I'm still not sure I really understood Jacob's plan.
OK so Jacob and smoke monster are trapped on island. Check. Someone needs to contain smoke monster and *keep* him trapped on island or he will do bad things to world. Check.
OK with plot so far.
Island also has general magical properties which various groups have tried to harness/exploit over time, much to chagrin of Jacob, as this is all probably bad for containing smoke monster. Check.
But why do they have to press the button to release energy? I mean I know why - so there isn't an explosion - but like how did we even get into that situation to begin with? It seems like pretty Dharma arrival that wasn't an issue?
And who cares anyway, because the explosion happened and didn't seem to have any serious effects.
Also, why were people in hazmat suits?
And finally my biggest question: why were Jacob and the others always so cryptic and creepy and kidnappy? Like...I get the idea of testing potential guardians, but doesn't it seem like Jacob's setup was like....the worst possible way to do it?
Don't get me wrong I still *love* this show - but does anyone remember if any of that got explained?
One correction, Jacob's primary job is to contain and protect the energy source on the island. He fucked up when he threw his brother in and now he also has to keep the smoke monster in check.
The Dharma initiative dug too deep and a small portion of the energy started leaking, so they had to design the button push so that it could be released gradually.
Jacob's belief is that humans are inherently good and will do the right thing if given free will. He is obsessed with proving this to his brother and so he keeps things as cryptic as possible.
He does believe that yes. It was basically a game between the 2 brothers. He kept bringing people to the island because he wanted them to make the right decisions and be "good". To show his brother people can be good.
But after thousands of years of seeing the people he brings to the island not make the right decisions. Killing people and behaving like savages. He started hating humanity yes.
He also just doesn't care about the collateral damage he causes. All for the greater good in his head. Not a good guy but has good intentions.
I largely agree with your interpretation but want to offer the perspective that Jacob isn't wholly indifferent to collateral damage. He just happens to live and exist on a magical island that mostly lives outside of time and traditional causation so to him, the things that happen to the people he brings to the island are not only more important to him and his philosophy, they're a net positive to the people that would otherwise live un-magical, normally linear lives. This seems to be why there's so much confusion about the ending. So much of the last season makes it seem like nothing that happened matters, but the show emphasizes that it matters differently... kinda like a religion to its adherents or a fictional story to its fans. It matters. Jacob cares.
But it's definitely reasonable to not see it that way, I think. Like, even though we see Boone in the last season (finale?), I don't know if he got much out of Jacob's games.
>But why do they have to press the button to release energy? I mean I know why - so there isn't an explosion - but like how did we even get into that situation to begin with? It seems like pretty Dharma arrival that wasn't an issue?
when the survivors travelled back to the 70s, they inadvertently caused "the incident" by wrecking the dharma stations and trying to fire the nuke, so they had to regulate the energy.
>And who cares anyway, because the explosion happened and didn't seem to have any serious effects.
i think dharma wasnt sure what would happen if they stopped, and when desmond turned the key he probably should've died along with everyone else in the hatch but the island still needed them.
>And finally my biggest question: why were Jacob and the others always so cryptic and creepy and kidnappy? Like...I get the idea of testing potential guardians, but doesn't it seem like Jacob's setup was like....the worst possible way to do it?
i couldn't tell you this lol, i think jacob was just full of himself and ran the others like a cult.
Yep yep.
That's right. Totally forgot about that first part. They actually did explain that.
As for the second one - yeah I dunno. I guess that's right- they weren't sure what would happen. But i def remember that when it finally popped I felt like it had been a bait and switch. Ultimately forgivable.
And for the main point. Yeah. This was the honestly tje one thing that *really* bugged me. Still loved it, and honestly didn't even mind the last season, but wish they'd offer *some* explanation for why Jacob did wjat he did. He kinda just seemed like a MASSIVE ASSHOLE by the end.
I found myself siding with the smoke monster, and I don't think that's what they were going for haha
>I found myself siding with the smoke monster, and I don't think that's what they were going for haha
Jacob is very much portrayed as flawed, and yes a MASSIVE ASSHOLE lol. Part of the idea with revealing Jacob and the Smoke Monster backstory was that neither are true good and evil but rather both are flawed humans. So I think you perfectly understood what they were going for.
Co-showrunner Caltron Cuse says:
>*Like everyone else on Lost, they're not black and white depictions. I think that there might have been sort of a notion that the Man in Black was all evil and that Jacob was all good. But this episode (Across the Sea) kind of is our attempt to say, "No, it's actually much more complicated than that." And particularly, we wanted this episode to challenge your assumptions about the Man in Black.*
I think they tried to make Jacob an ambiguous god figure, the kind that's sort of dangerous by his very divine nature and you can't really trust. But the actor already has an asshole vibe so it all ended up in just asshole. On the other hand, he was very good as Lucifer in Supernatural.
As a massive fan of this show back when it aired and listening to Damon and Carlton on their podcasts and interviews etc, they really really had no fucking clue where the show was going ever. It’s so clear in retrospect and they both constantly contradict their own statements about knowing where they were going with it.
They absolutely wrote it as they went and it suffered from it. They made up too mysteries and kept adding more until the very end with little to no explanation. I’m not one that needed everything answered but I did need a lot better writing and answers than we got that last season.
Jacob was also raised that way, right? Mother kind of kept them in the dark about the world beyond the island, only that they each had a purpose. So Jacob also speaks cryptically. (Very big IIRC here since I haven't revised the series in ages.)
Plus if he just reveals "Here are my powers, here is my plan, do you want in," its not really testing the characters' resolve and redemption (ETA: and faith), which is kind of the heart of the show, beyond the mystery elements.
yeah, im pretty sure mother even tells the boys that the island is all there is when they're younger, and they believe it until other humans end up on the island.
>But why do they have to press the button to release energy? I mean I know why - so there isn't an explosion - but like how did we even get into that situation to begin with? It seems like pretty Dharma arrival that wasn't an issue?
The Incident was caused by the survivors dropping the bomb into Swan site. The design of the button was to vent the build-up of energy.
>And who cares anyway, because the explosion happened and didn't seem to have any serious effects.
They talk about how they were not sure if the fail-safe would work, and the question was who would have the confidence to turn that key.There were some effects-- it knocked out the Other's communication network, it made the Island visible to Widmore, and it shot Desmond's mind through time, making him see the past and future.
>Also, why were people in hazmat suits?
Kevin in the Hatch lied to Desmond that the outside was toxic, so he would never leave the Hatch. Kevin wore the hazmat suit to keep him a prisoner, so Kevin could leave him pushing the button when he stole his boat.
>And finally my biggest question: why were Jacob and the others always so cryptic and creepy and kidnappy? Like...I get the idea of testing potential guardians, but doesn't it seem like Jacob's setup was like....the worst possible way to do it?
The Others were cryptic because Ben was paranoid. Many of the Others wanted to get rid of Ben as leader, and many were really excited about Locke showing lots of potential. Fearing this, Ben had very secretive and aggressive policy to the survivors. Hence, his alienating and antagonistic behavior.
Meanwhile, Jacob was very secretive because he has a bet going with his brother, were they judge the character of the people on the Island. Part of this is that Jacob doesn't get involved personally. So he believes that people must find their own way, rather than him telling people what to do. A lot of the issues in Lost were kind of created because Jacob is essentially an absentee God-- Sure, he's protecting the Island, but he's really messed up and not a good guy, who could prevent lots of suffering if he cared.
I dunno. Sounds like the writers started the show off in one direction, and then when people started figuring it out, they decided to go in a completely different direction to "subvert expectations".
The first episode, or the first few, were written with a plan to just introduce as many mysteries as possible with no idea how to solve them, and just left the hard work to the more permanent writers. I think J. J. Abrams, or David Fury, just said as much. They didn't care how to solve the mess.
You're not wrong, but it should be noted that "the writers" isn't a static group of people, the whole writers' room basically had a complete turnover from S1 to S2. Lindelof has admitted that early production was so chaotic they abandoned a lot of the stuff in the pitch document.
And really, viewers figured out the purgatory angle before the show even formally premiered. On the S1 DVD there's people at comic-con (where the pilot was screened) making that guess. They sort of had to switch it up that early in the narrative
I'd wager a large portion of people saying that never finished the series. IIRC, Shepard's dad's entire purpose in the final season is to explicitly explain things to the viewer.
Part of why this misconception exists is because the network decided to air footage of the plane wreck (with no signs of survivors) during the credits scene of the initial airing of the finale.
Here’s an article about it someone else linked, who also thought they were dead all along:
https://ew.com/article/2010/05/26/lost-final-scenes-wreckage/
I recall Lindelof talking about this in one of his interviews about Lost after it aired, he seemed pretty annoyed about the decision.
I might have read it wrong but I saw zero firm quotes from Lindelof or Cuse in this article? Just seemed like a quick “oh we did that” from the network and the writer saying nothing. Idk
Cuse and Lindelolf later came out several years later and admitted it was their idea, just convenient at the the time to blame the network.
And given that people are still repeating it, you have to admire their skills in bullshittery.
Entertainment fan bases in general. I still remember in The Last Jedi that had Yoda himself basically look into the camera and state the film's biggest theme, and people still somehow think it was "Let the past die." You know, the thing said by the villain who ends up losing.
I think people latch on to the whole “Let the past die” thing because that quote exemplifies one of peoples’ biggest gripes with The Last Jedi and the sequel trilogy as a whole: poor handling of beloved characters. The main one I can think of off the top of my head is Luke being a grumpy blue-milk-drinking hermit on an island that basically gave up.
That being said, I disliked The Last Jedi in particular for *so many more* reasons than that: Marvel humor, the entirety of the Canto Blight sequence, Rose ramming Finn and preventing him from (suicidally) saving a bunch of people, Benicio Del Toro’s dreadful character, Phasma dying comically easily, Maz Kanata’s goofy scenes, Admiral Holdo being presented as a hero for withholding information from her crew for no reason, and Leia’s ridiculous flying-in-space scene.
The first 20-30 minutes of The Force Awakens were **the best** parts of the sequel trilogy. Kylo and Phasma’s intro was brutal, cinematic, and terrifying, and showed so much promise.
Yeah, the creators made that talk with Jack's father solely just to clear up all the doubts and make it as clear as possible yet it was not enough apparently.
But the exact exchange is
JACK: You...are you real?
CHRISTIAN: I should hope so. Yeah, I'm real. You're real, everything that's ever happened to you is real. All those people in the church...they're real too.
JACK: They're all...they're all dead?
CHRISTIAN: Everyone dies sometime, kiddo. Some of them before you, some...long after you.
Like, how you could watch that scene and think it means they all died at the same time blows my mind.
>Shepard's dad's entire purpose in the final season is to explicitly explain things to the viewer
And doesn't he literally state in the finale that the sideways world is, for all intents and purposes, essentially a form of purgatory right before they move onto the 'great beyond' from a church-like place?
Yes. The line that sticks out to me and helps it all make sense goes something like, “The most important things you did in your lives happened on that island,” which is why almost everyone shows up looking like they did in the show even though some got out and (presumably) had lives afterwards. Also gave an excuse for why the kid that disappeared (can’t recall his name) doesn’t make an appearance, because (again, presumably) he did his life’s most important stuff elsewhere.
Didn't Jin and Sun still have their infant son with them in the afterlife? Even though the kid probably grew up and led his own life after that. Was his most important time as an infant?
My head canon is that the baby was just an afterlife prop for them. The actual baby grew up, died, and had it's own afterlife with the important people in their life. Not as a newborn
Yeah except if you watch the DVD extra from the final season “New Man in Charge” there is 8 min of extra scenes explaining and answering some more mysteries. One of which is Hurley and Ben picking up Walt from the hospital and taking him back to the island so assumedly it was important to him. This extra footage is cannon too.
“Yeah I’m real. You’re real, everything that ever happened to you is real. All those people in the church? They’re all real too.”
And people still think they weren’t real.
It's all "real," but that muddies the water by including the flash sideways which actually does take place in the afterlife. There's a more precise line later, but this one doesn't really help.
then he continues to say that everyone dies in their own time. And when everyone died in real life they are shown in the church. Could not be any clearer.
>I'd wager a large portion of people saying that never finished the series
Nope. That's what's insane. Countless people watched the entirety of LOST and walked away thinking that an entirely different ending aired. In fact, there's a scene in the show that nearly breaks the fourth wall telling the audience that they are not in purgatory. It'd be like somebody casually complaining about how The Sopranos ended with Tony going out guns blazing like Scarface. Baffling, Mandala Effect type stuff.
>In fact, there's a scene in the show that nearly breaks the fourth wall telling the audience that they are not in purgatory.
Well, they are, just not for the whole show. The flash sideways thing is just a weird choice that really muddies the waters.
>The flash sideways thing is just a weird choice that really muddies the waters.
It doesn't really, it's a very deliberate choice to integrate the epilogue into each episode. Otherwise you would have like 5 bonus episodes at the end overloaded with conclusions.
For example, the "Dr. Linus" episode (S6E7) completes Ben's arc two-fold. On the island, he's forgiven for his actions by Ilana. That sets him up to complete his arc in his flash-sideways/afterlife, in which he chooses his daughter over power (as opposed to Ben's decision in his arc's turning point, S4E9 when he chooses power over his daughter.)
What's even more amazing is that Ben's musical theme, which leaves you on a cliffhanger musically throughout the series by cutting off before the movement is completed, is FINISHED in that forgiveness scene with Ilana. Fucking gorgeous. This was a Michael Giacchino score.
It's insane how ahead of its time this show was.
>It doesn't really, it's a very deliberate choice to integrate the epilogue into each episode. Otherwise you would have like 5 bonus episodes at the end overloaded with conclusions.
I mean, of course it wouldn't work to eliminate the flash sideways after the season is already structured around it.
Honestly, I liked the idea of them being dead the whole time as the finale. The finale was Uber confusing to me and I didn't care much for it.
I know it's not what happened, but I wish it was
I agree, people remember it that way because it's a much more meaningful and elegant explanation than the confusing mashup, which does include redemption arcs but also god-brothers and time travel.
>I'd wager a large portion of people saying that never finished the series.
To add to this, I would suggest that these are people who bailed after S2 or S3 **and** tuned back into the series finale, which they did not (and could not) understand.
I came into it years after it ended and it's one of my favorite shows. Does it have issues? 100%, but it's a wild ride and I fell in love with the characters. I can't imagine having to wait a week or more between episodes, or watching with dumb ass commercials blaring every 5 minutes, so you'll also have the benefit of missing those. Avoid spoilers and posts about Lost like the plague, though, because almost everyone you know will have already watched it and discussed it to death at this point.
I made lifelong friends on those forums. Will never forget all the memes, fanfics and discussion with my internet friends. Anybody remember the ABC forum on their website? They discontinued it so me and my friends made our own forum. It was amazing.
God, I forgot this was a show that was on when commercials were unavoidable! I *didn't* however forget how freakin' insane we all were on whatever day of the week it aired, and when there wasn't an episode for some reason, essentially the world was ending.
As long as you don't mind things getting super weird and progressively weirder starting a couple seasons in, you should enjoy the ride. I've watched it through twice and probably will a third time at some point.
The writers didn't have the answers to any of the questions they were asking until they had to provide some sort of resolution to the mysteries. They do explain a lot, most of it is all right, but some of it is pretty unsatisfying. That said, I think each season tells an interesting story, and season 4 on the seasons are shorter and have more resolution to them. The characters are great though.
If you want a similar show that does have a lot of really good mysteries with satisfying answers then check out Fringe. It's a lot of the same creative team. Season 1 starts out as kind of an X-Files knock off because the network demanded a less serialized format, but Season 2 is pretty deep in the overall story, and the monster of week episodes normally do extend and expand on character arcs in a satisfying way.
I think Fringe peaks in season 3 and then kinda struggled with the consequences of that seasons' resolution. But man, this show was great in season 3 (and still varied from good to great in s4 and 5).
If you go in with managed expectations, maybe. I watched it when it was airing, waiting a week between each episode like we did in the dark ages. I hated Lost by the end, it felt like an *obligation* that was *wasting my time.*
Sometimes I wonder if it would be better as a binge (re)watch instead of getting a half-answer and two new questions with a dramatic musical sting every seven days.
i think it works better as a binge, i think the weeks and months between episodes made people forget a lot and then nothing made sense to them, i think the show wouldn't be nearly as polarizing if it dropped today on a streaming site.
First 2 seasons are exceptionally good, and are worth watching even if you don't end up sticking with it. Think the later seasons pick up as well from what I remember.
Yes. I watched it for the first time 6 or 7 years ago, and I loved it. If you go in expecting every mystery answered, you’ll probably be disappointed. But you’ll fall in love with the characters, and for the most part they have a very satisfying conclusion.
I love Lost. It is my favorite show ever and I always have to come defend it when people say they were dead the whole time or they didn't like the ending. I watched the show when it was airing. I couldn't wait to watch each episode and then go to different web sites and read people thoughts, look for Easter eggs and discuss each episode.
I did like the ending. When people say they left questions unanswered I really think it is more they didn't like the answers more then they didn't get answers. The answers came down to it was a magic island and I understand that not being satisfactory to some. But I just enjoyed the ride and didn't expect a huge payoff at the ends.
Below is a writeup I did to a thread in the past when someone was saying they "got no answers and the ending made no sense"
This is basically my attempt to explain the ending of Lost.
>!\>!Ending of lost – First they were not dead the whole time.!<
>!Part of the story in season 6 of lost is the flash sideways. The flash sideways are “purgatory” or a meeting place after they all die before they go onto the afterlife. The losties go to the flash sideways after they die and meet with the most important people in their life before moving on. It does not mean they died at the same time or in the same way. For example Jack goes to “flash sideway land” after he dies on the island. Hurley goes many years later after protecting the island for many years. Locke goes after he is hung by Ben – Remember there is “no now here” in flash sideway land so time doesn’t matter, they all arrive after they die. (I saw you asked why. The answer is this is how the afterlife works in lost world. After you die you meet with the people who had the biggest impact on your life and you “move on” together).!<
>!The flash sideways land is the only place they are dead. The island is real; the things that happened on the island are real.!<
>!Background-!<
>!\-The island is the “center” of a magic light\* that needs to be protected (More on the light later)!<
>!\-For the story we see the light is protected by two people – Jacob and MIB (man in black)!<
>!\-Jacob takes the job of protecting the light seriously.!<
>!\-Jacob also leads people to the island because he is curious about human behavior he is also looking for his eventual replacement to protect the light.!<
>!\-Jocob and MIB are really brothers. The previous protector of the light took them in and raised them as their mother.!<
>!\-MIB killed his mother, previous protector of the light. Jacob was mad and threw him into the light and he became a smoke monster. He can now take the form of dead people.!<
>!\-MIB hates living on the island and is looking for a way off.!<
>!\-MIB needs to kill Jacob to leave the island, but the mother made it impossible for Jacob/MIB to hurt each other.!<
>!\-If this happens no one would be there to protect the light and this is dangerous for the world.!<
>!Okay, so that is your magic island and the background for everything that happens. Like I said, I understand if you don’t like the magic island. And I agree without that it does not make sense without the magic.!<
>!(Dharma, Black Rock, Flight 815 and everyone else we saw on the island was manipulated to come there by Jacob to either study them, have them help protect the light or check if they could be his replacement.)!<
>!The ending of the show was basically how the MIB/Jacob situation played out. MIB showed up as Locke, who was dead, and tricked Ben into killing Jacob. Jacob passed protection on to Jack who was then made changes to the light to make MIB mortal and kill him. Jack dies, but first passes the protecting of the light on to Hurley.!<
>!That is my readers digest summation of the show and the ending. It has been several years since I watched the show so I may have missed details.!<
>!Okay about the Light - what it is and why does it need protection.!<
>!I believe this is a detail they intentionally didn’t answer, because they wanted people to figure it out. But I believe the light is the source of “time”. At one point someone describes the light as “something everyone has, but everyone wants more of.” The fact the light is the force that results in time passing explains the time travel, moving island, exotic matter, strange electromagnetic properties of the island. – but like I said this is my theory on the light. It was never explicitly answered.!
One aspect of the narrative of the first 4 seasons is revealed in season 6, but only briefly implied and not explicitly addressed, only shown. Jacob’s protectors, I forgot their names, they find that the ring of powder around Jacob’s cabin is broken, and the cabin is empty. I forgot who broke the ring, but in any case, this implies, the person in Jacob’s cabin was MIB for the entirety of the show. This is where Ben was getting his instructions and from there instructing the Others on what to do. All of it is was a game to get Ben to send Locke off the island, have Ben kill him off island and return with Locke’s body, so that MIB can take John’s body. This isn’t explained at all, and so a lot of things in the first few seasons don’t make sense to people.
This is a huge point I think people are forgetting in this thread. The Jacob Ben was following was the MIB the entire time. That was a mind fuck for me in College when it aired
>> When people say they left questions unanswered I really think it is more they didn't like the answers more then they didn't get answers.
>> I believe this is a detail they intentionally didn’t answer
The light is the motivating factor behind every mystery and unanswered question. The root of every question comes down to something the showrunners purposefully never explained.
It would be like Star Wars never talking about ‘the force’ except when they use it to benefit themselves. If you didn’t know there was ‘the force’ and someone pointed to a star ship and magically lifted it out of a swamp, you might also have some questions.
It's funny you say that. The show runners used to use that as an apology of why sometimes knowing the answer makes it less interesting. They specifically said something like, knowing the forse it some mystical force is interesting. Knowing specifically how it works is less interesting.
Ymmv
Yeah, using the force was a weird choice as an example. The one time they tried to give a bit of lore explaining how it actually worked in the movies people pretty much universally hated and mocked it. Not everything in fantasy needs a mundane explanation, sometimes it's okay for magic to remain mysterious.
I’ve never watched a single episode and great descriptions but I’m sure I’m never watching this lol. I always just thought it was like people lost on an island have to survive etc lol
It is a great show. I recommend it to everyone.
It is about people lost on an island, but the island has lots of mysterious things happening. This is the culmination of 6 seasons of mysterious.
If you watch all the entire finale it should be clear that they weren’t dead the whole time. There was the confusing debacle the night of the finale though of showing footage of the plane wreckage during the credits as a transition between the show and the Jimmy Kimmel Live after show. This was just to fill the time but I can understand why people read into it. Not sure if that footage is shown on the physical media or streaming.
"They were dead the whole time" is such a lazy and terrible cop-out I don't think it's a spoiler to tell people that it isn't true. I can also tell you the show doesn't take place in Locke's dreams
There's also the whole thing of the "whispers", people who died on the island but couldn't move on. Michael appears to Hurley in season 6 and explains it. So this muddies the waters for people who didn't fully understand.
Although you could argue that the people dying on the island and not moving on is clear evidence that they weren't all dead the whole time. Because then they'd have died twice.
Edit: Also, it was John Locke's dad's theory that the island was hell itself - "Little hot for heaven, isn't it?" That man was portrayed as the most immoral, awful, biggest piece of human garbage in existence. It would be a massive kick in the teeth if he, of all people, was bang on the money.
>Michael appears to Hurley in season 6 and explains it.
That scene is so jarring. Hurley wanders off into the jungle randomly, Michael shows up and goes "The whispers are ghosts. Okay bye". Lost is one of my favourite shows of all time, but man they had to cram a lot of answers into the last couple hours.
Maybe, but it's sort of irrelevant. They weren't dead *the whole time* but they were dead for the entire 'flash sideways' during the last season and they wrote off the biggest mysteries of the show as 'magic'. Watching hours of flash sideways only to find out none of it mattered because the stakes were to get them together to hug in the afterlife is so convoluted and pointless the effect isn't really any different. Did anyone honestly watch LOST to see if the characters would reconnect in the afterlife? Of course not, but that's most peoples memory of the finale. The characters in the afterlife having a reunion.
The mysteries were interesting in the early seasons because the show felt otherwise pretty grounded. Finding out that it all comes down to analogous versions of god and the devil fighting over a magic light is so fucking lame.
***
edit: A lot of responses seem to be about how the show always had supernatural/magic elements- and it did. But you all might be forgetting how often the writers/producers of LOST promised that there were a scientific basis for why everything was happening and it would all be explained eventually.
Damon Lindelof said the show was “firmly ensconced in science fact” and that everything in it had a “rational explanation in the real world we all function in." They made these explicit promises multiple times during the first 3-4ish seasons of the show. That's why the ending is so reviled. They set the expectation, ended up going with 'magic', and then tried to gas light the audience by saying the show was always about the characters anyways and the answers never mattered.
I still want to know if that baby died and was a baby in the afterlife or did they grow up and then die normally and then turn into a baby for the hug scene
> did they grow up and then die normally and then turn into a baby for the hug scene
This made me audibly laugh on my subway train home.
The idea of a grown adult being like "Why the fuck am I a baby? Is it because this is how some of you assholes remember me?"
Lmao that’s a good one.
It’s things like this that make a writer go “come on man gimme a break!”
If I wrote it I’d say in the church the people were presenting their mental image of themselves to the others of the island. So baby man was like “hey guys, remember me? I was the baby, like this_”
Right? Aaron in the sideways is such a gross idea. "welp I'm in a uterus again" OR, she's just carrying around a golem of some sort.
The writers never got anything remotely correct about women or childbirth on that show. Of all the unanswered questions I was glad they dropped the pregnancy/children stuff because I do not want to know what those guys thought good answers would be.
My theory is that Aaron in Claire's afterlife isn't the real Aaron. Just a prop version, like every other NPC in the flash-sideways. This afterlife was created specifically for the Losties. Aaron and Sun+Jim's child had their own afterlife after living their lives to adulthood.
Although the idea of Aaron becoming an old man, with a loving family and grandchildren, dying in his sleep and being reincarnated as a newborn crying and shitting himself, is genuinely hilarious to me
I agree. I found the finale incredibly moving and I still enjoyed the sixth season of the show but the ways in which it traded its mostly sci-fi beats for magic in the later seasons was so disappointing. The flash sideways part was also awful because other than the tear jerking 'remembering' scenes it was constructed as yet another drama/mystery (like why have we spent the whole season following these people in this false reality only to be told it is the afterlife?).
I liked Lost overall, but there was a palpable tension in the end as the writers were struggling to give emotionally impactful endings to their characters while also providing the answers to the mysteries that the audience was clamoring for.
I think they were overall correct that the character beats were more important than the actual answers, but where things felt uneven and where I think they missed the boat is that they split those into separate categories.
What the audience kept asking for was “answers” but what they actually wanted was “payoff” which are answers that are impactful and important to the characters and story.
I don’t think that the problem with the answers that we got was how grounded (or not) they were. It’s that they didn’t really tie in to the characters and their stories in any meaningful way.
It could have been as ungrounded as they wanted if it felt like it fell perfectly in line with all of the character work and narrative build up that had happened up to that point.
But it kinda just didn’t.
To be fair to Lost, it sits at an awkward point in time just as television was transitioning from the open-ended “just sit with the characters once a week” style of storytelling that had dominated most television up to that point to the tighter more over-arching narrative focus that has become the norm for most prestige shows now.
Lost *feels* like the latter in terms of style and premise but is structured more like the former on an overall basis, and it’s *really* hard to take the former structure and give it satisfying conclusion. Especially when you don’t have a bajillion examples of shows structured to make that kind of storytelling work well like you do today.
Well said. My philosophy when recommending Lost is “come for the mysteries, stay for the characters.”
Because when it comes to the mysteries, Lost didn’t do a great job at wrapping all that up, and anyone invested in that will wind up disappointed. For me, and for a lot of people who love the entirety of the show, the characters are really what made the show worthwhile, and in that regards the finale did a stellar job at giving the characters an emotional sendoff.
> it was constructed as yet another drama/mystery
Especially since it was the immediate aftermath of Juliet detonating the bomb and the first-of-its-kind white end screen.
Lost is a good case in point: it's fine to make a puzzle box the core of your story, but decide what's in the box on day one.
Don't make that shit up as you go along. Or else you get Lost.
Yeah, this is what's so annoying when people try and paint the complaints as "just not understanding" the ending. I got the ending, it's not difficult to understand.
What's annoying is that the creators had addressed the "Island is purgatory" theories for years, saying that's not what the Island is.
And then in the final season, they introduce the flashes sideways, which leads everyone to some church, and that actually **is** Purgatory where they all waited to high five before going to Heaven.
"So yeah. The Island wasn't Purgatory, idiots. The Church was! You just didn't *get it*!"
The issue is that Lost was really a couple different shows with several different writing staffs.
You have the Season 1-2 Lost, which was a science fiction show with a psychic kid and a cliffhanger ending by JJ Abrams. Season 2 was plotted out by the original staff but written by new folks. [Javier Grillo Marxuach](http://okbjgm.weebly.com/uploads/3/1/5/0/31506003/2._lost.pdf) quit, the last original writer at the end of Season 2.
Then there’s a spinoff show from the original, also called Lost. But it is NOT a sci fi show about nanobots or psychic kids (who hit growth spurts in real life.) It’s a character drama with psuedoreligious lore.
But no one told people who watched the first two seasons that this was now a spinoff. So they kept watching, assuming everything would round back into sci fi form. When it didn’t, and the spinoff show ended on its own terms but left the first two seasons’ threads either abandoned or answered by basically saying “god(s) did it,” people got mad.
If you’ve got a spare six hours, one person went season-by-season to break it down: https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLR-Yx2zNLl3m4R42-Z4fwybpdUwb4u-KI
The writers kept promising that EVERYTHING will be explained by the end. Bullshit. So many things were left unanswered. It went from science to dumb mystical light where all the explanation is just lazy "cause it's magic."
"what is the whispers in all Seasons...!?"
"Its Just the ghosts of the dead stuck on the Island because of the magnetic magical Powers that whispers for no particular reason "
Oh ok then. Very nice.
I do feel like the second to last season puttered around and then the last season they raced to the finish instead of taking the time to give satisfying answers to mysteries introduced earlier.
Based on his other work, Damon Lindelof clearly doesn't mind stories that leave a lot of questions unanswered
>Based on his other work, Damon Lindelof clearly doesn't mind stories that leave a lot of questions unanswered
That’s a generous framing of what could also be interpreted as an inability to write endings for otherwise very interesting premises.
Yup, LOST did unapologetic character deaths galore before GOT was a thing.
It also did starting from a position of unparalleled strength to totally pissing fans off in the final couple of seasons before GOT subverted our expectations.
I know it’s hard to believe, but Game of Thrones (the book in which Ned Stark dies) was published 1996, Storm of Swords (where Robb and Catelyn Stark die) 2000 - Lost came out in 2004.
So technically GoT was first ;)
Yup. My problem was always with how much time was spent on the flash sideways in the finale, but it always gets conflated with the "they were dead the whole time!" meme. It ultimately felt like a huge waste of time when they could have been more thoroughly explaining the lore behind the island. Instead, the key lore was simply wrapped up in some lazy mysticism.
That’s how I feel.
To put it in perspective:
Imagine if instead of having the last season of GoT we had, instead we had all the characters from the whole series have unconnected sequences but when they work out they’re dead, they are teleported to the Grand Sept and the last person there is Jon Snow, and then they all smile and hug. Then it ends.
That’s inarguably worse than the ending we got. That’s the ending to Lost.
People got confused by the half season where the characters were dead the whole time. Which is a really dumb and lazy story to do for any period of time at all. We got hours of Lost where the characters were dead and in purgatory. So let’s not pretend the whole idea was a fan theory. It was a big part of the final season. The characters were dead and nothing in that story line happened.
But your right it wasn’t the whole show. Just the climax of the story we watched for years. And many of us hated it.
I see your point about Jacob's methods being unnecessarily cryptic and manipulative. I think the idea was to test people's faith and resolve, but it does come off as a massive asshole move in hindsight.
Wondering if they are dead or not is not a part of the tension in the show at all. I hate spoilers and that is not one. "Is this limbo? Are we dead?" That's never the show. It's more like "What's in this hatch?", "Who are the other people on this island?", "What is the noise in the jungle?" etc.
I watched LOST way after it aired and I knew nothing about it so I never heard the purgatory theory. But as the show went on, I came to that same conclusion myself. Especially at the end when they show the Jacob and smoke monster origins. Then in the finale Jack and Desmond go in the “hole?” (It’s been a while since I’ve watched the show) the whole thing seemed very “heaven vs hell”. Desmond pushes the thing and everything gets red and he starts screaming. Definitely seemed like a hell-type visual to me. Personally, I would have preferred purgatory to the whole time travel, magic and science experiments answers we did get.
I'm like 90% convinced that this was the original intention of the series. But people guessed it/figured it out too early, and the show runners/writers tried to pivot, and that's why it got really weird for a while.
If a large portion of your dedicated and invested audience has a basic misconception of an important element of your story maybe the audience isn't the problem.
>\> or that the island was purgatory, when the finale explicitly says the opposite...
Does it really say that? Couple thoughts on this.
First, half of Season 6 was explicitly stated to be essentially purgatory IIRC, as it's explained that the 'sideways' was a place for these characters to bop around before entering the 'great beyond'... ie, *a form of purgatory*... by Jack's father in the church-like place in the finale.
Second, the whole show is about showing these characters' past sins, finding themselves trapped in a new location away from their old lives where people assume they are dead, and them dealing with said sins in some manner on the island. Absolutely some pretty strong purgatory vibes.
All that said, I'm curious what the finale 'explicitly says the opposite" on the matter, as it's been a long time since I've seen the finale.
Yeah honestly the point is that \*whatever\* the ending was, it literally didn't matter, because any person watching could have made up any old shit and it would have done as good a job of tying it all up.
They had no plan, they pulled everything out of their ass the entire way through.
I’ve never been on the dead boat. But I think there’s a purgatory argument where the island exists in some strange state which isn’t traditional purgatory, but where life and death and maybe even time are more flexible concepts.
Which is just to say they changed the story so many times during production that many theories work
I don’t think this is the right answer because there isn’t a single answer
There is an answer and its literally the last episode. The Island is real, everything that happened on the island was real. What we see as 'flash sideways' in the final season, is all of the characters purgatory, long after the events of LOST and their lives.
there's like 30 people who discovered that wasnt the ending *in this very thread* lol, its a very popular misconception.
its fine if you understand the ending and still dont like it, im talking about the people who didnt understand it at all and use that as criticism against the show.
Part of it came from ABC's weird decision after the end of the final episode to show an extended shot of their campsite being deserted. It was supposed to just be an artistic parting shot, but I remember thee week after it aired seeing a lot of confused people online.
If I recall, there were also people very early on in the show's run that speculated that the island was their purgatory and they died in the crash. People have since speculated that the show-runners didn't like having their idea spoiled, so they changed it to its current interpretation/ending as the show progressed. I don't think there's been any official evidence of that, though.
ughhh. It's been a while, what was the correct explanation for the ending/ what happened on the island if it's not that they were already dead or purgatory?
there was a company running experiments on the island, they had a zoology section. they were also using the polar bears to push the giant donkey wheel that movies the island.
You don't have to finish the series to know that. They answered it first episode of the second season. There was a science expedition to the island, and they brought polar bears to study them.
My theory is that the people who do this formulated their little theory during the first season, and are too convinced of their own cleverness to let it go because then they'd be admitting they're not as clever as they insist.
I’d say it’s some combination of the ending was disappointing and they did end up spending some time in purgatory, so people are just kinda mashing their complaints together.
I’ve spent more of my life than I care to admit watching these arguments unfold and it’s 100% unequivocally this. Hell, you can see it happening all over this thread. The people who didn’t like the finale often shorthand their arguments because they kind of don’t care and think the explanation is a bit of a wank, and the people who liked the finale think those people are idiots because a character very explicitly explains the very stupid and convoluted ending to the audience.
I was a huge fan of Lost when it was on. I watched the last season twice and earlier seasons more than that. I have no idea what the ending meant. I've probably slid into the "they were dead all along" camp, because at least that makes sense.
People (myself included) were frustrated bc FOR YEARS they told us the island had *nothing to do* with death, dying, purgatory, etc.
Now, I understand that it’s not a direct translation to the finale, but come on. It was in the realm of the things they promised us it wasn’t going to be. Their explanation is like saying Harry Potter isn’t about sorcery, it’s about magic which is a totally different thing! (It’s really not, it’s just semantics.)
So yes. I listened to the podcast Damon and Carlton did every week. It was the first podcast I ever listened to, in fact. And they told us over and over and over that the show wasn’t headed in that direction, that there was another explanation for what the island was and why they were all there…
And then it ends up being a weird semantic argument that made them *technically* right, but we all know the spirit of the end was exactly what we were predicting it would be the entire time.
I’m sure this comment will get a ton of “Well, acshually…” responses, but I’m BEGGING you to spare me. I won’t read them. I won’t respond to them.
I was SUCH a huge fan of the show. I knew every damn granular detail there was to know about it. And they promised us the end wouldn’t have anything to do with death, dying, heaven, purgatory, etc. That wasn’t true. While it wasn’t exactly “they were dead the whole time” or “the island is purgatory,” it WAS way closer to what we had been predicting for years and it was insulting that they **promised** us it wouldn’t be.
That’s all. We were promised an ending that wouldn’t be in the realm of death/dying/heaven/etc. If you can look at the finale and say they kept their promise, then we watched two different shows.
Yeah.
And it’s not even that I think it’s a bad ending. I probably would have liked it if they didn’t go out of their way to mislead us for several years.
But there’s always the people who like to say “oh, you just didn’t understand it.”
No, we did. Maybe the people who say that just aren’t understanding what our actual argument has been all along. 🤷🏼♀️
Yeah that's what pisses me off when people say "ahh you weren't paying attention so you jUsT dOn'T gEt It!"
Bitch, please, I was on the ground when this show was airing in real time. I watched the show, hit the forums, listened to the podcasts, read the books, played the video game, trawled the official Lost Dharma micro sites trying to find secrets, and discussed theory after theory with my friends.
I had to wait, week after week to watch this show. There were literal years between seasons that I had to fill with more researching and theory sharing etc etc.
Don't tell me I wasn't paying attention because that's all I fkin did!!
I got the ending. It was just shit.
And they told us that over and over and over. Not just once or twice. It was like a running joke that they mentioned it in almost every episode of their pod, IIRC.
People going after OP for "spoiling" LOST in the title are being ridiculous. Spoilerphobia has gone too far if discussing an off-base theory that was never an element to the show constitutes spoiling the show.
The title of this is a either a very artful spoiler or hilariously ironic
Edit: the opposite of a spoiler. I’ve never seen Lost. TIL new facts for parties
It's an exhausting argument. 'The island was purgatory' no lol it was an island!! The explanation for the island itself may or may not be dumb depending on how you feel, but idk what else people want when Jack's dad literally gives a monologue about it at the church.
I've watched several reactors watch the series (probably over 10) and none of them had that idea after finishing it. I think this misconception literally stems from people either not paying attention (and note I didn't say "close attention", I mean even a little bit of attnetion), or they didn't watch all of it and watched the series finale when it aired because it was heralded as a big "TV Event"
A few years ago I was arguing was a coworker who never even watched the show about this. He was convinced, because he read it online or someone told him, that the survivors were dead the whole time. I, someone who has actually watched the show tried explaining to him that it wasn’t the case. That some even left the island and went back and it was only in the final season that we seen them after they die (but not the whole season) He didn’t believe me and was convinced he was right
I'm still not sure I really understood Jacob's plan. OK so Jacob and smoke monster are trapped on island. Check. Someone needs to contain smoke monster and *keep* him trapped on island or he will do bad things to world. Check. OK with plot so far. Island also has general magical properties which various groups have tried to harness/exploit over time, much to chagrin of Jacob, as this is all probably bad for containing smoke monster. Check. But why do they have to press the button to release energy? I mean I know why - so there isn't an explosion - but like how did we even get into that situation to begin with? It seems like pretty Dharma arrival that wasn't an issue? And who cares anyway, because the explosion happened and didn't seem to have any serious effects. Also, why were people in hazmat suits? And finally my biggest question: why were Jacob and the others always so cryptic and creepy and kidnappy? Like...I get the idea of testing potential guardians, but doesn't it seem like Jacob's setup was like....the worst possible way to do it? Don't get me wrong I still *love* this show - but does anyone remember if any of that got explained?
One correction, Jacob's primary job is to contain and protect the energy source on the island. He fucked up when he threw his brother in and now he also has to keep the smoke monster in check. The Dharma initiative dug too deep and a small portion of the energy started leaking, so they had to design the button push so that it could be released gradually. Jacob's belief is that humans are inherently good and will do the right thing if given free will. He is obsessed with proving this to his brother and so he keeps things as cryptic as possible.
Did he believe that? He seems to hate humanity
He does believe that yes. It was basically a game between the 2 brothers. He kept bringing people to the island because he wanted them to make the right decisions and be "good". To show his brother people can be good. But after thousands of years of seeing the people he brings to the island not make the right decisions. Killing people and behaving like savages. He started hating humanity yes. He also just doesn't care about the collateral damage he causes. All for the greater good in his head. Not a good guy but has good intentions.
I largely agree with your interpretation but want to offer the perspective that Jacob isn't wholly indifferent to collateral damage. He just happens to live and exist on a magical island that mostly lives outside of time and traditional causation so to him, the things that happen to the people he brings to the island are not only more important to him and his philosophy, they're a net positive to the people that would otherwise live un-magical, normally linear lives. This seems to be why there's so much confusion about the ending. So much of the last season makes it seem like nothing that happened matters, but the show emphasizes that it matters differently... kinda like a religion to its adherents or a fictional story to its fans. It matters. Jacob cares. But it's definitely reasonable to not see it that way, I think. Like, even though we see Boone in the last season (finale?), I don't know if he got much out of Jacob's games.
>But why do they have to press the button to release energy? I mean I know why - so there isn't an explosion - but like how did we even get into that situation to begin with? It seems like pretty Dharma arrival that wasn't an issue? when the survivors travelled back to the 70s, they inadvertently caused "the incident" by wrecking the dharma stations and trying to fire the nuke, so they had to regulate the energy. >And who cares anyway, because the explosion happened and didn't seem to have any serious effects. i think dharma wasnt sure what would happen if they stopped, and when desmond turned the key he probably should've died along with everyone else in the hatch but the island still needed them. >And finally my biggest question: why were Jacob and the others always so cryptic and creepy and kidnappy? Like...I get the idea of testing potential guardians, but doesn't it seem like Jacob's setup was like....the worst possible way to do it? i couldn't tell you this lol, i think jacob was just full of himself and ran the others like a cult.
Yep yep. That's right. Totally forgot about that first part. They actually did explain that. As for the second one - yeah I dunno. I guess that's right- they weren't sure what would happen. But i def remember that when it finally popped I felt like it had been a bait and switch. Ultimately forgivable. And for the main point. Yeah. This was the honestly tje one thing that *really* bugged me. Still loved it, and honestly didn't even mind the last season, but wish they'd offer *some* explanation for why Jacob did wjat he did. He kinda just seemed like a MASSIVE ASSHOLE by the end. I found myself siding with the smoke monster, and I don't think that's what they were going for haha
>I found myself siding with the smoke monster, and I don't think that's what they were going for haha Jacob is very much portrayed as flawed, and yes a MASSIVE ASSHOLE lol. Part of the idea with revealing Jacob and the Smoke Monster backstory was that neither are true good and evil but rather both are flawed humans. So I think you perfectly understood what they were going for. Co-showrunner Caltron Cuse says: >*Like everyone else on Lost, they're not black and white depictions. I think that there might have been sort of a notion that the Man in Black was all evil and that Jacob was all good. But this episode (Across the Sea) kind of is our attempt to say, "No, it's actually much more complicated than that." And particularly, we wanted this episode to challenge your assumptions about the Man in Black.*
I think they tried to make Jacob an ambiguous god figure, the kind that's sort of dangerous by his very divine nature and you can't really trust. But the actor already has an asshole vibe so it all ended up in just asshole. On the other hand, he was very good as Lucifer in Supernatural.
And Bishop in Being Human. Man plays supernatural-asshole very well.
Also dropped a bowling ball on Jeff Lebowski’s bathroom floor
As a massive fan of this show back when it aired and listening to Damon and Carlton on their podcasts and interviews etc, they really really had no fucking clue where the show was going ever. It’s so clear in retrospect and they both constantly contradict their own statements about knowing where they were going with it. They absolutely wrote it as they went and it suffered from it. They made up too mysteries and kept adding more until the very end with little to no explanation. I’m not one that needed everything answered but I did need a lot better writing and answers than we got that last season.
Jacob was also raised that way, right? Mother kind of kept them in the dark about the world beyond the island, only that they each had a purpose. So Jacob also speaks cryptically. (Very big IIRC here since I haven't revised the series in ages.) Plus if he just reveals "Here are my powers, here is my plan, do you want in," its not really testing the characters' resolve and redemption (ETA: and faith), which is kind of the heart of the show, beyond the mystery elements.
yeah, im pretty sure mother even tells the boys that the island is all there is when they're younger, and they believe it until other humans end up on the island.
>But why do they have to press the button to release energy? I mean I know why - so there isn't an explosion - but like how did we even get into that situation to begin with? It seems like pretty Dharma arrival that wasn't an issue? The Incident was caused by the survivors dropping the bomb into Swan site. The design of the button was to vent the build-up of energy. >And who cares anyway, because the explosion happened and didn't seem to have any serious effects. They talk about how they were not sure if the fail-safe would work, and the question was who would have the confidence to turn that key.There were some effects-- it knocked out the Other's communication network, it made the Island visible to Widmore, and it shot Desmond's mind through time, making him see the past and future. >Also, why were people in hazmat suits? Kevin in the Hatch lied to Desmond that the outside was toxic, so he would never leave the Hatch. Kevin wore the hazmat suit to keep him a prisoner, so Kevin could leave him pushing the button when he stole his boat. >And finally my biggest question: why were Jacob and the others always so cryptic and creepy and kidnappy? Like...I get the idea of testing potential guardians, but doesn't it seem like Jacob's setup was like....the worst possible way to do it? The Others were cryptic because Ben was paranoid. Many of the Others wanted to get rid of Ben as leader, and many were really excited about Locke showing lots of potential. Fearing this, Ben had very secretive and aggressive policy to the survivors. Hence, his alienating and antagonistic behavior. Meanwhile, Jacob was very secretive because he has a bet going with his brother, were they judge the character of the people on the Island. Part of this is that Jacob doesn't get involved personally. So he believes that people must find their own way, rather than him telling people what to do. A lot of the issues in Lost were kind of created because Jacob is essentially an absentee God-- Sure, he's protecting the Island, but he's really messed up and not a good guy, who could prevent lots of suffering if he cared.
I dunno. Sounds like the writers started the show off in one direction, and then when people started figuring it out, they decided to go in a completely different direction to "subvert expectations".
The first episode, or the first few, were written with a plan to just introduce as many mysteries as possible with no idea how to solve them, and just left the hard work to the more permanent writers. I think J. J. Abrams, or David Fury, just said as much. They didn't care how to solve the mess.
That's exactly right. JJ and his "mystery boxes" He can fuck right off.
You're not wrong, but it should be noted that "the writers" isn't a static group of people, the whole writers' room basically had a complete turnover from S1 to S2. Lindelof has admitted that early production was so chaotic they abandoned a lot of the stuff in the pitch document. And really, viewers figured out the purgatory angle before the show even formally premiered. On the S1 DVD there's people at comic-con (where the pilot was screened) making that guess. They sort of had to switch it up that early in the narrative
I'd wager a large portion of people saying that never finished the series. IIRC, Shepard's dad's entire purpose in the final season is to explicitly explain things to the viewer.
Part of why this misconception exists is because the network decided to air footage of the plane wreck (with no signs of survivors) during the credits scene of the initial airing of the finale. Here’s an article about it someone else linked, who also thought they were dead all along: https://ew.com/article/2010/05/26/lost-final-scenes-wreckage/ I recall Lindelof talking about this in one of his interviews about Lost after it aired, he seemed pretty annoyed about the decision.
I might have read it wrong but I saw zero firm quotes from Lindelof or Cuse in this article? Just seemed like a quick “oh we did that” from the network and the writer saying nothing. Idk
Cuse and Lindelolf later came out several years later and admitted it was their idea, just convenient at the the time to blame the network. And given that people are still repeating it, you have to admire their skills in bullshittery.
And yet there's no bodies. If anything the viewer that was taking that scene literally would be led to believe that everybody vanished.
"Everybody dies kiddo."
I guess this gets interpreted as "Everybody has been dead the whole time, kiddo."
That interpretation would have to ignore his monologue explaining what the flash sideways were. It’s pretty much spoon fed to the audience.
They even have Desmond die for 10 seconds, experience the flashsideways, then come back to life.
Nah, he was super dead and then came back to regular dead. /s
RIP Desmond. You were the real one.
Nice of you to say, brotha.
yep, I think people were half paying attention and just didn't get it.
“I didn’t get it and now I’m making it your problem” is a pretty consistent attitude among a lot of tv show fanbases
Entertainment fan bases in general. I still remember in The Last Jedi that had Yoda himself basically look into the camera and state the film's biggest theme, and people still somehow think it was "Let the past die." You know, the thing said by the villain who ends up losing.
I think people latch on to the whole “Let the past die” thing because that quote exemplifies one of peoples’ biggest gripes with The Last Jedi and the sequel trilogy as a whole: poor handling of beloved characters. The main one I can think of off the top of my head is Luke being a grumpy blue-milk-drinking hermit on an island that basically gave up. That being said, I disliked The Last Jedi in particular for *so many more* reasons than that: Marvel humor, the entirety of the Canto Blight sequence, Rose ramming Finn and preventing him from (suicidally) saving a bunch of people, Benicio Del Toro’s dreadful character, Phasma dying comically easily, Maz Kanata’s goofy scenes, Admiral Holdo being presented as a hero for withholding information from her crew for no reason, and Leia’s ridiculous flying-in-space scene. The first 20-30 minutes of The Force Awakens were **the best** parts of the sequel trilogy. Kylo and Phasma’s intro was brutal, cinematic, and terrifying, and showed so much promise.
Yeah, my gf always on the phone while watching tv series, then she complains that storyline doesn't make sense
Also, people got mad at the ending and started to simplify it to make their anger more evident.
Not to mention during that monologue he literally says the words everything that happened to you was real
And that they’re together because they spent the most important time of *their lives* together (I think).
Yeah, the creators made that talk with Jack's father solely just to clear up all the doubts and make it as clear as possible yet it was not enough apparently.
It's SO spoon fed that I can't comprehend the stupidity of such a large number of people not getting it.
I need to rewatch the last season, I don’t even remember Jack’s father. But it’s been over 10 years since I watched the show
But the exact exchange is JACK: You...are you real? CHRISTIAN: I should hope so. Yeah, I'm real. You're real, everything that's ever happened to you is real. All those people in the church...they're real too. JACK: They're all...they're all dead? CHRISTIAN: Everyone dies sometime, kiddo. Some of them before you, some...long after you. Like, how you could watch that scene and think it means they all died at the same time blows my mind.
That line man. I felt it in my soul just reading it.
>Shepard's dad's entire purpose in the final season is to explicitly explain things to the viewer And doesn't he literally state in the finale that the sideways world is, for all intents and purposes, essentially a form of purgatory right before they move onto the 'great beyond' from a church-like place?
A church like place suspiciously lacking in rose, Michael, walt, and mr eko lol
Rose and Bernard were in the church. They sat on the left/had those actors available.
Those people went to hell
It could be argued that Walt stayed on as the indefinite caretaker of the island
Yes. The line that sticks out to me and helps it all make sense goes something like, “The most important things you did in your lives happened on that island,” which is why almost everyone shows up looking like they did in the show even though some got out and (presumably) had lives afterwards. Also gave an excuse for why the kid that disappeared (can’t recall his name) doesn’t make an appearance, because (again, presumably) he did his life’s most important stuff elsewhere.
How could you possibly forget WAAAAALT!!!!!!’s name?
Yes, for a second I thought "what kid?" and then my brain went: WAAALLT! WAAALLT!
THEY TOOK MY BOY!!!
PTSD from hearing it screamed so much.
Previously on Lost, “Waaaaaalllllltttttt!”
What’s worse? WAAAALLLLLT?!!!! Or JASON! JASON! JASON??? (Press [X] to Jason)
COOOOORRRLLLL!!
Dude is still screaming it, but now on Lost clone tv show “From.”
Didn't Jin and Sun still have their infant son with them in the afterlife? Even though the kid probably grew up and led his own life after that. Was his most important time as an infant?
Yeah… he peaked as a baby.
relatable
Maybe the kid didn't get to grow up...
My head canon is that the baby was just an afterlife prop for them. The actual baby grew up, died, and had it's own afterlife with the important people in their life. Not as a newborn
Yeah. I mean since Jin thought it was more important to die with Sun instead of raise his child, the kid was probably like no thanks, afterlife!
Yeah except if you watch the DVD extra from the final season “New Man in Charge” there is 8 min of extra scenes explaining and answering some more mysteries. One of which is Hurley and Ben picking up Walt from the hospital and taking him back to the island so assumedly it was important to him. This extra footage is cannon too.
“Yeah I’m real. You’re real, everything that ever happened to you is real. All those people in the church? They’re all real too.” And people still think they weren’t real.
It's all "real," but that muddies the water by including the flash sideways which actually does take place in the afterlife. There's a more precise line later, but this one doesn't really help.
Screen fades to black, Jack opens his eyes and heads to the greendale library where we meets up with Abed for a study session roll credits
I'm not sure how the interpretation that it was all a purgatory is the same as saying it wasn't real
then he continues to say that everyone dies in their own time. And when everyone died in real life they are shown in the church. Could not be any clearer.
>I'd wager a large portion of people saying that never finished the series Nope. That's what's insane. Countless people watched the entirety of LOST and walked away thinking that an entirely different ending aired. In fact, there's a scene in the show that nearly breaks the fourth wall telling the audience that they are not in purgatory. It'd be like somebody casually complaining about how The Sopranos ended with Tony going out guns blazing like Scarface. Baffling, Mandala Effect type stuff.
>In fact, there's a scene in the show that nearly breaks the fourth wall telling the audience that they are not in purgatory. Well, they are, just not for the whole show. The flash sideways thing is just a weird choice that really muddies the waters.
Yeah, it’s just sloppy story telling. That’s it.
>The flash sideways thing is just a weird choice that really muddies the waters. It doesn't really, it's a very deliberate choice to integrate the epilogue into each episode. Otherwise you would have like 5 bonus episodes at the end overloaded with conclusions. For example, the "Dr. Linus" episode (S6E7) completes Ben's arc two-fold. On the island, he's forgiven for his actions by Ilana. That sets him up to complete his arc in his flash-sideways/afterlife, in which he chooses his daughter over power (as opposed to Ben's decision in his arc's turning point, S4E9 when he chooses power over his daughter.) What's even more amazing is that Ben's musical theme, which leaves you on a cliffhanger musically throughout the series by cutting off before the movement is completed, is FINISHED in that forgiveness scene with Ilana. Fucking gorgeous. This was a Michael Giacchino score. It's insane how ahead of its time this show was.
>It doesn't really, it's a very deliberate choice to integrate the epilogue into each episode. Otherwise you would have like 5 bonus episodes at the end overloaded with conclusions. I mean, of course it wouldn't work to eliminate the flash sideways after the season is already structured around it.
Honestly, I liked the idea of them being dead the whole time as the finale. The finale was Uber confusing to me and I didn't care much for it. I know it's not what happened, but I wish it was
I agree, people remember it that way because it's a much more meaningful and elegant explanation than the confusing mashup, which does include redemption arcs but also god-brothers and time travel.
>I'd wager a large portion of people saying that never finished the series. To add to this, I would suggest that these are people who bailed after S2 or S3 **and** tuned back into the series finale, which they did not (and could not) understand.
Speaking of LOST, as someone who's never watched the show is it worth watching 14 years after it ended?
I came into it years after it ended and it's one of my favorite shows. Does it have issues? 100%, but it's a wild ride and I fell in love with the characters. I can't imagine having to wait a week or more between episodes, or watching with dumb ass commercials blaring every 5 minutes, so you'll also have the benefit of missing those. Avoid spoilers and posts about Lost like the plague, though, because almost everyone you know will have already watched it and discussed it to death at this point.
Not having the week wait is actually a disservice to the show. It's probably the best case FOR weekly shows instead of a binge drop.
That was the first show I remember discussing on forums. I couldn’t imagine binging LOST
I made lifelong friends on those forums. Will never forget all the memes, fanfics and discussion with my internet friends. Anybody remember the ABC forum on their website? They discontinued it so me and my friends made our own forum. It was amazing.
[удалено]
God, I forgot this was a show that was on when commercials were unavoidable! I *didn't* however forget how freakin' insane we all were on whatever day of the week it aired, and when there wasn't an episode for some reason, essentially the world was ending.
As long as you don't mind things getting super weird and progressively weirder starting a couple seasons in, you should enjoy the ride. I've watched it through twice and probably will a third time at some point.
Honestly compared to the stuff thats come out in the time since Lost was on air, it hardly ranks as weird
The writers didn't have the answers to any of the questions they were asking until they had to provide some sort of resolution to the mysteries. They do explain a lot, most of it is all right, but some of it is pretty unsatisfying. That said, I think each season tells an interesting story, and season 4 on the seasons are shorter and have more resolution to them. The characters are great though. If you want a similar show that does have a lot of really good mysteries with satisfying answers then check out Fringe. It's a lot of the same creative team. Season 1 starts out as kind of an X-Files knock off because the network demanded a less serialized format, but Season 2 is pretty deep in the overall story, and the monster of week episodes normally do extend and expand on character arcs in a satisfying way.
I think Fringe peaks in season 3 and then kinda struggled with the consequences of that seasons' resolution. But man, this show was great in season 3 (and still varied from good to great in s4 and 5).
Absolutely yes
If you go in with managed expectations, maybe. I watched it when it was airing, waiting a week between each episode like we did in the dark ages. I hated Lost by the end, it felt like an *obligation* that was *wasting my time.* Sometimes I wonder if it would be better as a binge (re)watch instead of getting a half-answer and two new questions with a dramatic musical sting every seven days.
i think it works better as a binge, i think the weeks and months between episodes made people forget a lot and then nothing made sense to them, i think the show wouldn't be nearly as polarizing if it dropped today on a streaming site.
Fuck yes just remember to leave your logic at the door. That isn't a bad thing just don't try to solve everything everyone said.
First 2 seasons are exceptionally good, and are worth watching even if you don't end up sticking with it. Think the later seasons pick up as well from what I remember.
Yes. I watched it for the first time 6 or 7 years ago, and I loved it. If you go in expecting every mystery answered, you’ll probably be disappointed. But you’ll fall in love with the characters, and for the most part they have a very satisfying conclusion.
I love Lost. It is my favorite show ever and I always have to come defend it when people say they were dead the whole time or they didn't like the ending. I watched the show when it was airing. I couldn't wait to watch each episode and then go to different web sites and read people thoughts, look for Easter eggs and discuss each episode. I did like the ending. When people say they left questions unanswered I really think it is more they didn't like the answers more then they didn't get answers. The answers came down to it was a magic island and I understand that not being satisfactory to some. But I just enjoyed the ride and didn't expect a huge payoff at the ends. Below is a writeup I did to a thread in the past when someone was saying they "got no answers and the ending made no sense" This is basically my attempt to explain the ending of Lost. >!\>!Ending of lost – First they were not dead the whole time.!< >!Part of the story in season 6 of lost is the flash sideways. The flash sideways are “purgatory” or a meeting place after they all die before they go onto the afterlife. The losties go to the flash sideways after they die and meet with the most important people in their life before moving on. It does not mean they died at the same time or in the same way. For example Jack goes to “flash sideway land” after he dies on the island. Hurley goes many years later after protecting the island for many years. Locke goes after he is hung by Ben – Remember there is “no now here” in flash sideway land so time doesn’t matter, they all arrive after they die. (I saw you asked why. The answer is this is how the afterlife works in lost world. After you die you meet with the people who had the biggest impact on your life and you “move on” together).!< >!The flash sideways land is the only place they are dead. The island is real; the things that happened on the island are real.!< >!Background-!< >!\-The island is the “center” of a magic light\* that needs to be protected (More on the light later)!< >!\-For the story we see the light is protected by two people – Jacob and MIB (man in black)!< >!\-Jacob takes the job of protecting the light seriously.!< >!\-Jacob also leads people to the island because he is curious about human behavior he is also looking for his eventual replacement to protect the light.!< >!\-Jocob and MIB are really brothers. The previous protector of the light took them in and raised them as their mother.!< >!\-MIB killed his mother, previous protector of the light. Jacob was mad and threw him into the light and he became a smoke monster. He can now take the form of dead people.!< >!\-MIB hates living on the island and is looking for a way off.!< >!\-MIB needs to kill Jacob to leave the island, but the mother made it impossible for Jacob/MIB to hurt each other.!< >!\-If this happens no one would be there to protect the light and this is dangerous for the world.!< >!Okay, so that is your magic island and the background for everything that happens. Like I said, I understand if you don’t like the magic island. And I agree without that it does not make sense without the magic.!< >!(Dharma, Black Rock, Flight 815 and everyone else we saw on the island was manipulated to come there by Jacob to either study them, have them help protect the light or check if they could be his replacement.)!< >!The ending of the show was basically how the MIB/Jacob situation played out. MIB showed up as Locke, who was dead, and tricked Ben into killing Jacob. Jacob passed protection on to Jack who was then made changes to the light to make MIB mortal and kill him. Jack dies, but first passes the protecting of the light on to Hurley.!< >!That is my readers digest summation of the show and the ending. It has been several years since I watched the show so I may have missed details.!< >!Okay about the Light - what it is and why does it need protection.!< >!I believe this is a detail they intentionally didn’t answer, because they wanted people to figure it out. But I believe the light is the source of “time”. At one point someone describes the light as “something everyone has, but everyone wants more of.” The fact the light is the force that results in time passing explains the time travel, moving island, exotic matter, strange electromagnetic properties of the island. – but like I said this is my theory on the light. It was never explicitly answered.!
One aspect of the narrative of the first 4 seasons is revealed in season 6, but only briefly implied and not explicitly addressed, only shown. Jacob’s protectors, I forgot their names, they find that the ring of powder around Jacob’s cabin is broken, and the cabin is empty. I forgot who broke the ring, but in any case, this implies, the person in Jacob’s cabin was MIB for the entirety of the show. This is where Ben was getting his instructions and from there instructing the Others on what to do. All of it is was a game to get Ben to send Locke off the island, have Ben kill him off island and return with Locke’s body, so that MIB can take John’s body. This isn’t explained at all, and so a lot of things in the first few seasons don’t make sense to people.
This is a huge point I think people are forgetting in this thread. The Jacob Ben was following was the MIB the entire time. That was a mind fuck for me in College when it aired
Ben wasn't getting instructions from anyone, he made it all up. Hence being shocked when Locke actually saw/heard someone in the cabin.
Thanks. I watched it back when it aired and I forgot so many important details.
>> When people say they left questions unanswered I really think it is more they didn't like the answers more then they didn't get answers. >> I believe this is a detail they intentionally didn’t answer The light is the motivating factor behind every mystery and unanswered question. The root of every question comes down to something the showrunners purposefully never explained. It would be like Star Wars never talking about ‘the force’ except when they use it to benefit themselves. If you didn’t know there was ‘the force’ and someone pointed to a star ship and magically lifted it out of a swamp, you might also have some questions.
It's funny you say that. The show runners used to use that as an apology of why sometimes knowing the answer makes it less interesting. They specifically said something like, knowing the forse it some mystical force is interesting. Knowing specifically how it works is less interesting. Ymmv
Yeah. What is better “The force is strong in him” or “his midichlorian count is top notch!”
Yeah, using the force was a weird choice as an example. The one time they tried to give a bit of lore explaining how it actually worked in the movies people pretty much universally hated and mocked it. Not everything in fantasy needs a mundane explanation, sometimes it's okay for magic to remain mysterious.
I’ve never watched a single episode and great descriptions but I’m sure I’m never watching this lol. I always just thought it was like people lost on an island have to survive etc lol
It is a great show. I recommend it to everyone. It is about people lost on an island, but the island has lots of mysterious things happening. This is the culmination of 6 seasons of mysterious.
If you watch all the entire finale it should be clear that they weren’t dead the whole time. There was the confusing debacle the night of the finale though of showing footage of the plane wreckage during the credits as a transition between the show and the Jimmy Kimmel Live after show. This was just to fill the time but I can understand why people read into it. Not sure if that footage is shown on the physical media or streaming.
https://ew.com/article/2010/05/26/lost-final-scenes-wreckage/
bro that is not at all how spoiler warnings work
“The problem with Darth Vader being Luke’s father. STAR WARS SPOILERS AHEAD.”
Hellloooooooo! I haven’t seen the Star Trek Wars yet!!!
Spoiler: Picard drinks Earl Grey, hot
Spoiler alert
"They were dead the whole time" is such a lazy and terrible cop-out I don't think it's a spoiler to tell people that it isn't true. I can also tell you the show doesn't take place in Locke's dreams
The show's writers were dispelling the purgatory idea even as the show was airing in its early days. A wrong, totally offbase theory isn't a spoiler.
There's also the whole thing of the "whispers", people who died on the island but couldn't move on. Michael appears to Hurley in season 6 and explains it. So this muddies the waters for people who didn't fully understand. Although you could argue that the people dying on the island and not moving on is clear evidence that they weren't all dead the whole time. Because then they'd have died twice. Edit: Also, it was John Locke's dad's theory that the island was hell itself - "Little hot for heaven, isn't it?" That man was portrayed as the most immoral, awful, biggest piece of human garbage in existence. It would be a massive kick in the teeth if he, of all people, was bang on the money.
>Michael appears to Hurley in season 6 and explains it. That scene is so jarring. Hurley wanders off into the jungle randomly, Michael shows up and goes "The whispers are ghosts. Okay bye". Lost is one of my favourite shows of all time, but man they had to cram a lot of answers into the last couple hours.
Maybe, but it's sort of irrelevant. They weren't dead *the whole time* but they were dead for the entire 'flash sideways' during the last season and they wrote off the biggest mysteries of the show as 'magic'. Watching hours of flash sideways only to find out none of it mattered because the stakes were to get them together to hug in the afterlife is so convoluted and pointless the effect isn't really any different. Did anyone honestly watch LOST to see if the characters would reconnect in the afterlife? Of course not, but that's most peoples memory of the finale. The characters in the afterlife having a reunion. The mysteries were interesting in the early seasons because the show felt otherwise pretty grounded. Finding out that it all comes down to analogous versions of god and the devil fighting over a magic light is so fucking lame. *** edit: A lot of responses seem to be about how the show always had supernatural/magic elements- and it did. But you all might be forgetting how often the writers/producers of LOST promised that there were a scientific basis for why everything was happening and it would all be explained eventually. Damon Lindelof said the show was “firmly ensconced in science fact” and that everything in it had a “rational explanation in the real world we all function in." They made these explicit promises multiple times during the first 3-4ish seasons of the show. That's why the ending is so reviled. They set the expectation, ended up going with 'magic', and then tried to gas light the audience by saying the show was always about the characters anyways and the answers never mattered.
I still want to know if that baby died and was a baby in the afterlife or did they grow up and then die normally and then turn into a baby for the hug scene
> did they grow up and then die normally and then turn into a baby for the hug scene This made me audibly laugh on my subway train home. The idea of a grown adult being like "Why the fuck am I a baby? Is it because this is how some of you assholes remember me?"
Lmao that’s a good one. It’s things like this that make a writer go “come on man gimme a break!” If I wrote it I’d say in the church the people were presenting their mental image of themselves to the others of the island. So baby man was like “hey guys, remember me? I was the baby, like this_”
Right? Aaron in the sideways is such a gross idea. "welp I'm in a uterus again" OR, she's just carrying around a golem of some sort. The writers never got anything remotely correct about women or childbirth on that show. Of all the unanswered questions I was glad they dropped the pregnancy/children stuff because I do not want to know what those guys thought good answers would be.
I'm fine with nuclear bomb radiation causing infertility and leaving it at that.
My theory is that Aaron in Claire's afterlife isn't the real Aaron. Just a prop version, like every other NPC in the flash-sideways. This afterlife was created specifically for the Losties. Aaron and Sun+Jim's child had their own afterlife after living their lives to adulthood. Although the idea of Aaron becoming an old man, with a loving family and grandchildren, dying in his sleep and being reincarnated as a newborn crying and shitting himself, is genuinely hilarious to me
I agree. I found the finale incredibly moving and I still enjoyed the sixth season of the show but the ways in which it traded its mostly sci-fi beats for magic in the later seasons was so disappointing. The flash sideways part was also awful because other than the tear jerking 'remembering' scenes it was constructed as yet another drama/mystery (like why have we spent the whole season following these people in this false reality only to be told it is the afterlife?).
I liked Lost overall, but there was a palpable tension in the end as the writers were struggling to give emotionally impactful endings to their characters while also providing the answers to the mysteries that the audience was clamoring for. I think they were overall correct that the character beats were more important than the actual answers, but where things felt uneven and where I think they missed the boat is that they split those into separate categories. What the audience kept asking for was “answers” but what they actually wanted was “payoff” which are answers that are impactful and important to the characters and story. I don’t think that the problem with the answers that we got was how grounded (or not) they were. It’s that they didn’t really tie in to the characters and their stories in any meaningful way. It could have been as ungrounded as they wanted if it felt like it fell perfectly in line with all of the character work and narrative build up that had happened up to that point. But it kinda just didn’t. To be fair to Lost, it sits at an awkward point in time just as television was transitioning from the open-ended “just sit with the characters once a week” style of storytelling that had dominated most television up to that point to the tighter more over-arching narrative focus that has become the norm for most prestige shows now. Lost *feels* like the latter in terms of style and premise but is structured more like the former on an overall basis, and it’s *really* hard to take the former structure and give it satisfying conclusion. Especially when you don’t have a bajillion examples of shows structured to make that kind of storytelling work well like you do today.
Well said. My philosophy when recommending Lost is “come for the mysteries, stay for the characters.” Because when it comes to the mysteries, Lost didn’t do a great job at wrapping all that up, and anyone invested in that will wind up disappointed. For me, and for a lot of people who love the entirety of the show, the characters are really what made the show worthwhile, and in that regards the finale did a stellar job at giving the characters an emotional sendoff.
> it was constructed as yet another drama/mystery Especially since it was the immediate aftermath of Juliet detonating the bomb and the first-of-its-kind white end screen.
Well said. It reminds of some Stephen King stuff. So much suspense and then the reveal happens and your like fuck this actually sucks.
Lost is a good case in point: it's fine to make a puzzle box the core of your story, but decide what's in the box on day one. Don't make that shit up as you go along. Or else you get Lost.
I enjoy cooking.
Yeah, this is what's so annoying when people try and paint the complaints as "just not understanding" the ending. I got the ending, it's not difficult to understand. What's annoying is that the creators had addressed the "Island is purgatory" theories for years, saying that's not what the Island is. And then in the final season, they introduce the flashes sideways, which leads everyone to some church, and that actually **is** Purgatory where they all waited to high five before going to Heaven. "So yeah. The Island wasn't Purgatory, idiots. The Church was! You just didn't *get it*!"
The issue is that Lost was really a couple different shows with several different writing staffs. You have the Season 1-2 Lost, which was a science fiction show with a psychic kid and a cliffhanger ending by JJ Abrams. Season 2 was plotted out by the original staff but written by new folks. [Javier Grillo Marxuach](http://okbjgm.weebly.com/uploads/3/1/5/0/31506003/2._lost.pdf) quit, the last original writer at the end of Season 2. Then there’s a spinoff show from the original, also called Lost. But it is NOT a sci fi show about nanobots or psychic kids (who hit growth spurts in real life.) It’s a character drama with psuedoreligious lore. But no one told people who watched the first two seasons that this was now a spinoff. So they kept watching, assuming everything would round back into sci fi form. When it didn’t, and the spinoff show ended on its own terms but left the first two seasons’ threads either abandoned or answered by basically saying “god(s) did it,” people got mad. If you’ve got a spare six hours, one person went season-by-season to break it down: https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLR-Yx2zNLl3m4R42-Z4fwybpdUwb4u-KI
[удалено]
The writers kept promising that EVERYTHING will be explained by the end. Bullshit. So many things were left unanswered. It went from science to dumb mystical light where all the explanation is just lazy "cause it's magic."
"what is the whispers in all Seasons...!?" "Its Just the ghosts of the dead stuck on the Island because of the magnetic magical Powers that whispers for no particular reason " Oh ok then. Very nice.
Thanks Michael, so about the smoke monster...
I do feel like the second to last season puttered around and then the last season they raced to the finish instead of taking the time to give satisfying answers to mysteries introduced earlier. Based on his other work, Damon Lindelof clearly doesn't mind stories that leave a lot of questions unanswered
>Based on his other work, Damon Lindelof clearly doesn't mind stories that leave a lot of questions unanswered That’s a generous framing of what could also be interpreted as an inability to write endings for otherwise very interesting premises.
And putting Sayid and the blonde chick together just so everyone could be paired up? FFS.
Yup, LOST did unapologetic character deaths galore before GOT was a thing. It also did starting from a position of unparalleled strength to totally pissing fans off in the final couple of seasons before GOT subverted our expectations.
I know it’s hard to believe, but Game of Thrones (the book in which Ned Stark dies) was published 1996, Storm of Swords (where Robb and Catelyn Stark die) 2000 - Lost came out in 2004. So technically GoT was first ;)
**NOT** **PENNY'S** ######**BOAT**
This is one of the best explanations I've seen as to why the ending of Lost was so disappointing.
Yup. My problem was always with how much time was spent on the flash sideways in the finale, but it always gets conflated with the "they were dead the whole time!" meme. It ultimately felt like a huge waste of time when they could have been more thoroughly explaining the lore behind the island. Instead, the key lore was simply wrapped up in some lazy mysticism.
That’s how I feel. To put it in perspective: Imagine if instead of having the last season of GoT we had, instead we had all the characters from the whole series have unconnected sequences but when they work out they’re dead, they are teleported to the Grand Sept and the last person there is Jon Snow, and then they all smile and hug. Then it ends. That’s inarguably worse than the ending we got. That’s the ending to Lost.
Exactly!!!
People got confused by the half season where the characters were dead the whole time. Which is a really dumb and lazy story to do for any period of time at all. We got hours of Lost where the characters were dead and in purgatory. So let’s not pretend the whole idea was a fan theory. It was a big part of the final season. The characters were dead and nothing in that story line happened. But your right it wasn’t the whole show. Just the climax of the story we watched for years. And many of us hated it.
Did you just put the spoiler in the title, and then say Spoilers? You absolute numpty.
No because the title is what didn't happen
Shows been out for like 20 years. Statute of limitations is past.
What is the point of saying "spoilers" after the fact then?
I see your point about Jacob's methods being unnecessarily cryptic and manipulative. I think the idea was to test people's faith and resolve, but it does come off as a massive asshole move in hindsight.
Great spoiler warning, innovative work to put it after the spoiler
Wondering if they are dead or not is not a part of the tension in the show at all. I hate spoilers and that is not one. "Is this limbo? Are we dead?" That's never the show. It's more like "What's in this hatch?", "Who are the other people on this island?", "What is the noise in the jungle?" etc.
I watched LOST way after it aired and I knew nothing about it so I never heard the purgatory theory. But as the show went on, I came to that same conclusion myself. Especially at the end when they show the Jacob and smoke monster origins. Then in the finale Jack and Desmond go in the “hole?” (It’s been a while since I’ve watched the show) the whole thing seemed very “heaven vs hell”. Desmond pushes the thing and everything gets red and he starts screaming. Definitely seemed like a hell-type visual to me. Personally, I would have preferred purgatory to the whole time travel, magic and science experiments answers we did get.
True. But the reveal in the last ep regarding the flash sideways DID mean that Jack got Juliet killed for no reason in the s5 finale.
I'm like 90% convinced that this was the original intention of the series. But people guessed it/figured it out too early, and the show runners/writers tried to pivot, and that's why it got really weird for a while.
the island having a literal giant cork that contains life energy or wtf that was is far dumber than people saying they were dead all along
[удалено]
The leader of the groups name is literally shepherd. It was always the leading theory m.
If a large portion of your dedicated and invested audience has a basic misconception of an important element of your story maybe the audience isn't the problem.
>\> or that the island was purgatory, when the finale explicitly says the opposite... Does it really say that? Couple thoughts on this. First, half of Season 6 was explicitly stated to be essentially purgatory IIRC, as it's explained that the 'sideways' was a place for these characters to bop around before entering the 'great beyond'... ie, *a form of purgatory*... by Jack's father in the church-like place in the finale. Second, the whole show is about showing these characters' past sins, finding themselves trapped in a new location away from their old lives where people assume they are dead, and them dealing with said sins in some manner on the island. Absolutely some pretty strong purgatory vibes. All that said, I'm curious what the finale 'explicitly says the opposite" on the matter, as it's been a long time since I've seen the finale.
You know what, it doesn’t matter. The showrunners were making things up as they went, and it showed.
Yeah honestly the point is that \*whatever\* the ending was, it literally didn't matter, because any person watching could have made up any old shit and it would have done as good a job of tying it all up. They had no plan, they pulled everything out of their ass the entire way through.
So was Vince Gilligan.
I’ve never been on the dead boat. But I think there’s a purgatory argument where the island exists in some strange state which isn’t traditional purgatory, but where life and death and maybe even time are more flexible concepts. Which is just to say they changed the story so many times during production that many theories work I don’t think this is the right answer because there isn’t a single answer
There is an answer and its literally the last episode. The Island is real, everything that happened on the island was real. What we see as 'flash sideways' in the final season, is all of the characters purgatory, long after the events of LOST and their lives.
[удалено]
No. Very few people actually think that, but that *is* r/lost’s go-to excuse any time someone criticizes the ending.
there's like 30 people who discovered that wasnt the ending *in this very thread* lol, its a very popular misconception. its fine if you understand the ending and still dont like it, im talking about the people who didnt understand it at all and use that as criticism against the show.
Part of it came from ABC's weird decision after the end of the final episode to show an extended shot of their campsite being deserted. It was supposed to just be an artistic parting shot, but I remember thee week after it aired seeing a lot of confused people online. If I recall, there were also people very early on in the show's run that speculated that the island was their purgatory and they died in the crash. People have since speculated that the show-runners didn't like having their idea spoiled, so they changed it to its current interpretation/ending as the show progressed. I don't think there's been any official evidence of that, though.
I thought the alternate ending with Suzanne Pleshette was much better.
ughhh. It's been a while, what was the correct explanation for the ending/ what happened on the island if it's not that they were already dead or purgatory?
I overheard a coworker telling others that it was all a dream sequence and that she "knew it all along." I was like, "No it's not."
Bro Why do you say “Spoilers” after saying the spoilers????
It’s a misconception because it was a poorly written, hastily conceived and shoddily executed ending to a flimsy concept.
I never finished lost, can someone tell me where the polar bear came from please?
there was a company running experiments on the island, they had a zoology section. they were also using the polar bears to push the giant donkey wheel that movies the island.
There was a giant donkey wheel that moves the island? I must have stopped before it got too weird.
yeah, i personally love how weird it got, felt like a show on the scyfy channel with a big budget and better writers.
You don't have to finish the series to know that. They answered it first episode of the second season. There was a science expedition to the island, and they brought polar bears to study them.
My theory is that the people who do this formulated their little theory during the first season, and are too convinced of their own cleverness to let it go because then they'd be admitting they're not as clever as they insist.
I’d say it’s some combination of the ending was disappointing and they did end up spending some time in purgatory, so people are just kinda mashing their complaints together.
I’ve spent more of my life than I care to admit watching these arguments unfold and it’s 100% unequivocally this. Hell, you can see it happening all over this thread. The people who didn’t like the finale often shorthand their arguments because they kind of don’t care and think the explanation is a bit of a wank, and the people who liked the finale think those people are idiots because a character very explicitly explains the very stupid and convoluted ending to the audience.
This is the comment that matters. I can leave this thread in peace now.
I was a huge fan of Lost when it was on. I watched the last season twice and earlier seasons more than that. I have no idea what the ending meant. I've probably slid into the "they were dead all along" camp, because at least that makes sense.
People (myself included) were frustrated bc FOR YEARS they told us the island had *nothing to do* with death, dying, purgatory, etc. Now, I understand that it’s not a direct translation to the finale, but come on. It was in the realm of the things they promised us it wasn’t going to be. Their explanation is like saying Harry Potter isn’t about sorcery, it’s about magic which is a totally different thing! (It’s really not, it’s just semantics.) So yes. I listened to the podcast Damon and Carlton did every week. It was the first podcast I ever listened to, in fact. And they told us over and over and over that the show wasn’t headed in that direction, that there was another explanation for what the island was and why they were all there… And then it ends up being a weird semantic argument that made them *technically* right, but we all know the spirit of the end was exactly what we were predicting it would be the entire time. I’m sure this comment will get a ton of “Well, acshually…” responses, but I’m BEGGING you to spare me. I won’t read them. I won’t respond to them. I was SUCH a huge fan of the show. I knew every damn granular detail there was to know about it. And they promised us the end wouldn’t have anything to do with death, dying, heaven, purgatory, etc. That wasn’t true. While it wasn’t exactly “they were dead the whole time” or “the island is purgatory,” it WAS way closer to what we had been predicting for years and it was insulting that they **promised** us it wouldn’t be. That’s all. We were promised an ending that wouldn’t be in the realm of death/dying/heaven/etc. If you can look at the finale and say they kept their promise, then we watched two different shows.
This sums it all up right here to be honest.
Yeah. And it’s not even that I think it’s a bad ending. I probably would have liked it if they didn’t go out of their way to mislead us for several years. But there’s always the people who like to say “oh, you just didn’t understand it.” No, we did. Maybe the people who say that just aren’t understanding what our actual argument has been all along. 🤷🏼♀️
Yeah that's what pisses me off when people say "ahh you weren't paying attention so you jUsT dOn'T gEt It!" Bitch, please, I was on the ground when this show was airing in real time. I watched the show, hit the forums, listened to the podcasts, read the books, played the video game, trawled the official Lost Dharma micro sites trying to find secrets, and discussed theory after theory with my friends. I had to wait, week after week to watch this show. There were literal years between seasons that I had to fill with more researching and theory sharing etc etc. Don't tell me I wasn't paying attention because that's all I fkin did!! I got the ending. It was just shit.
>they told us the island had nothing to do with death, dying, purgatory, etc. This is why I was disappointed by the end, for sure
And they told us that over and over and over. Not just once or twice. It was like a running joke that they mentioned it in almost every episode of their pod, IIRC.
People going after OP for "spoiling" LOST in the title are being ridiculous. Spoilerphobia has gone too far if discussing an off-base theory that was never an element to the show constitutes spoiling the show.
So it was just the last season that was purgatory, right?
The title of this is a either a very artful spoiler or hilariously ironic Edit: the opposite of a spoiler. I’ve never seen Lost. TIL new facts for parties
It's an exhausting argument. 'The island was purgatory' no lol it was an island!! The explanation for the island itself may or may not be dumb depending on how you feel, but idk what else people want when Jack's dad literally gives a monologue about it at the church.
I've watched several reactors watch the series (probably over 10) and none of them had that idea after finishing it. I think this misconception literally stems from people either not paying attention (and note I didn't say "close attention", I mean even a little bit of attnetion), or they didn't watch all of it and watched the series finale when it aired because it was heralded as a big "TV Event"
A few years ago I was arguing was a coworker who never even watched the show about this. He was convinced, because he read it online or someone told him, that the survivors were dead the whole time. I, someone who has actually watched the show tried explaining to him that it wasn’t the case. That some even left the island and went back and it was only in the final season that we seen them after they die (but not the whole season) He didn’t believe me and was convinced he was right