ok, Snoop just made up for all my bad feelings
I’m happy they were fake. I hate real alternate endings, because they seem to cheapen the actual ending.
Having popped in from time to time over the years to drop a post or two, then disappear, I wanted to thank everyone for your insights and thoughts - they’ve been a vastly entertaining and enlightening read, and I have always thought of this as the definitive LOST forum for my limited fanwank time.
Like BlackKnight, I don’t have much to say except that I’m pretty happy with it, and getting more so the more I think about it. I think it was quite straightforward, though definitely open to interpretation as to whether the ALT was purely Jack’s afterlife, or some sort of combined consciousness. I like that several interpretations could all be correct, and I very much doubt that TPTB will ever clear it up for us.
I was a little disappointed that Christian Shepherd had to come in and explain it all, but then with that name, who else could?
Speaking of, there was a wheel in the stained glass window at the end. Was that a reference to the frozen donkey wheel or something else? I’ve been thinking the last few episodes that the Jacob/MIB story was explaining a new religion, one born and practiced on the Island, and just as nonsensical and mixed up as any of those written down in the non-Island universe. It would be interesting if the stained-glass was a nod to that.
Negativity warning: Ever since the eye closed I’ve been trying to like what I saw - really trying to fanwank an explanation/theory/interpretation that salvages this finale. I have failed.
Once upon a time, a little boy was walking down the street. His family was very poor and he had not eaten in a long time. But today was his lucky day as he found a $20 bill. He was so excited. Across the street was a grocer. The little boy imagined how his family would be so happy when he came home with food for them all. He ran across the street, not aware of the oncoming bus…
… which missed him, then 30 years later, after he died, he hooked up with all the people in his life that were important to him.
What bugs me about this ending is they simply gave up on the story I invested my interest in and slapped a metaphysical sappy non-ending. I mean, it was rather well done in its own right - in particular the Sawyer/Juliet reunion and other. But once the big reveal was revealed, the momentum of the episode evaporated.
I call particular fowl on real Desmond saying, “I thought I’d go somewhere where we’d all be happy.” This lead me to believe that he was about to go somewhere - and become “Alt-Desmond” and thence save the day in some yet-to-be-revealed-but-must-certainly-be-interesting fashion.
But no, it was only a failed prank of the writers to somehow make the sixth-sense ending more, what, surprising?
Add up all of the hours spent in alt-timeline this season. Couldn’t that time have been spent in actually telling the rest of the story we’ve been following all these years?
The wheel in the stained glass window was almost surely a reference to Hinduism and the Wheel of Life. It really looked like they cribbed it from those lame “Coexist” bumper stickers.
Character-ending/getting the story beats right: a solid A. But as far as the mythology goes, a cop out. I know they said they wanted to avoid the “mitichlorians” scenario, but a little more about the reason the island was so important or maybe some connection between the island’s whole life/death powers and the end ending simply could not have hurt. They could have tied together more stuff without much effort. Instead, just more odd artifacts with no explanation.
Now that I that I think about it, anything else that the sideways could have been would have been a cheat: undoing deaths, breaking the story. So that means that a lot of the past two seasons was in the service of a season six fakeout. But it was a good fakeout, honestly. Christian Shepard definitely overdid it, but it took the characters where they needed to go.
The window was extremely ecumenical. Even if Jack got the Christian Shepherd explanation, other Losties might be seeing things differently.
Ben couldn’t leave because he had papers to grade; can’t see Doctor Ben Linus leaving his students in the lurch. (Locke was only a substitute, after all.) As other have said, he wants to spend a bit more time with his daughter & the non-crazy French lady.
I don’t have anything profound to say right now. But seeing all the Losties in their Alt World made me want to see those actors in a bunch of different roles. Glad they got a chance to get out of those rags & clean up at the end.
One interesting thing to note – Smokey never smoked-out at all in the finale. I had kind of expected some serious smoke-action in the last battle. Of course, changing the island so that he no longer was Smokey but just a man made sense in terms of “how the hell do you kill him” thing. Hard to kill him when he’s smoke. I think I’d just expected a bigger battle than the Jack / Locke fight on the cliff.
I did enjoy Jack going all “I’m BATMAN” at him, though.
Dead??!! WTF!
And I just have to say that I am really glad Ben made it all the way to the end and even got some nice redemption scenes. I’ve liked Michael Emerson for years before he ever appeared on LOST and he immediately became one of my favorite characters. There were several episodes where I feared he’d be killed so it really pleased me to see him happy at the end. He said on Jimmy Kimmel he’d be back in NYC soon so I hope we see him back on stage in the future!
While doing the dishes, I suddenly had this thought: Jack doesn’t really have a son. Locke even confirmed it. Yet Jack apparently conceived and raised a 15-year-old imaginary being in Purgatory. WTF? Is this a holographic kid run on God’s fancy AI software? Aren’t Dead Jack and Dead Juliet going to be mighty disappointed when they learn their offspring is really imaginary? Why invent him if he is just going to turn out to be an illusion? A truly bizarre (and stupid, IMO) choice on the part of the writers.
I totally agree on the Michael Emerson front. He is one of my favorites. I am hoping for a spin-off set in an Alternate Flash Sideways Forward and Backward Universe starring solely John Locke, Ben Linus, Mr. Eko, Sawyer, and Hurley for comic relief. Juliet and Charlotte can also visit (yowza). Kate’s mother has been killed Terminator style in this universe, so Kate never existed.
I’m of two minds - as a finale episode, it was lovely. All the major and minor characters came back, we got to see pivotal/memorable scenes again. There were heartfelt reunions. Juliet & James, sigh. (The right way to re-unite a separated couple, not like the crap that was the Sun/Jin reunion, though seeing the two of them with the in utero Ji Yeon was nicely done). There were callbacks to previous scenes and set ups. That part went well.
The rest, though, they relegated the entire ALT timeline to meaninglessness and a waste of time. That they were all in limbo removes the urgency from anything that anyone did. Why did Desmond hit Locke with a car? Why the kidnappings & jailbreak? Why force this meeting at that time? Seeing that this is the place when you go when you’re dead, and we know that they didn’t all have to go in at exactly the same time, sooner or later, they’d all have worked their way in. The things that happened in ALT that either illuminated the characters or let them work through their issues (Ben’s story, parts of Jack’s, parts of Locke’s) - great. The things that were climactic/action oriented (The Kwons’ story. Sayid & Hurley, what I remember of ALT-Sawyer with the exception of “hey, he’s a cop,” damn near everything to do with Desmond) were just filler. And poorly thought out filler at that.
Which is my overarching problem with the series. There was a lot of poorly thought out stuff that ended up being filler. Serialized storytelling is very, very difficult. It’s hard enough to give every hour a decent dramatic structure. Trying to do that 120 times on a micro-level while creating a grander macro structure is tough and the LOST creators failed at it. At first, they blamed it on not knowing when the series would end. But they were given an end date 3 years ago and have been able to count down for 50 episodes, and based on this season they apparently didn’t plot out the big picture. And that’s disappointing. If this was the ending, the wrap-up they wanted, they wasted a lot of time with irrelevant plotlines, irrelevant characters, and wholly irrelevant episodes. I didn’t need “Across the sea” for this ending. I sure as hell didn’t need “Ab Aeterno.” (Really, I didn’t learn anything about Richard-as-a-personality in his backstory that I didn’t already know. It would have been just as satisfying to stare at Nestor Carbonell reading a phone book).
It’s not like I’ve not wasted time watching TV before. (I used to watch One Life to Live for goodness sakes). But this had the veneer of being more than it was. I’m disappointed by the man behind the curtain.
The wheel is a Buddhist motif. There was also the Hindu “Om” symbol in the window
Lovely, weepy, yadda yadda.
I’ll agree (partially) with Kimmel that this season focused mainly on Jack Sheppard. He may have been diverted to the AWR when the plane shook before landing in “LA_X”.
Still, what about all the time flashes seasons ago? Were they dead then? From the start? What of the numbers? What of Dharma? What of the golden toilet? And who the hell built the waterfall bathroom and the decor? Don’t look nothin’ like IKEA…
It would make SOME sense that this season was Jack’s “test” or life of importance.
I would’ve loved to see MiB and Locke get the living crap kicked out of them for bringing them there in the first place and having to deal with it.
I loved sharing thoughts with all the Dopers here. Thanks to all for that.
First off, cliff diving. I have cliff dived in Hawaii, although off a waterfall and not into the ocean. But never would I have, as a non-professional diver, dived HEAD FIRST into the ocean from a huge height into water possibly hiding rocky underwaters.
Let’s do good news then bad news…
WIN WIN:
-
The episode worked on an emotional level, with regard to the ends for the character on the island and in the “afterlife”.
-
The combination of Kate’s “nothing can’t be reversed” and the unplugging and replugging in of the snack machine together were a good foreshadowing of Jack’s unplugging and replugging of the island light.
-
I don’t like that Lost resorted to the afterlife, but I approve of it’s afterlife model: it was non/multisecular with the stained glass window of the church, 2) it has multi levels: regular life, stuck on the island afterlife of the whispers, heaven of resolving what you think you still need vs what you actually need, and then going into the light when you are truly ready to move on…
-
Kate loves Jack, Sawyer loves Juliet (but Jack had a kid with Juliet) …
-
Meta moments “aren’t you the obvios choice?”
-
Sawyer’s comment about Jack’s plan being a ‘long con’.
-
Kate kills MIB: shades of Angel finale.
AMBIGUOUS:
- So who was ready to move on / in the church??
Still totally in purgatory: Ana Lucia (why?), the original Sawyer: obvious, Ben( not quite redeemed, or wanting time with Alex and Rouseau?) & Alex & Rouseau (and Rouseau’s original hubby), Widmore/Eloise/Daniel/Charlotte - one happy family? Eko & Yemi ?Richard/Isabella? Miles? Jack’s son (only exists in afterlife)? Michael (still an island ghost whisperer) & Walt & Vincent? Helen?
At the church / ready to move on together: Jack & Kate & Christian, Boone & Shannon & Sayid, Rose & Bernard, Sawyer & Juliet, Hurley & Libby (Libby’s original husband??), Locke (Helen??), Desmond & Penny (Charlie 2??), Charlie & Claire & Aaron, Jin, Sun (and Ji Yeon as fetus??).
FAIL FAIL:
-
The flashsideways as “afterlife” might have worked if the producers hadn’t insisted that they wouldn’t resort to “snowglobe” or “purgatory”. In this sense, though at least there was a happy ending, it still wreaked of “flash-sideways is not real”.
-
The whole what the fuck happened at Jacob’s cabin goes unexplained.
-
MIB was never really more than mundanely evil - almost everyone on the island has murdered or killed someone at some point. Nothing would have happened if he had left before he became smokified as far as we can tell. Even if he had left after smokification, it’s not clear that he was a huge danger. It’s also not clear what exactly was the danger of the light going out.
MISSING:
-
I would have made the sideways more ‘real’ and relevant. Maybe have them "wake up’ with both regular and sideways memories, and then realize that the ‘light going out’ made them empty or presented some other danger, and then they all return to the sunken island to replug the cave and resurrect the island…
-
They really needed to show the island in it’s entirety from the air. I mean, come on, they could have done it when the Ajira left, or if they had the sideways folk return.
-
It wasn’t really clear why they couldn’t have just all left on the boat or why the plane was able to leave without the correct heading (except for the light being out at the time).
-
It would have been nice to get a little more island history.
-
It might have been nice to see some of the regular timeline off island stuff - Claire reuniting with Aaron especially. A hint at Sawyer plus Kate maybe?
-
Lack of Walt / Aaron!
-
A shot of Locke actually turning into the MIB, and/or Jack also getting smokified.
Had I not been in the presence of someone annoying butch I would have cried several times.
[quote=“Mahaloth, post:28, topic:540459”]
[li]The final shot will be of an eye closing.[/li][li]Jack will figure out that the only way he can defeat the smoke monster is by becoming one himself.[/li][/LIST]/QUOTE]
Eye: uncanny, dude!
Smoke monster: I’m still not clear on why Jack didn’t become a smoke monster!
Yep! I wonder if there were any redshirts time traveling lol.
LOL yeah, but that’s intentional. I was thinking the same thing. But it’s nice to see characters acting on outdated info.
LOL @ Jack and Sawyer’s comment about the ultimate long con… turns out they were both right…
I never understood this complaint. Doesn’t the FCC or whatever regulate the amount of commercials? I think this is based solely on the proportion of commercial near the beginning vs end of the episode. For example, if I recall correctly, Alias was interesting with regard to having an absurdly ling opening sequence, but balancing it with longer commercial breaks after that point.
Nice. OTOH… what’s the final verdict with regard to Locke? He was right about the island being important, and about some of his thoughts about the island (and the button) being important, however, he was wrong about the smoke monster being the avatar of the island (or at least about it having the island’s best interests in mind). But in the end he was just a pawn in the LONG CON of the MIB…
Who was beating her up in the FS? I didn’t quite catch that. I know that the actress wasn’t able to appear til the last episode due to other filming commitments…
Hehe common tvtrope, but also possible real life trope… to get overly anxious husbands and bystanders “out of the way” by giving them something to do…
I was in hysterics too, but at the obvious “300” Sparta trope of warrior jumping up and coming down from a higher position…
I liked Ben’s redemptions…
What? She hit Locke. Every single time.
Especially when eating oranges.
It has a light side, a dark side, and binds the universe together.
Yeah… I’ve heard that some of the random things they considered unimportant get covered in a “fun” DVD extra.
Ben= Richard, but otherwise, yes.
IDK why Jack isn’t smokified. I understand why he escaped - the end of the waterfall river ends up downstream of the cave, as we saw previously with the MIB body stripped of it’s agency. But I don’t understand why he didn’t get smokified.
Yeah… the show failed somewhat as a mystery story, but it succeeded totally as a relationship / emotional arc story.
I generally loved it. But with regards to the church scene, I agree.
As we saw with MIB’s body, the river washes outside of the save somewhere.
We’ve seen that the island is on top of some kind of ‘light’ (people theorize some kind of strange matter meteorite), and that the way to utilize it’s powers it to pour water on it. The light well seems to be the ultimate utilization of this.
No. Not at all. Not even a little bit. Christian says “it was all real!”. However…
Yes, the sideways-flash all season six long does appear to be the afterlife. Moreover it does seem to be heaven. But not quite “move on from heaven and reunite with God” until the very very end.
Well… I understand the writer’s desire to have their cake and eat it too. In this sense it worked, but I would have made the “eat it too” part (flashsideways) be more appetizing by making it an actual alternate timeline and not an afterlife.
Yeah I was surprised how quickly they got to the cave.
I agree with Eloise, although I guess some of that can be explained with Daniel’s notebook. What bathtub room?
Agreed.
Agreed. I suspect this was an actor availability issue though.
LOL!
Well sticking Nadia with his brother was a guilt thing. He didn’t feel good enough to be with her. But Shannon was always a “fresh start” romance for him. Plus (meta) a way to get Shannon in the finale.
Well yeah. The well of light did seem a little bit ‘alien astronaut’.
LOL and MIB as MJ…
That’s the wheel of dharma from buddhism.
Did anyone notice what the actual ‘denomination’ of the church was? Was there a shot of the sign in this or any other episode? If it actually existed I would imagine some sort of ‘interfaith’ sort of thing.
Yeah this was odd. At least we saw the original MIB “smoke out” on Jimmy Kimmel’s “Connect four million.”
I really liked the finale. I think it helped that I went in not expecting answers to everything. I do understand those who may have opposing feelings about this ep.
An announcement from the Jimmy Kimmel Aloha to Lost show is in the post-show Hulu/JKL Q&A session: it confirms that the Blu-ray release (August 24) will answer some of questions that were left open to interpretation in the finale.
Here’s my collection of questions of my own/thread participants/those who I watched the show with that I hope they’ll answer:
Why aren’t some of the characters from the show in the church at the end?
How does Eloise know that some folks aren’t ready?
Why is the beach empty (except for the still intact plane fragments) in the ending credits?
Questions I’d be happy if they answer, but understand if they don’t:
Who was in the other outrigger and shooting at Juliet/Sawyer/Locke/Daniel/Miles/Charlotte in the rowing scene when the time flashes were still going on?
How is “this place” in the church created?
When did each of folks in the church die?
Why is Christian there at the end?
I personally am okay with the POV that the finale smells like a bit of a money-grab for the final DVD/Blu-ray release–I see it as a reward for the creators/cast for 120+ hours of thought-provoking entertainment (available for preorder at under $200 on DVD/Blu-ray on Amazon!). After this finale, I do really hope that ABC won’t bring back Lost in the future (even in movie form).
What a fantastic ending…
…to a different show. This isn’t the Lost I started watching years ago. At any rate, I found the ending emotionally moving for some damned reason even though I barely understood what was happening at the time I was watching it.
But again, as a final to what used to be an interesting show, it failed spectacularly.
Hm.
Here is how I’m processing this:
Island
**Logic: C **
If you ignore the fact that no one knows why they have to protect the light, and you don’t mind a certain number of mysteries not being solved, it kind of hangs together. It certainly works within the frame they’ve set up over the past dozen episodes or so.
Emotional Impact: A
I liked the callback with Jack (and Vincent!). They did a lot of things they should. I thought Kate’s declaration of love was off-key, but otherwise it pretty much all worked. Matthew Fox knocked it out of the park.
Alternate Time Line
Logic: D-
OK, it’s all just the Cosmic Waiting Room. WHY all the messing about with people having to almost “die” to remember, Desmond having to run around reminding people, all the logistics, and the stuff with Daniel’s diary? Answer: To Fuck With The Audience. It doesn’t hold together in any sensible way - they just needed viewers not to realize it was the Cosmic Waiting Room until the end.
Emotional Impact: A-
I’m taking off some points because if the logic doesn’t make sense, it undermines the impact (such as pointed out above about Jack’s phantom son). But damn, it was great seeing everyone remember each other (especially James and Juliet), and the actors all did a beautiful job. I was bawling a lot. Also, they hit the right notes in the “church” (loved the set dressing!).
So that comes out to about a B. That feels right. And about what I expected, maybe a little higher.
Wow. What a horrible, horrible ending. It has now replaced Quantum Leap as the most disappointing series finale of any show I have watched.
It wasn’t purgatory. Pay attention to what Jack’s father said.