After six seasons Lost finally drew to a close - first on the East Coast in the US and then around the world as simultaneous broadcasts took place... starting with a slightly worrying technical fault!The most disappointing aspect (apart from all the questions that remained unanswered) was that there was no hard and fast solution to hang your hat on. Rich and I watched the whole six years together, but at the end of the final episode had initially very different ideas of what it was all about.
We're used to the writers playing fast and loose with time on Lost - first there were flashbacks, then flash-forwards and finally the flash-sideways. The first two were great - we learned about the characters and saw what was to come for them... the flash-sideways was slightly harder to fathom. What was the deal with the alternate universe?
Well it seems that it was some sort of muster point for the characters of Lost to rediscover each other after they died - as Christian Sheppard says to Jack (isn't he dead? yes, apparently he is!) "Everyone dies sometime, kiddo. Some of them before you, some of them long after you". This line I take as evidence that this interpretation is the correct one - that and Jack's insistence that "whatever happened, happened".,
It was quite touching as all the characters found each other again - the joy on Hurley's face when he went to fetch Charlie was lovely... as were all the romantic reunions.
So, pretty much everyone got their happy ending. A few burning questions were answered; the mother of Jack's creepy kid was Juliet... Rose, Bernard and Vincent were still alive and well and leaving their peaceful existence in their castaway hut... actually, that's about it.
Many things went unanswered... details about the Dharma Initiative, fertility problems on the island, where the others came from... actually just about every major and minor mystery left unresolved.
I love that everyone got their happy ending, but I hate that so much was left unresolved. I don't like the whole "open to interpretation" vibe of the finale. I want concrete answers.
One of the alternative interpretations I have come across is that everyone died on the crash of Oceanic 815 - so it doesn't matter that pretty much nothing after makes sense. This is a theory I can't subscribe to. That would be worse than Patrick Duffy appearing in the shower in 'Dallas'. There we only wasted a season... this would be six years!
So - take from it what you will. After six years and 100+ episodes I was massively disappointed. I wanted to know who put the four toed statue there, how the journal from the Black Rock came to get off the island for Widmore to buy at the auction, who was dropping the food parcels on the island... and a whole heap more besides.
All the complaints aside though there were some truly excellent moments and some superb lines:
- Hurley says about Jacob "He's worse than Yoda"
- Locke's disappointment when he finds out that Jack is Jacob's successor "You're sort of the obvious choice don't you think?" - thousands of heads nodded in agreement.
So we say goodbye to the island and along with Desmond say "I'll see ya in another life, brother".