Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION The Anywhere Machine Lost: The Final Season

Here are some long and random comments and thoughts I had:

The finale for me was a beautiful hymn to these characters and the world they created for themselves. I start weeping when I think of Jack dying in that bamboo grove, where it all began, with Vincent for company. They did in the end live together, and they didn't die alone.

The Island is a transcendent mystery. Who built Tawaret and the Temple? Who created the viaducts in the golden glowing light (GGL) cave? Why did MIB falling into the cave make him an evil smoke monster who can only assume the forms of dead people? Who put the plug in the naval of creation? My answers are for myself, and are incomplete, and I can't wait to read what others have to say on the matter. But the kernel of my answer lies in the words of Mother, that crazy lady from "Across the Sea." The Island is focus of divine light in the world, the same light is inside everyone, but people always want more, and if we are not careful, we will put it out, and it will go out everywhere. The Island and its heart ARE the naval of creation, the interface between the divine, eternal and unchanging and temporal, transitory world of suffering. Remember what Namaste the word and the gesture both mean: "The divine in me recognizes the divine in you and acknowledges we are the same." The little bit of divine light in everyone. The godlike, the eternal. And that light has a Source, and that Source can be used by Man, and Man can destroy it if he is not very, very careful.

As to why that source is the Island, why it's on Earth, why it's at the bottom of a cave with a stopper in it, why it has a guardian, why it has ANYTHING to do with electromagnetism--why not the strong or weak nuclear forces, they're cool too? That's the macguffin part. There is no definitive answer to THAT. There are as many answers as there are people now and forever to ponder those questions. Just like everyone has to answer for herself/himself what the Lost finale really means.

Spoilery things below:

I LIKED that Shannon was the person Sayid was meant to be with, after all. She was his second chance, after all, another deeply flawed person who didn't care about Sayid's past. In that light, Nadia was a temporal attachment -- deeply loved, yes, but also completely intertwined with Sayid's unspeakable past and the suffering it created for him. He had to let go of her to move on. And he did, and the reward was Shannon. Why did he love her? You got me, but the heart wants what it wants.

I LOVED that Hurley is the new Guardian, but probably because I have long expected him to be. And as Ben suggests, I think Hurley used his guardianship in a completely new way, with no smoke monster to contain and no crazy mother baggage to carry. I see Hugo making the Island a place of healing for people who couldn't fix themselves any other way. After all, that's what it did for him.

I LOVED that Jack had the foresight to trust in Jacob's machinations, the very "long con" as Sawyer perfectly described it. And I'm glad that the climactic fight wasn't the end, only the beginning of the end.

Damon Lindelof Star Trek connection! The climax in the GGL cave is an homage to Start Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. In TWOK, Spock has to repair the Enterprise's warp engines with his bare hands, and receives a fatal dose of radiation that kills him. It's completely unclear what he actually does, but it involves removing a stopper from a central pedastal, fiddling with it, while blinding light shoots out, and replacing the stopper. Just like Desmond and Jack did. Spock, like Jack, was a man of science, who in the end learned that logic was the beginning of wisdom, NOT the end, and that friendship mattered more than anything else. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one. And vice versa.

I may never be clear on what the Sideways REALLY was -- the creation of Faraday's bomb plot, or just the typical purgatory. But it IS clear that it was essential to getting Desmond to willingly go down in the GGL cave and potentially sacrifice his life. He was CONNED by the connection to Sideways Desmond into doing this willingly (which he clearly wouldn't have done otherwise) by the seductive vision of that happily ever after Sideways life. In contrast, the mission of Sideways Desmond was to bring together all the key Losties, to help them find each other. And in the process, Desmond realized, despite the almost unendurable pain and suffering he had been through, that these people were in fact his bruthas, and he wanted to move on into eternity with them. Pretty damn cool, that Desmond!

I'm left thinking a LOT about Sawyer, Miles, Claire and Kate, the ones who got away. Kate fulfilled her mission, to reunite Claire with Aaron. After all the broken, deceptive family issues, in Kate's life and Lost generally, that's a wonderful thing. Aaron won't be raised by another. He will know his real mother, warts and all, and Kate will be there for Claire, just as she was at Aaron's birth, so that Aaron doesn't end up like Jacob and MIB. And Ji Yeon will be there too, I suspect. Sawyer and Miles. They can still do a bad-ass cop show! They make it out together, and have to find something to do with themselves before they die and go to LA X. I also think about Sawyer's daughter. Will he be there for her now, as his parents weren't there for him? I believe he will. I think it's great that, of the characters left alive at the end, these were the ones who had something to go back for, and they did. Yes, the world probably needs a gifted spinal surgeon more than a con man, a psychic, a crazy Aussie chick and a fugitive, but what the hey.

Clearly, a lot of people view the final shot of the crashed plane as meaning that it was all a dying man's dream. Others have claimed the wreckage was rusty, there were footprints, etc. I'm with you all: I think the Island happened. If it didn't, then the characters' suffering, learning and deaths wouldn't matter, and while Darlton are sneaky bastards, the authenticity of the character arcs were clearly their highest priority, too. I think the last shot is Darlton's test of each fan's faith. And that's as it should be.

But what of squirrel baby?

A line almost all of us knew was coming and totally delivered: "See you in another lifetime, brother" (Jack to Desmond this time). I told my wife expect that line hours before the show aired and she was like "yeah, whatever, I already thought that too". And then when Jack said it we were both a little teary eyed.

I didn't like the fake-out with the flash-sideways, and I have a hard to reconciling some of things we see and we are told with the actual revelation of what it was. Every "enhanced" episode, for example, began with the claim that that the flashsideways is "what would've happened if the plane had never crashed", while that's not exactly true. It's really I kind of joint dream that they all create, as I understood it.

On the other hand, we did see quite a bit to indicate that at least people with a connection to the island remained on the island after death, so we were kind of set up for this all along. I'm reminded of that guy building his cabin over and over again in the woods, and I wonder how many many different variations of our Losties lives have played out in "flash-sideways".

It was an incredibly powerful episode, and a fit ending to what was easily the best network tv series of our generation. I'll mention also the great visual allusions to earlier episodes. The most obvious one was Locke and Jack when they were lowering Desmond into the light, but there were a bunch more, as I recall.

I was the same, Cobie. Ultimately the finale and the show worked for me because I was totally in the moment of the show and along for the ride, and even the things I expected left me completely moved when they happened, because the plot, pacing, acting, music, cinematography, everything just worked. I can't blame people for thinking the finale was too sentimental or mawkish. On an objective level it absolutely was. But for me the payoffs for each character were pitch perfect.

EDE, I feel the same, but I imagine, as with the BSG finale, some combination of producer hints and fan insight will resolve this seeming discrepancy sooner or later. You could take the line about "what their lives would have been like if the plane hadn't crashed" as having a deeper meaning -- that the only way that could happen is in a wish-fulfillment/after-life construct, because what happened, happened, the Island was real, etc.

I forget if it was the 2nd or 3rd season, but Sawyer pointed out to Kate that they really didn't have anything to go back and should stay on the island. At this point though, Kate has Aaron to go back to and I think Sawyer wants to get away from his memories of Juliet.

Hey, to each his own. I personally don't like the anorexic pubescent boy look that far to many people in hollywood go for these days. There's being in good shape and healthy, and then there's extreme overdoing. Even my wife commented on it. Its just a thang. everyone has their own tastes. To me, she looked a little haggard and permaturely old even in the black dress. When did women become embarrased to have curves and look feminine?

I thought the same thing, Rick, and I think if you look at the clips from the first season, Evangeline looks healthier and curvier. I hope, for her sake, that she looks thin and haggard for the part, and not because she has fallen victim to the Hollywood holocaust look.

Interesting that other characters were in the sideways world as well, such as Miles, Rousseau, Alex, Charlotte, Nadia, Ana-Lucia etc. and even bad guys like Keamy but weren't at the church. Makes me wonder which characters were "really" there and which may have been there for wish fulfillment. It's possible they were all real but not "ready", but there's evidence that some, like Jack's son obviously, were not.

I'd say that some others were definitely real, especially Eloise and Faraday. Maybe they just weren't ready to move on yet and let the fantasy end. Eloise certainly enjoyed having the opportunity to be a loving mother to her son for a change.

Ben, I think, still felt unworthy after all the horrors he'd been responsible for. And he had his dad, his daughter and a budding relationship with Rousseau in this afterlife stop. They may have all very well been real as well. Or maybe not.

Lots to think about there.

Same here, DC. It really stood out at the stream scene. Her arm looked mannish, and that isn't the way I remembered the character. She was a bit tomboyish and yet still cute and sexy at first. Thats what was so jarring, the amount her looks had seemed to change by a gaunt, stringy look.

Everyone gets older. Its been six years, I know, but she's still pretty young to have that much of a radical change i thought.

That was one of the big question marks for me, as well.

Knowing that Jack's son wasn't real makes Locke's comment to Jack "Jack, you don't have a son", and Jack's obvious inability to process it all the more painful. I'll be looking for that upon a re-watch.

On the other hand, doesn't Christian say something to the effect that the flash-sideways is indeed *real*, or at least as real as anything else? I seem to remember some line to that effect.

For me one of the most interesting bits was the skeletons in the cave at the heart of the island.

There were lots of comments about whether particular characters were "ready" or "not ready." Eloise says that to Desmond, Desmond says it about Ana Lucia, Desmond tells Eloise that he's not taking Daniel "with ME." So are these their real souls, or just artifacts of the Sideways reality (like Jack's son)? And how do you tell the difference? I want to rewatch the ending church scene again. Because I projected people like Richard Alpert and Miles into that, but I guess they weren't there?

I'm therefore struck all the more by Desmond (and Penny) being there. Was Desmond trapped in Sideways against his will and needed to assemble the 815 survivors to "move on?" (And how similar, BTW, is that to Smoke Locke needing to assemble/kill the candidates!) How did Desmond get into the Sideways? After all, he wasn't on the Island when the bomb went off. Is it just that, as the "constant," he's drawn to these people? I still prefer to think he was there because, as Christian said, this was the most important time in his life. He really was a brutha to the Losties.

BTW, LW needs more posts from Vu!

You've got to wonder how Sawyer, Kate, etc. explain things once they get back to the outside world.

Interesting fact: Kate is the only one of the "Oceanic Six" to make it back the second time.

Just got done watching it. Avoided all talk of it till now. I really liked it. It was nice to see what happened onthe island...and nice to see everyone happy in the sidewaysverse.

Very touching moments...teared up twice. Sun and Jin seeing their baby and remembering, as well as the Clair/Charlie reunion.

1. I also found the bones in the cave interesting,but just guessing you could theorize that the person who built the plug ...those are his/her bones.
2.I could have sworn i saw Daniel at the church, even though Desmond told Eloise he wasnt going.
3. I believe that the purgatory is optional, once you realize that you are dead, as is the case with Ben who chose not to join the Lostaways on the final journey. Eloise Hawkings also knew it was purgatory but chose to stay and also didnt want Daniel to leave.

Or it could connect to FakeMom telling Jacob and MiB that they would die if they went in the cave.

Just watched it. I liked it.

I guess if you're going to rip-off an ending, "Jacob's Ladder" is a pretty awesome one to grab (and the tile fits )

its too bad they didnt explain the sickness, i can only guess that when Russeau's crew was killed, they came back the same way Sayid did and werent the same.
That is...the sickness is MIB claiming someone for his side.

There's the "turns evil" sickness, and then there's the other sickness that killed off, for example, most of the Tailies.

And the sickness preventing the Others' births.

yes but the "turns evil" sickness was what Russeau's people got, and she said that she couldnt let them be rescued because what then?
Which to me, implies that its evil and can spread, and in theory if that were true, Claire shouldnt leave the island because she is infected, and lets be honest Claire is going to a mental institute.