hieroglyphics on everything if they didn't press the button, and the place blew up at the end of season 2. So. No explanation what hatch was really for? Why are there hieroglyphics on the wall?

Are you okay with the "numbers" that kept coming up being their candidate list numbers? These were the numbers they had to also enter into the hatch's machine. Why? Because Jacob is god or something? I don't know.

Flash sideways. Yeah, I had to google that. So, the idea is, according to Lostapedia, "the incident" where the atomic bomb blew up was the beginning of the flash sideways events, and that's quite possibly where they died. Fuck me. How can any sane person figure that out when they could've also died at the end of season 2 when the hatch blew up? See? It gets stupider the more I think about it.

There were just too many unanswered questions or plot devices set up and then glossed over without explanation.

>> ^Sarzy:

What about the hatch? I don't think there was anything about the hatch that was left completely ambiguous -- that seems to be one of the few elements on the show that didn't really leave any lingering questions. Am I forgetting something?

Here's a few unanswered questions about the hatch:

Why did the Dharma initiative want to build it? Why did they think it was important, and needed to be kept secret? What was the significance of the numbers? Why did the door say Quarantine on it? What did "the Button" actually do, and why did it need to be pushed every 108 minutes? Why did hieroglyphs appear on the countdown clock when it was finally allowed to reach zero? What started happening when the clock reached zero? What happened when Desmond activated the failsafe? What was the failsafe? Why did Desmond start seeing flashes of the future from that point forward? Was he really seeing the future? Did the hatch have anything to do with the smoke monster/light plotline? Did the "others" know or care about what was going on with the hatch? Did Jacob have any sort of position or interest in what happened in the hatch?

What effect did the nuclear bomb set off at the base of the hatch before it was built have, other than sending everyone back to the "present"? Was the button version of the hatch built as a direct consequence of what our own merry band of castaways did in the 70's?

Don't get me wrong, I understand that shows will pointedly try to get you to forget stuff a few years back that doesn't fit the story they've decided to tell in the present. The hatch and the numbers were ancient history, and I can forgive them for pretending like it doesn't matter anymore.

I'm mostly annoyed that even stuff they brought up in just the last two seasons didn't get any kind of explanation or payoff, like the nuclear bomb last season, and the central conflict between Jacob and his smoky adversary this season. I expected them to at least try to build a new internally consistent mythology, and try to retcon in as much of the previous seasons as possible.

Instead we got "none of this matters" as our big explanation for what's been happening on the island. Meh.

@blankfist I suppose one interpretation is that the authors of the Island is the people on oceanic 815, and they fill in elements they need until they could get some closure and move on.

My interpretation is that what happened on the Island during the whole show was real in the same sense as when Dumbledore talks to Harry after he's dead:

"Tell me one last thing," said Harry. "Is this real? Or has this been happening inside my head?"
"Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?"

I think everything that happened on the Island was "invented" by the "survivors", who for their own reasons could not move on, on their own. They got caught in a limbo of their own creation. The different people who actually popped up once in a while like libby, ana-lucia etc. might have been on the plane, but actually moved on already, explaining why they weren't in the church at the end.

I still have unanswered questions about Jacob, MIB and stuff like that, but many of the smaller things like the hatch, which was portrayed as a "Big Thing" might not have been all that important, it was what locke needed at the time, so it sorta popped up. (yeah, it's a bit of a cop-out solution, but it works.)

@NetRunner - Okay, clearly, there are many unanswered questions about the hatch. I stand corrected. I will say that most of those questions are awfully specific, and I don't think that their unanswerededness (yeah, that's a word -- don't look it up though, just take my word for it) really impacts the show all that much. I mean, it would have been nice to know that stuff, but I think most of it falls in the category of minutia. I mean, we know that pressing the button somehow keeps all that electromagnetic energy contained -- as for HOW it actually does that... do we really need to know that? We know that the failsafe somehow dissipates all that energy without destroying the entire island, but scientifically how...? I don't know. Why does that matter?

Like I said, I don't think Lost is perfect. There are things that bug me, such as the contradictory way the others acted in season 1, and the whole pregnancy thing, which was clearly set up to be significant and then dropped for whatever reason. But even if the writers of Lost had been much more forthcoming with answers than they were, I don't think there would have been any way for them to answer every single question down to the smallest detail. Some things are going to have to be left somewhat vague.

@blankfist - I disagree with the theory that they all died in the explosion. I think they all died at various times in their lifetimes (ie. Sayid in the sub, Jack at the end of the last episode, Hurley and several others much later into the future) and then found themselves in the flash sideways world together. We, the viewers, first see that world when the bomb goes off, but really, it's not taking place at any specific time in the real world (I believe Christian said something like "there is no now."). It's taking place at some time in the future, after the last of them has died, whenever that may be.

I liked the ending.

My take on the ending was the same as Sarzy's. What happened on the island really happened, and what happened in the alternate reality was not purgatory or punishment, it was more of a Coda. The love fest in the sanctuary at the end was way too happy and non-denominational to be mistaken for grim Catholic mythology.

In general, I found the show to be more of a wild, unpredictable ride than a tight believable narrative. At many points in the show, the writers were clearly making it up as they went, but because of the creativity of the writers and the strength of the characters, it worked just fine. Most of the unanswered questions probably had no real answers to begin with. The writers just thought it would be cool to put a four toed statue and a couple of polar bears* on the island. Fair enough, coolness is cool.

BSG, on the other hand, took it's story and characters much more seriously. The narrative was much tighter, making a satisfying ending that much more important to me and tougher for the writers - and boy did they fail badly.

Lost avoided those expectations. Lost managed to stretch my suspended disbelief so far (without alienating me), that they could have pretty much done whatever they wanted with the ending, as long as it was cool, exiting, suspenseful, weird or otherwise entertaining. So the ending didn't carry the same importance for me as it did for BSG.

Anyway, those hours watching Lost were well spent, and the finale was a nice way to say goodbye to the lovable and lovably hateable characters that brought this thing to life.

KP, you'd probably dig this show if you gave it a chance. I felt the same way that you did, but quickly changed my mind last august when it came to Netflix streaming. It's a very unique show that can't really be understood without jumping in feet first.

*Yes, I know they explained the polar bears**.
**They were used for experiments carried out by the Dharma initiative.

My take on the ending:

http://i.imgur.com/wtzBE.gif

>> ^RedSky:

My take on the ending:
http://i.imgur.com/wtzBE.gif


If only... But that's TV for ya. You only need to keep the viewer hooked till the next episode. You can completely mess up the big picture and it won't even matter that much. If the writers were any good they'd write movies.

Here's an interesting article with the answers to pretty much all of those questions posed by that College Humor video from a couple days back:

http://www.movieline.com/2010/05/rebutting-losts-questions.php?page=1

Some of these are just theories or guesses, but they all sound pretty plausible.

@Sarzy, I know I'm a grumpy nitpicker, but most of those "answers" were "who cares?"

That was fair for a lot of them, but it seemed rather arbitrary which ones he said were legitimately unanswered vs. "you really need an answer?" vs. "here's my theory, and that means it's been answered".

It's a pretty fair criticism to say that there were a ton of tantalizing mysteries that were presented as important to the story which they never even tried make pay off down the line.

I agree with @NetRunner. The movieline "answers" are a snarky list of "So what?"

I now get the flash sideways thing, and I actually like that when they die they all meet in this place that exists indifferent to space/time. But a cool melodramatic tearjerking ending where everyone is rejoined in the afterlife (Except for the black people. What's up with that?) does not excuse the show creators from paying off the nearly countless mysteries they set up.

And I disagree with @dystopianfuturetoday, the BSG ending was not great but it was at least satisfying. They didn't leave any unanswered questions, as far as I remember. Sure their answers were arguably lazy, but at least they were answers!

^I bumped into some pretty angry Lost fans at my gig today. The writers should open up a Q&A forum online and answer all the unanswered questions. They owe it to the die-hard fans. Maybe they could even make some kind of video addendum to tack on to the series. I'm sure people would tune in.

@dystopianfuturetoday I think if they did that, they'd just get lynched when it became clear that their answer to everything is "I don't know".