I saw it. I slept on it. I wasn’t into it.
Like some 13 million others (ha!), I tuned in with great anticipation to the Lost finale knowing full well that I probably wouldn’t get the answers to all of my questions but still clinging onto the hope that the writers would tie up the story in a satisfying way. I could have been happy with “good enough.” Instead, what we got was a treacly “embrace the white light” non-resolution that solved some questions but neglected a major one: what, exactly, was the Island? I think we got slightly St. Elsewhere’d and I wonder if I’d be more satisfied if it turned out to all be the figment of an autistic child’s imagination. At least that would provide me with something concrete to be frustrated at.
For those who were perfectly content with seeing Jack’s eye close and have that be that have argued that it’s an issue of what you were watching for: the characters or the plot/story. If you were watching for the former, the series ended in the spirit of of its conception, with the characters reuniting, joining together once again, off the Island and moving onto the great after-death unknown. So, I must’ve been watching for the plot.
But here’s the problem: whether any Lostie realizes it or not, you were watching it for the plot, too. If you weren’t, the series wouldn’t have had such longevity, kept us riveted throughout and made us care about the vehicles (the characters) moving that story along. They’d just be people with sad, lonely lives crashing on a really pretty Island, shooting things and exploring stuff.
The characters, through their back stories, their actions and their evolutions drove the story as it unfolded on this mysterious Island which, over six seasons, became a character itself. It had its own history (DHARMA, the hatch, the numbers and – we found out – a temple with some old Asian dude who spoke an ancient form of Japanese and his Beatle-lookalike sidekick), its own quirks (to say the least) and, in some instances, seemed like a living entity on which the Oceanic passengers were merely players. The entire – to use a hackneyed term – mythology of the series surrounded this enigmatic locale that was only reachable by plane crash or a really well-commandeered submarine. Oh, and it could skip around in time if you rotated a big frozen donkey wheel.
Others have argued that the whole show, like the ending, has all been about interpretation in the spirit that all art is – just ask anybody who’s had to BS his way through an art history paper. But if you’re a Lostie subscribing to that objectivist-esque school of thought, you’re also ignoring that the writers wrote rules about the Island and the characters and that it was a reality in the Lost universe. The specifics and details about said universe was undermined by the vagueness of that last episode.
For example, the Island could only be reached under specific circumstances and there was a certain magnetism – literally – that made it special. Desmond could skip around in time between the Island and the rest of the world (and so did the ill-fated Makowski and possibly Regina – remember them?) before anybody else could and was immune to electromagnetic forces; Walt was “special” but he was, we can only assume or – ahem – interpret that he was living some now-normal existence somewhere off the Island; the MIB couldn’t kill Jacob without a loophole, and speaking of whom, Jacob himself set up a “rule” illustrating the Island as a sort of “plug” to the all the evil humanity could ever know. There were rules that required a logic that wasn’t explained. Maybe knowing what I know now, there’s enough circumstantial evidence throughout the seasons that can help piece it together (DVD box set marathon time!) but even then, there will still be unanswered questions.
Which is fine. Such is the way of the TV writing and we, as audience members, aren’t entitled to an answer to every question. Never did I think that we’d get them either: the pacing of the last season was evidence right there. Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse (and J.J. Abrams) are tremendously talented and have made an overall amazing show that has touched the emotional pulse of so many TV fans and fans of, yes, a good story. A good yarn. The finale was everything that constitutes entertainment for me: action-packed, witty, and moving… there was even a Jack-jumping-in-the-air/flying fist shot! Maybe the ending was off-putting for me because it undermined the sci-fi elements in favor of a spiritual-heavy resolution that wasn’t gritty or groundbreaking or unique to the Lost canon. Or maybe I just get awkward when I see people hugging in slo-mo on-screen.
