I am finally back from my trip and have begun my quest to catch up on the shows that I missed while I was gone. I was most eager to watch the Lost finale since that show has been my absolute favorite since it started back in 2004. I’m sure most people have seen it by now, but just in case, there are spoilers beyond this point.
Let me first say, I really really hated the way this show ended. Yes, that is a very strong opinion, but I don’t hold it lightly. As a seriously dedicated fan of this show for six years, I felt like I was completely let down. There were so many places they could’ve gone with it and I felt what they chose was a total cop out.
Firstly, they introduced this “sideways” world, that ended up being the show’s end, at the beginning of the sixth season. This raises the question, why should I have cared about what happened for the first five seasons? If the plot’s ultimate endgame is not relevant until the final season and has no relevance to the story up till that point, then why should I have invested all my time watching and caring? There were so many story-lines that had literally no connection to the final plot and yet the writers made such an effort to make us care about them. It’s like the show was a giant jigsaw puzzle but when you tried to put it together some of the pieces were missing and some of the pieces didn’t even belong to right puzzle.
Secondly, this “place” that they created for themselves where they all meet up in the church makes zero sense. Why were THOSE particular people present? The way that Christian Shephard explained it, I feel like only the people on flight 815 should have been there. Meanwhile people like Juliet and Penny were there and others like Walt and Michael were absent. I mean, Michael sacrificed himself so that others could live and he doesn’t even get invited to the “crossing over” party? And what about that poor flight attendant and the kids that were stuck with the Others? It just seemed really inappropriate.
A fairly literal Lost ad. I guess we had some warning.
Thirdly, I don’t like that the show took such a religious turn. I realize that there were religious undertones throughout most of the series, but I didn’t feel that it was strong enough of a theme to be the endgame. There’s a fine line between faith and religion and they crossed that line in the finale. As a fan who is decidedly non-religious I was really put-off by that change. It thankfully didn’t get too preachy, but just the fact that there was clearly a religion-heavy emphasis really put a bad taste in my mouth.
I could go on for PAGES as to why this ending was terrible and the show deserved better. I’ll spare you since it will just get increasingly angry. In my opinion, a show’s finale should end major plot points or reach a turning point of some kind and then leave the audience something to think about. A good example is the finale for the show Alias, which is particularly relevant because a number of the Lost creative team worked on it. The finale ends a lot of the major plot points, but leaves just enough open to interpretation. I remember watching it and thinking “well done” to myself. Maybe I just set my standards too high for Lost.
I won’t deny that I’m happy that the characters at least found “peace” in the end, but I’ve never been comfortable with happy endings. They’re just too unrealistic. I guess I would’ve been happier with the ending if they hadn’t had the whole “sideways world” plot. Without that, the story would’ve ended with the Ajira flight escaping the island, Hurley running the island with Ben, and Jack dying in the same spot where he crashed. To me, that’s a more satisfying ending than the poorly-executed religious plot that tried to tie a nice bow on everything. But like I said, I don’t like happy endings.
DISCUSS: What did you think of the Lost finale? Were you happy with it?