LOST 06.17/18/18.5: "The End" (Everything Else Was Just Progress)

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shagg_187 said:
Question: was Jack's son at the church? Just wondering especially since he is not his "son", per se.
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Didnt see him - so we can assume he was a means to an end.

Rewatching it - love Jack's words to Desmond as he tried to get him out of the cave,
"There are no shortcuts, Whatever happened, Happened". Saw some people calling the fact that they are dead the perfect definition of Deus Ex Machina - I can see where you guys are coming from with that, but got to admit - its the best use of DEM ever haha
 
5.8(6.4 in the last half hour) or 13m viewers was just a little bit over the season premiere. I'm very disappointed that a larger audience didn't get to experience it, but that would just lead to more confusion. My mom still doesn't understand what happened even after I explained it to her.
 
Hari Seldon said:
The ending was overtly Christian (Jack's Christ-like sacrifice and wounds, the water-to-wine, the CS Lewis ending, purgatory, etc. etc.). I'm guessing the other symbols were in the church so that everyone who is not Christian could still feel included by the ending. However to ignore the strong Christian themes is being ignorant.
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There was a lot of Christian imagery but I actually feel like the ending was more Buddhist. The Losties were sort of reincarnated in purgatory...it had a cyclical feel to it. And once everyone was together and had "let go" (a pretty common theme in Buddhism) they were able to transcend and reach nirvana.
 
I think the ending fit the show well. There are still some unanswered questions, but I think using your imagination is a big part of the whole show in the first place.
 
So the losties are all really happy after they die. That's swell, but it would have been cool to show us what happened to them after they left the island...you know the thing they've been trying to do for six seasons.
 
StoOgE said:
But why did Desmond flash off and on the plane? Why was the island burried in X-timeline?
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Desmond didn't flash off and on the plane. He got up and walked away. It was to make us think he was flashing off the plane but then we learned that he was normal like everyone else in that reality at first.

cory said:
5.8(6.4 in the last half hour) or 13m viewers was just a little bit over the season premiere. I'm very disappointed that a larger audience didn't get to experience it, but that would just lead to more confusion. My mom still doesn't understand what happened even after I explained it to her.
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Just as well. That just means less people who never watched the show shitting up this thread.
 
Alucard said:
If LOST was a book, people would be raging about loose ends and a lack of coherence.
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Most definitely. The sheer encyclopedia of in-universe canon left unanswered or unexplored is mind-boggling. I thought I was signing up to watch a character-driven science-fiction drama. Instead I ended up with emotional hogwash tied together with unnecessary plot lines and half-baked fantasy.

I expected that there weren't going to be any answers about Walt, and that didn't bother me. He was written out of the show, and was an expected loose end. The happy ending was contrived and felt tack-on. None of the "flash sideways" bits added anything substantial to the story. Charles Whitmore was always poised to be an epic antagonist that made Ben Linus look like a schoolyard bully - and that's no small feat when Ben was responsible for the wholesale genocide of the Dharma Initiative - and then Charles is cast as just another good guy looking out for the island. I could write a ten page essay on the plot-holes, character contrivances and unexplained phenomena of Lost, but I'm sure more than a few of my fellow nerds have already done this for me.

After such a stellar S4 & S5, I'm disappointed.
 
tabsina said:
ugh.. wasn't that the whole appendix thing? that's where the cut was when he lifted his shirt, wasn't it?
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Sort of. Except it doesn't explain why the minor wound was bleeding and the mortal wound was healed for months/years.
 
LCfiner said:
No. it’s not real. if it were a real place, jack and juliet wouldn’t abandon their real son and go off to church and then to heaven.

if it were a real place, jack wouldn’t be seeing fresh scars pop up that are resulting from his memory of his fight with Locke.

if it were real, the casket wouldn’t be empty and jack wouldn’t realize that he was dead and his dead dad wouldn’t be telling him that there is no time in this place and that everyone waiting for him had died.

it’s not real.

Christian was most likely referring to jack’s flashes of the island being real. Since this new jack is seeing them for the first time and has to reconcile all these new memories.
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-David mattered to Jack's growth as a character but didn't in the grand scheme. The purpose of this existence/timeline was to A. get a second chance at life without the island's influence B. reunite with those who mattered most before moving on. David was integral in helping Jack's redemption in a way.

-the bleed over, both literally and figuratively was a result of this existence being created out of a previous one.

-There was never supposed to be a body in a coffin. it was all Desmond's doing.

-fake people don't get shot and die, fly planes, get pregnant, give birth etc.. That all happened. The reality they created wasn't exactly like the original/main one. But it was a reality none the less.
 
Korey said:
So the losties are all really happy after they die. That's swell, but it would have been cool to show us what happened to them after they left the island...you know the thing they've been trying to do for six seasons.
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That's what they've been trying to show us? I thought they were trying to show us a compelling story about castaways on a mysterious island. Which they did.
 
Korey said:
So the losties are all really happy after they die. That's swell, but it would have been cool to show us what happened to them after they left the island...you know the thing they've been trying to do for six seasons.
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I don't care at all, the only post-Lost material I'd want to know about is Hurley/Ben/Des, if they just had plain sailing from then on, or if it was as crazy, or even crazier than the Lost we saw, but I kind of like not knowing. The people who left, I don't care about at all.
 
ProudClod said:
Haha, people are incredibly pathetic. I absolutely loved the ending, but I'm not going to go around trying to convince people to do the same. There are obvious reasons as to why some would enjoy the ending, and some wouldn't. I gave up caring about the mythology after AtS (which is what the whole point of the episode was, I guess. A way to get us to "let go". To forget about the addicting chase of "the answer"). I became a strictly character person, and I absolutely loved the ending. I also really don't mind metaphysical and religious twists. A religious twist in Lost is really not that far reaching, given the material we've had to work with over the past 6 years. I was fine with the religious twist in Raiders of the Lost Ark, and that came out of FUCKING NOWHERE. So, compared to that, Lost's religious/spiritual spin is actually somewhat predictable. Someone who only wants answers to mythological questions and a logical, scientific explanation for everything would clearly not have enjoyed the finale. These are Men of Science. I am a man of Faith. There is no amount of complaining, bitching about inconsistencies, plot holes, lack of explanation for electromagnetism or Taller-Ghost-Walt that is going to turn me into a Man of Science. Lost has become a show faith rather than science. Of magic rather than nanomachines. Of supernatural rather than electromagnetic. Why do you find it so hard to believe?
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People are pathetic because they watch the show for a different reason than you? It's fine for you to "let go" of what made people watch the show in the first place, but some viewers expect the writers to deliver the goods they promised in season 1. Instead they got a bunch of cop outs and non-answers because for some reason now the show is "character driven".
 
big ander said:
That's what they've been trying to show us? I thought they were trying to show us a compelling story about castaways on a mysterious island. Which they did.
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No, they didn't. They did manage to do the castaways part right though.
 
John Harker said:
Here we actually disagree. Jughead didn't factually do anything in terms of the 'flash sideways narrative'. Jack was wrong, and even admitted it. The term "flash sideways" is itself the final red herring, they weren't flashing to anything... this was a reality created after death by those whose journey we saw in life. This was their journey after death.

As Locke said after he awakened: Jack had no son. None of these people were real. I know some people will be disappointed with this, but this was the ending for those "men of faith." LOST was a journey from birth to death and after for these characters, and all we saw this season was the culmination of that. There was no part of the sideways that even existed that wasn't part of these LOST characters lives. The island was sunk because they needed to move on from it - it even needed to EXIST because some of them were born on it (Charlotte, Miles, etc). Even Ben visited the Island, but we learned in the flash sideways they moved off it young.

The island needed to go away for everyone to continue to exist and reunite, so in this purgatory, it was removed. In that sense, the 'bomb worked' - but again, it was all a spiritual illusion. Until each person "awakened" - i.e., came to the realization and acceptance of their own mortal death, they are born, died, and renewed within this karma cycle. Some people are ready (Jack, Locke, everyone we saw in Church) some are not (Ben, Ana Lucia as told by Desmond, Hawkings, etc) and some never will (Michael, Whispers, etc). After these people in the Church go to their deserved afterlife, all that will not touch the remaining people still in this purgatory lives... ceases to be.
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I actually copy/pasted this to a text file...I still feel like they may have cheapened it but I'm willing to revisit it with these thoughts in mind. Well said.
 
ProudClod said:
Haha, people are incredibly pathetic. I absolutely loved the ending, but I'm not going to go around trying to convince people to do the same. There are obvious reasons as to why some would enjoy the ending, and some wouldn't. I gave up caring about the mythology after AtS (which is what the whole point of the episode was, I guess. A way to get us to "let go". To forget about the addicting chase of "the answer"). I became a strictly character person, and I absolutely loved the ending. I also really don't mind metaphysical and religious twists. A religious twist in Lost is really not that far reaching, given the material we've had to work with over the past 6 years. I was fine with the religious twist in Raiders of the Lost Ark, and that came out of FUCKING NOWHERE. So, compared to that, Lost's religious/spiritual spin is actually somewhat predictable. Someone who only wants answers to mythological questions and a logical, scientific explanation for everything would clearly not have enjoyed the finale. These are Men of Science. I am a man of Faith. There is no amount of complaining, bitching about inconsistencies, plot holes, lack of explanation for electromagnetism or Taller-Ghost-Walt that is going to turn me into a Man of Science. Lost has become a show faith rather than science. Of magic rather than nanomachines. Of supernatural rather than electromagnetic. Why do you find it so hard to believe?
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Say what now? Religion was a part from the very beginning of the movie.
 
Nameless said:
-David mattered to Jack's growth as a character but didn't in the grand scheme. The purpose of this existence/timeline was to A. get a second chance at life without the island's influence B. reunite with those who mattered most before moving on. David was integral in helping Jack's redemption in a way.

-the bleed over, both literally and figuratively was a result of this existence being created out of a previous one.

-There was never supposed to be a body in a coffin. it was all Desmond's doing.

-fake people don't get shot and die, fly planes, get pregnant, give birth etc.. That all happened. The reality they created wasn't exactly like the original/main one. But it was a reality none the less.
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I don’t know what else to say to you. the show was pretty damn clear that the alt timeline was a waiting room after death. it wasn’t real and even the folks here in this thread who loved that reveal understand that it wasn’t real.

and the bolded is exactly why I disliked the "alt timeline" ending. it was all fake. or imagined or dreamed. whatever.
 
MjFrancis said:
Most definitely. The sheer encyclopedia of in-universe canon left unanswered or unexplored is mind-boggling. I thought I was signing up to watch a character-driven science-fiction drama. Instead I ended up with emotional hogwash tied together with unnecessary plot lines and half-baked fantasy.

I expected that there weren't going to be any answers about Walt, and that didn't bother me. He was written out of the show, and was an expected loose end. The happy ending was contrived and felt tack-on. None of the "flash sideways" bits added anything substantial to the story. Charles Whitmore was always poised to be an epic antagonist that made Ben Linus look like a schoolyard bully - and that's no small feat when Ben was responsible for the wholesale genocide of the Dharma Initiative - and then Charles is cast as just another good guy looking out for the island. I could write a ten page essay on the plot-holes, character contrivances and unexplained phenomena of Lost, but I'm sure more than a few of my fellow nerds have already done this for me.

After such a stellar S4 & S5, I'm disappointed.
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Really? Because dozens have posted the Lostpedia entry showing how few questions are left.

And this is the second time somebody has posted about plotholes with zero evidence. There aren't plotholes, at least no gaping ones.

Charles WIDMORE WIDMORE WIDMORE (if you're a "nerd" who loves this character so much, you should know this) didn't turn out to be the person you wanted him to be? ...Okay?I liked it. Others did. Shouldn't ruin the show.
 
I'm mad at myself right now. I can't even think about certain scenes from the finale without getting misty-eyed. Darlton really pushed my buttons.
 
finally caught up with this thread. Still loved the episode after I slept on it. I can completely understand why some people would hate it, but for me it was completely satisfying and left the perfect amount of mystery to the island. It would have been unbelievably stupid if they explained every little detail.
 
I would probably have enjoyed this episode more if I wasn't highly resistant to overt emotional manipulation.
 
John Harker said:
Here we actually disagree. Jughead didn't factually do anything in terms of the 'flash sideways narrative'. Jack was wrong, and even admitted it. The term "flash sideways" is itself the final red herring, they weren't flashing to anything... this was a reality created after death by those whose journey we saw in life. This was their journey after death.

As Locke said after he awakened: Jack had no son. None of these people were real. I know some people will be disappointed with this, but this was the ending for those "men of faith." LOST was a journey from birth to death and after for these characters, and all we saw this season was the culmination of that. There was no part of the sideways that even existed that wasn't part of these LOST characters lives. The island was sunk because they needed to move on from it - it even needed to EXIST because some of them were born on it (Charlotte, Miles, etc). Even Ben visited the Island, but we learned in the flash sideways they moved off it young.

The island needed to go away for everyone to continue to exist and reunite, so in this purgatory, it was removed. In that sense, the 'bomb worked' - but again, it was all a spiritual illusion. Until each person "awakened" - i.e., came to the realization and acceptance of their own mortal death, they are born, died, and renewed within this karma cycle. Some people are ready (Jack, Locke, everyone we saw in Church) some are not (Ben, Ana Lucia as told by Desmond, Hawkings, etc) and some never will (Michael, Whispers, etc). After these people in the Church go to their deserved afterlife, all that will not touch the remaining people still in this purgatory lives... ceases to be.
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Great points.
 
Jexhius said:
I would probably have enjoyed this episode more if I wasn't highly resistant to overt emotional manipulation.
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You think a television show/movie shouldn't attempt to induce emotion? Or it should only do it in a subtle way?
 
Alucard said:
So, I heard a rumour that the Michael character walked off for a while because he thought the writers were racists?
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From what I remember, it wasn't his initial exit, but his death episode that made him say that.
 
Alucard said:
So, I heard a rumour that the Michael character walked off for a while because he thought the writers were racists?

Also, thanks to the person who posted this:

http://ca.eonline.com/uberblog/watc...5_lost_want_know_man_in_blacks_real_name.html

There are some answers to questions in the second video. Namely...

-We're going to get Walt's story on the DVD
-MiB's name was Samuel
-#108...
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WHAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!

Oh and I think the racist comment isn't true. As mentioned in JKL, Michael's role was dead when Walt grew 6 feet tall...
 
big ander said:
You think a television show/movie shouldn't attempt to induce emotion? Or it should only do it in a subtle way?
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That's why I said 'overt'. There was a mixture in this episode - some of the flashes when people met up in flash-sideways were straight up nostalgia grabs. Other conversations - such as Locke talking to Ben, then standing up, were genuinely great and not cheap at all.
 
tumblr_l2wx9yuIMt1qzff5co1_500.png
 
shagg_187 said:
Oh and I think the racist comment isn't true. As mentioned in JKL, Michael's role was dead when Walt grew 6 feet tall...
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I don't think he actually said anything direct, but he wasn't happy that the remaining black guy was killed off.
 
echoshifting said:
I actually copy/pasted this to a text file...I still feel like they may have cheapened it but I'm willing to revisit it with these thoughts in mind. Well said.
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Yea, this must be what Lindelcuse meant when they said to trust them that by re-watching the 'flash sidways' with the knowledge after the finale will REALLY mess with our minds.

I'm super excited to watch Season 6 on dvd later this year... it will certainly lessen the confusion and really up ante the emotional connection now considering we're seeing their spiritual journey's actually play out after death. It feels almost like some kind of personal invasion, that's pretty intimate :)
 
Jexhius said:
That's why I said 'overt'. There was a mixture in this episode - some of the flashes when people met up in flash-sideways were straight up nostalgia grabs. Other conversations - such as Locke talking to Ben, then standing up, were genuinely great and not cheap at all.
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Gotcha. Well I loved moments like Locke and Ben and Hurley, but the flashes were awesome to me because they were built on the past 6 years of show that made these relationships great, so remembering all the genuinely touching moments was enough to put me in tears. But I see what you mean.
 
Korey said:
People are pathetic because they watch the show for a different reason than you? It's fine for you to "let go" of what made people watch the show in the first place, but some viewers expect the writers to deliver the goods they promised in season 1. Instead they got a bunch of cop outs and non-answers because for some reason now the show is "character driven".
Click to expand...

No, they are pathetic because they're trying to convince everyone to dislike the show. I am fine with most of the discussion going on "I didn't like the finale for reason A" or "I liked the finale for reason B", but it's starting to piss me off just how many people are convinced that the other side is "wrong". There are two sides to the coin (well, a few more sides, actually, considering you can be a Man of Science and not care about the mythology). Point I'm trying to make is, we all liked Lost for different reasons. The people that liked it because of the mythology or the science fiction aspect are very disappointed. I understand that. There are others, however, that liked the show for different reasons (like myself) and have come off incredibly satisfied with the finale. I don't understand why this is so hard to fathom. There are people that come in and try to convince that their way is the only way of thinking, and that we're somehow mistaken about what we like, or that the producers owe us something... They're pathetic.
 
ProudClod said:
Haha, people are incredibly pathetic. I absolutely loved the ending, but I'm not going to go around trying to convince people to do the same. There are obvious reasons as to why some would enjoy the ending, and some wouldn't. I gave up caring about the mythology after AtS (which is what the whole point of the episode was, I guess. A way to get us to "let go". To forget about the addicting chase of "the answer"). I became a strictly character person, and I absolutely loved the ending. I also really don't mind metaphysical and religious twists. A religious twist in Lost is really not that far reaching, given the material we've had to work with over the past 6 years. I was fine with the religious twist in Raiders of the Lost Ark, and that came out of FUCKING NOWHERE. So, compared to that, Lost's religious/spiritual spin is actually somewhat predictable. Someone who only wants answers to mythological questions and a logical, scientific explanation for everything would clearly not have enjoyed the finale. These are Men of Science. I am a man of Faith. There is no amount of complaining, bitching about inconsistencies, plot holes, lack of explanation for electromagnetism or Taller-Ghost-Walt that is going to turn me into a Man of Science. Lost has become a show faith rather than science. Of magic rather than nanomachines. Of supernatural rather than electromagnetic. Why do you find it so hard to believe?
Click to expand...

I don't have to "believe" to see plots just being dropped or loose ends hanging about like they're going out of style.

I accept the ending as is, but I do not find myself satisfied with the lack of continuity from previous seasons. Also, it's funny that you cared for SIX YEARS but then in the third-to-last episode you decided that the mysteries weren't important anymore. Don't you find that frustrating in the least?
 
ProudClod said:
No, they are pathetic because they're trying to convince everyone to dislike the show. I am fine with most of the discussion going on "I didn't like the finale for reason A" or "I liked the finale for reason B", but it's starting to piss me off just how many people are convinced that the other side is "wrong". There are two sides to the coin (well, a few more sides, actually, considering you can be a Man of Science and not care about the mythology). Point I'm trying to make is, we all liked Lost for different reasons. The people that liked it because of the mythology or the science fiction aspect are very disappointed. I understand that. There are others, however, that liked the show for different reasons (like myself) and have come off incredibly satisfied with the finale. I don't understand why this is so hard to fathom. There are people that come in and try to convince that their way is the only way of thinking, and that we're somehow mistaken about what we like, or that the producers owe us something... They're pathetic.
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Well put.

I completely understand why some people wouldn't like the finale, but this conceit of "I can't wait for you dum-dums to wake up and realized you were all duped rubes" is hilariously sad. RubX said it best. I'm happy, you're frustrated. I win.
 
Alucard said:
So, I heard a rumour that the Michael character walked off for a while because he thought the writers were racists?
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Louis Farrakhan actually put his two cents into the matter in an interview last year:

Louis Farrakhan said:
The white creators of this show went out of their way to make sure all black voices on Lost would be silenced. Naomi and Abaddon thought they had it made working for that old white man Widmore. They thought they were untouchable because master would pat them in the back or give them a pat on the head every now and then. But they were reminded of their place in society and killed by white people. The white man could not stand to see a black man change his ways and surrender himself to Allah, so they killed Mr. Eko. The white man did not want to see a black man have a strong relationship with his son, so they killed our brother Michael and wrote his son off the show. The foundation of the black family, our women, is being attacked as we speak. The writers want to send the message that there are no good black man left and have the only black woman on the show shacking up with a cracker, living in the jungle in poverty.

My brothers, the white man can no longer both brutalize us physically and at the same time escape the law. So he uses other means to attack us. New millennium, same old devil. Assalam alaykum!
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