Finally.... The End (Lost)

[Night Fury]

So this summer I have watched the whole run of 'Lost' on Netflix.

I only ever saw the first season when it originally aired, so it was jammed full of surprises for me. What a great show.

I have the 2-hour finale to watch tonight. I really hope it isn't a let down, I've thoroughly enjoyed the show so far, bar a few bits which were really terrible....

I will probably cry a lot. I tend to cry at TV shows. I cried a lot today watching Lost....

Anyone else a fan of Lost on here?

[Bunny]

I just started rewatching Lost so I can finally finish it. I've heard the ending was pretty bad but I'm into torturing myself.

[Night Fury]

WHAT EVEN WAS THAT ENDING?

WHAT?

WHAT?

[charliepanayi]

I still quite like the Lost ending, though I acknowledge it was flawed, much like the show itself.

And just to turn this around a bit before everyone starts ranting about Lost again, considering how controversial many final episodes have been in terms of dividing opinion (or just being universally disliked), what would people say are the best final episodes you've seen? I'd put forward Six Feet Under. Maybe Star Trek: The Next Generation too.

[Psychotic]

ending needed more Sawyer punching things and coming up with comedy nicknames

just sayin'.

[Night Fury]

I still quite like the Lost ending, though I acknowledge it was flawed, much like the show itself.

And just to turn this around a bit before everyone starts ranting about Lost again, considering how controversial many final episodes have been in terms of dividing opinion (or just being universally disliked), what would people say are the best final episodes you've seen? I'd put forward Six Feet Under. Maybe Star Trek: The Next Generation too.

I liked it, but I was a tad confused.

The final episode of Chuck was pretty smashing.
Aaaaand because I'm a big girl, Desperate Housewives.

[Jinx]

I still quite like the Lost ending, though I acknowledge it was flawed, much like the show itself.

And just to turn this around a bit before everyone starts ranting about Lost again, considering how controversial many final episodes have been in terms of dividing opinion (or just being universally disliked), what would people say are the best final episodes you've seen? I'd put forward Six Feet Under. Maybe Star Trek: The Next Generation too.

bro step back

[The Man]

TNG's last episode was great. Other conclusions I liked: The West Wing, Arrested Development, Cowboy Bebop, the original run of Futurama.

Lost's final episode wasn't bad, although there were a few mysteries I wish they'd resolved. It probably wouldn't have been possible without extending the run of the show a lot further though. I do wish they had done more with Walt's character.

[McLovin']

Most exciting show ever. Always kept you interested. What other show could do that consistently with some REALLY batshit story?

The ending was gay but it was extremely well done. From the opening to the very last scene, it was very captivating.

[The Man]

Lost was at least a good show throughout its entire run (despite a dip in quality in the third season) and is honestly probably one of the best shows in TV history, despite its flaws. Few other shows have managed to continue building as extensive a mythology as Lost did without eventually collapsing under the weight of their own ambition. (Much as I love Battlestar Galactica, I have to admit that it definitely started to do this towards the end of its run, much more so than Lost did. The X-Files, another show I am quite fond of, and which quite clearly influenced Lost, suffered this problem even worse).

I do have to wonder if Lost would've been anywhere near as effective without Michael Giacchino's score though. Pretty much everything that man touches turns to gold.

[Bubba]

I lost interest after series three. I'm not even that bothered how it ended.

Too many questions, polar bears, black smoke, numbers etc. Script writers... if you can't answer the questions, then don't write it!

I'm sure some of it was explained but from what I've heard no-one was satisfied.

[The Man]

Most of the important mysteries were addressed actually. A few of them weren't addressed onscreen but nearly all of them have been answered somewhere (http://www.cracked.com/blog/108-answers-to-losts-supposedly-unanswered-questions/).

The ending makes it pretty clear that most of the plot had been planned out pretty extensively from nearly the beginning of the show. There is an astounding amount of foreshadowing that viewers will not notice the first time through because of how complicated and unpredictable the story was, but a second viewing will reveal just how much of the plot had to have been planned from the start.

[Old Manus]

I never watched Lost and took the thread title to mean that the series was finally ending, and was like wow these guys are really making Tom Hanks look small time.

[Raistlin]

I also only watched Lost after it came on Netflix. The first two seasons were good, though overrated (too many cliches and painfully forced plot points for me). The rest I forced myself to watch to see what happened, just like everyone else.

The ending was terrible, and there are no excuses. The writers had spent 6 seasons making random, wild shit up as they went along just because it sounded cool, with no idea how they happened. This was made blatantly clear at the end, when they... never really resolved anything. The finale redefined "trite" in the dictionary.

Also, I could only take so much of everyone warning everyone else not to listen to the other side or "EVERYONE WILL DIE! THEY'LL KILL EVERY SINGLE PERSON ON THE ISLAND!" before I stopped taking any such threats seriously. Seriously, that is said upwards of dozens of times throughout the entire series.

[charliepanayi]

Seeing what happened to Heroes after its first season (and every show since Lost that has been styled as 'the new Lost'), I think Lost did pretty well in the end. As for forcing yourself to watch six seasons of a show, frankly you should probably have bailed out earlier. If a show's an ordeal to watch, it's not really worth watching. Any ending Lost had would have got people ranting anyway, it was that sort of show.

[Jinx]

Oh, Heroes. What happened to you? :(

[Raistlin]

As for forcing yourself to watch six seasons of a show, frankly you should probably have bailed out earlier. If a show's an ordeal to watch, it's not really worth watching.

That was hyperbole. I obviously got some enjoyment out of most of the show... at least until the last season.

[Mercen-X]

I just started rewatching Lost so I can finally finish it. I've heard the ending was pretty bad but I'm into torturing myself.

Wrong. The second and third seasons were complete bull (possibly due to writer's strike), but the ending was awesome as the beginning. BOOK ENDS!

[The Man]

I wouldn't say the ending was as awesome as the beginning. The pilot set a standard that it would have been difficult for any show to continue to match. The last three seasons are much better than a lot of season two and three, though.

[charliepanayi]

I liked season two, the first half of season three was probably the weakest part of the show in my opinion. But then they had the great Through the Looking-Glass at the end of that season at least.

Besides, without Lost we'd never have 'WE HAVE TO GO BACK!'.

[Night Fury]

I liked season two, the first half of season three was probably the weakest part of the show in my opinion. But then they had the great Through the Looking-Glass at the end of that season at least.

Besides, without Lost we'd never have 'WE HAVE TO GO BACK!'.

Or 'NOT PENNY'S BOAT'

:'(

Oh man, it's an emotional rollercoaster that show. As much as sometimes the plot can fail, the characters are just... :heart:

And the music.
Michael Giacchino man, guy is a genius.

http://i386.photobucket.com/albums/oo310/juanteojo/charliemanoejemplo.jpg

[Miriel]

[theman]Lost was at least a good show throughout its entire run (despite a dip in quality in the third season) and is honestly probably one of the best shows in TV history, despite its flaws. Few other shows have managed to continue building as extensive a mythology as Lost did without eventually collapsing under the weight of their own ambition.

Are you kidding me? That is exactly what happened to lost. The whole mythology got so convoluted and ridiculous that MILLIONS of people stopped watching the show. Lost became stupid and insipid. I was a huge huge Lost fan, and I still think that it was on the whole, one of the most brilliant and daring tv shows to ever exist. But when it got bad, it got really smurfing bad. Like disgustingly bad. So bad I wanted to punch people in the balls bad.

But it did pick up toward the end, and like so many other naive viewers, I believed in the promise of answers. Finally.

They never came. The finale was emotionally resonating. I cried and cried. And how amazing to see all the cast together again! It's only after all that huggy glowy feeling dissipated that you realize what a smurfing load of bulltrout that finale was. It answered nothing. It attempted to answer nothing. They lied for years about having answers. Stupid to believe them, really. The whole mythology was a load of hooey.

The pilot episode however, remains one of the best things I have ever seen.

Battlestar Galactica similarly got really really bad. But worse than Lost? I don't think so. Maybe equally bad.

Finales are usually shit. I heard the Six Feet Under finale is unusually good, but I never watched that show. I just finished all 5 seasons of Friday Night Lights which I can't believe I never watched before because that show is absolutely jaw-droppingly brilliant. And the finale for that show was almost pitch perfect. One of the best finales I've ever seen. Not because anything amazing or crazy happened. But it was just toe-to-toe right in line with everything the show is about.

[charliepanayi]

They lied! Oh, the humanity! Get over yourselves.

[The Man]

I had a long smurfing reply here but vBulletin ate it, so if something isn't coherent that's probably why.

People stopped watching the show because they stopped being able to follow its convoluted plot threads. Many of them have admitted as much in this very thread. That's fine. Lost is a show that demands lots of attention and it's not a slight on anyone who isn't willing to put in that attention if they can't follow it. I don't think it's really the writers' fault if some viewers get tired of putting the effort in either though. A show like Lost demands a lot of emotional energy and a plot that demanding isn't to everyone's taste, just as science fiction in general isn't to everyone's taste, or as metal and hip-hop aren't to everyone's taste. Long-running mystery shows take a special kind of audience.

Moreover, it's pretty clear that the convoluted plot was by design. Damon Lindelof has acknowledged (http://web.archive.org/web/20060718000520/http://www.eonline.com/Gossip/Kristin/Trans/Lindelof/index2.html) that Robert Anton Wilson was one of his primary influences, to the extent that the number 23 was one of The Numbers purely because of the 23 Enigma that appears in Illuminatus! and other works by Wilson. Another concept of Wilson's is "Operation Mindsmurf". Illuminatus! was very deliberately constructed as a work that would make readers question reality by presenting plot twists that would recontexualise everything that had previously been presented in the plot. Lost doesn't go quite to the extent that Illuminatus! does of having the characters actually realise they are characters in a book, but it does pretty clearly up the scale of the conflict in a manner that recontexualises the previous plot: Others vs. Lostaways, Ben vs. Widmore, Jacob vs. Man in Black, etc.

That said, most (not all, for sure, but most) of the important plot elements revealed from the very beginning are in fact given explanations, whether it's in the show itself or outside of it. The polar bears are explained. The smoke monster is explained. The plane crash is explained. People may not like those explanations, but that's a whole different problem from not having been explained at all.

Questions like "What is the nature of the island?" were left unanswered, though. I'm not sure why anyone ever expected them to be, really. From what I remember, Lindelof and Cuse had been saying pretty much from the time I started paying attention to their interviews (I think starting with the fourth season?) that trying to explain the Force was one of the dumbest things Star Wars ever did, and that there was much more drama and mystery to the saga when you didn't know things like midichlorians existed. Explaining what gave the island its magic would have been taking the mystery out of it.

This isn't to say that everything the show did was to my liking - it's never been satisfactorily explained, for example, while Michael's actions mean he can't move on while Ben's do, and there are a few minor plot elements like the reason for Libby's stay in a mental hospital that I feel weren't given satisfactory explanations, but most of these latter issues were background questions. Lostpedia has a list of unanswered questions (http://lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/Unanswered_questions), and most of them either are midichlorians-type questions ("why can't the smoke monster pass through the grey ash") or are pretty minor and don't really affect the plot ("Did Ben kill or order the death of the real Henry Gale?", "Why was Libby in Australia, and why was she leaving?", "Where did the nickname 'Hurley' come from?", etc.) There are a couple of things that could qualify as plot holes (for example, Rousseau not recognising Ben, though charitably to the writers we can assume that a person's memory of a face after sixteen years might have disintegrated, even if that person did kidnap their daughter), but that's to be expected in a show of this scope. I also feel the problems with the show are often vastly overstated by its detractors, and overall it seems to explain a lot more of itself than BSG did.

[Slothy]

People stopped watching the show because they stopped being able to follow its convoluted plot threads. Many of them have admitted as much in this very thread. That's fine. <i>Lost</i> is a show that demands lots of attention and it's not a slight on anyone who isn't willing to put in that attention if they can't follow it. I don't think it's really the writers' fault if some viewers get tired of putting the effort in either though. A show like <i>Lost</i> demands a lot of emotional energy and a plot that demanding isn't to everyone's taste, just as science fiction in general isn't to everyone's taste, or as metal and hip-hop aren't to everyone's taste. Long-running mystery shows take a special kind of audience.

Are you bringing this up in response to Miriels last post because if so I'm not seeing the relevance? For the record, I'm exactly the kind of person lost is was targeting in its audience. I watched all but perhaps the last two seasons several times before the show ended, I don't have trouble following convoluted plots, and I tend to remember far more about anything that I watch than most people, and for years longer than most people. And I will gladly state for the record that Lost didn't just become a convoluted mess by the end, but it didn't even have the decency to be an interesting convoluted mess by the end. Sure, most of the characters managed to be interesting enough for most of it's run, but it was pretty clear by about the end of the third season or so that as far as the mythology went, they cared more about leading fans on for several years than telling a tight, well paced, and well structured story. Which is pretty awful really because the structure that season 1 built up was awesome.


That said, most (not all, for sure, but most) of the important plot elements revealed from the very beginning are in fact given explanations, whether it's in the show itself or outside of it. The polar bears are explained. The smoke monster is explained. The plane crash is explained. People may not like those explanations, but that's a whole different problem from not having been explained at all.

Questions like "What is the nature of the island?" were left unanswered, though. I'm not sure why anyone ever expected them to be, really.

Here's the big problem I have with all of that. Most of the stuff they explain doesn't need to be explained, and actually worked against them because it deflated the mystery that the first season builds too much. Meanwhile, answers to the really important questions like why they're on the island got such cop out answers that there really are no words to describe it. At the end of all those seasons, we kind of deserve to know why those people ended up there. What did we get? Because Jacob brought them there. We didn't really get any more than that except that protecting the island is important and he needs a successor. The closest thing we get to why it all even matters is an allusion to the fact that it may a cork holding back hell (metaphorical or otherwise). But they might as well have answered the question of why it was important with "because we say it is" for all that really told us. And it did nothing to explain how the island can do any of the things it can do. Now I'm not saying they had to give us full explanations of everything, but they could have done better than that. Hell, they even could have given us several explanations and never told us which was true and it would have been better than that because at least that would acknowledge that the mystery of the show was half the fun after spoiling most of them with lame explanations that frequently make no sense because the island does whatever they think would be cool that week.


From what I remember, Lindelof and Cuse had been saying pretty much from the time I started paying attention to their interviews (I think starting with the fourth season?) that trying to explain the Force was one of the dumbest things Star Wars ever did, and that there was much more drama and mystery to the saga when you didn't know things like midichlorians existed. Explaining what gave the island its magic would have been taking the mystery out of it.

Except the problem with that analogy is that how the force worked wasn't central to the plot. How the island does what it does and why it's so important that Jacob needed to bring those people to it and so many people are willing to kill for it kind of is. Like I said before, giving an explanation doesn't have to take the mystery out of it. In fact, they were pretty good at giving all kinds of explanations for guys like Smokey early on and never saying which was right.

[Raistlin]

That said, most (not all, for sure, but most) of the important plot elements revealed from the very beginning are in fact given explanations, whether it's in the show itself or outside of it. The polar bears are explained. The smoke monster is explained. The plane crash is explained. People may not like those explanations, but that's a whole different problem from not having been explained at all.

You keep saying this, and the article you linked to earlier said the same thing, but this strikes me as extremely disingenuous. Go back to that article and count how many "explanations" are simply "magic." Although to be fair, that seems to be about the same level of the thought the Lost writers put into explaining some of their plot points.

And are you seriously trying to justify a lack of explanation in the show by saying some things are explained outside of the show?

EDIT: And I agree entirely with Vivi that many of the explanations that were given were lame and extremely cursory. E.g., "Jacob did it," "the Island wanted it," etc. And my god, the reason Locke and Ben used to try to make everyone return to the island was so painfully forced I actually felt embarrassed.

[The Man]

You keep saying this, and the article you linked to earlier said the same thing, but this strikes me as extremely disingenuous. Go back to that article and count how many "explanations" are simply "magic." Although to be fair, that seems to be about the same level of the thought the Lost writers put into explaining some of their plot points. Well, I mean, go back to Star Wars and see how many explanations are simply "The Force". I'm not saying Lost was as successful as the original Star Wars trilogy, but it's pretty common in works of science fantasy, which Lost clearly is, to have unexplained powers as an explanation for some plot elements. I don't really mind that as long as it's used consistently - e.g., the Smoke Monster's powers are pretty much consistently used throughout the show. Where do the powers come from? I don't think it matters. It's science fantasy.


And are you seriously trying to justify a lack of explanation in the show by saying some things are explained outside of the show?Miriel was saying the creators never had any answers for a lot of what happened in the show. They did. I'm not saying that having mysteries explained outside the show is optimal - it would be better for everything to be explained in-universe, as long as it doesn't detract from the pacing of the work (or other aesthetic qualities). But Lost is hardly the first case of answers to unresolved plot questions being given in supplemental material, interviews, etc. - I don't remember anyone complaining when J.K. Rowling gave lots of answers about Harry Potter outside of the books. (Ok, except for conservative Christians, but that's just because she revealed Dumbledore was gay).


Are you bringing this up in response to Miriels last post because if so I'm not seeing the relevance? For the record, I'm exactly the kind of person lost is was targeting in its audience. I watched all but perhaps the last two seasons several times before the show ended, I don't have trouble following convoluted plots, and I tend to remember far more about anything that I watch than most people, and for years longer than most people. And I will gladly state for the record that Lost didn't just become a convoluted mess by the end, but it didn't even have the decency to be an interesting convoluted mess by the end. Sure, most of the characters managed to be interesting enough for most of it's run, but it was pretty clear by about the end of the third season or so that as far as the mythology went, they cared more about leading fans on for several years than telling a tight, well paced, and well structured story. Which is pretty awful really because the structure that season 1 built up was awesome.Well, as I said, a large part of the purpose behind the story of Lost seems to have been to build up a story that branched out from its original points and recontextualised previous plot points in a manner to make viewers question reality. How well they did this is up for debate, but except for the dip in the third (and to lesser extent second) season, I found it largely compelling throughout, although of course it could have been done better (what TV show couldn't?).

Objecting that the show didn't stay the same throughout its run as it was during the first season is fine for all it goes - if that's what you enjoy the most, that's fine. But I also think it's pretty clear that the tightly controlled structure of the first season was not what the writers were going for. The show didn't completely abandon structure later on, but tight is obviously not what they were going through. The more the conflict expanded beyond simply Others vs. Losties, the less tightly structured it could be.


Here's the big problem I have with all of that. Most of the stuff they explain doesn't need to be explained, and actually worked against them because it deflated the mystery that the first season builds too much. Meanwhile, answers to the really important questions like why they're on the island got such cop out answers that there really are no words to describe it. At the end of all those seasons, we kind of deserve to know why those people ended up there. What did we get? Because Jacob brought them there. We didn't really get any more than that except that protecting the island is important and he needs a successor. The closest thing we get to why it all even matters is an allusion to the fact that it may a cork holding back hell (metaphorical or otherwise). But they might as well have answered the question of why it was important with "because we say it is" for all that really told us. And it did nothing to explain how the island can do any of the things it can do. Now I'm not saying they had to give us full explanations of everything, but they could have done better than that. Hell, they even could have given us several explanations and never told us which was true and it would have been better than that because at least that would acknowledge that the mystery of the show was half the fun after spoiling most of them with lame explanations that frequently make no sense because the island does whatever they think would be cool that week.That's fine, but that's a much different objection from "Nothing was explained". For the record, I think the stakes for what would have happened if Smokey had left the island could have been raised much better. I was largely fine with the way the protectorship of the island was explained though. It's not really much different from the mythologies of several major world religions.


Except the problem with that analogy is that how the force worked wasn't central to the plot. How the island does what it does and why it's so important that Jacob needed to bring those people to it and so many people are willing to kill for it kind of is. Like I said before, giving an explanation doesn't have to take the mystery out of it. In fact, they were pretty good at giving all kinds of explanations for guys like Smokey early on and never saying which was right.Really not seeing how the Force's mechanics aren't central to Star Wars' plot. Several of the most important characters use the Force on a pretty routine basis - at least as routine as the Island's powers are utilised by characters. The Protector, Jacob, and Smokey actually make up a smaller percentage of the Lost cast than Vader, Obi-Wan, Yoda and Luke do (yes, Leia has powers but for all they impact the story she might as well not) by virtue of how many characters Lost has. Star Wars would not be the same story if characters could not use "the Force", and what powers "the Force" can convey to people who use it are never explained by the original trilogy.

[Slothy]

Really not seeing how the Force's mechanics aren't central to Star Wars' plot. Several of the most important characters use the Force on a pretty routine basis - at least as routine as the Island's powers are utilised by characters. The Protector, Jacob, and Smokey actually make up a smaller percentage of the Lost cast than Vader, Obi-Wan, Yoda and Luke do (yes, Leia has powers but for all they impact the story she might as well not) by virtue of how many characters Lost has. Star Wars would not be the same story if characters could not use "the Force", and what powers "the Force" can convey to people who use it are never explained by the original trilogy.

What the force allowed characters to do certainly was central to the plot. How it allowed them to do it wasn't. That had literally nothing to do with characters motivations or the reasons anything in those movies happens (barring a glance into the future making Luke go to Cloud City). Moreover, until the prequels, force powers were for the most part consistently applied, and were established in the first movie. In fact, the only definite example of a power showing up that wasn't shown in the original movie was force lightning. Seeing the future might have been introduced in Empire, but I can't remember for sure, though it was already established that Jedi and Sith had the ability to perceive things beyond the scope of our five senses. More over, I'm not sure I'd compare the deus ex machinas used in a somewhat silly sci-fi adventure series to the ones used in a much more serious character drama.

But Lost was definitely far worse in all of those regards. The island, the Others, Smokey, and Jacob basically changed into whatever the writers wanted them to be to surprise the audience whether it was actually a good idea or not. Hell, the things the island is capable of doing from week to week changed so often that it became hard to take the show seriously by the end.

But really, I think Lost's biggest problem was that it didn't end after season 3 or so. If they had plotted out a good arc from the beginning which gave explanations to the things people wanted to know (what is the island) instead of the things no one really needed to know (why are there polar bears? What are the whispers?), and ended on a solid conclusion involving the Others instead of adding multiple new villains in an attempt to extend the life of the show for as long as possible, it would have been something great. As it is, I'll actually disagree with your assessment of the seasons. Season 1 was undeniably the best, season 2 was definitely a big drop in quality, season 3 did a reasonable job of clawing it's way back, then it was all down hill from there. It really was a show that suffered from going on far too long, and relying on far too much hand waving and misdirection for it's own good.

[The Man]

I guess I'm not really seeing introducing new powers as being a problem, since it was implied that the island had mysterious powers from the beginning and they were never really given a clearly delineated limit. But the fact that we disagree on whether "What is the island" should have been answered probably has a lot to do with why we disagree on the plot, as does the fact that we disagree on whether there should have been new antagonists. From where I'm sitting, the introduction of Widmore and then Smokey enabled the writers to reframe the story and cause a questioning of everything the viewer knew about the universe up until that point. Could it have been done better? Unquestionably. On the other hand, there are so few precedents for this kind of storytelling that I find it hard to fault them too hard for some sloppy storytelling.

I guess I'm also willing to overlook Lost's deus ex machinas after the deus ex machina to end all deus ex machinas that was the end of Battlestar Galactica. (Granted, that one was foreshadowed from the very beginning, but when the explanation for the entire resolution of your plot is "God did it"... yeah. It would have been more forgiveable if God's motivations were at all discernible - at least Jacob is a character on Lost whose motivations are pretty clearly delineated). They may be larger than Star Wars', but compared to some of the others I've seen they're pretty inconsequential.

I do agree that some of the answers that were given could have been more compelling, but eh. I never pretended Lost was perfect :p

[Miriel]

Ok, let me clarify my position.

They did answer some of the questions. But the answers were so atrociously bad that I must have wiped them from my memory. I remember for some reason Allison Janney appeared on the show but I am willfully preventing myself from remembering the rest of that idiotic plot line.

[Del Murder]

If you watch the Lost finale looking for answers, you will be really disappointed. If you watch it as a Lost fan, you will probably enjoy it. Just enjoy the ride, man.

I really liked Lost. The first season was one of the best seasons of TV ever. The second season was pretty good too. The middle seasons were pretty crap and almost unwatchable. The last season and a half was a return to glory but I really didn't like all the random killing of characters at the end.