Series Finale: Lost

[moonshayde]

I came to this show only two seasons ago, short seasons, so this didn't impact me as much as it might have others. Still, Lost, you had a good run.



Okay, so WTF? You know, I wondered if they were going to go with the whole dead thing and in a way, they did. I had always wondered if the show was about some kind of purgatory, about making the right choices to move onto some better place after you die. I always thought maybe the island was it. My guess is the writers purposefully made it not.

I guess the alt world was just some purgatory type holding place for those who have died. Only the cast of characters loved each other so much, they waited for each other so they could all move on together. Some died early, some died now, and some died in the future. Time was irrelevant because in that place, they all met.

Which is all very philosophical and poignant. And really the way they closed the story with Jack closing his eye to parallel him opening it at the beginning of the series was brilliant. Still, the way I am I am not wholly satisfied, but with these type of shows I never will be. That's just me ;)

I did realize something that I never realized before: this show ran on PAIRINGS like whoa. Really. Like every other flash of insight was someone touching or kissing someone else.

Didn't stop me from crying, though ;)

I guess the alt verse runs on fan service, eh? LOL

Lots of clues sprinkled throughout. Locke saying Jack didn't have a son. "Moving on." Some people not ready to go in to the multi-denominational church. Hurley telling Ben he "was" a great No2. real!Desmond's confusion. Earlier episodes pointed to this as well: Charlie seeing/feeling some great light and being pulled back. Daniel's mom's reluctance to let him go. Perhaps even the name Christian Sheppard. And of course Jack's injuries.

Guess why we know Hurley was all leaderlike this season.

They never answered half of the questions I had and I never expected them to. I suppose on a show like this it's bound to fall short of the hype and anticipation around it. But it was one of the better shows on TV and it will be sad to see it go. As a more casual viewer, I will even miss it. But I hope the cast and crew enjoyed the run and they move on to even greater things.

Comments

[grav-ity.livejournal.com]

I wonder if I liked it so much because I don't know what half the questions were? And I'm just all happy that they're together and SHANNON AND SAYID ARE TOGETHER!!!! (seriously, that's not wearing off for a while.)

Also, I am a finale junkie. I even like the dumb ones. ;) So I am probably not the best judge.

I see your point, though. But I'm still good.

[moonshayde.livejournal.com]

Don't get me wrong. I thought it was a very good finale. It's just impossible to live up to my expectations. TV show finales rarely do. That said, this is one of the better ones I have ever seen.

[grav-ity.livejournal.com]

I'm very glad I got to watch it on an ABC stream instead of a Canadian one. The Target commercials were FANTASTIC. ;)

[ldyanne.livejournal.com]

I've been watching since the very first episode. I didn't expect them to end it, or answer all the questions (I would have liked a *few* more answers though!). I'm pretty satisfied in what we got.

I don't think the sideways world was purgatory in the way we think of it. Some people were happier, some people were in a worse place, it was just different. It was more of a waiting room until everyone was ready to move on together. Desmond was the driving force in that, bringing everyone together so that once Jack was ready, they could all move on together.

That last shot over the closing credits is the one that stays with me. I don't know if the wreckage was the plane with Sawyer & Company or if it was a new plane and the cycle is starting over again.

They certainly gave us a lot to think about and talk about! And I think that's what they (TPTB) wanted.

[moonshayde.livejournal.com]

See to me, the waiting room is a form of purgatory. That's the closest explanation or example I can give for it. Purgatory can be a happy place or not so happy. It's the place where you go before you are ready to move on and you have to work out some of your issues first. So that is why I use it as an example.

I wondered about that last shot. I didn't know if that was the plane that took off or if that was a new plane. I can't see Hurley being all, yeah let's crash some planes!! So I don't know.

[meg-tdj.livejournal.com]

Wait, did I miss something? What last shot? The only plane I saw was Frank and co's flying over before Jack's eye closed and it ended.

[moonshayde.livejournal.com]

In the credits, they showed the beach with plane wreckage. There seems to be some debate over whether it was just a shot of wreckage to remind you of how it all began, if another plane had crashed, or if Lapidus and crew didn't quite make it.

[aurora-novarum.livejournal.com]

Oh, I think that was just pictures of the set they had used for years. A final farewell to their show.

The last "Shot" was Jack's eye closing after seeing his friends make it to freedom.

Perhaps rather than purgatory, "limbo" would be a better analogy?

[moonshayde.livejournal.com]

That's what I think. I've just seen some debate about it.

Oh, and I'm not sure limbo works either. It wasn't really a non-state.

[meg-tdj.livejournal.com]

Wow. We just got an ad for Dancing With the Stars or something, so I'll choose to believe it didn't have anything to do with the actual story.

[claudiapriscus.livejournal.com]

I was a hardcore Lost junkie during Season 1. I was abroad at the time, and if you were on the university network, they had everything so locked down that the only way to get copies of shows was someone would download them elsewhere and then share them on the network. Someone put up Lost, and soon we were all staying up until 4am, watching four episodes at a time.

But then in mid-season 2, it got kind of stupid so I quit watching. I always thought that if ended well, well enough to justify the emotional investment, I might go back and watch it all. I've been reading reactions, trying to gauge whether it did or not. It's all staying very ambigious, though.

[moonshayde.livejournal.com]

Honestly, I think it had one of the better endings I've seen on a show.

I didn't ever watch this show on my own. Wasn't interested. My brother and I did a trade off: I would watch Lost with him if he would watch SPN with me. So I became a fan of the show late and he became a fan of SPN. Still, I'm the bigger SPN fan and he is the bigger Lost fan.

He loved S1 and he loved this finale. There are a lot of parallels between this one and the pilot. I have some nitpicks, but overall I'm satisfied.

I guess my advice would be if you like fantasy/scifi type shows, Lost becomes more and more one of those kind of genre shows as time passes. If you don't like that sort of thing, you might not like the other seasons.

S3 really hits a bad slump, imo, before it picks up toward the end. I enjoyed S4, S5, and S6.

[a-phoenixdragon.livejournal.com]

*hugs*

[aurora-novarum.livejournal.com]

I thought the connecting thing was love. Once they connected with their love (like for Sun & Jin, it wasn't actually each other, but their love for their baby on the sonogram--which is good because they really screwed her with that self sacrifice), they saw the whole...not just flashes (like Charlie did earlier in the season). But it's nice they all connected with each other and waited for each other.

I also think the island was more an Eden.

Ben's not ready yet. He wants to enjoy normal family with Rousseau and their daughter and connect with them.

I thought afterwards (and others have felt this as well), this show really had a "Narnian" ending. It kind of fit.

[moonshayde.livejournal.com]

I thought it was obvious the connecting theme was love. Look at all the pairings LOL

But it went beyond that because they all waited for each other - in that other place - until not only they were ready to move on, but everyone was ready to move on. Or at least Jack was since Ben was still sitting out there and didn't go in.

I think the island had a lot of Eden themes, but I fall short from seeing it as an Eden.

All in all, it was one of the better finales I've seen.

[gategrrl.livejournal.com]

It sounds a helluva lot like the finale to Ashes to Ashes (and Life on Mars, original Brit version).

[gategrrl.livejournal.com]

And why was Hurley all leader-like? Was he the "angel" moving them on?

[moonshayde.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't say Hurley was an "angel," no. It's just this season, on the island, Hurley has been very much a leader. He's been the one guiding and directing people which is a far cry from what he did in the earlier seasons. In the end, he ended up being the one to guard and protect the island.

[meg-tdj.livejournal.com]

I SO loved the thing with Hurley. It confused me for a while why his luck was so much better and he was so much more confident in the alt!timeline, but if he'd already lived who-knows-how-many-years on the island as the leader, it makes sense that he would be so much more confident and in control of himself once he remembered. And I LOVE that it was him who really took over for Jacob. He was always the trustworthy caretaker and cheerleader of everybody right from day 1.

[moonshayde.livejournal.com]

Oh really? As I've never watched either show, in what way?

[gategrrl.livejournal.com]

Do you know the premise of the two shows? In each one, a policeman or woman is shot back in time (to the 70s and the 80s, respectively) after either an accident or a shooting. The very last episode explains that the place they're all in is a between place until the police-souls are ready to move on, and that Gene, the main co-lead in both series, is actually a shepard (or archangel, as the creators explain it) helping them move on into the next life.

[moonshayde.livejournal.com]

Yeah that parallel doesn't work for Lost as a whole. Lost only introduced this alt/sideways verse this past year. Everything freaky happening on the island for the past 6 years is reality. But before they "move on" after death, they all created this alternate reality to wait for each other.

Though, one of the characters, Christian Shepard, could be seen sort of an a shepard.

Ashes to Ashes spoilers-don't read if you don't want to know!

[gategrrl.livejournal.com]

It sounds like it is, though: an afterlife, souls waiting to go further into it after they're ready (for whatever reason), creating their own way-station--in the case of Ashes to Ashes, Gene, who takes the police to the "pub" when they're ready to go further on, was himself a policeman who was murdered in 1953. As far I know there's no explanation for how he came to be in charge, or if he's actually making up for his own actions in life.

Plus the two/three series have a mysterious "place" involved, that a mystery to at least one or more of the characters there.