More Than 23 Questions About The Lost Series Finale, Answered!
Previously on Lost: A plane crashes on a mysterious island. Six years later, here we are.
By jetliner, VW bus, yellow Hummer, unmarked BMW, outrigger canoe, sailboat or submarine, please join us as we Answer the Final Set of Questions offered up by our last, constantly commercial-interrupted moments with our favorite group of merry castaways. (It should go without saying that a frank discussion of the Lost finale will be a long string of spoilers. Beware, those who sat out this searingly important cultural moment!)
"Oh, what a long, strange island it's been!"
-Driveshaft
So?
So.
Can we get on with it?
Yes, sure. Of course. We just have so many feelings.
While you get yourself together, how is Damon Lindelof holding up?
All things considered, he seems to be doing OK.
It's got to be tough for him. His Kimmel schedule is going to wind down to practically nothing, and soon the giddy 4 AM texts from Carlton about a great philosopher name for a new character will cease. Life will move on. But nothing will be the same. He welcomes the change, but at the same time, he fears it.
Christian Shephard. Christian. Shephard. Seriously?
Oh, shut up, Kate. You don't suddenly get to be wise-assy at this point. Now take your generic TV character name, squeeze into this hot dress, and wait for your Wake-Up without all the needless sarcasm.
Who can tell Kate why she's here?
No one can tell her why she's here. Not in a here here way. Like here, in this car. Obviously, she's in the car. We're talking in a larger way, like in regards to the purpose of her life. She'll have to figure that out later, maybe by reuniting with her true love, or staring down the business end of a birth canal as a screaming, placenta-drenched payload of Big Answers hurtles towards her.
So Jack really went through with the whole "new Jacob" deal?
He did. He even held his own Campfire Answers Summit with the gang, around the smoldering embers of Old Jacob, for symbolic purposes. (And Cuselindedamonton never met a neat parallel they could resist.) Among the subjects discussed, as requested by Sawyer: sights seen on the mountaintop, minutes of his conversation with the burning bush, why Smokey didn't extinguish the Light himself (ain't got what he needs, i.e., Desmond, the magic leprechaun).
Better guyliner: Richard Alpert or Dissolute Flash-Sideways Charlie?
While Richard had the more consistent, natural-looking application, Charlie seems like he told a Beverly Center MAC makeup artist to "I wanna look like Liza Minnelli after a week-long crying bender."
Why did Jack take the Jacob gig?
Because he was supposed to. Because the island's the only thing he's got left, the only thing he's never ruined. He makes an excellent point. He's ruined a lot of things, and he desperately needs to complete a character arc that will somewhat unsurprisingly serve as the arc for the entire series.
When Kate tells Jack that "nothing is irreversible," did that sound very familiar?
You may remember "nothing is irreversible" from episode 604, when Jack offers to fix Sideways Locke's paralysis.
When Ben joined up with Smokey, should he have gotten some clarification about what exactly Smokey meant when he said he was going to "destroy the island"?
There was a time when everything Ben did seemed perfectly calculated. But now he's switching sides willy-nilly, grasping for an angle, and not finding out in advance whether or not his smoke monster confederates intend to literally or figuratively destroy the island he's been promised as a reward for his assistance in potentially bringing about the end of existence as we know it. Ben is slipping. Maybe he just needs some more time to reflect upon how he's lived his life...
Hey, did you hear that? That really obvious walkie-talkie sound?
Hmm, no idea what you're talking about! There are definitely no walkie-talkies here that someone is using to communicate with a ghost-whisperer trying to fix an airplane that we plan on using to escape the island! [Fumbles with volume knob on walkie-talkie, hopes secret escape plan has not been foiled by an incredibly stupid lapse in volume-knob adjustment.]
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Comments
I have to say that I'm going to miss reading 23 Answers more than watching LOST itself. Well done, Lisanti.
meh.
I can't believe I wasted 6 years of my life following this show for that ending. How disappointing was that. We don't even know what the light meant. What is the light. And for the black smoke. So lame that Jack didn;t turn into the black smoke when he when into the light. So freakin dumb
i am willing to forgive them for not answering all the questions I have, but what I cannot forgive, what I can not abide, is them not answering the question, "Why can't Smokey leave the island? If he leaves the island, what would happen and why? And, if after the cork was opened he became some normal shmuck, why couldn't he leave the island then? And if he could leave the island without the world ending, Jack just killed that motherfucker in cold-blood, right?"
Ok, maybe that's more than one question.
When I first saw the Lightdrain, I thought it looked like a giant Putt Putt hole. The final resting place for the lost balls from Hurley's golf course.
I thought it was a note-perfect ending, personally. Though I'm not sure what I'll miss more, the show or cracks like "Seventh Day Donkeywheelism." Amen.
it's a kooky, sci-fi, fantasy show...there are NO answers to most of your questions...sometimes you have to settle for, "Because I said so!" when asking childish questions.
Truly, the highlight of the evening was the Target commercials. I laughed my ass off at each one. While I enjoyed the finale, those commercials were instant classics!
Thanks so much for doing these 23 question articles! They've really enhanced my enjoyment of the show each week, plus you've helped with the severe finale disappointment I'm feeling today.
"Attention Target shoppers: Memorial Day is right around the corner, so be sure to stock up on our BBQ sauce for all your wild boar grilling needs.
Wish I'd have found this site before now. This is hilariously snarky stuff!
I agree with everything Bend said. I've learned with Sci-fi not to ask too many questions, just enjoy the ride, but those are excellent points.
At first I thought that Michael & Walt weren't there because the island was not the most important part of their lives. Then I remembered that Micheal is dead & stuck on the island as one of those whisperers because he was a trader...I guess. So the island is his hell. But what about Walt and his soggy backwards speaking ghosty self? I dunno.
Don't feel like you wasted anything. Go back and watch it all again. Seriously alot of people complaining JUST DONT GET IT. MOST questions have been answered you just have to be able to understand them and pay attention. Don't cry about being confused if you're taking bathroom breaks and texting your friends throughout the entire series. Yes there were some things that weren't answered. As i told my roomate right after the episode with the "light" aired. They probably won't explain that anymore than they already have because theyre just writers. They don't actually know the meaning to life, the universe and everything.That is basically what the light was, it was the light inside every human that makes us more than just animals. I never thought that would even be a question people wanted an answer to because it's supposed to be a mystery.
As far as Jack not turning into a smoke monster, well if Jacob had done the same thing he wouldn't have either. His mother only told him not to, she enevr said why. And the reason MIB DID turn into it was because he wasn't the islands protector and he wasn't Desmond who was exempt from all the rules.
Also to Corrine....the island wasn't hell. The big stone crok was containing hell within. It was only unplugged for a short time and was never really released thanks to Jack.
Seriously, I don't know if I laughed more watching the finale or reading this. Both were HILARIOUS. The flashbacks were the tackiest things I ever saw in my life!!!
And there are soooooooo many questions unaswered but why bother?
And those rocks falling in the island reminded me of Xena and all those times Callisto was killed by major fake rocks!
Kate seemed all about Sawyer until the last minute, when she realised Juliet was back, so she'd better tell Jack she loved him and make out, so she wouldn't be seating like an old maid in the end.
Oh well.. it was fun while it lasted. But seriously, thank god it's over! 😛
Richard Alpert starts aging once Jacob's ashes are destroyed and Jacob disappears.
Michael is not in purgatory because as he explained to Hurley standing over Libby's grave a few episodes ago, he is one of the whisperers on the island sentenced to live out eternity whispering to people on the island. Not sure why this punishment doesn't also apply to Ben, The Others and anyone else who killed dozens of innocent people on the island.
As far as who was at Jack's "realizing I'm dead" ceremony apparently this ceremony only applies to those individuals who were important to Jack's experience on the island or those whom Desmond had the time to round up. Walt was not really instrumental in Jack's experience on the island. Nor were the flight attendant, Arzt, Kate's FBI agent, or anyone else living out their afterlife years in purgatory. Ana Lucia actually was important, but Hurley makes some comment about her not being ready. Maybe they all just hated Ana Lucia and didn't want her to know about the going to heaven party. God knows where Mr. Eko was.
Eko really got shafted. Still don't understand why he could be killed by Smokey. Surely Mr. Eko must have been a Jacob candidate. They wouldn't have given us all of his flawed history back story if Mr. Eko wasn't an important candidate on the island.
Smokey could kill anyone who was not a candidate. Plus the actor playing Mr. Eko hated the set, apparently, and asked to be released to go shoot "G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra" (which might be viewed as its own Purgatory).
Don't give me that goddamn "just don't get it" speech. I swear, if I read that one more time in defence of this show...
AMEN!
You will be missed and by the way everything you wrote about the finale is right on the money!
They had no idea what they were going to do in the end and used the self imposed end date to secure viewers, advertisers and themselves.
I loved the show and this wasn't as bad as the Sopranos but more disappointing because they had no reason NOT to answer the questions or at least be more confident and definitive.
yes, how annoying was that the romantic resolutions were..... GOTCHA! wtf? who was expecting that after a whole season of kate going after sawyer and not giving a damn about what jack was doing.
if only this was the worst part. the worst part was that awful, soap opera finale. and the lack of any explanation.... so we were all watching a show about jack, and just how great he is? if i had known this i would have stopped watching a long time ago.
they say it is a character show, but not even the characters got any resolution, just silly old jack.
Eko wasn't in purgatory because his Jesus stick gave him the power to skip levels and go directly to Heaven.
Smokey can't leave the island cause he doesn't really have a physical body anymore. In the episode "Ab Aterno" (I think) he mentions something about Jacob taking his body, then in "across the see" we see his body all bloody on the rocks after he drifts down the light drain. We then see jacob carry his body and his mother's to the cave that would later house Jack and friends and it flashes forward to them finding the two skeletons and Locke making a comment about adam and eve...
MIB has no physical body so he assumes the form of whichever dead body happens to be lying around the island. Once he leaves the island, the magic that allows him to be formless smoke and also to assume the form of other dead people ceases to apply and therefore he reverts to being dead with no body again... so he can't leave.
Jack couldn't turn into black smoke in the cave because we needed all those extra moments of Jack in Hell agonizing over the where's-the-water-dammit-it-didn't-work (he didn't get Juliet's message to Miles). And if you buy the resurrection symbol, he had to be in hell a while. (Seriously, I think the smoke came as a result of the nature of the spirit of the MiB, it was not a given that everyone who goes in the cave turns into smoke. Lucifer was in heaven a while before he became the fallen angel, or don't you watch Supernatural?) By the way, let's not forget it was Magdalene, I mean Kate, who killed Judas, er, FLocke, not Jesus, er, Jack. And how cool was it that Miles became Chewie on the weekend of the 30th Anniversary of The-Story-That-Hurley-Wanted-to-Fix? P.S. You all got the memo that the final shot was inserted by some ABC flunky who either wanted a joke at our expense (what can they do, cancel the show?) or was just completely clueless about the fallout from the fans of a symbols-are-everything show. Either way, that is someone I'd like to send to the Island to be kidnapped by Ben. Pre-Hurley Ben, I mean. 😉 Thanks for the laughs, everyone.
ABC put in the footage of the very much disturbed airplane wreckage (burn marks from the funeral fire, neatly piled items, tarps tied to trees) themselves - the writers had nothing to do with it, and it was meaningless, other than a way to decompress the viewers before the news came on.
The religious symbols in the stained glass window are Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism (this is called the Dharmacakra), and Taoism.
i only tried watching the 1st season.
after that, i was LOST
i have tried watching it...throughout the years, at different times.
if one remembers the story line from the beginning, to the end....figure it out!
They were ALL dead when the plane crashed, and "we' figured they were survivors!
only explains the weirdest and wildest parts of the ones that "died" a few times on the show, and then returned at different times throughout the seasons.
they were all' the living dead" so to speak.
a well written show indeed, but very confusing as well
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