they could have had the same emotional reunions in the finale without wasting 1/2 season of irrelevant red-herring plot on it.

LOST was a TV experience unlike any other I've ever had. I personally liked the idea that there was some place so unique and special that the time the Losties spent there ended up being the most important(albeit limited) time in their life regardless of what followed or preceded it...so much so that it essentially linked their souls together for eternity so they needed to be with each other even in death to awaken and transcend to what ever was next.

Very cool concept even if you don't believe in god/afterlife or weren't in love with all the characters etc. Few shows deal with anything more than the day to day existence or only the material world and all its pursuits. LOST tried to reach beyond that on a spiritual, philosophical, and emotional level and though there were plenty of bumps in the road and some dead ends. Overall each season was great and the end justified the means.

To the haters...I'd really just let go and move on to something else. You will never convince someone who connected with the show like I did because of the above that it wasn't worth the ride, and it didn't deliver, all because it didn't do or answer A/B/C. Its like trying to convince someone who was in love that the person of their affection really isn't all that great.

Pretty solid review/write up on EW
http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,2031...387946,00.html

Ultimately, what was the source of evil the island had to contain? Why couldn't MiB leave the island?

When Jacob speaks to Richard for the first time, he calls the wine in the bottle "hell" and uses a cork to demonstrate what the island is doing: containing the evil. In the final episode, we see a cork at the center of the magic light, that when removed, unleashes a destructive force that begins to sink the island.

Jacob and MiB are described as "real people" by the producers during the clip show. From Hurley and Jack, we know that protectors of the island don't have to have inherent superpowers or be special (other than being chosen as a candidate).

The evil existed on the island before MiB was born. The Mother character was on the island, to contain the evil. She had sons so there would be a replacement protector someday.

What evidence is there that the MiB ever became this evil power itself? What evidence is there that his leaving the island would end up destroying the world? Plenty of regular people have left the island.

The island needed to be protected prior to MiB becoming the black smoke. He was not allowed to leave the island prior to becoming the black smoke. Why?

maybe because there was afterbirth all over it?

just to pick up 1 thing:

at one point Dharma was a giant mystery and important. Radzinksi, the blast door map, etc. the fact that it became so insignificant is bothersome

Most of these are good, a few had reasonable answers. The ones I can think of:

The producers said in an interview on Friday that the only person who called Aaron special was later revealed (in Ecko flashback) to be a fraud. So it basically was a red herring that they will admit to. This satisfies me for Aaron specifically, but not the larger pregnancy issues / how Aaron was born on the island etc.

"Because he made a deal with Jacob, and Jacob is magical." The real question here is more about Jacob's powers, but they did tell us that making Richard immortal was one of them.

Producers say: They aren't experts in carbon dating. Lol, makes one a little suspicious about their prior claim that they knew the identities of the skeletons all along, but I'm not convinced fully in either direction.

He was born on island, so he somehow got them from their apparently, in the same mysterious way the island healed Locke and gave Hurley powers I assume. It really just makes Walt's powers more of a mystery though.

The MAJOR THEME of season 2 was "the Others"...who were they, were they really good as they said, if so why did they act so strangely and do so many seemingly bad things? This isn't some minor theme I'm making up.

And it turns out that the Others were just a completely ordinary group of people. We are given no reason for why they are so ridiculously hostile towards the Losties. We are given no reason for why Ben went to all that trouble just to get Jack to operate on him.



Childbirth, the importance of children(remember when they kidnapped Zach and Emma and let them live but killed the others?), the importance of Walt/Aaron...this was a HUGE THEME throughout the first 3 seasons.


Ben vs Widamore.....at one point in time, we thought this was THE BIGGEST THEM ON THE ENTIRE SHOW.




If you say that I'm nitpicking with some of my list, then thats fine. But these 3 things above were huge themes that went absolutely nowhere.

Jacob is not bound by linear existence

Its pretty funny that Vagos and Phil are both trying to argue against my case, yet in several instances they both tell me "this was clearly explained" and then they both list totally different explanations! And I'm not taking about small details, they do this on some of the "big questions" I asked.

Its so hilarious when seperate people defending the show giving adequate answers completely disagree about whether specific answers (big ones, too) have been thoroughly explained or not at all.

how do you reunite characters that were already together at the start of the season?

Depends which page on Lostpedia you use as your source I guess.

Assani,
re: The Others
They were always very parochial, they believed Ben was talking to Jacob and repeating his orders. it makes sense that that they would be hostile towards the losties.

Childbirth problems were presumably caused by the incident. The Others likely kidnapped children, because they knew women couldn't survive childbirth and they probably wanted to create a next generation of others.

Ben vs. Widmore have there own spat about who gets to rule the island. Ben kicks him off the island, Widmore believes he should still be the leader and does everything in his power to get back. At one point one of the biggest plot arcs in the show was should characters live in the caves or at the beach, as the show continues to expand threads that once seemed very important become significantly less important this is not due to bad storytelling (though that existed), but it is because they continued to expand the universe.

Edit: Note that these maybe slightly wrong, but I think the general idea behind all of them is correct. It is not necessary to didactically explain all the minutia of LOST mythology so that everything is an objective fact. They have given us enough evidence that you can reasonably induce a whole lot even if it is never stated.

Why the Others were hostile has already been explained by Phil and by myself. Ben was a bad leader, corrupted by power, selfish, sought to control the island but was upset by his perceived lack of communion with it, MiB was manipulating him, etc etc...

As for the children being kidnapped and Zach and Emma and WAAAAALLLLLTT, I consider this the nut low point of the show. The fact it went nowhere is fine by me, but even so, it can still be explained! They were people Jacob was interested in, perhaps on those "lists" that were given to Richard by Jacob. However, once under the supervision of Ben, things were handled very poorly.

Agree that Ben and Widmore deserved a more fulfilling arc.

But seriously, Room 23, WAAAALLLT (THAT'S MY SON!), Ben doing surgery on Jack...these were not the show's finest run of episodes. And not coincidently, they were the point in the show where the network kept telling the writers to spin their wheels and not set an end date.

100%.

I dont need to be shown how to drink, just show me where the water is.

Also we have a shockingly large amount of overlap on these questions.

At the end of the day i dont want a show to treat me like a child, spoon feed me answers and never leave the comfort zone. A good show should be interpreted differently by people. Maybe some get it wrong, but the fact they are trying and have room to do so is the important thing.

A lot of the mystery and history of Lost can be solved in a "choose your adventure way". A lot of it is implied and they leave you to fill in the blanks how you choose.

I mean the last thread someone actually wanted them to show them building the temple. I dont give a **** how the temple was built and it really isnt important who did so. In fact i have a long theory that deals with the island's history in that thread.

There are holes in the show, it is not a perfect show and i dont think even the creators would claim that. The timelines are a little off here and there, some stuff was given too much importance at times and ignored to stop them bogging down the story and this show would benefit greatly from a Battlestar style one off movie giving the story specifically from MiB's perspective to tie up some loose ends and to show what was going on in the other side but it doesnt need it and the show largely stands on its own and holds up to a lot of scrutiny.

If any of the people from the time of Jacob/Bib survived I could see the new "others" perpetually in a state of war preparation. Young Widmore & Eloise were those same defensively aggressive type. But it is assumed that Eve slaughtered the entire camp of settlers, and probably any and all on the island.

That was something I had hoped the writers would reconcile, the Others camp was identical to that of the 47AD landers. Was that a Jacob rule, or merely coincidence?

I'm tired of this "Its hard to write for a TV show" BS.....Carlton and Damon are professional writers who have devoted a major portion of their lives to this show. They should be able to write consistent storylines. I can cut them some slack with things like Eko leaving the show or the audience's reaction to Ben being so overwhelming that they have to go out of their way to include him more. However, time and time again they've built up things/people to be ultra-important and then had them end up being meaningless....thats just inexcusable writing imo. As I said in my long post, I read many message board theories that I liked a ton more than the actual ending....if random people on message boards can come up with good theories that tie up a lot of the loose ends, then wtf can't professional writers who knew the general direction the show was headed all along do so?

hu? the reunions that mattered emotionally involved dead people.

It's not that funny. The show creates different interpretations and it sparks discussion about certain events. I doubt there's many "BIG QUESTIONS" where I would totally refute Phil's explanation, and vice versa.

So obvo this.

It's understandable that there are a few people on here defending it, because we've all spent 6 years watching it from the edge of our seats, and to have it be a let down at the end is pretty disappointing.

What I find interesting is that none of the people who liked the ending can articulate why the purgatory story line was GOOD writing. Instead the defenders just call us idiots or make excuses.

there have been many different antagonists and sources of conflict throughout the seasons. the final season and finale essentially invalidated them all.

why did the others act like others to the survivors? why were the survivors brought to the island when there was already a group of people on the island who could have done what they did? why would desmond be allowed to live at all if he could end the world? what was widmore doing? what did ben think he was doing? what exactly was jacobs plan (that he spent ~2000 years enacting)? what is hurley protecting if MiB is dead? why did MiB need the the candidates to leave if they were just writing on the wall? how could he find the magical light all of the sudden? why was widmore testing desmond? why bring him at all? why can some people just get to the island in a sub and some have to recreate magic?

and on and on and on. no ones actions from previous seasons make sense.

assani, i think you can apply Hobbesian philosophy to why "nice" ppl may behave hostile when there are no repercussions.

The hostile exchange never struck me as needing an explanation.

Ben may have been "corrupted with power", but he was also a smart guy. Not only that, but he had a ton of info(remember he knew EVERYTHING about each Lostie's past). So he knew that Jack was a doctor who loved to fix things. So why on earth not just go up to him and ask him to operate on him?

As for the Others and how they dealt with the Losties in general....if Ben wanted to have power over the Losties, then wtf wouldn't he just welcome them to his camp with the stipulation being that Ben is the leader and they listen to him?

All of the Others' actions towards the Losties make little sense. You can't just say "Ben was a bad leader so thats why they did stupid things." Ben was very smart, and the Others' actions should have clear motivations.


I think that the OBVIOUS answer is that the writers had no clue what they were doing....they had a really vague outline, but they mostly just made it up as they went along.

You honestly expected that when they wrote the Adam and Eve scene in the 5th episode of the entire series that they had the entire Jacob/MiB arc hatched out and they knew exactly how many episodes they had to develop said arc? They've said on MULTIPLE occasions they didn't start to cook up most of the mythology until between seasons 1 and 2, AFTER they wrote that Jack thought the clothing was 50 yrs old. Should they let this minor production error stop them from developing their entire story just to conform to some sense of perfectly tying up every single loose end.

Gimme a break, this is nittery at its finest.

So this fraud (which he clearly was), instead of telling Claire some bull**** story and taking her money instead decides to give her back her money, furiously telling her "DONT LET HIM BE RAISED BY ANOTHER OR ELSE", keeps on calling her in the middle of the night (still no payment for his fraud) and goes through extreme lengths to make sure she gets the **** on the right plane, WHILE STLL RECEIVING ZERO DOLLARS FOR HIS APPARENT FRAUD?

The Eco episode where he admits that he's a fraud made it only clearer to me that with Claire he actually had a REAL psychic experience.

Yet Aaron was dropped like a hot potato by the very writers who set this whole mind**** up in the first place....