Tonight we bid adieu to Lost after six seasons on the air. The series finale had a lot to live up to and, without question, it wasn’t going to please everyone.
The producers have long said that the series was about the people. The title referred to their place in life and, through their experience, they grew and changed. In the end, all of our Losties (and many of their loved ones) are all together again, bound by the most important time in their lives — their time on the island.
In looking at the immediate reaction, it seems that many people feel cheated. I think it stems from (I believe) the misconception that the characters were dead the whole time.
We were told that the Losties were not dead and not in purgatory and they weren’t. Their experience on the island was real. They were all dead by the end of the show, in the church — a place they all created so that they could reunite once they had each passed away. As Christian told his son, some of them died before Jack did (on the island) and some died after.
What did you think of the series finale of Lost? Satisfying or upsetting? Love it or hate it? How does this one rank against other series finales?
UPDATE: If you were confused by the final images, blame ABC.
I was with this show until the last ten minutes. Then it proved the two things I always believed about Lost. 1.) That show had no respect for human life and 2.) Every storyline that happened off the island was cheesy and stupid. There at the end I though maybe Murder Island had actually orchestrated all those events of nuclear bombs and time travel, just to create a side reality for all those it effed with the get to live their lives in peace. Then it pulled the rug out from under my feet and revealed it was all a… Read more »
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and to be honest, if we had got all the answers would the interweb be buzzing with differing theories, opinions and arguments about the rights and wrongs of not telling us everything about the island. I agree that one of the best characters in the show was the Island itself, but that was due to its mystery, and if we had got the answers we wanted, that mystery would have been removed and then it would just be another island. I don’t agree with the purgatory thoery either. Technically most of the characters… Read more »
ABC’s programming has always been geared towards the casual television watcher. LOST attracted a rather new type of audience to ABC. A more thoughtful and harder to please audience.The types of people who create the buzz on the internet are exactly the kind of people this ending offended. People that make Fansites and write fan-fics and start long-term , hardcore discussions about TV shows are a different breed than the folks who casually watch a show and never really even care if they understand it. I do not know who it is you are agreeing with. It seems you are… Read more »
I personally was thrilled with the whole series, I really think it was very clever with the mythology and almost biblical references running though the show, combined with numeous themes and subplots. It seems to me that whatever way the creators of Lost had gone there would always be people who would be dissatisfied, but then that is the viewers prerogative as it would be the reader of a novel. This was an epic, it was clever and fascinating all at the same time, combining all sorts of human emotions, tragedy, grief, comical moments ( Sawyer was a great contributor… Read more »
In the first season they mentioned The Island being like another character. That was the gimmick, that was the intrigue, that was what kept us watching the show. Remember in season 3 when the show sucked? That was because all we saw was ridiculous episodes about Jack getting his tattoos and the Expose people getting bit by spiders. The ratings tanked because we were getting no answers about the island. So now they say, “It was all about the people, and we’ve always said that.” No it wasn’t, and no you didn’t. I feel like I was strung along for… Read more »
I dont understand how people can say that was the worst finale EVER, obivously they havent seen the Sopranos. Granted there are many questions unanswered, but at least people will be thinking about the answers to these questions long after the show is over.
I am not sure how you can compare the Soprano’s ending to this. The Sopranos storyline was all tied up and closure was brought to all of the running plotlines. They even went several steps further and started Willow and Tony Jr on coherent , believable paths towards thier future. I have to assume you are talking about the final scene where Tony was killed without showing the bullet fired……. That may have been a little unsatisfying, but its not that big a deal, its just some imagery, we knew what happened we just didn’t see it. The Sopranos were… Read more »
It was very disappointing. Yes, it sucked. Just like the endings of The X files or Seinfeld.
It was a great way to satisfy a very religious and scientifically illiterate country (USA).
By the way, none of you have “theories” about the show. A scientific theory is a well tested and proven set of facts about the natural world, such as Darwins Theory or Einsteins Special Theory of Relativity. You have hypotheses which need confirming data in order to call them theories.
I expected more than a “gotcha” ending. The ending was not as sophisticated as the audience. We guessed they were in Purgatory in Season 1. But after six seasons, to just come out and say that they were all dead, is a cop out to me. It makes the stories of Jacob & MIB, Richard, all the time travel and the Dharma Initiative…IRREVLEVANT! And then to show Kate, Sawyer, Claire, Miles, Daniel Faraday and Frank Lapidus actually getting off the island was an extra insult to only say…. gotcha….they’re all dead….. I have read so many BETTER theories on the… Read more »
@Dolly: There’s no “gotcha” about it.
The point is that they weren’t all dead from the beginning. The island was not a dream or purgatory. It all happened in the character’s lives, except for the “flash sideways” that we’ve been seeing in season six. The ending showed us that the characters all ended up in the afterlife together and moved on to the great beyond (heaven if you like).
Well if they weren’t all dead from the beginning, why did they show the original wreckage of the Oceanic 815 flight? And not all the characters showed up at the church. Where was Mr. Eko, Michael, Walt, Ana Lucia, Daniel Faraday, Miles and Frank Lapidus? Were their “sins” greater than anyone else’s? What was Penny doing at the church? Both her and Desmond were not on the flight. Did those few seconds at the stadium with Jack & Desmond running the bleachers make that big a difference in Jack’s life? If so, then how lame is Jack! And why did… Read more »
“this ending really makes me sick”
Me too. I kid you not when I say I burst into tears when it ended–I couldn’t believe I had just wasted 6 years on a show that has a non-ending.
Ending sucked. The “purgatory” storyline was an absolute watse. I don’t give a crap that they all couldn’t “move on” after they died (I understand that they all died at random times and they didn’t die together in Flight 815, 316, or the H-bomb). Who cares? The show was not about the people, it was about the Island. These people represtent just one chapter in this island’s long history, mainly the last chapter of Jacob’s tenure as island protector. You have to assume that the island has had many protectors and people coming and going over the centuries, all playing… Read more »
Ending sucked – just one alternate ending could have been everyone was frozen by Drama after the plane crash and their brain waves were being manipulated by Ben for research and the volcano on the island blows up allowing all to die in peace
???? Well, we are all entitled to our view point, I’m sure that you may have got confused with ‘Thunderbirds’ or ‘Captain Scarlett’
Right after the finale ended, I got up and threw out my “Lost” Season 1 DVD set (the only one I had pending possibly getting the full series on DVD) They betrayed the series. I understand it’s about the people on the show. But the bottom line is, pulling a religious ending out of the show when they had tried so hard to make it a science fiction show is a cop out. What if some of the folk were non-believers? Is Ben what happens to them, unable to accept what’s happening and enter “heaven”? The writers and producers had… Read more »
very very disappointing ending
It was perhaps the most disappointing ending to a show of all time. Soo many questions needed to be answered and never will be. very unhappy
don’t compare this rubbish to A2A, that is an insult, A2A tied up everything and answered every question, lost took the easy way out cos the writers weren’t clever enough, I don’t care that they are dead and moving on together, I wanted the islands questions answered, not the cop out we got, the island was real and they just died at different times, kate said she missed jack so she got off the island and lived a life, they just all met in that place when they died, so if the island is real, answer they should have answered… Read more »
Yes, yes, yes! I totally agree with you! They never finished the story. I don’t care if the show was just about the people. If the show wasn’t about the Island and its mysteries, it never should have been mentioned!
Basically, the show ended with everyone dying and nothing happening. It was a sappy Lifetime movie ending.
I think it was a good ending, fitting of Lost as a whole. I think it would have been more annoying to have everything answered as Lost, as the name implies, means that we are not meant to know everything. As has already been mentioned, it was always about the characters and they had their storylines pretty much wrapped up. My theory about the ending: Everything that happened on the island was real. The plane did crash. The experiences that everyone went through were real, hence why everybody experienced flashbacks when they touched the ones they loved or whatever. Why… Read more »
To Man of Science The island is a real place where time travel occurs; it ties together the physical world as we know it and the metaphysical world–for sci fi fans there is a time portal accessible due to enormous electomagnetic forces somehow “bottled” there. Physicists do think that time travel is possible–so if we all die in time, yet we think our existence is limited by time and death–can we be alive after our death? Many times during the show, characters who had died, such as Charly make appearances to those living in the “future” world. If there is… Read more »