I think this line sums up Lost perfectly

Grunching a bit here because this thread is really freaking long...but I'm surprised at the response I'm seeing.

After Christian talked to Jack last night, I thought it was pretty clear that the sideways-verse was basically a pocket universe, an alternate timeline created by the nuke going off. The pocket universe was basically a fantasy land where everyone got the life they hoped for, primarily being that they never encountered the island (which was the whole point of nuking the island in S5, right?) What all the characters involved had to come to grips with was that the island, and their interactions with it, and the people that they encountered as a result, were actually very important, and they all had to learn that the "real" island life was what really mattered in the end, regardless of how tragic it was to turn out for some of them.

It did obviously get a little vague there at the end...does stepping into the light at the end indicate the end of the entire pocket universe, or just the disappearance of those gathered at the church from the sideways-verse?

My perceptions may be a little clouded from the beers I was enjoying while watching the show, so maybe I missed some huge thing, but I didn't think for a second that the whole purgatory thing was happening at any point, and have beens surprised by the number of times people are bringing that up.

In the end, though, I thought it was worthwhile.

I also briefly thought Jack was going to become the next smoky, which would then set up a Jack vs. Hurley battle.

Quick question - what happened to Desmond? He was pulled out, didn't get on the plane, and wasn't with Hurley and Ben in the end.

such an arrogant view, but then again you would believe anything the writers tell you

I mean 2 weeks you said you expected lots of other mysteries to be spoken to by the finale. it didn't happen. and here you, thrilled!!

some people will be happy regardless of whatever is spoon fed to them

Yes, I think this was by far the biggest casualty of turning the story into Jacob vs. Smokey. I wonder if they decided that they weren't able to come up with enough interesting backstory in the time travel angle for Ben and Widmore to make that work out, ultimately. EDIT: More generally, for being a major behind-the-scenes villain for so much of the series, Widmore seemed really underused and underdeveloped.

Yeah.

Ben convinced hurley he could run the island differently so they sent him home to penny.

This is a pretty lazy way to dismiss most of the complaints about the show.

It being "all about the characters" doesn't excuse bad plotting. Yes, there's some stupid beefs in this thread, but a lot of the criticism isn't the least bit invalidated by parroting the producers idiotic defense of their own ineptitude.

I suspect it was more the gaping knife wood in his gut that killed him a few moments later that was his problem.

You might want to listen to the Jack/Christian conversation again. There was nothing about it that indicates a pocket universe created by the nuke. It's explained fairly clearly.

EDIT - Jack/Christian Convo

Christian: Hello Jack.
Jack: I don’t understand. You died.
C: Yeah. Yes I did.
J: Then how are you here right now?
C: How are YOU here?
J: [realization hits] I died, too.
C: That’s OK. It’s OK, son [hugs]. I love you son
J: I love you, too, Dad. Are you real?
C: I sure hope so. Yeah, I’m real. You’re real, everything that’s ever happened to you is real. All those people in the church. They’re all real, too.
J: They’re all dead?
C: Everyone dies some time, kiddo. Some have been before you, some long after you.
J: Why are they all here now?
C: There is no now, here.
J: Where are we, Dad?
C: This is a place that you’ve all made together so that you could find one another. The most important part of your life was the time that you spent with these people. That’s why all of you are here. Nobody dies alone, Jack. You needed all of them, and they needed you.
J: For what?
C: To remember, and to... let go.
J: Kate... she said we were leaving.
C: Not leaving, no. Moving on.
J: Where are we going?
C: Let’s go find out.

Nope.

I guess I'll throw out my opinion of season 6 and the show as a whole.

Personally, while season 6 was good, it was a total wasted opportunity and I don't really understand how that happened. S1-s5 had a lot of continuity to it and by the end of s5 I felt like I knew which direction the show was going to go in, but it's like they threw away 5 seasons worth of storylines and started from scratch on s6.

I understood there would be a lot of questions unanswered, but why abandon them altogether. We have 5 seasons of Dharma Initiative stories, but then barely mention them in s6. Why develop this whole Widmore vs Linus thing and lead it nowhere or the Others vs Dharma. It would've been much better if they showed that the Others were always on Team Jacob and the Dharma Initiative was always on Team Smokey (or vice versa) and the castaways were caught in between. Instead, no mention of the Others, or Dharma, or Ben vs. Widmore...nothing. It's almost as if they hired new writers just for s6 who decided to say "**** it" we're ignoring everything that brought us here and now we are going to spend precious time on introducing new characters (that went nowhere) and new story arcs for characters (that went nowhere) as opposed to wrapping up existing storylines. I can understand dramatic changes in the direction and quality of shows when they make drastic changes behind the scenes (i.e. when the head writer to Heroes left and all the things that made s1 great were abandoned for the remaining seasons), but Damon/Lindelof apparently had this all mapped out from either the beginning, or s3 at least. Apparently the only thing they really mapped out was the show starting Jack's eyeballs and ending on Jack's eyeballs.

I don't give a **** about Jack's imaginary son playing the piano, or Sawyer hooking up w/ Charlotte, or Sayid's brothers loansharking debts, or any of the other bull**** they put into the flash-sideways. Give me some ****ing continuity. I can see the writers sitting in a room and being "well we've done flashbacks and flashforwards, now lets do flash-sideways to show what an alternate universe would be like if they never crashed on the island, but in the end we'll pull a M. Night Shamalan and say that they were all dead anyways". Or they canvassed all the message boards out there, wrote down all the great theories people came up with and said "well we HAVE to surprise everybody and there's no way we can use an idea if somebody already posted a theory about it even if that was the direction we were going in, so instead let's just come up with new bull**** so we can shock them in the end" I would love to see there overall story mapping to see if it was really as splintered as it ended up being. I don't buy that they wrote themselves into any corners with the storylines, bc they are ****ing writers. It's their job to be creative and write themselves out. Look at all the theories on all the message boards out there. Most of those theories were better than what s6 was and they kept up the continuity and mythology of the show.

I also don't want to hear that this was ALWAYS a character driven show. Sure a lot of the reason people loved Lost was bc the characters were very well developed, but a main reason people loved the show was the mystery of what the hell was going on to those characters. What is the island? What are the numbers? Who are the Dharma Iniative? What will detonating the atom bomb really do? They always kept us on the edge of our seats by unveiling all these awesome mysteries and thats what kept most people coming back season after season. Don't give me 5 seasons of mysteries, then throw them all out the window and write it off as saying this was Jack's story about finding his way to heaven. That's complete bull****. This show was never only about Jack's story, only the finale was. Sure, Jack and Locke were the two main characters of the show, but they spent LOTS of time fleshing out these other characters only to abandon their story arcs.

I appreciate what s6 was and I dug the finale, but goddamn they wasted a perfect opportunity to finish this show as one of the best of all time. Look at The Wire for example. While s5 wasn't as good as some of the previous seasons, they wrapped up all the character story arcs neatly and were faithful to the history of the show. What if they decided to abandon Marlo and his gang altogether (never explaining what happened to them) for s5 and then spent the beginning of s5 introducing a new gang only to kill them all off after episode 4? Then they decided to make McNulty a sober family man, or make Omar and Kima "straight" and instead of the gangs being drug dealers, they were now secretly descendants of the Knights Templar looking for the Holy Grail underneath Camden Yards. Or what if the Sopranos abandoned the mobster side of Tony's life for all of s6 and instead focused on him and Christopher making a sequel to cleaver in 3D.


I'm glad that some of you loved the final season, but put me in the camp of enjoying it and not hating it, but very disappointed in what could've been.

would you have watched it?

Gonna go back and (try to) read through the thread. I didn't comment last night bc I wanted to let it sink in and I thought I would be too bitter at the end. But upon letting it sink in, it was actually worse than I thought at the time.

I've tried writing this post about 5 times now, and I keep coming up with thing that I'm just really disappointed they left off, didn't conclude, etc.

Overall I'm not going to hate all of Lost. It was a great show for however many years, but that was just a very very disappointing conclusion. I used to casually watch the X-Files, so I was aware of how hard it is to close a big show like this. But even with those lowered expectations, I can't believe that this is how they ended it.

I would love to be/have been a fly on the wall in the writers' meetings, to see what really went on here. How long ahead did they plan this? Was there a point in time where they were like, '****, we ran out of time.' No matter how they spin it, I do not believe that they all could have been satisfied with this.

I wish they had sat down, and written the end of the show like a movie or book, then told ABC, 'we need X number of seasons.' I would have been totally cool with them even taking like a year off to do that.

But that's just how it goes. They managed to create and execute a genre of show that in the tv/movie industry is essentially impossible, and as you can see by the wannabe's and failures of other attempts, is really hard to pull off. Those guys are brilliant writers, and I do hope that they try their hand at (Lost or non-Lost) movies with similar traits of what they were able to do with Lost for so long.

This review is really on point.

Oh yeah, it was flawed. There are very very few shows that can have so many writers, so many characters and so many plotlines all working at once where there wont be things going on that arent quick grade A.

Regarding the purgatory, alt universe stuff, note that Ellie knew already what would happen if they all came together. It was a group construct where they lived their fake lives but one in which she was actively trying to stop everyone from coming together. In the real world Jacob fated them all to cross paths but in purgatory (someone plz come up with a better term) they fated themselves to come together.

I only watched the finale an hour ago and there is going to be a lot to reprocess in my own mind, but the purgatory is created by themselves to get to relive choices and make better decisions. Everyone lived a better life, not a perfect one, but one where they were happier with everything they did. Everyone in the church was a good person (note Michael, Eko and Anna Lucia were not there amongst others). The "people" who werent Lost characters such as baby Aaron and Jack's son werent real, they were just dreams. Aaron probably wasnt even dead at the time that scene happened (though obviously time is going to be a funky concept in the afterlife).

Finally as for Ben he did get his redemption in the end by protecting the island with Hurley and setting up a new "game" with new rules to be played by the next groups of people cycling onto the island to replace Hurley.

other than that amazing richard alpert episode, last season was trash...

oh well, thnks 4 th mmrs!

lol lost apologists itt

im not too arrogant to admit i got suckered by a fraud of a show.

at first I didn't really think I liked the finale as it was happening, but as I started to understand where they were going, I loved it. it grew on me through the finale and even more so now as I reflect on it.

let me state that i am in the group of people who _loved_ the show. Not every episode was incredible, but all in all, the show was extremely well put together. The writers had to put together a predetermined storyline that was as seamless as possible, while still dealing with real life issues (viewer ratings, actor issues, unintended mistakes, etc). And of course, there were holes in the story, but for the overall theme and message of the series, those holes don't matter or are relatively unimportant. There are tons of things in the series we can nitpick but it's not worth it.

The finale was incredible. This is my opinion, but for those who thought the story/finale was bad because several _important_ issues were unexplained or solved with a quick crappy fix, rewatch the entire series. There are so many things that people complained about in this thread that were actually explained or implied throughout the show. This is truly a show that cannot (or is extremely difficult) to understand through one showing simply because important clues are missed on casual viewing (because we don't know they are important yet).

_My_ explanation of the series setting:
I agree with the idea that everything really happened in the story (flight 815 crashes, people survive, blah blah blah, and kate/sawyer/miles/etc escape at the end, etc etc etc) and that the "flash sideways" was a form of purgatory.

The way I think it will be easier to understand the "flash sideways" is to first realize it isn't a flash sideways since time is not a matter in that universe. The easiest way to view it is to think of it as an infinite flash forward in the distant distant future. This alternate storyline begins far in the future. Also, since this is a purgatory of sorts, the story that happens isn't real, like wholecut mentioned, and what ever happens can happen, but it didn't really happen in real life. That is why the story and facts of the alternate storyline don't necessarily sync with the first flight 815...it's because it didn't really happen. The image of the underwater island can also be explained as the island finally being destroyed in the far future after Hurley and Ben leave. During the finale, someone mentioned that if the island is destroyed, it will sink to the bottom of the ocean.

Anyway, I had tons of thoughts ready in my head to write, but after reading this long thread, I've lost some of them and/or don't have the energy to write more now. But my main point is that there is so much to the story that people are simply missing and it would make their appreciation of the series so much more if they noticed them again.

Also GOAT finale is clearly The Shield.

What about this one:

http://www.usatoday.com/life/televis...iew24_ST_N.htm

The polar bear came from Dharma's zoo.

I think one reason the finale left a bitter taste in a lot of people's mouth is because they created unreal expectations by horribly overrating the first couple seasons. LOST was never close to being the GOAT none of it's seasons standup to the great seasons of serialized TV drama. It is a good show and it had a good finale.

It will be hard for any show to ever beat that finale. Sopranos was also good, but The Shield just defined awesomeness.

USA Today review reads like USA Today review.

I happened to watch the last 4 eps of Mad Men S3 yesterday as well.

I really hope the people who made Lost watch a show like that, with all of the careful plotting, great acting, incredible attention to detail- and then just hand their heads in shame.

I have to agree with Pudge, I can't recall a better finale than The Shield.

awful.

"But if you could be content with the "big" answers to the big questions"

I don't think there is anyone who thought we got big answers. there are people who thought we got hints, or that we don't need them, or that we can fill in the blanks, but nobody thinks we actually got real big answers.