Lower Decks

There’s been a lot of talk about the LOST finale, and the opinions seem to be split.  Some people loved it, seeing it as the perfect culmination of six years of storytelling.  Some people didn’t love it, as it didn’t explain some of the questions that were eating at people since the show began.  And I won’t make you jump to know my opinion – I loved it, and I’m very happy to explain why I loved it.  But I think your opinion of the finale is going to be solely dependent on what show you were watching.  And, oddly enough, it seemed that there were to sets of LOST fans out there.  Which one are you?

LOST began with a simple premise.  A group of people crash on an Island and are forced to survive.  I remember the first time the I read an article on the show, and it sounded so interesting.  And one of the things that made it interesting was the fact that this wasn’t an ordinary Island.  There was a polar bear on a tropical Island, and a man who found his paralyzed body instantly healed.  And don’t forget about that spooky monster with the mechanical noises.  And as the show evolved, we learned more about the mysterious Others, the haunted numbers, and dozens of other Island mysteries.

And the mysteries were the icing on the cake.  They were the part that got people talking, got people thinking, and got people to pass the show around.  Don’t get me wrong – LOST isn’t the show it is without the mysteries and the mythology.

But it was just the icing.  The substance part of the cake were the characters, and it was like that from day one.  While the mystery of the Island would come and go, episode to episode, the show was trying to train you to care about the people.  Not every episode dealt with the Monster or the Others, but every episode featured a flashback.  Every episode dealt with one of our characters, telling us who these people are and what led them to the Island.

It seemed like it was simple enough – the flashback would usually tie into the character’s current predicament.  Charlie’s failed relationship with a woman would deal with his current status with Claire.  Jack’s inability to let go of something connected with his inability to let Boone die.  Sawyer’s troubled past was connected with his inability to let anyone close to him.

But this season let us know something else.  We got three years of flashbacks to teach us how flawed these people were, and how much they needed the Island.  They were all scared, all damaged, and all alone.  John Locke repeatedly told them that they were brought to the Island for a reason, but none of them realized that they were all the same.  Only the fans, who could put their stories side by side, could see the connections they all had to each other.

And it made the show so rich!  You would see characters from one flashback (say, Nadia) appear in someone else’s flashback (she appeared in a Charlie flashback and a Locke one), and it would make you smile.  The show wouldn’t come out and say it – it would just let you see it.  If you got it, you got it.  If not, it was no big deal.

And the flash sideways became one big Easter egg.  The finale reveals that the flash sideways was created by the survivors so that they could be together again.  Call it Heaven.  Call it Purgatory.  Call it a bubble universe.  Call it the afterlife.  Call it whatever you want because the show makes no statement about anyone’s beliefs (the stained-glass window in the church was evidence of this).  Whatever you believe is okay, and you can find a way to make it fit.

For the whole season, we’ve been debating on what the flash sideways meant.  We thought that there was a chance that the two universes would meet – that perhaps one Locke could defeat the other.  Or maybe everyone would get the choice between living in one world or the other.  Would Jack decide to live as Jacob or as a father to David?

Instead, the flash sideways universe showed us the true souls of these people and what they wanted to be.  Kate Austen spent her life trying to rationalize what she’d done to get herself in all that trouble, and yet in the flash sideways, she continually proclaimed her innocence.  Sawyer saw himself as a good guy who made the wrong choices – so this time, he made the choice to do things on the right side of the law.  Jin and Sun went from a loveless marriage to a uncommitted relationship full of love.

And Jack Shephard, the cowboy with all the daddy issues, got to prove his own worth as a father.  After alienating his own son for most of the boy’s life, Jack does whatever it takes to make his son believe in him.  And by being a father to David, Jack was able to exorcise all of the demons brought on by his own father.

And none of this is possible if we didn’t know these characters as well as we did.  As well as we do.  We wouldn’t recognize the subtle changes, and we wouldn’t have teared up at the sight of all the reunions.

Looking at the two and a half hours as a whole, it’s pretty simple to see why some people loved the finale more than others.  If you wanted answers in the finale, you weren’t going to get any.  The biggest question that was answered was “what is the significance of the flash sideways universe?”

Did you want to know more about Jacob?  Sorry, he didn’t appear.  Want to know more about his Monster?  Unfortunately, he’s still nameless.  What about that mysterious light?  It’s still as mysterious as when we first saw it.

In a lot of ways, the “mythology finale” was “Across the Sea.”  Outside of a few words from Jacob in “What They Died For”, there weren’t really any answers to go around.  This finale was about closing the book on the characters, and that’s really what I tuned in for.

Did I want some answers?  Sure.  But knowing that Locke was able to find redemption in the afterlife was much more important than finding out the Monster’s true name.  Seeing Claire and Charlie reunite was much more important than finding out why the Dharma food drops were still coming after all these years.  And, honestly, seeing Christian at the church was more important than seeing Walt.

But, at the end of the day, there will always be more questions.  This show proved that you only bring up more questions when you answer one.  Remember when our biggest concern was finding out what the Others were all about?  Remember when we had no idea what the Monster even looked like?  Remember when we had no idea who the French woman was?

Last night, there were two Others in the main cast (Ben and Richard).  Not only was the Monster in the main cast, we got to meet him in his very own flashback.  And the French woman died so long ago that it was a treat to finally see her last episode.

And we kept looking for answers from people.  We all remember what it felt like when they had Ethan cornered in season one.  This was one of the Others, and we were all so furious with Charlie for killing him before we got anything from him.

Then came Henry Gale.  The writers tortured us with the question of whether or not he was “one of them.”  And when he finally revealed his true nature, he spoke in mysterious riddles to the point where we never really understood.  And when season three shed light on Ben’s real identity, we realized that he didn’t really know that much in the first place.

As soon as we learned that, there was Richard Alpert.  The man seemed to be ageless, and he was an Other when Ben Linus was just a kid.  Surely, when his brain was properly picked, we would get all the answers we were seeking.  And, yet, we finally get a flashback of Richard, and it turns out that he was just a laborer who ended up on the Island by mistake.  Sure, he’d seen a lot, but he didn’t have the answers we were desperately seeking.

But there was Jacob.  The man behind the Others who we didn’t meet until the season five finale – even his death in that episode couldn’t keep us from the answers.  But just like Ethan got his answers from Ben, Ben got his answers from Richard, and Richard got his answers from Jacob – Jacob only received his answers from the mysterious “Mother” character played by Allison Janney in “Across the Sea.”

Every question raises a new one.  Ethan to Mother, the answers always came from somewhere else.  And I think that was the point.  If we were given a flashback of Mother, it would have been the same thing.  Maybe we would meet her Father, who simply got answers from someone else.  It would take flashing back all the way to the beginning of the Island to get the true answer.

And, honestly, that answer probably would have been – “This is a very powerful light.  I must protect it.”

Because at the end of the day, that’s all it is.  It’s a light that gives off magical properties.  It protects certain people, heals certain people, and turns certain people into living smoke.

I remember an interview back in season one where the producers said that they would always have  a scientific base.  I believed it, and I preached it for a while.  But Arthur C. Clarke said that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”  Maybe it’s some form of electromagnetism.  Or maybe the same aliens that built Mayan pyramids set up the Island as some form of experiment.

Because, at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter.  I listened to the Official Lost Podcast, and the writers basically told the fans that, if they wanted some big explanatory scene, they needed to go watch The Matrix Reloaded.  In that movie, the Architect (Jacob?) tells Neo (Jack?) the truth behind the Matrix.  And instead of answering everyone’s questions and leaving them wowed, it’s regularly made fun of.  The Matrix sequels are constantly ridiculed.  Is that really what you wanted from LOST?

I tried to ask people, going into the finale, what questions needed to be answered by the finale to be considered a success.  The flash sideways question seemed to be the big one, and that was answered.

Another one seems to be about the pregnancy topic.  I’m not entirely sure how people anticipated that question would be answered in the finale (was the Monster going to tell us all about fertility issues?), but I have a relatively easy explanation for it.  Mother basically said that people don’t belong on this Island.  That man would continue to accidentally land there, but that it would have to be by accident.

The Island is invisible to modern technology to keep man away.  Wouldn’t it also have some sort of defense against the people that decide to live there?  And that’s where the pregnancies come in – if you try to have kids on the Island, you can’t.  The Island doesn’t let you.  If you bring a kid, it can’t stop it from being born, but it won’t let you conceive on-Island.

I think that explanation makes a lot of sense – would that answer have made the finale any better for anyone?

At the end of the day, the finale did for me everything that it needed to do.  I secretly hoped that John Locke would find redemption in some way.  His character is tortured in every way up until he reached the Island.  And when he finally made it to the Island, he gave everything to it – only to have his image stolen and used by the Monster.  And Locke died the way he lived – completely betrayed by someone that he thought loved him.

And when Locke smiled as he walked into that church, you knew it was okay.  That despite all that had happened to him, Locke was at peace with everything that had happened.  And despite all the hardships, you get the sense that he wouldn’t done it all the same way if he’d been given another chance.  That, despite knowing the truth, he still would’ve believed in something greater.  And that’s just really cool.

And there’s Ben, the man we all love to hate.  The flash sideways showed that he was a good man at heart, and as he sat outside the church, afraid to go inside, he begged John for forgiveness.  And John, in a way only he could, smiled and let Ben off the hook.  And Ben was humbled by it.  Particularly when we find out that, as the final scene takes place in Infinity (or “out of time”), that Ben has probably had dozens of years to think about all the mistakes he’s made.

There’s Hurley, who after years of ridicule and following, gets the chance to be the leader he believes he can be.  The soul of the group (and of the show) is given the most important role on the Island, and it just feels so right.  I loved when Hurley saved the day in the season three finale, and I was so happy for him in the finale.

There’s Sawyer, the man who just couldn’t seem to get off the damn Island.  And after years of trying, he finally gets his wish.  Kate, torn between Jack and Sawyer for the entirety of the show, chooses Jack, only to leave the Island with Sawyer.  Claire is finally able to accept herself and move towards finally embracing her role as Aaron’s mother.

There are the characters of Richard, Lapidus, and Miles.  Afterthoughts to some people but important characters in their own right.  Miles and Lapidus were comedic characters who we cheered for.  And Richard, who I feared died last week, got to leave the Island with his first real love of life in a long time.

A lot of people will argue, even if you love the characters, that the show short-changed us.  That we never even got to see the Ajira plane leave the Island.  We didn’t get to see Claire and Aaron reunited.

Well, that’s because of Jack Shephard.  At the end of the day, LOST is about Jack.  Plain and simple.  The end.

The show started with him.  He received the most flashbacks of any character.  He was the first to be seen in a flashforward.  And he was the first to be seen in the flash sideways universe.  Of all the off-Island connections, Jack seemed to be the most inter-twined.  In a truly ensemble cast, Jack Shephard was the star.  It started with him, and it ended the same place.

It started with Jack lying next to Vincent following a plane crash.  It ends with him lying next to Vincent following a plane taking off.  It’s the kind of cyclical story that I assume LOST would do.  And the kind of symmetrical beauty that I expected to get from it.

Jack, who started off as the man of science and ended up as the man of faith.  The man who spent so many years trying to please his father only to see the man die before he ever got any true acceptance.  It’s no coincidence that Jack’s life truly began when Christian died, and it’s no coincidence that Jack found no life off-Island without his father.  It felt strange to see Jack emulating John Locke these last couple of seasons, but it makes sense.  More than anybody, the Island was drawing Jack close.  Jack was always afraid to admit it, but he was happy on the Island.  And it was only in the last couple of years that he truly realized it.

And, in the end, Jack died a hero.  And, in a way, he also died alone.  If I might steal one of his catchphrases.

And that final scene at the church was all about Jack.  The survivors of Oceanic 815 realized that the best part of their lives was on the Island with each other.  Together.  And even their “happy” lives were interrupted by the idea that they could be reunited with these people one more time.

You might ask why more people weren’t at the church.  Why didn’t Miles or Daniel show up at the church?  Why didn’t Ben go inside?  Where was Richard or Lapidus?

And my answer is that they didn’t belong there.  Richard was with his wife.  Daniel and Miles were with their families.  Lapidus was doing whatever it is that he did.  These people had loved ones in their lives that mattered to them.

But Jacob’s whole point in bringing Oceanic 815 to the Island was that these people only had each other.  None of their family bonds were strong enough to matter.  At the end of the day, they had each other and no one else.  And if they were going to move on to the next phase of existence, it was going to be as one big family.

And Christian explained everything perfectly – it all happened.  Everything on the Island was real.  And, yes, everyone in the church was dead – but they all died at different times.  Hurley died after years on the Island.  Kate and Sawyer probably died years after lives off-Island.  That’s why Jack (who died in season six) was able to visit with Boone, who died three years earlier.  They all died at different times but showed up to the church together.

And they were all happy there.  Despite all the pain and heartache, they all ended up happy.  The ones who died and the ones who made it, all together.

If you loved the characters, it was a great moment.  If you didn’t, it was either sappy or boring.  Either way, I hope you enjoyed the finale as much as I did.  And I hope you enjoyed the series as much as I did.  This was a show that brought so much joy to my life, and I’m truly going to miss it.  I have all of the seasons on DVD, and I’m sure I’ll be buying the whole series on Blu-Ray soon enough.  People argue that the show has little re-watching possibilities, but I disagree.  I look forward to watching it all again, looking for Easter eggs as I go through.

If you watched the show for the characters, go back and try to find the answers you might have missed.  And if you watched for answers, try to watch for the characters.  The show kept a delicate balance, and I thought they finished off about as well as possible.

There will always be more questions.  But if a series can get you to love the characters, I think it’s done it’s job.  And, to me, that’s what LOST was always truly about.