No, they specifically stated that it wasn’t, right?
I mean when i first started watching the DVD’s from the beginning before season 4 started, it smacked of purgatory to me. but i thought they said it wasn’t the case.
I see the alternate timeline as a purgatory-type holding area for everyone to connect and be happy. But when did they die? the closing shots showed an un-molested (i.e not stripped for parts) plane with nary a survivor. How does the fact that they all died in the plane crash jivee with juliet/ben living on the island.
But if they all just died at different times and had to wait for Jack to die to meet them all, that would intimate that hurley and ben predeceased him? Or maybe his soul had to accept his death before he moved on? Then again, Why did the Nuke start off the purgatory ALT timeline?
fuckers. i wanted to know about the Statue. And who built all of that shit in the “bathroom”
Despite future vagueness from the writers, this is what they were going for. It’s quite clear. I don’t get this whole “everyone died in the 1st episode” stuff. Very well summarized by Kinthalis.
Loved it. Loved loved loved absolutely freaking loved it. The only false note was Sayid/Shannon, but they’d already brought Nadia in, so what were they gonna do.
The alterna-reality was, in fact, a kind of mini-Limbo; everything in the “real” reality happened, with the endpoint being Jack dying, Hurley becoming Number One and the plane flying away. Then, as the years went on, everyone else died, and they all eventually found each other, got to say the things they’d wanted to say, and prepare to move on.
Put aside any knee-jerk WTFs and ask yourselves: how could they have possibly wrapped this up any better and still be fulfilling. They kept the focus where it mattered, and where they’d always been successful: on the characters. Everyone (well, most everyone) got to resolve, find peace, and move on. I think it was lovely. Flawed? Yeah, I guess. But perfectly lovely and smart.
(The shots of the plane were the shooting locations, and sort of a little mini-retrospective for the crew. They came after the final “LOST” sign, so they’re not canon; I think it was the producers saying goodbye to the set.)
The powers that be repeatedly said they knew what the final image would be. They may have even hinted at the eye, but they used the eye opening so much that I think it became obvious it would be an eye. I kind of thought it might be an eye opening again but the closing eye made more sense.
If we accept the the remains on the beach over the ending credits as pertaining to the story proper there’s only one explanation. If we accept it as thematic of the initial crash then it’s simply representative of the show itself.
Everything that happened on the island really happened. In the end, Hurley and Ben stayed behind to protect it (for a very long time, judging by Christian’s comments) and Sawyer, Kate, et al left. What happened to them? Who knows. The flash-sideways was their afterlife. The bomb had nothing to do with it. Daniel was right all along, “What happened, happened.”
I am completely satisfied and happy. And I’ll leave this thread so as not to get bogged down in negativity.
Holy shit, guys. You know what they just did, right?
Remember back in season one when everyone was saying, “They’re all dead and in Purgatory!” And the producers swore that no, they were NOT in Purgatory? Well, they waited six years for us to forget that theory. Then they introduce the Alternate Timeline, and we spend all season trying to figure out what the hell that is. And guess what, folks:
I think all the on-island scenes are “real” enough. The debris on the beach was always there after the plane crash.
I think that when Desmond removed the plug, that simply had the effect of de-smokifying Locke and turning him into just the not-Locke persona, in a true mortal body - and finallhy making him killable.
Agree with Sayid spending eternity with Shannon vs. Nadia, that was strange. Maybe that was Shannon’s heaven.
Shouldn’t Alex have been in the church?
And what was afterlife-Ben planning to do? just hang around and enjoy the not-quite-Heaven for a bit?
On the “real” island: let me check my tally: Hurley (new Jacob), Ben (no powers but loves the island), Rose, Bernard, Vincent and Desmond. Anyone else left behind? I think not-Locke slaughtered everyone else at the Temple, right?
They went to the light cave at ~8:45 CDT, not 10 as I would have guessed.
If it wasn’t for the scene on the beach, I’d say it was prettty straitforward - Hurley is Jacob, Ben is Richard, Jack dies, everyone else goes on. The church is limbo (for lack of a better term) where everyone agrees to meet when they die.
But I’m not sure what the scene on the beach means.
I would still like closure on how Eloise knew all that shizzle about the island in the “real timeline”
And who built the bathtub room?
And where did fake-mommy come from.
I think it was left intentionally open ended: Was the reality this subset of Oceanic Flight 815 “survivors” (i.e. the main cast + a few others) created together the ALT timeline or was it the Island + the ALT timeline (i.e. everything in the entire series)? I’m going with the latter. Doing so remove a lot of questions such as, “what exactly is the island” and “how is it jumping through time”. Scientific explanations become unnecessary; it was all merely an elaborate construct to allow their souls to find each other to move on. And in the universe where Lost is set, humans possess souls that continue to exist after their bodies die.
You mean the wreckage scene when the credits were rolling. I just took that as a “here’s a visual reminder of what started it all, now that we’re rolling the credits and the whole series is over”, nothing more. I didn’t take the visual of the credits to be part of the actual ending or meaning of the end of the story.
How I saw it:
The handful of people got off the island on Ajira 316, and lived out their lives back on the mainland. For example, Claire got reunited with her baybay, Aaron. Kate helped. Lapidus did some more piloting. Most of them probably lived for a good while longer.
Hurley took over as the protector of the island, with Ben as his second. Hurley probably lived for many many many more years. Perhaps he eventually passed the torch onto a new protector. Who knows how long.
Jack dies of his wounds on the island. The last thing he sees is Ajira having just taken off and flying away overhead – he’s happy, knowing his friends made it off the island. Vincent lies next to him as he expires (dogs are good people).
Rose and Bernard happily live out their lives on the island, not getting involved.
Eventually everybody dies. Some already (Jin, Sun, Locke…). Some much later (Kate, Claire, Hurley). “Everyone dies sometime, kiddo. Some of them before you, some of them long after you,” said Christian Shepherd. “There is no ‘now’ here”.
ALT reality was not created by the bomb or by the island sinking, and it’s not a parallel reality (and never was). It’s a personal afterlife (or start thereof) our characters created for themselves – probably through how they wished for their lives to be (to some extent) if there had been no plane crash – and as Christian said, where their souls could find each other before moving on. Or perhaps the Afterlife Waiting Room (as somebody else said). Change ATL to AWR.
I’m in Northeast Ohio too, and thought it was just me at first too. In fact, even after they started showing that notice I still wasn’t sure, since I don’t always get the greatest reception anyway. Nice to connect with someone else who suffered through it similarly. After missing a line of dialogue for about the 17th time, I muttered to myself, “this is what I get for not having cable.”