Spoiler-free LOST finale afterthoughts

[thehefner]

Let me tell you... going from sobbing my eyes out at LOST to laughing my ass off in BOONDOCKS, all within the space of three minutes? Yeah, I think we can call that emotional whiplash.

An hour later...

ME: (skimming through Twitter, Facebook, and LJ) Unsurprisingly, a lot of people hate the ending of LOST.

MOM: Well, they're pussies, what can I say?

Over the next few days (years?), I look forward to reading the complaints about that finale, giving them my full attention and consideration. For now, I'm gonna continue to think that that ending was almost as perfect as that show could possibly have, against all fears and expectations to the contrary.

I'm betting that some of you are sick and tired of hearing the mere mention of LOST, and I'm just adding to the problem. Frankly, as someone who got into this show very late in the game, having to spent every Thursday (or was it Wednesday?) mornings wading through all the geekgasms and spoilers from people raving about the previous night's episode... yeah, believe me: I feel your pain. I was never a LOST fanatic.

After being disappointed and frustrated too many times by where the characters did or didn't go, I was watching it pretty much purely to see what happened next. I never had the investment that others did, considering that I watched the first five seasons on DVD, without having to wait week to week, season to season, theorizing and geeking out with fans. Not until this season did I finally understand that fun, on what was considered by many to be the worst season ever. Now, I want to find everyone who complained about the Sideways Universe being "pointless," and I just wanna go "FUCK YOUUUUUU."

Maybe it was the Johnny Go martini that I made at the show's start. And/or maybe it was the Dark 'N Stormy I made at the halfway point. Or maybe it's the fact that I'm soft and sappy from being in a relationship with Henchgirl, to the point that--even though she was exhausted and napping upstairs--there were four separate occasions (guess which!) where I wanted to wake her up and kiss her for reasons she wouldn't understand.

With a couple minor exceptions, I feel like this ending made me love the show as a whole in ways I never could before. And unsurprisingly, many of the hardcore fans who DID love it all these years... many of them seem to outright loathe this ending. Or at least, they're left cold. Unsatisfied, perhaps deeply.

Right now, I don't care. I'm still feeling very tender, very sappy, and incredibly grateful that I didn't watch it at a party, or with hardcore LOST fans. I watched it with my Mom, with whom I've followed the entire series. An hour later, we still couldn't talk about it without blubbering. It hit personal notes that I think completely bypassed many other people, and I'm grateful to have shared it with someone else who felt that way, even if we aren't both big fans of the show.

So again, speaking as someone who is *not* a major fan of LOST... I absolutely fucking loved that ending, and I think it was perfect. It proved once and for all that this show is about character over mythology, and no resolution or any unanswered question would have been half so fulfilling and satisfactory for me as what this finale did.

But if you did hate it, I'm genuinely curious: how should it have ended? You don't have to answer it now, as I expect this will be debated for years and years to come.

Comments

[fragmentedsky.livejournal.com]

I (probably predictably) feel like I shouldn't love the ending, given how little it answered, but I did. It wasn't the giant fucking perfect final puzzle piece, but it came back to what was always central about the show - the banding together of these people. It opens the door for so many new stories (HURLEY AND BEN RUNNING THE ISLAND TOGETHER, OH GOD I WISH WE GOT TO SEE THAT.) I sobbed, over and over and over again. It ended there, and I'm okay with that. I can't wait to watch the whole thing over again.

[gnort.livejournal.com]

I'm rather torn myself. I get all the flash and callbacks being there as a way to sort of look back on the time we spent with these characters and how they've changed, but it really didn't need two and a half hours for it. You could've easily cut a half hour from that and made it an even two hours. Also, they really could've paced it better.

While the characters are important, the mythology was a huge part of the show and hand waving it the way they did was pretty lazy. I know that people's imaginations would build it up to something bigger than what it was, but that's no excuse to just throw up your hands and give up.

You can't spend years building up all these mysteries and plotlines only to shrug and say "meh" at the end of it. I know, the journey is what matters, but it bugs me when writers use that line to justify their inability to come up with a satisfying conclusion. The quality of the conclusion should have a direct correlation to the journey, the better the journey, the better the payoff. Going against that just leads to frustration.

I almost feel like this video

http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/thatguywiththeglasses/cs/11035-cslost

was far more accurate at the end of it all than it should've been.

In a lot of ways it did act as a good send off though, as I said, looking back at the characters was fitting in a nostalgic sort of way, and the final shot was perfect, I also liked the final moment between Ben and Hurley.

All that being said, I knew, even when I was watching the earlier episodes on Netflix, that this was going to be a show I'd watch once, enjoy well enough and just be done with it. That still holds true, so I'm not freaking out over it, but I did feel a bit letdown by the way they chose to wrap it all up.

Not quite "You've always been here"

[american-arcane.livejournal.com]

While I liked the finale plenty, it wasn't without flaws and I can definitely see how some who were expecting a more sci-fi flavored ending were left with a Durian-bad taste in their mouth after trying to swallow the fantasy they were handed.

A lot of the mythology came down to "It just is, ok?" which is somewhat problematic as so much backstory had been developed off the screen in a couple of alternate reality games and other web-based, canonical formats. Lots of stuff was just never introduced into the show--stuff that made some of what has gone on over the last handful of years make more sense.

And the whole deal with the split in the lives of the characters (crashed vs. didn't crash), while awesome and sensible to me, could have been made a lot more palatable to the more general audience by having some sort of foreshadowing of it... probably from Dogan while everyone was at the temple.

But, yeah, it hit all the right emotional buttons that your casual fan would get caught up in the spectacle and character and not care about the hard questions that weren't being answered. The hard-core mystery solvers, though? There's probably no way short of an actual encyclopedia or after-action report from God that would make some of them happy.

[leiacat.livejournal.com]

Just watched it. Loved the character stuff, which was indeed nothing short of perfect. Loved the way the show was crafted - how the shots were composed, how the references interplayed, all that.

I have to say, though, I prefer the sorts of endings that imply a bit more "beginning of something else". And unlike the first responder, the island-side ending felt like not enough. With too many interesting characters dead, fewer than I'd like get to have the story-in-potentia new beginnings. So, I was _really_ hoping that sidewaysverse would have more places to go, the explained nature of/reason for the sideways felt entirely unsatisfying.

What I wanted was for the timelines to converge via electromagnetic handwavy mumbo-jumbo, with the island staying in the memories of the now-wiser-and-better-adjusted sideversers. Preferably this would happen via Ben doing something redeemingish. (I'm ok with what they did with Ben instead character-wise.) It'd have been nice if Jack happened to actually grow up and step away from his saving-everyone streak, too. (At least they hung a lampshade on it.)

[thehefner.livejournal.com]

I was very much hoping for a collision of the universes too, but only out of my desire to see characters like Locke (especially Locke) finally get their redemption. In that respect, the way they actually did it satisfied me. Seeing Locke in the hospital bed, remembering who he was, it felt like being reunited with a long-lost friend. And that scene with him and Ben outside the church might honestly be my all-time favorite moment of the series.

Also, I never cared about Juliet at all, and yet I so cried when she and Sawyer were reunited. CRIED. That's what I loved about this finale: in the last couple hours, this show made me care about things I hadn't cared about at all over the previous six seasons.

[leiacat.livejournal.com]

That's because you're a sap. Whereas I'm a cynic, and to me it was Almost But Not Quite Enough, especially when it turned out that all of these characters growing and coming into themselves is ultimately for nothing, because they're all dead. Sun and Jin never get to raise their daughter together, so the mere fact that they remember her is Not Enough. The new and improved Locke never gets to walk down the aisle for his wedding. Sayid, who spends so much effort being a good man, never gets a chance to live like one. It might be the lack of Christian background in me, but a good afterlife is just no substitute to a well-lived life.