It’s a little difficult putting into words how I feel about Lost. There have been many shows I’ve followed and loved, but something about Lost connected with me in ways I’ve never experienced. After Sunday’s two-hour series finale, I couldn’t stop thinking about it, processing it all, trying to figure out if I was satisfied with the ending or not and then finally realizing it didn’t matter if it answered questions or not. It still connected with me — and now that it’s finally over, it feels strange.
I remember when I first heard about the show. The premise, about a plane that crashes on a desert island, sounded a little stupid, to be honest, so I didn’t even bother watching the pilot. But the second week, I tuned in just to see what all the fuss was about — and was immediately hooked. Here was this group of people who survived a plane crash, trying to figure out how they were going to get rescued. Then, unexpectedly, we see these characters and what their lives were like before the crash. Jack (Matthew Fox) was a doctor who had serious issues with his father; Kate (Evangeline Lilly) was a fugitive; Sawyer (Josh Holloway) was a con man; Charlie (Dominic Monaghan) was a junkie rock star; Claire (Emile de Ravin) was a soon-to-be unwed mother; Jin (Daniel Dae Kim) and Sun (Yunjin Kim) were a Korean couple whose marriage was falling apart; and Locke (Terry O’Quinn) was a wheelchair-bound man who could suddenly walk again when he crash landed on the island. And he liked to hunt with his suitcase full of knives. Oh man, this was goooood!
Then it REALLY started getting wonky, with the Others living on the island, the people from the tail of the plane, the hatches, the Dharma Initiative, the statue with four toes, the MIB/Smoke Monster, Jacob, flashbacks, flash forwards, time travel, alternative universes. But there was also this incredible heart to the show, with all the friendships and bonds. Kate and Jack, then Kate and Sawyer, then Sawyer and Juliet; Jin and Sun falling in love again; Charlie and Claire and little Aaron; Desmond and Penny; Locke and the island; Jack and Locke — man of science vs. man of faith; Ben vs. Locke; Charlie sacrificing himself to save Desmond; Juliet letting go of Sawyer’s hand and falling to her eventual death. I mean, I could go on and on. And finally, there’s the island itself, which you could say was a type of Eden, where good and evil wrestled with men’s souls. I might not have always understood it, but I always appreciated it.
I’ve had many conversations with people who say they started watching Lost but then gave up with all the programming snafus and lengthy hiatuses. They couldn’t follow it. Or others who were with it for the first two seasons but got disillusioned in the third season when the show seemed to meander. All along, I kept right with it, never once getting bored or ticked off that it would go away for awhile. I just waited patiently for it to come back. And come back, it would. When the creators decided to buckle down, trim it and put an end date on it, the show started to zing.
Then I find out the Lost geniuses Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof (and third co-creator J.J. Abrams) were huge Stephen King fans — and that King was a huge fan of the show. That did it for me. I seriously felt like I found kindred spirits, since I, too, love Stephen King and could see exactly how the show was on the same wavelength as my favorite author. Of course, Cuse and Lindelof are also into a lot of other really deep and philosophical stuff — you could say they are two enormous geeks — but they already had me at King, so they really couldn’t do any wrong. Oh, what I would have given to just sit in a room with these guys, and Stephen King, and just talk about it all. Maybe someday.
So, as the series finale began, I had a lot of emotions about how it would all end, what would happen, who would live or die. I mean, I had invested six years of my life to these people. For those of you who know the show, this six and final season saw the Losties on the island, dealing with a failed attempt at trying to reset the whole deal with a nuclear explosion and then having to battle with Locke, aka MIB, aka Smokey, to keep him on the island. But in Lost fashion, there was also a “Sideways” world, in which the gang never crashed but where Oceanic Flight 815 landed safely in L.A. from Sydney, Australia. Yet, in this alternate universe, the characters find themselves inexplicably drawn to one another, culminating in a collision of both worlds, so to speak.
I expected to cry, but oddly, I didn’t, even though I was deeply moved by the show of affection between the characters as, one by one, they found their soul mates and reawakened in the Sideways world. Still, I was still left speechless when it ended, with the Sideways group, in a church, crossing over into the light, while a dying Jack, lying on his back in the bamboo forest on the island, closing his eyes, rather than opening them. Frankly, I was a little shell shocked — but I was not disappointed.
The next day, I hit the water cooler at work and find out there’s a wide range of emotions about the finale — from it being tremendous and brilliant, to being confusing and muddled, to finally it being a waste of six years since NOTHING was explained. Many are comparing it to the end of The Sopranos, which just fades to black, quite literally in the middle of a scene. I loved The Sopranos ending, actually, so it should come as no surprise that I’m on the creators’ side for doing what they did.
I secretly wish for a movie follow up — but that’s me. TheMovieKit!
I know I don’t usually talk TV, but I still watch it religiously, in between screenings. And we’ve got to convince Jemaine Clement (and his comedy partner Bret McKenzie) to BRING CONCHORDS BACK! When I was recently interviewing Clement for Gentlemen Broncos [see below], the fate of The Conchords inevitably came up. Unfortunately, according to Clement, a third season doesn’t sound promising: