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Lost Ends
Unless you live in a hatch somewhere, you are probably aware that Lost has ended. If you want a simple, clear explanation of exactly how the series resolved, Lost Untangled will do nothing to clarify things for you. For everyone else, I provide this discussion thread for you to complain/revel in the most spoiler-laden manner you desire.
Note: what follows is my own opinion. Many viewers that were more attentive than I were very satisfied with and emotionally moved by the ending.
... just unexplainable U-turns in morality and logic.
I've always been bicuriously Lost as the show would sometimes give me a feeling that something more was going on that would eventually be revealed. So, having caught a number of episodes early on, I started watching Season Five religiously in order to prepare myself for the ending. But at the end of Season Five with no end in sight and only more questions and more characters (and a freaking reset button that later turned out to be a multiverse splitting mechanism), I gave up. Until I watched the last episode last night in hopes that the island would have some greater meaning. It didn't. Well, it tried to I guess but everyone's got their own interpretation of what they saw last night.
So many questions I have went completely unanswered. Questions about Walt, why Faraday never recognized Desmond (the guy that unexpectedly gave him the constants to time travel one day) when Faraday landed on the island, the properties of the multiverses (some people seem to care about the futures of the other multiverse even though they shouldn't know about it until they're dead), why the black cloud killed who it did and left others (especially now that we know more about the black cloud), the list goes on and on. The worst of it is if you take each character individually and reassemble their timelines in sequential order that the episodes slowly piecemeal it out to you -- everyone is a goddamn psychotic sociopath. No rhyme or reason to the actions of half the characters. And it's not even Lord of the Flies neurosis
The show started out very concrete, real and physical and slowly absolved into symbolism with last night being such pure symbolism that you cannot say for sure when they died or what the afterlife was or what the church represented or where they went at the end when the doors were opened. It reminded me of a few anime series I watched in this respect where the shows digress into absolving themselves of anything earthly or logical in some sort of ethereal climax of visual and auditory sequence or cues. Problem was that none of Lost's resolutions sat well with me.
I sympathize with the writers as they had no idea how many seasons they would get but in the end I must admit I found the writing to be more or less utter drivel. Designed only to get you to keep watching with little if any satisfactory explanations. Everyone was a chaotic actor in the past, present and alternate multiverse. Writing that many flash sideways scenes as plot devices is -- quite frankly -- juvenile at best. Also the lead writer had refuted the theory that everyone was dead, in purgatory, in heaven or in hell. Yet, at the end they're clearly in some sort of afterlife.
The series offered closure on what happened eventually to everyone but no closure whatsoever as to what the island was and how its mechanations functioned -- even on a magical fantasy level. I was intrigued with Donnie Darko when the ending was left open to interpretation but Lost takes it to a whole new (unbearable for me) level. I hope other people enjoyed the ending but for me it was a complete indication not to devote anymore time to this series or these writers. Still better than 85% of what you'll find on TV but that isn't saying much.
They could have done a lot of neat things with tying down loose ends, explaining the island and completing their work. Instead they gave us this. And finally I see no further point in discussing it because there's no hope of ever explaining anything. Unlike a finely crafted classic novel, the grand symbolism and allusions are too abstract to nail down. So what's the point? Everyone's going to experience the series differently and for me it was just some guys writing a seria
My work here is dung.
Don't care, too stupid
It was just ok. Given that Battlestar was the last finale I watched, it handled similar material in a much better way. Given the terrible ways it could have ended, it was good enough. Some people will be mad that some questions were never answered, and I would have been happier if the last episode focused more on the island than the survivors, but really, given how they didn't have an ending written when they started the series, they did a fairly good job of cleanup.
Whether or not there is some sort of god, I'm not supposed to say/god is a word and the argument ends there-Smog
I'm tired of hearing you people constantly talk about this steaming pile of ass. Lost is, quite possibly, the most overrated show that has ever been on television.
And yes, I've watched it...a friend of mine convinced me to watch the first two seasons, and even that was almost impossible. How people obsess over this show completely eludes me.
Living With a Nerd
I am not much of a TV watcher but a coworker loaned me the DVDs to watch on the bus during my commute in the Fall of 2008 and I kept up with the show ever since. For the first two seasons I was riveted. The cliffhangers, the mystery, etc, etc, etc. With the first half of Season 3 the show started to fall apart. They came back with a clear vision in the second half, supposedly, but I never saw it materialize.
Yesterday I sat down with my wife (who only started watching it in Season 5) and we watched as nothing in the final episode answered any questions. No, the fucking light at the center of the island didn't tell us shit and that stupid fucking ending with some sort of allusion to the afterlife was absolutely stupid. People had been suspecting that all along and knowing that many people did you would have thought the writers, being paid as much as they were, would have come up with something more shocking than that--but they didn't.
I am glad that I only wasted two years of my life watching that show rather than the 6 many others did. It started with a plane wreck and it ended with one. We were all duped. The least they could have done was provide everyone watching with some of that Dharma beer in rusty cans to help ease the pain.
I remember the producers of Lost saying at some point either during or at the end of the first season that the mysteries of the island would all end up being explainable scientifically. Not necessarily pure science, but at least the sort of semi-plausible science-like stuff most sci-fi is built on. For most of the first two or three seasons they were flailing around, but for the most part it still seemed there could be a plausible explanation for everything. The introduction of Faraday and all of his scientific mumbo jumbo lent credence to that idea.
Then, over the past two seasons, the show took a sharp turn into religious territory and it became increasingly obvious they were going to take the easy way out and make it all into some ridiculous religious/spiritual allegory of some kind, albeit one so confused that no one would ever be able to make any real sense out of it. It reminded me of the Matrix, where the first movie was more sci-fi and the second and third were all a bunch of confused pseudo-religious nonsense.
I was primarily disappointed with their complete abandonment of any attempt to explain anything scientifically, and instead lean on a literal Deus Ex Machina by making the whole thing into a spiritual "God (or some other spiritual entity) did it". That sort of thing has been done to death. Hell, Battlestar Galactica was explicitly a religious allegory from the very beginning, and even it explained more stuff pseudo-scientifically than Lost did. Regardless of what they may say now, I think the Lost creators started out with a show that would have been much more scientifically based, but ended up having to extend it beyond what they thought they would. After wandering in the wilderness for much of seasons 2 through 4, they were backed into a corner and took the easy way out by waving the magic religion wand to "explain" everything away.
I gave up on "lost", it seemed to be a meandering plot with hints but no resolutions. I am about to give up on "flash forward" for the same reason.
I don't understand how being an athiest would deter you from watching a work of fiction. Clearly the imagery suggested in the show had nothing to do with a particular type of religion that exists. Also, nothing about this series would imply that there was going to be a rational ending to this show. I don't ever recall a scientific or rational explanation to anything.
I think the most revealing part was during the closing credits when they showed the wreckage on the beach with no people. My interpretation is that the entire series existed entirely in Jack's mind as the plane crashed and all passengers died on impact. Similar to the common cliche of one's "life flashing before their eyes" during a near-death experience, but in this case the result was actual death.
Many people who have a near-death experience describe comfort and moving toward a white light. This has been explained by science as the brain flooding itself with dopamine and other pleasure chemicals because it knows that it is dying and might as well go out feeling good. I think the series was an interpretation of that phenomenon - realizing that he had but seconds to live, Jack's brain created this vivid melodrama based on the wishful thinking that he'd actually survive the crash. The islands electromagnetic properties explain the crash, and the hope of reversing the crash and sending his life on a more fulfilling path (flash-sideways with Jack finding love, having a son, etc.) provides comfort.
With that being said, I think the writers took the easy way out and I'm quite disappointed having invested a significant amount of time in the series. I'm sure there will be plenty of post-game analysis and people will find tons of symbolism that was intended and even more that wasn't, so at least the discussion and speculation may fill my need for closure.
I've never seen the show either, but I imagine most shows with a "story" would run into this problem.
If you have the most awesome story, and make it a TV show, it could be great... until the story is over, but since it was successful "TV", more shows get ordered... but the story was already told, so you have no choice but to make stuff up. (And you have to do it on a schedule, whereas the first one might have taken years to conceive.)
Same reason most movie sequels suck too.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
I have never seen a single episode, it the whole series worth watching, now that it is over?
In a word, no. The show barely made sense watching it over the past 6 years as it was released. We continually got some hints that things might make sense eventually, but they never did. Inconsistencies from vaguely remembered episodes of 2 or 3 years ago kept popping up and giving this little feeling in the back of one's mind that the writers had no idea what they were doing. I suspect if you watched it all back to back it would make even less sense because the inconsistencies and utter nonsense would be that much more obvious.
I watched it from beginning to end, but I have absolutely no desire to watch it again, and I certainly won't be wasting money on the DVDs.
It wasn't all a dream. After the Losties died (after the very real events on and off the island), they went to purgatory, aka the flashsideways. Then, realizing that they were holding on to their fantasy about what life would have been like without the island, they accepted what happened to them and were set free.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Both The X-Files and Twin Peaks used this formula of just throwing more and more weird riddles and sci-fi mysteries at the viewer with answers always seemingly to come in just a few more episodes. I never saw Lost, but it sounds like a repeat of that. The Matrix series was a condensed movie version of this phenomenon. I wish writers would just come up with a story that has an ending and tell it. Joss Whedon seems to be the only TV writer who can actually manage to do that.
generic "mysticism"**
How is it generic, the guy who opened the door for them was "Christian Shepard", for fuck's sake!
Watch season one, and then pretend that it was canceled. Curse the network executives for doing so.
There you go, you got a better Lost experience than most of us who gave up on it later. Watching the rest is like volunteering to watch your neighbor's father as Alzheimer makes him lose his mind, and become a husk of himself.
It seems to me that a series is *so* much better when the writers KNOW what the ending will be BEFORE the series airs. This way, the entire series can work towards the ending, with the result being much more satisfying.
The subject above lists three series I felt were fucking epic, because the ending matched what the series was all about from the very first episode. It wasn't just "make shit up as you go along", and then after you've run out of material stringing your audience along for as long as you can, write up some mish-mash of an ending that really doesn't have anything to do with the rest of the series.
The Star Force got the Cosmo DNA and got back to Earth, The Alliance accidentally created the Reavers by trying to make paradise, and Sheridan kicked some Shadow ass (and paid the ultimate price, twice!).
I've never watched LOST, but I knew from the begining they had no plan to really end the series, so, I never bothered to even try to get into it. I'm sorry if you did. Next time, choose more wisely.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
No. The show is an empty promise, leading people on without any plan to resolve it. If you watch the first 3 seasons, you'll see weird things that you assume get explained later, but it never happens, and then in the 4th-6th seasons they're clearly just making stuff up as they go, and hoping that you'll forget prior mysteries. The show is all setup and every time you think it has gotten to Act 2 or even Act 3, the writers lose interest in the plot and decide you're in Act 1 again.
Lost is bad.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
are those who have to show up in a thread about lost and bash the show
i never got the show, but obsession with the show is completely harmless. i don't hold it against anyone
what bother me is people who don't like the show... but have to come in and shit all over someone else's harmless enjoyments
we all have our quirky likes and dislikes that are easy to ridicule or put down. so what? most socially well-adjusted folk don't have an irrational need to pick on others. if you do have such a need, this reveals nothing about lost, it reveals something about yourself: a poverty of character and some sort of unresolved self-hatred and self-loathing. lose your pathetic need to go out of your way to menace other people's harmless hobbies
oh who am i kidding... this is the internet. mindless negativity seems like that's what the internet was created for
carry on then, aggressively ultranegative losers. the internet is yours, unfortunately
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Parent is absolutely right. Shows like these succumb to their own success.
This is the problem that faced Lost from season 2 onward. It was never -meant- to be as many seasons long as it ended up being. But when you get such high ratings, the stations pretty much force you to produce more content (read:filler), dragging the story on and on, and eventually you end up having so much going on in the show, that the ending you had envisioned by the time you wrote the pilot, that the ending will no longer work and you've got just a few shows (if being abruptly canceled. Hi, Heroes) to try and tie things up - which is, invariably, a mess.
( Let's see how Heroes fares with their cancellation. )
Sadly, hardly any station would allow you to specify in the contract that the show will be N seasons or episodes long with key plot elements from the pilot to the finale, with little room in other (filler) episodes for the station managers to get their egotripping time. The only way to get -that- is with a miniseries.. 2-4 episodes ..which aren't well-suited for shows designed as a series.
I stopped watching mid-way through season 3.. don't bother telling me it gets better in season 4; after reading the short summary in the top post here, it could be the most brilliant made-for-TV work of our generation.. and I still wouldn't care to see it.
Does any one else think that the writers were making up even the finale as they went along? Personally, I think the explanation of the flash sideways = limbo was something they tacked on at the very last minute. In fact, if you re-examine the last season, I think it’s clear that the flash sideways was originally intended to be a true parallel reality of sorts.
1. A submerged/sunken version of the island was shown in the flash sideways world.
2. Kima, a murderer that everyone on the island hated, was present in the flash sideways world.
3. In the beginning on the flash sideways, it was implied that it took something like a near-death-experience to catch glimpses of the other timeline. By the end though, apparently any strong emotion was enough.
4. Faraday in the flash sideways specifically thought that the flash sideways was the result of something they had done with a nuclear bomb.
5. When Widmore put Desmond in the magnet shack, the impression was given that Desmond was able to jump between both realities.
6. Some of the Lostaways had pretty harsh and painful lives in the flash sideways which would seem weird for a group created dream world.
7. When fake-Locke cut Jack's neck on the island, his neck in the flash sideways began to bleed as well.
8. Eloise didn't want Desmond messing with things in the flash sideways.
Now, I'm sure if you try hard enough, all of the above can be explained away, but taken as a whole, I think its obvious that the writers created the ending of the flash sideways world completely on the fly, and I would go so far as to say there's good evidence that they didn't even figure out what they were going to do until quite a ways into the finale itself. In fact, it’s entirely possible that even during the concert in the finale the writers still hadn't figured out how they were going to end things. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't figure out what to do until the point when they were trying to figure out what Jack would find inside his dad's coffin.
P.S. And I get so sick of people defending the show by saying "Its about the characters." That's like defending a Michael Bay movie by saying "Its about the FX." A good show should be about the story, of which characters, plot, and presentation are all a part.
I knew from the begining they had no plan to really end the series, so, I never bothered to even try to get into it. I'm sorry if you did. Next time, choose more wisely.
You knew nothing of the sort. We were told time and time again that there was a plan, it was all plotted out, and it would all come together and questions would be answered. We were lied to.
But the entire premise of Starwars is not based around 'The Mystery Of How Luke Moves The Lightsaber With The Force', and the concept of 'The Force' is explained early on - now, if we were just introduced to the fact that Luke can move stuff without touching it, but were never given a token explanation, then your argument would hold water.
The 'Black Smoke' isn't even given a token explanation, just a 'oh look, heres how hes created - by the magical light', which introduced yet another 'mystery' isntead of answering anything.
A good % of the *human race* has "supernatural feelings"
People like to see supernatural stuff in fiction because it makes thinks interesting.
ESP makes you angry but warp engines and teleporters don't? Warp engines and teleporters aren't possible in our understanding of science, so they could be considered supernatural. There is no proof of aliens existing, so put them in the supernatural category too.
Some people like stories about aliens, some people like stories about ESP.
I too am very dissatisfied with LOST. Some things were just badly written. To me this goes back at least to when Charlie died, even though water physically could not have filled the room above the broken port hole, and continued through the final episode, where suddenly Jack, Kate and the rest were traveling across vast stretches of the island in hours or minutes when it had previously taken days to cover so much ground. And even things that were supposedly explained this season made no sense if you look at the whole story. The smoke monster was revealed to have caused the appearance of several deal people, including Jack's father. But we also know that smokey could not leave the island. Yet Jack also saw his dead father manifested while he was in L.A., before returning to the Island. How can a viewer even hope to figure out anything in a story when they do stuff like that?
There were many many story holes, far too many for me to list here. But one that really needed some sort of explanation was the Darma food drop that happened shortly after the crash and saved Hurley from a much needed diet. Why was there a Darma food drop if all of Darma had been killed years earlier? Who did it, and what else are they doing? How did they even make a food drop on the Island, the mysterious nature of the Island should have made it unreachable by air, Darma had to use a sub to get there other times. But the message to viewers who were trying to actually figure out the story and make some sense of it was "screw you, the writers don't care about such things, we just want to have melodramatic deaths and church scenes with the major cast (but curiously none of the extras who also died).
And the ending made no sense at all taken with the departure of Kate, Sawyer and Clair on the plane. How does Kate end up at the funeral dead if she managed to fly off the island alive? Why even bother to get that group to the plane, if it is meaningless if they reached it or not?
The writers of Lost promised that they had a full story in mind when the series started, that they were not just making it up as they went along. That either wasn't true or they were some of the worst writers in history.
Some shows are just entertainment. The viewer knows not to spend any time trying to figure out much of anything, because it would be time wasted. But Lost presented itself as something different. It claimed to have an underlying logic behind it. Viewers were encouraged to try to understand the riddles of the island. In the end the loyal viewers were betrayed.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
As I said, you do not like the answers provided. You can complain that the show didn't provide the answers you wanted and remain miserable, or accept them for what they are and be at peace. It's your choice, dude. You can come into the church whenever you're ready. I forgive you.
I'm not miserable, I was expecting them to wave their hands at me, I learned my lesson with Galactica.
But you're right, I don't like the answers provided, since the answers were: "just because" and "because I said so".
You can't take the sky from me...
I once heard that The Unit switched attention away from the military operations of the men to the lives of the women left behind at home, as a result of focus group studies. Soon thereafter, it tanked in ratings and was canceled.
I can't help but feel something similar must have happened to Lost somewhere within the last 6 years. When the show first started out, I got the distinct feeling that the many mysteries had meaning and rational explanations. (I believe that the writers themselves even said so.) Sure, the Dharma Initiative was a peculiar operation, but it explained some things. But this ending, I don't know... It smells as if the ending that was originally planned was scrapped because it offended too many focus groups. Perhaps the original story promoted that all mysteries are only a lack of scientific understanding? (Sufficiently advanced technology, and all that) Perhaps it promoted predestination? I don't know.
All I can say is that with this ending, something changed somewhere. The carpet doesn't match the drapes.