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

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Raist said:
Certainly not most, and the large majority of the answers provided were like a 30secs scene which didn't really provide an answer anyways, or poor answers with loads of inconsistencies.
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LOST's story was told purely from the perspective of the characters. The majority of answers weren't given in a pedantic Law & Order/Scooby-Doo style reveal where everything is magically wrapped up. Sometimes it could take three different scenes all in different episodes to provide clarity to something that happened.

And that's why I appreciate the show so much. They didn't pander the viewer, though it seems a lot of people would have preferred that.
 
Kurtofan said:
What important mysteries remain?
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Pretty much everything related to the island, the origin of its powers, how people found out about it, the heavy focus on egyptian stuff, etc. All we got was a glowing cave with a plug.
And some big mysteries' answers like who the fuck are Jacob/MIB was kinda answered, but that was seriously lame.

As I said, I never expect everything to be answered completely or clearly.
I absolutely loved Quantum Leap, and it certainly never gave a clear answer, for instance. But the show wasn't heavily focused on that at all, so I was fine with it, and the ending was brilliant while purely character-focused. That's my main gripe with Lost, it focused on all that stuff so much, bringing 5 more questions after vaguely giving one answer, and the last season felt like "ok, let's throw a few rotten bones, and switch to a cheesy happy ending, every character will be so lovable even if they used to be evil/assholes. Awesome."
 
Raist said:
Pretty much everything related to the island, the origin of its powers, how people found out about it, the heavy focus on egyptian stuff, etc.
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Island's origin? Same origin as the rest of earth. Its just an island.
Island's powers? Its just electro-magnestism, which is in high concentration there.
People found it the way every other charted place on earth was found. Exploration.
Egyptian stuff? To show that the Losties are but a link in the great chain of civilizations that have, are, and will exist.

Amount of this that matters? None.
 
Raist said:
Pretty much everything related to the island, the origin of its powers, how people found out about it, the heavy focus on egyptian stuff, etc. All we got was a glowing cave with a plug.
And some big mysteries' answers like who the fuck are Jacob/MIB was kinda answered, but that was seriously lame.

As I said, I never expect everything to be answered completely or clearly.
I absolutely loved Quantum Leap, and it certainly never gave a clear answer, for instance. But the show wasn't heavily focused on that at all, so I was fine with it, and the ending was brilliant while purely character-focused. That's my main gripe with Lost, it focused on all that stuff so much, bringing % more questions after vaguely giving an answer, and the last season felt like "ok, let's throw a few rotten bones, and switch to a cheesy happy ending, every character will be so lovable even if they used to be evil/assholes. Awesome."
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Seems like you're the guy who wanted to know "how" The Force worked in Star Wars. They writers provided more than enough exposition about the Island and it's function as it related to the characters. None of what you posted is relevant to the story of LOST. Not to say it would've have been cool to say, but it just didn't matter.
 
Solo said:
Island's origin? Same origin as the rest of earth. Its just an island.
Island's powers? Its just electro-magnestism, which is in high concentration there.
People found it the way every other charted place on earth was found. Exploration.
Egyptian stuff? To show that the Losties are but a link in the great chain of civilizations that have, are, and will exist.
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All non-answers or cheap answers, you should write for ABC's next series :p
And again, if Egyptian stuff was just a detail, I'm still wondering why they insisted so much about it, linking it with every single major mysterious place on the island.

The importance of this stuff across the show, and how they answered (if at all) in the end is extremely unbalanced to me, and it feels like season 6 was just telling us to forget about all that crap that doesn't really matter in the end because what matters is that everyone is happy together in the afterlife. Meh.

Edit: yeah. That's what I thought. Well excuse me for expecting a little bit more from a show that was big because of all these mysteries, and not expecting an ending made of (very poor) character drama.
 
Raist said:
All non-answers or cheap answers, you should write for ABC's next series :p
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Says the man with a Metal Gear avatar :lol

Sounds like you watched the show for all the wrong reasons, and Lindelcuse totally trolled you in the end. LOL.
 
Raist said:
Pretty much everything related to the island, the origin of its powers, how people found out about it, the heavy focus on egyptian stuff, etc. All we got was a glowing cave with a plug.
And some big mysteries' answers like who the fuck are Jacob/MIB was kinda answered, but that was seriously lame.

As I said, I never expect everything to be answered completely or clearly.
I absolutely loved Quantum Leap, and it certainly never gave a clear answer, for instance. But the show wasn't heavily focused on that at all, so I was fine with it, and the ending was brilliant while purely character-focused. That's my main gripe with Lost, it focused on all that stuff so much, bringing 5 more questions after vaguely giving one answer, and the last season felt like "ok, let's throw a few rotten bones, and switch to a cheesy happy ending, every character will be so lovable even if they used to be evil/assholes. Awesome."
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See, deal with it, no matter if the questions were answered you wouldn't like the answers. Sucks you didn't like the show over all, but the writers can't win them all. But , I'm one of those fans they could give a fuck about the mythology. Glad I cared about the character's, and only the character's.
 
What did you expect then? The Island to to be apart of some already established legend or myth. It's funny, if Jacob's mother had given some bullshit 30 second spiel about The Island being Atlantis and rising to the surface due it's electromagnetism people would have been satisfied. If there was some useless flashback which showed what would become the Island glowing before breaking apart from Pangaea, I feel there would be less backlash. None of it makes sense to me to be honest.

I'm starting to realize that people aren't disappointed by the show itself rather that their own unrealistic or fucked-up expectations of the show weren't sated.
 
Solo said:
Says the man with a Metal Gear avatar :lol

Sounds like you watched the show for all the wrong reasons, and Lindelcuse totally trolled you in the end. LOL.
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Remind me never to fight Solo. He'll kick you in the balls with a quickness. :lol
 
dwt64z.jpg


nobody knows who that is behind desmond? or the girl in the pink behind sayid?
 
I don't understand how someone could watch this show for six years looking only for answers all along, but then not be able to understand stuff like the huge clues we got about when egyptians were there, who smokey was (I.e. Mother was smokey) and more.
 
big ander said:
I don't understand how someone could watch this show for six years looking only for answers all along, but then not be able to understand stuff like the huge clues we got about when egyptians were there, who smokey was (I.e. Mother was smokey) and more.
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Perhaps they turned their brains off, watched for the on the surface character stories and figured all the mysteries would be wrapped up in a gigantic answer dump at the end the series.
 
big ander said:
I don't understand how someone could watch this show for six years looking only for answers all along, but then not be able to understand stuff like the huge clues we got about when egyptians were there, who smokey was (I.e. Mother was smokey) and more.
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I think the ones who got fucked the hardest are the people who only care about answers and dont go on the internet to discuss or look up stuff about lost.

At least thats the case with 2 people i know.

They feel like they wasted 6 years of their life :lol
 
Nameless said:
What did you expect then? The Island to to be apart of some already established legend or myth. It's funny, if Jacob's mother had given some bullshit 30 second spiel about The Island being Atlantis and rising to the surface due it's electromagnetism people would have been satisfied. If there was some useless flashback which showed what would become the Island glowing before breaking apart from Pangaea, I feel there would be less backlash. None of it makes sense to me to be honest.

I'm starting to realize that people aren't disappointed by the show itself rather that their own unrealistic or fucked-up expectations of the show weren't sated.
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They were just a few examples, and still you only picked the origin of the island, which was honestly one of the lesser problems. As I said, I don't WANT everything to be 100% answered, but for me they didn't deliver at all.
I mean, take Jacob, the dude is like the Final Boss or something for most of the show, and eventually he's just a random baby who's been given these powers after sipping some wine, from his adoptive mother who was like him before. That's not an answer at all. Same for Smokey, he's the evil brother who magically turned into a smoke monster doing clicking noises after being thrown in a cave with a magic light. Doh.

As far as character drama goes, to me they completely ruined most personalities, every single tension between characters, the tragic and poignant deaths of many of them, and the awesomeness of assholes ike Ben in the final scene. "Everyone is happy and friends in the afterlife. Nothing else matters. THE END".
Seriously, it's like "And they had a long happy life with many children".

So yeah, I'm not saying that the show as a whole was shitm I enjoyed seasons 1-5 a lot, but the final season was a huge miss for me.
 
Pretty much why I love this season's promo pic more than anything else.
Locke is all manga/comic posing up in this piece.
 
Raist said:
I mean, take Jacob, the dude is like the Final Boss or something for most of the show, and eventually he's just a random baby who's been given these powers after sipping some wine, from his adoptive mother who was like him before. That's not an answer at all. Same for Smokey, he's the evil brother who magically turned into a smoke monster doing clicking noises after being thrown in a cave with a magic light. Doh
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Whats wrong with that?

I think its awesome that MiB and Jacob were flawed and complicated instead of just demi gods
 
Solo said:
Island's origin? Same origin as the rest of earth. Its just an island.
Island's powers? Its just electro-magnestism, which is in high concentration there.
People found it the way every other charted place on earth was found. Exploration.
Egyptian stuff? To show that the Losties are but a link in the great chain of civilizations that have, are, and will exist.

Amount of this that matters? None.
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"Electromagnetism" is now the new "a wizard did it".
 
Korey said:
"Electromagnetism" is now the new "a wizard did it".
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This is not something new. EM was the catch all for the island's wackiness since S2. It was at the forefront of S4 and S5 too.
 
Raist said:
They were just a few examples, and still you only picked the origin of the island, which was honestly one of the lesser problems. As I said, I don't WANT everything to be 100% answered, but for me they didn't deliver at all.
I mean, take Jacob, the dude is like the Final Boss or something for most of the show, and eventually he's just a random baby who's been given these powers after sipping some wine, from his adoptive mother who was like him before. That's not an answer at all. Same for Smokey, he's the evil brother who magically turned into a smoke monster doing clicking noises after being thrown in a cave with a magic light. Doh.
Click to expand...

So it's not that "nothing was answered," but "I don't like the answers we got."

In which case, maybe you should be happy that not everything was answered. =P
 
Drealmcc0y said:
Whats wrong with that?

I think its awesome that MiB and Jacob were flawed and complicated instead of just demi gods
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I think the answer was quite disappointing, but the main problem is that it felt kind of rushed and poorly presented. In most cases I felt like they wanted to get rid of all mysteries asap, not really giving a shit, to focus so much on the afterlife (like half of the last season is...) when, given the final reveal, it didn't really matter after all.

I seriously cannot understand how Lost-GAF spent so much time making up theories, deciphering egyptian hyeroglyphs, and analysing 400x zooms of screencaps, and now acts like "LOL you're doing it wrong, none of that mattered, it's all about the characters, dude!". Seems a bit... inconsistent.

Ah well, the journey was fun. See you on the other side guys. I think I'll stay out of the church tho :p
 
Vincent on the cover = AWESOME.


The only plotlines Lost did not satisfy me with were:

The outrigger shooting scene
Walt's powers (the birds!)
Jacobs cabin
 
Raist said:
They were just a few examples, and still you only picked the origin of the island, which was honestly one of the lesser problems. As I said, I don't WANT everything to be 100% answered, but for me they didn't deliver at all.
I mean, take Jacob, the dude is like the Final Boss or something for most of the show, and eventually he's just a random baby who's been given these powers after sipping some wine, from his adoptive mother who was like him before. That's not an answer at all. Same for Smokey, he's the evil brother who magically turned into a smoke monster doing clicking noises after being thrown in a cave with a magic light. Doh.

As far as character drama goes, to me they completely ruined most personalities, every single tension between characters, the tragic and poignant deaths of many of them, and the awesomeness of assholes ike Ben in the final scene. "Everyone is happy and friends in the afterlife. Nothing else matters. THE END".
Seriously, it's like "And they had a long happy life with many children".

So yeah, I'm not saying that the show as a whole was shitm I enjoyed seasons 1-5 a lot, but the final season was a huge miss for me.
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If that's really all you took from the narrative than I'm not sure what you want me to say other than you missed the point. If you didn't like it you didn't like it. That's your prerogative. But don't give some blatantly sarcastic and reductive critique of the plot and act as though that's a realistic and factual interpretation of the events. You can do that with anything: LOTR was about some Emo Ranger who helped a midget destroy a trinket. Star Wars about a whiny kid with a blood disorder who teams up with a rag-tag group of misfits and conquers his daddy issues. That shit ain't clever and you're not fooling anyone.
 
Raist said:
I mean, take Jacob, the dude is like the Final Boss or something for most of the show, and eventually he's just a random baby who's been given these powers after sipping some wine, from his adoptive mother who was like him before. That's not an answer at all.
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It is an answer man, as were the ones Solo gave you and that were desumed from the show.
Just because you expected something more important, it doesn't mean there weren't answers at all. There were, you just didn't like them and wanted them to be more relevant (and there's nothing wrong with that) but it doesn't mean they didn't answer shit.

Raist said:
Same for Smokey, he's the evil brother who magically turned into a smoke monster doing clicking noises after being thrown in a cave with a magic light. Doh.
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Same here. He wasn't thrown into a random magic light, he was thrown into a highly concentrated amount of energy with EM properties, and turned into a cloud of pure electromagnetism.
You may ask why he did while Desmond and Jack didn't, and this is indeed a legitimate question, but it doesn't make what happened to Jacob's brother a non-answer.
 
I hate obviously Photoshop'd covers. All of Lost's are pretty terrible, season 3 at least didn't try and make it look like everyone was posing together.
 
jamesinclair said:
Vincent on the cover = AWESOME.


The only plotlines Lost did not satisfy me with were:

The outrigger shooting scene
Walt's powers (the birds!)
Jacobs cabin
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Agreed on the outrigger. I don't care much about Walt though.

As for the cabin, I would have liked for it to be explained, but I doubt it could have been explained without plotholes developing.
 
I don't think seeing the characters have happy afterlives hurts the impact of the main events of the series at all. The surviving characters still lived out the rest of their lives knowing that their loved ones were gone and not knowing for certain whether they'd see them in the afterlife.
 
So, I think I fall somewhere in the middle of this answers/no answers debate.

On the one hand, I ABSOLUTELY agree that most of the people saying the show provided no answers are actually saying that they didn't like the answers they got... even if they don't realize that that's what they're saying

Across the Sea is a great example. After the episode aired half of GAF was pissed about it not answering anything. But what they need to think about is A) How much they knew about Jacob and MiB before the episode aired and B) How much they knew afterwards.

AtS gives pretty much a complete backstory on their life, their motivations... how they became the way they are (barring a little smokey ambiguity at the very end). The problem people have is that going into the episode, they thought learning Jacob's background = learning the island's background. And they were annoyed to learn that Jacob was essentially clueless.

What they are ignoring is that that, in and of itself, is an answer.

BUT

I also side with the "no answers" camp on a lot. Here's the problem with LOST - you can say it's about the characters all you like, but the show hung it's hat on the mysteries. My rule of thumb is any smash-cut to "LOST" followed by a commercial break (or worse an end of an episode) needs to end up being important, in the end. If it isn't, then it's just the show fucking with the audience.

So something like the Hurley Bird... that's fine. It's clearly meant to just to be unsettling. But when you have a moment like this:

Sayid: "I'm less curious about where the giant statue came from, and more curious about why it has four toes."
LOST
*cut to commercial*

But then in the end, that isn't relevant to anyone. And LOSTgaf is now insisting that that stuff is just flavor... it's just background. The problem with that argument is that it was the SHOW ITSELF that elevated these mysteries and put them front and center.

When you're gonna hang a commercial break cliffhanger on something, and then say "whoops that actually didn't matter at all" years later, then that is a problem and people have a right to be upset/disappointed. All that weirdness *could* have been background if the creators wanted. But they intentionally call attention to it with the most dramatic tool in their arsenal (commercial break), only to then ignore it all.

Moral of this post:

No Answers Camp: Don't forget how much of the onion WAS peeled back. Think about what you knew at the beginning of S6 about Jacob and the Island, compared to the end of S6. Same for other seasons.

None of those mysteries matter camp: LOST leaned heavily on these mysteries for years and years. The creators wrote their entire show to keep people guessing about things they had no intention (or were unable) to answer, which is bad form.
 
Jocchan said:
It is an answer man, as were the ones Solo gave you and that were desumed from the show.
Just because you expected something more important, it doesn't mean there weren't answers at all. There were, you just didn't like them and wanted them to be more relevant (and there's nothing wrong with that) but it doesn't mean they didn't answer shit.


Same here. He wasn't thrown into a random magic light, he was thrown into a highly concentrated amount of energy with EM properties, and turned into a cloud of pure electromagnetism.
You may ask why he did while Desmond and Jack didn't, and this is indeed a legitimate question, but it doesn't make what happened to Jacob's brother a non-answer.
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I never said there was ABSOLUTELY NO answers. Just that some stuff wasn't answered at all, and most answers felt completely unsatisfacting, with inconsistencies, and rushed with a poor presentation.
I've said that one billion times so I don't really understand why you guys act like I said "they didn't answer anything, boooh!"

Someone took the "Force in Star Wars" example earlier. I don't have a problem with it. And it's completely different from what happened with Lost. It's a rule in the Star Wars universe, from the start, and you don't get any more developments on that stuff, which is fine. The plot of the Star Wars series isn't built around it and its origin for instance. However, they eventually came up with an answer. Medichlorians. Didn't make any sense, and that was a poor explanation.
Electromagnetism is exactly the same, because it certainly cannot explain supernatural stuff in any way. That's also one issue for me, trying to give a completely unscientific explanation to supernatural events with something based on science.
 
GDJustin said:
But when you have a moment like this:

Sayid: "I'm less curious about where the giant statue came from, and more curious about why it has four toes."
LOST
*cut to commercial*

.
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Your one example is that they didnt answer why the statue had four toes?

Well it did, its because the statue of tawaret
 
Semantics LOST-GAF-age:

Sayid's actual quote was more like "I don't know what's more disquieting, the fact that the rest of the statue is missing, or that it only has four-toes"

Hey, that was my favorite LOST episode before last sunday.
 
Egyptians are the new polar bears. "What do you mean Dharma did experiments on the bears? No, you're fucking wrong and that's stupid."
 
Raist said:
I never said there was ABSOLUTELY NO answers. Just that some stuff wasn't answered at all, and most answers felt completely unsatisfacting, with inconsistencies, and rushed with a poor presentation.
I've said that one billion times so I don't really understand why you guys act like I said "they didn't answer anything, boooh!"

Someone took the "Force in Star Wars" example earlier. I don't have a problem with it. And it's completely different from what happened with Lost. It's a rule in the Star Wars universe, from the start, and you don't get any more developments on that stuff, which is fine. The plot of the Star Wars series isn't built around it and its origin for instance. However, they eventually came up with an answer. Medichlorians. Didn't make any sense, and that was a poor explanation.
Electromagnetism is exactly the same, because it certainly cannot explain supernatural stuff in any way. That's also one issue for me, trying to give a completely unscientific explanation to supernatural events with something based on science.
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Well, I actually said that you can be unsatisfied by the answers, but the point is they do exist.
A lot of stuff is just hinted and left open-ended, but you can came up with reasonable conclusions. This means that some answers do exist, they just can be disappointing.
And that was my point :)

Drealmcc0y said:
Your one example is that they didnt answer why the statue had four toes?

Well it did, its because the statue of tawaret
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Exactly, many depictions of Taweret had four toes.
And it's pretty easy to imagine why Egyptians would build a statue of Taweret on the island.
Of course we were letting our imagination run free and thought of aliens or ancient civilizations before the human race, so in the end the answer was much less exciting... but there was still one.
 
Hahaha Oh my god I had no idea that Sawyer was the first ever vampire you see in Angel :lol . I'm watching the first episode right now and he's the first vamp you see :lol

Can't find it on youtube cause there's no Angel stuff in there, but he's at 1:40 :lol
 
Drealmcc0y said:
Your one example is that they didnt answer why the statue had four toes?

Well it did, its because the statue of tawaret
Click to expand...

*shrug*

I stand behind my even-handed post. I don't have LOST commercial breaks memorized to the degree required to come up with some other examples of the writers using mysteries to manipulate their audience.

My overall point is

*something crazy*
LOST
*commercial*

is a well-worn LOST trope at this point. I mean shit it's been parodied dozens of times. And the fact is the *something crazy* is often there just for the sake of having something crazy, with no intention of it being central or in some cases being answered at all.

"WE HAVE TO GO BACK" is an example of a genius smash-cut to commercial. Season ending one, to boot. But there's plenty of example of manipulative and exploitive ones. All the "no answers" people feel cheated by them.
 
Sorry to move off-topic a bit but I have a question about the DVDs/Blu-rays.

I have the first 5 seasons on DVD (UK versions) and the finales are all split up into their individual parts with added "previously on lost" segments. This really annoys me and messes with the pacing (particularly with through the looking glass, my favourite episode). Is this the case with the U.S version of the DVDs or is it the same? I'm planning to buy the complete collection on blu-ray eventually but I would rather import the US version if they don't split the finales.
 
By the way i think this a good summary for what the whole light and what happened to the Mib:

The MIB was evil because he died when Jacob threw him down, landed in the Light, which was life itself, and so he became the incarnation of death basically. He was a psychopath with a specific agenda to leave the Island. It wasn't that he was going to "kill everyone" when he left: when the Light went out fully (once the Island sinks it can't be restored), it goes out everywhere. That means everyone dies.
 
I think most of the questions were answered in a very organic way. The only thing that felt heavy-handed was the whispers explanation, but everything else was handled in a logical way instead of making everything into a big deal. Yeah, they acted like the four-toed statue thing was a big deal back in season 2, but it got answered nonetheless. It may have not ended up being a big thing but I like that I got the information and was able to think, oh, okay, that's what the statue is and that's why it has four toes. Problem solved. Some may not like that and I completely understand, but I don't see how anyone could feel cheated by it, as a very solid explanation was given.

I love how, for example, the polar bear explanation wasn't like OKAY KIDS ITS POLAR BEAR ANSWER HOUR! Instead they show us cages, they show us frigid environments... badda bing. There's the information I personally need. I don't need any more than that.
 
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