Agreed. I think Smokey is a separate entity, and anyone going into the light cave gets absorbed into Smokey somehow. It wouldn’t make sense for Mother to also be Smokey (why would she manifest as Claudia and rat herself out).
I’m actually OK with Desmond not getting smokified - he’s proven to be immune to whatever Power is going on. And I’m OK with Jack not smoking either - he was a) already mortally wounded, and b) maybe it’s something about entering the cave while the lights are on that does it (they were off when he went in).
Claudia was actually a ghost. We’re able to tell who is a ghost and who is smoky on Lost by who can see them. Only certain people can see ghosts. Everyone can see smoky.
Nothing personal, as I’m not bashing your theory, but I can’t resist this set-up…
“Rectify”? Is that when you pull an explanation out of your ass?
Well, I’ll put myself in the camp of those that gave this a thumbs down. I still liked the series, but what a goofy ending. I’m sure they’re going to say there’s no one explanation and everyone should take out of it what they will. But that’s just sloppy writing, meaning they didn’t have any particular idea of what they were doing.
I went in with the attitude that I was OK with not getting all the answers. I decided to enjoy whatever the writers manipulated me into feeling. I loved this series. What happened, happened.
I expected to cry; I didn’t expect to sob for 105 minutes.
Good point, I can’t disagree. I can’t say I feel “cheated” although I do think the writers punted on the basic question of what would have happened if MiB had made it off the island, and why. (I’ll add that the original MiB’s motivation for wanting to leave, when he was among the other people who had come to the island, may have been different than the motivation of Smokey/FLocke. In his younger days, MiB seemed to just want to go back to be with people and get away from Mom. Later it seemed that he wanted to wreak some kind of havoc.)
I’ve tried to write this a few times but I can’t seem to put into words exactly what I’m thinking. This will probably come out wrong as well.
I’m going to go with the “What happened, happened” rule. Christian reiterated it in the finale. He also said, “There is no now”.
The island, from the very beginning seemed to have a problem with the normal flow of time. It was always a little “unstuck” in time. People on the island can be a little unstuck in time as well. Some people are more aware of this “unstuck” property than others; Desmond, for instance. Some people, like Jacob and MiB, can, to some extent, manipulate this unstuckness.
So, the events on the island and the events in the ATL all really happened. It’s just that, for most of them, the two timelines were completely separate memorywise. Only Desmond had a sense of both timelines at the same time. The final scene in the church occurs when all the ‘island’ timelines are ended by the fact that the last person has died (maybe one of the kids Cindy had with her) and is simply Desmond getting everyone together to ‘merge’ the two timelines. In my mind, they all get up and wander out of the church to resume life in the ATL.
As for the mechanism for all this, we don’t get to know. The one central feature of the island is the glowing light and we will never know what that is, whether it is mystical or magical or some advanced alien technology. Everything else on the island was brought or built by humans who came to the island to explore it’s mysteries but who had no more clue as to the true nature of the island then we do. All we get to see are it’s effects.
Maybe I missed it, but did they explain why Jack passed the baton on to Hurley? I mean, Jack had to be the shortest lived Island Protector everrrrrrrr.
No. Come on now. I don’t understand why people are trying to make this more complicated than it is. The final shot of Jack’s eye was simply as a visual bookend to how the show first began. The whole series was not some instantaneous imaginary flash in Jack’s mind before his died. :rolleyes: That’s just… stupid.
Just finished watching it last night and finally caught up on the thread here.
I’m firmly in the “great ending” camp. The island turned out to be a real place (not the purgatory or hell cop-out that many expected), the alt-timeline was a shared afterlife of a sort, bound together by the fact that the crash of Oceanic 815 on the island was the most significant event in their lives (sort of like the ending to Titanic, where Rose, upon dying, finds herself reunited with all the Titanic victims). Plenty of tear-jerker moments, loved the fact that Sun and Jin got a better last scene than their death in the submarine.
At first I thought of the whole alt-timeline to have been a total waste, because it was introduced this season, and served no purpose other than for itself. But then I realized it did - Desmond knew of it, and that’s what motivated him to pop the cork on the island. Clearly, the “light” of the cave is some sort of fusion of soul and electromagnetism, allowing Desmond to sense the afterlife, even though he didn’t fully understand what it was.
The one thing that I really felt they did wrong by not explaining was the Island’s connection to ancient Egypt - statue of Egyptiant goddess, heiroglyphics everywhere, including one depicting the smoke monster - I was expecting to discover that “Mom” (from two episodes ago) was that goddess or a descendant or reincarnation of her, and that all the significant Losties are descended/reincarnated from Egyptian dieties as well. Ah well.
Still, an excellent series wrap-up, both emotional and not cop-out-ish.
I enjoyed the ending. It wasn’t perfect, but it was satisfying. Most of what I would say has already been said in this thread, so I won’t rehash. But I am glad I spent the last 6 years watching the show. Thanks, Lost!
I assume the Island has had many things happen on it and it has an old history. I am surprised they didn’t have an episode that showed various key moments over it’s huge history. Would have been a cool episode.
We can guess a little about why the hieroglyphics were there. MiB and Jacob were the children of a Latin speaking woman who washed up on shore. This suggests that the island used to be in the Mediterranean. From what we know, the island couldn’t move until the MiB built the wheel, so most likely the island was in one place until some time after the events of Across the Sea.
If so, the Egyptians were probably the first to find it, and the first to set up the guardians of the light. We also know that the guardian can set the rules for how easy it is to get to the island. So getting the materials and manpower to build the temple and statue wouldn’t be a problem with a friendly guardian.
At some point the island gets depopulated and Mommy takes over.
Yeah, I would like to have seen when Island Protector Og makes some scratches on a cave wall. Maybe 4 slashes, then 8, then 15, 16. Then Og scratches his head-- he can’t count any higher than 20 (fingers plus toes).
