“Lost” Ending Explains Alternate Universe, Brings Closure to Show

Predictably, the “Lost” finale sparked a wave of mixed emotion from its fanbase that has fans expressing everything from joy to sadness to absolute rage.

While the episode itself received high marks, the final sequence–which focused on explaining the alternate timeline in closing the story for good–spurred intense debate with cries of confusion and disappointment rampantly trickled throughout. And, for a show like “Lost,” there really was no other alternative.

No character-driven drama can escape the reality that when the story comes to a close, fans are going to be disappointed. Viewers are going to have preferred different characters lived and different ones died. They are going to have wanted different relationships to have succeeded. They are going to have hoped the characters would build their lives in different directions. Those desires all exist with “Lost,” but they join another key factor in doing so–the quest for answers to unknown questions.

“Lost” had the additional battle in that it had spent six years introducing fans to a host of questions, unexplained occurrences and mythologies. Regardless of how the sixth season developed, answering all of those questions was going to border on impossible. And as the show ended up moving in a more forward-thinking, action-oriented direction, that border was crossed. Ahead of Sunday’s 150-minute ending, it became clear that even the most fundamental questions related to the existence of the island were going to go unanswered.

Fans are certainly justified in writing the finale off for its lack of answers. But in evaluating just how well the episode ranks on the all-time list of series finales, it is important to evaluate what was provided and determine if it is compatible, believable and desirable within the “Lost” framework.

Before getting to an explanation of the ending, it is worth recapping what happened on the island in the finale:

Quick highlights from the “island” timeline:
— Desmond’s resistance to electromagnetic forces allowed him to literally “uncork” a pillar from the heart of the island. In doing so, the evil force was apparently unleashed, and the island began collapsing–essentially beginning a trip to the bottom of the ocean.

— Pulling the cork had another consequence–it stripped Locke (Man in Black) and Jack of their immortality, allowing them to be both injured and killed. Locke attempted to escape the island via his boat, but Jack interceded, and a fight ensued. Locke managed to stab Jack in the stomach, but just as he was about to slit Jack’s throat, Kate arrived (with Sawyer, Hurley and Ben) and shot Locke. Jack then kicked him off the cliff, killing the Man in Black on impact.

— Meanwhile, in a quest to destroy the plane (they are still under the impression that Locke wants to use it to escape), Miles and Richard come across Lapidus, who had apparently survived the submarine explosion and was stranded at sea. He, instead, recommends that they use the plane to get off the island. Pressed for time due to the impending island collapse, they nonetheless have to take the shot. They also contact their counterparts via walkie talkie and stipulate a deadline of an hour for Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Hurley and Ben to reach the plane.

— Jack decides not to go–he feels it is his job to re-cork the heart of the island and prevent the collapse. Ben joins him, deciding “if the island is going down, I’m going down with it.” Hurley also joins Jack, leaving Kate and Sawyer to reach the plane. Kate and Jack kiss goodbye and declare their love for each other.

— Kate and Sawyer reach the plane in time. They also convince Claire, who had been sitting on the beach in rebellion, to go along.

— Prior to the final task, Jack gives his powers over to Hurley, arguing that his job is to sacrifice himself to fix the island–Hurley’s job is to protect it thereafter. Ben ultimately volunteers to be Hurley’s number two, and they decide they will not run the island like Jacob did–people will be free to come and go.

— Jack lowers himself into the ‘heart of the island’ and encounters Desmond, who volunteers to “recork” the island. Even though Desmond has a better chance of surviving the presumed electric blow, Jack feels that Desmond has done enough and now should leave the island to be with Penny and his son Charlie. Jack accomplishes the task, and appears ready to die as the light and water start to trickle back into the cave.

— Somehow, Jack later ends up on the surface of the island, still suffering from the stab wounds. He makes his way through the jungle but ultimately dies in the same spot in which he awoke in the series premiere. As an homage to that episode, which began with Jack’s eye opening, the series ends with Jack’s eye closing.

Short explanation of the “ending”:
As per Christian Shephard’s speech in the show’s closing minutes, the “sideways” timeline was essentially a state of purgatory created by the Oceanic 815 survivors (and some of their counterparts–notably Juliet–from the island). Believing their interaction with the fellow survivors to be the most important component of their lives, they could not proceed to the next step (presumably the after-life) until everyone was re-united and prepared to do it together.

In order to achieve this total reconnection, all of the survivors needed to have the “memory flash” of their time on the island (as witnessed throughout the season, the flashes could be prompted by near-death experiences but did not seem to take full shape until one experienced dejavu of a positive occurrence on the island, such as falling in love).

The ending itself was quite open to interpretation, but there was nothing to indicate that the events on the island itself were imaginary or part of this fictitious, “purgatory” universe (contrary to how a number of critics and fans are analyzing the ending). Christian explained that while everyone in the final reunion was dead, they did not necessary die at the same time (as in, they did not necessarily all die during the initial Oceanic 815 crash). Hugo and Ben’s final interaction, in which they expressed how well they worked as a team, also suggests they legitimately lived on the island for a while once forced to takeover Jack’s “protector” responsibilities. Finally, because the entire premise of the purgatory state was contingent on the relationships these individuals had with each other, it would make no sense if they had never survived and landed on the island; otherwise, they would have just been strangers coincidentally on the same plane.

Another element of ambiguity concerns exactly whose “purgatory” viewers were seeing during the course of the sixth season. By virtue of the stories that were told and based on Christian’s comment that it was a universe everyone created, the logical belief would be that the sideways universe belonged to all of them and that each character’s soul was lost until everyone from the island was reconnected. Of course, an alternative interpretation suggests the universe only belonged to Jack (with each character perhaps creating his own alternative timeline), as noted by the fact that they all were able to move onto the afterlife at the very moment he died on the island.

Further, it was never definitively established if the “reconnections” were meant to be literal (as in, the characters truly needed to find their fellow survivors in purgatory in order to ‘let go’ and move on) or figurative (as in, “reconnecting” with the characters was just a metaphor for accepting one was truly dead).

Some reasonable complaints:
— In a somewhat dissatisfying outcome, it turns out that detonating the hydrogen bomb accomplished nothing (there had been an expectation that the bomb’s explosion somehow created the alternate timeline). Juliet’s cry of “It worked” was apparently only a setup for the later deja vu moment with Sawyer at the vending machine; it was not an actual declaration that the bomb succeeded in altering the timeline.

— The ending does not render the island insignificant or meaningless, and it thus does not allow the “Lost” writers to elude criticism for not addressing its mysteries and unanswered questions. As everything that happened on the island was pivotal to the characters’ creation of this purgatory state, it was actually quite important to understand how the island came about and why it could do what it did.

— For as beautiful and touching as the final sequence was, it was effectively a cop-out. The writers realized that there was no logical way to build an unequivocal “happy ending” into the story, but instead of having some of the characters end up in states of disappointment, sadness or yearning, “Lost” found a way to give all of the characters (and fans) what they wanted (even if it meant the characters had to be ‘dead’ for it to happen). It was certainly nice to see all of the island couples reunited (Jack and Kate, Sawyer and Juliet, Shannon and Sayid, Charlie and Claire, Hurley and Libby, etc), but it did not feel entirely honest. Some characters did not get what they wanted while still living, and it would have been more sincere, for instance, to see Hurley and Ben work together on the island, to see Kate and Sawyer have to live without their truest loves.

Why some people will be wrong to complain:
— There seems to be a misconception among fans that the ending nullified everything that happened on the series. That is not true — the ending was a lot more satisfying than a “it was all a dream” or a “they died in the first plane crash” reeval; none of that final reunion would have been possible without the experiences, relationships and personal discoveries created by the events on-and-off the island. Every moment, save obviously for the flash-sideways clips, mattered. And it is not as if the emotionally-jarring flash-sideways clips were hard to watch.

— People will confuse an outcome that is not what they wanted with a “bad” outcome. There were some things that every “Lost” fan wanted to witness–he wanted to see Jack and Kate happily living off the island, he wanted to see a matured Sawyer encounter his child, he wanted to see Claire reconnect with Aaron and, quite honestly, he even wanted to see Ben finally complete his evolution into being a good person. But as “Lost” aimed for something bigger and more significantly central than tying up a few love stories and loose ends, its decision not to give fans exactly what they wanted does not necessarily make the finale bad. Again, it is important to evaluate the episode for what it accomplished not what one hoped it would have accomplished.

Comment:
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