Thoughts on the Lost Finale
OK, so my real motivation in this post is to keep from explaining the ending a thousand times. I’ve got work to do.
Yes, I think the world population is dumbing down.
With that said, I’m going to give my summary of the wrap-up in bullet points, so as not to confuse anyone.
- No, they didn’t die in the initial crash. Their life on the island was real.
- The flash-sideways sequences of the last season were more like limbo at some point in a timeless future.
- The answers to the island’s mysteries are irrelevant, which is not an unprecedented concept in good science fiction. Do we really expect to get all the answers in life?
- We all fight our own ‘monsters’ and try to escape from ‘islands’ all the time; those experiences and struggles shape our character.
The Real Ending:
For all you ending-haters out there, I believe you’re missing some key points. The ending was a real ending. Jack gave all to save the day, the bad guy was killed, and Hurley took over as protector of the island. A small group escaped in the plane and Jack had the satisfaction of knowing that he’d helped save a few folks, maybe even the world. The post-ending, or the afterlife sequence, is not the real ending. Call it closure, but it helps explain that some people died early, some people probably lived a long time, but they all were important enough to each other to warrant sticking together for whatever journey or transition came next.
The Allegory:
In my opinion, each of the island’s mysteries were symbolic of the stuff we go through everyday, in our real lives. We don’t really truly understand anything that’s happening, but we have to work through it anyway. In the end, we probably won’t get the answers. We’ll be left with the relationships that we’ve built and the communities that we’ve had, and we’ll realize that the small stuff didn’t matter. Not one bit.
Well said. I love that they didn't address all the mythology of the story and focused on the characters.