The End

So there it is, the end of Lost. While I didn't think it was "the best" episode of the series, I did very much enjoy it, and I thought it a fitting end for the show. I think the opinions are going the vary wildly on this, and it's going to have a lot to do with where your investment as a viewer lies.

Put simply, if you're in it for the Mysteries of the Island, you probably hated this finale. Why was the Dharma Initiative still dropping food on the Island two decades after their work there came to an end? Who built the giant statue of four-toed Tawaret, how, and why? Not only did you not get answers to questions like that, but you actually got even more questions in this finale without answers! Who built the strange "stopper" down the hole with the light, and what was with all the crazy markings all over it?

Well, if that's you, you're free to speculate about such things. I care little or nothing about these kinds of details. I've said many times before, and I'll say it again here for the last time, I was invested in Lost for the characters. And on the level, the finale delivered a number of triumphant moments. The series of "awakenings" were a good narrative device, though I thought they actually weren't the most powerful moments in the finale. Actually, they more served as a way to remind of us powerful moments in the past seasons of the show, a sort of "greatest hits." Remember when Locke first realized he could move his legs? Remember when Kate helped Claire deliver her baby (even as Boone was dying elsewhere)? Well, I do too, and it was nice to be reminded of some of these moments that made me like Lost so much to begin with.

I may be an outlier in this, but I actually thought the most potent moments tonight were the new character beats that were found throughout it all. Miles' love of and belief in duct tape. The reunion of Claire and Charlie (and Aaron). The moment when Ben finally found acceptance as Hurley asked him for his assistance. And the careful symmetry of it all, ending with Jack lying down in the very spot where we first saw him wake up in the first moment of the first episode.

Lying down to die, of course. That was the big revelation of this final installment, that the "Sideways World" we've been watching all season was actually the first step of the afterlife for our heroes, after their separate and respective deaths. It's very interesting to me that, if you'll recall, the most popular theory on Lost for the first two years was "they're all in purgatory," denied repeatedly by the creators, and ultimately shattered in the season two finale (when the listening station out in the real world picked up on the destruction of the hatch). Now, things circled back around to the purgatory idea, but with the other reality, not the Island, serving the role.

Lots of things make greater sense now, when you look back at the Sideways World with this knowledge -- that this was a place of the castaways' own making. Kate swore she was innocent of murder in this reality, and indeed she may have made it so. Sun and Jin were not married here, perhaps because the actual marriage took them down a very dark road before they could truly become happy together. Sawyer refashioned himself as a detective, a true hero -- but wasn't completely able to let go of the baggage of chasing the man who killed his parents. Jack tried marriage with Juliet, but it didn't "take," because it wasn't those two who were meant to be together. So on, down the list. It's a pretty nice tying up of this season-long plot line. (Though with perhaps one exception... what was Sideways Eloise Hawking's interest in preventing the castaways from realizing they were dead? Is she some kind of guardian of purgatory? Or is she punishing herself over killing her own son in reality, and just looking to make the rest of them pay too?)

But it's only too appropriate that Lost leave questions for interpretation on the table. You can imagine for yourself what happened to Lapidus, Miles, Richard (who can now age!), Kate, Sawyer, and Claire after they made it off the Island. You can imagine the rest of Rose and Bernard's life on the Island. You can imagine the adventures of Island-keeper Hurley and his "number two" Ben.

It's funny, but going into tonight, I'd had the feeling over the last few weeks that I would want to sit down and watch the whole series again. And I still will probably do that at some point. But now, after having seen the finale, I don't feel as great a need to do so right away. The show no longer seems to me about seeing how all the pieces fit together. I'll watch it again to relive those great character episodes again -- to get the same sort of feeling that the best moments of tonight's finale gave.

Pretty solid. I can't honestly say I'm expecting anywhere near as much from tomorrow's 24 finale.