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

Maybe killing the MiB cures that sickness?

Didn't the Others actually kill most of the Tailies?

Most were "taken" by the Others. I was thinking that a number had died because they had gotten "sick". But now that I check lostpedia it appears that the ones who died apparently just died from injuries.

I spent a LOT of time last night (before my massive 2nd viewing big cry) looking at the heart of the island scenes. It's SUCH a fine line they walk here -- can it look impressive, real, but not over-the-top. It's really been a LONG time for me since we had a great mystical cave scene. Seems like they were a staple of the 1950s, 60s and 70s. I was struck by the fact that the central pool had one inlet (from the stream and waterfall entrance) and 4 outlets. 4 rivers of the Garden of Eden, anyone? I also wondered about the 2 skeletons. Why 2? Adam and Eve? Cain and Abel? And the massive stalagmite formations in the background--they really captured my attention. I kept flashing to the 7 deadly sins statues at the Rock of Eternity, or the Promethean Giants of Kirby's 4th World. They had a giant, human feel to them -- like the remains of ancient kings overseeing the naval of creation.

Plane parts at the end...are they implying that Frank and the rest crashed before leaving...

A lot of people are trying to make some meaning out of the plane debris at the end, but I don't think there was supposed to anything deeper than showing an iconic image of the show.

Yeah, I kinda saw that footage as symbolic of the show being over. Didn't really give it a lot of thought before reading about it on the net. Pretty sure it's Oceanic and not Ajira. Some have said it means nobody actually survived the crash.

I don't subscribe to that at all. Part of the purpose of the Sideways, I think, was to show Purgatory/the afterlife, so the doubters would see that the island was never that which many thought it might be. Also, it was a way to give our survivors the happy ending that would allude most of them.

Two notes: 1) Kinda odd to have a birth and an additional pregnancy be part of the afterlife, eh? Seems we'd be more likely to have older versions of Aaron and Ji Yeon. To me, they're the most difficult parts to explain. Maybe Sun wasn't actually pregnant in the afterlife, but Aaron was actually born and everything. Puzzling! 2) Seemed to me we may have had some cameos in non-speaking roles: the attendant unloading Christian's body, the cab driver getting John's wheelchair, etc. Any ideas? For some reason, I got the feeling they may have been some named extras like Scott and Steve. Anyone read anything about those?

I think the afterlife, or whatever it was, was their version of what would of happened, and that they felt that they would all be drawn together no matter what.

I know there are some faiths where it is believed that you can still reproduce in the afterlife. Not sure which ones, though.

Yeah, the folks who want to cry "rip off" think the plane footage after the final tile card means no one survived the original crash. It was all a dream. But then how to explain the footprints in the sand around the wreckage, the tarp shelter in the background, and the discrete pile of laundry on the beach (I immediately thought of Rose and Hurley doing laundry). I think the crash shot was in part a final test of faith from the producers -- do you believe them, speaking through Christian, that everything really happened, or do you want to feel tricked and cheated?

As to being pregnant in purgatory (great band name!) while it certainly wouldn't be MY choice, I think the idea was to show the most significant moments in each character's life. If they showed moments not in the original show, it would give things away, I imagine. For Claire (and Kate) it was delivering Aaron. For Sun and Jin, it was confirming Sun's pregnancy (remember, Jin was infertile prior to the crash). These were the characters' own most important moments, created by them in the Sideways continuum.

Mormonism comes to mind immediately.

One thing to think about: How do the various appearances of dead characters on the main series connect to the vision of them in the afterlife? So... when Charlie appears to Hurley or something, is that really Charlie from the afterlife?

I've thought about that, too. Don't have a solid answer, though. Could be Charlie appearing before he's crossed over to the afterlife. Could be Charlie crossing back over to guide his friend. Who knows?

But I'll state again, the reunion of Charlie, Claire and aaron was the most beautiful part of the episode for me and the only part to make me cry. Of all the couples it seemed Charlie and Claire were split before or just after they'd really figured out what it was they'd had. It was so touching and beautiful, and I'm so glad that scene was in there beyond all others.

ABC clarifies the plane wreakage scene
http://scifiwire.com/2010/05/abc-clarifies-that-everyone-on-lost-was-not-dead-the-whole-show.php

I think I am going to have to re-watch pretty much the whole series before I get a good sense of the dead people -- when are they the MIB, when are they the "whispers," what is the significance of who Hurley sees, etc. The best I have is that all the stuff on the show -- the Island, the Flash Sideways, the Orchid/Donkey Wheel, Hurley's talking with the dead -- it's all about the interface between the temporal world and the infinite, and that interface creates time and death, and so dead people have some imprint on the universe that results in a persistence of consciousness that the Island and Hurley tap into. But there were key dead people visions that I am not sure I understand -- Sawyer seeing Kate's horse, and the young Jacob who haunts the MIB, Kate seeing Claire and Jack seeing Christian when they are off-island (so it CAN'T be the MIB, right?).

not only that but when Michael was on the freighter, it was Christian that said you can go home now Michael. Whats up with that, no way is it MIB, he cant travel across the water unless he has a boat and someone would have noticed that,So who was that, the source?
And if Michael can go home now, why is he trapped on the island as a ghost?

]http://scifiwire.com/2010/...not-dead-the-whole-show.php[/QB][/QUOTE]
Nice of them to clear that up.

I missed the end credits, and glad i did, it would have compounded my confusion.

I assume everyone's seen this post by someone who worked at Bad Robot and may or may not have some insight into what the writers were going for this season.

http://lostmediamentions.blogspot.com/2010/05/someone-from-bad-robots-take-on-finale.html

Whether it's 100% true or not, it's good to get in words what I'd kind of figured they were going for with the ending.

Now that I've had some time to think about it I'm more than happy with how the finale ended (with a few minor annoying exceptions).

The show has always been (Man of) Science vs (Man of) Faith but since most viewers are science-fiction fans and have been conditioned through our hobbies into believing that angle is "better/righter" than the faith-based one I think it's understandable that some people feel a bit shocked/betrayed that their science-fiction show ended on a faith/spiritual note.

But like I said - that angle has been there from the beginning (most obviously represented by Locke) and I think it took balls for the writers to commit to it at the end. Jack, as the main proponent of science/reason since the beginning, just had to let go and "embrace the light" in order to be able to move on. I think all of that aspect of the finale was a total success.

Where I feel a bit annoyed is in some of the little stuff. Michael and Walt should really have been there in that church. I totally don't buy that Michael is doomed to wander the island as a whisper or whatever forever because of his actions while Ben (who killed countless more people than Michael did) gets forgiven and invited in. That annoys me. Also, I think the other characters like Myles, Charlotte, Daniel, etc should have been there too. I get what the writers are saying about them having formed other attachments in their lives or whatever but really - since it was just a happy, celebratory scene for the viewers of all our beloved main characters moving on into Heaven then the other main characters should really have been there too. As it is, I can't look at that scene and not just think - where is everyone else?

I think some of the actions of Jacob, the Smoke Monster, Ben, Richard, Widmore, etc all look a bit suspect in retrospect too, and that when one re-watches the show from the beginning they'll be like - 'Hold on. If Jacob/Smoke Monster/Richard/whoever wanted people to do this - why is he doing that?' a lot. But I think some continuity/character fuzziness is always going to occur in these long, sprawling, intricately told sagas. Just look at comics!

The rest of the finale with all it's Jack/Fake-Locke fighting on cliffs and emotional reunions in the alt-verse was fab too I thought. And the final scene with Jack and Vincent and Jack closing his eye as the plane flew overhead was excellent.

So all in all - I'm one happy Lost fan! Great show! One of the best ever without a doubt. So glad I was around for it.

P.S. Did you hear that the DVD apparently has extra goodness of Hurley and Ben during their Island protector years? And Walt apparently plays a part in it? (Coming looking for his Dad I bet.) That DVD is a total must-own for me now!

i heard about the extra footage, it must be that hidden footage that was mentioned in the week before the finale. I never heard anything about walt being in it though, but i miss things.

You could say that Ben had years of being Hurley's number 2 to redeem himself.

^ Oh I totally get that that's what they were going for but I think it's a bit of a cheat on the viewers that we didn't get to see this mostly evil character get his comeuppence in the end and instead are supposed to suddenly think he's 'good' based on something that happened off-camera. Especially in relation to Michael and Ana-Lucia who were a lot more 'good' and needed much less redemption and yet we're told they're 'not ready yet'.

It's a bit like reading Batman dying and going to a Lost-like Heaven and there's the Joker waiting for him and God going 'Him? Oh yeah, he totally turned his life around after you died. Cocktail?'

Now to completely discredit what I just wrote in the above two paragraphs... I can actually buy that Ben bought himself a level of redemption as Hurley's #2 (though I loved that he obviously still felt guilty enough that he wasn't ready to cross over yet) and I don't mind that he was there in Purgatory with them because it gave us all those awesome alt-Ben scenes this season ("citizen's arrest" ) as well as that fantastic final Locke/Ben moment. I think my problem is just that they left Michael out in the cold as if he was somehow more unworthy of Heaven than Ben. And that's something I can't get behind.

Anyway, moving on - I think they dropped the ball with Widmore a bit this season. Wasn't he meant to be the Big Bad of the show at one point? What were his goals exactly? To help Jacob? Wasn't that what everyone else was doing too?

Anyway, I won't dwell on that. Still love the finale.

One of the main points of the show, I think, is that it's never too late for redemption, but it starts from within. Look at Sayid. The man deserved to be dropped down the nearest deep hole in the ground. Or Kate. She murdered her father. Ben's actions were evil, no doubt about it. But the show is about redemption, not justice in a legal sense. With respect to Ben and Widmore both, I think looking back on the series you can see both men as trapped in and reflecting the multi-generational internecine conflict that started with Mother and was perpetuated by MIB and Jacob. There's no doubt, in the end, that MIB was worse than Jacob, but Jacob was hardly a saint, and I think the character himself would agree with that. He allowed and orchestrated the deaths of countless innocents. But he did what he could do, with the cards dealt him by his Mother and by the consequences of his own actions (killing his brother). But Jacob's own words -- "It only ends once, the rest is just progress" -- apply equally well to individual characters. Redemption is possible, even after unspeakable acts of evil.

I think upon further rewatches of the entire show, we'll see just how good the actor who played Jacob did with the role. Every scene he was in had a kind of weary-eyed, tiredness to it, where you felt Jacob realized he'd made many mistakes over the years but still had faith in humanity *and* himself to be redeemed and do the right thing in the end. The actor's subtle moments really gave us a Jacob who felt both human and more-than-human at the same time.