For every question I answer, there will only be more questions. This quote, from arguably one of the best episodes of LOST ever, Across the Sea, accurately sums up the show overall.
The whole idea with a book or a movie or a narrative of any kind with a storyteller is simple. You, the reader or viewer or taker-inner, are taking in a story. The writer is the one who puts in it what you need to fully take in that story. That’s part of the incredible fun of writing: telling enough to get the story across while leaving enough for each reader/viewer/whateverer to bend and twist it into something they can recognize for themselves.
It’s something of an art.
Yesterday, as the blogosphere exploded with reviews over the series finale for LOST, some of the artwork was portrayed rather like the cow dung Madonna of a few years ago. Some called it pandering. Others called cop-out. And though most polls of the readers showed a majority of viewers appreciated the end of what has become a truly original show, the blog writers seemed to be left unsatisfied.
Personally, I wonder what they would have said had Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, Writers of the Show to Beat All Shows Evermore had written the finale these bloggers would have had them write. To answer Out Loud every question. To tie up neatly with A Bow Seen From Outer Space every loose end.
The so-called art critics of today would have called pandering on that as well. Insulting the intelligence of the savvy audience, they would have cried. Foul, sirs, foul! We are not rubes to your show of wit and wonder! We did not need the spoon feeding! Those viewers love the wonder, and have followed faithfully for years this series which invariably left more questions at the end of every episode than had come before, doling answers more sparsely than a teacher awarding prizes for good behavior in math class.
Since what we see as viewers is what we get, and we are interpreting the story as we take it in, based on the information allotted to us, allow me to explain what happened on LOST from my perspective as a viewer since the beginning.
If we take Christian Shepherd at his word (and as Kate said, he is a Christian shepherd, even though never once did I spot the significance of his name, perhaps because his personality was the antithesis of what a “loving guide” should be) then all those things which happened on the island really did happen. He said so flat out to Jack. Also, Jack is dead there at the end. Yep. I can’t figure out why that’s such a mystery to people who have watched this show all the way through for so long, but yes, Jack died. He had to. It was part of his hero’s journey to make the world as okay as he could make it for those HE was shepherding. After all, Jack was a shepherd, too.
Jack left the island to Hugo, regained his own mortality, turned the light back on, staggered through the bamboo where he had originally woken up on the island, closed his eyes, and died. If him laying there alone didn’t convince you, even Vincent the dog was there to comfort him through to the end of his suffering.
So Hugo and Ben at that point had control of the island, had Desmond to work with them, and began to find a way to bring back together all those they had loved and lost over the years. In the sideways world, Des was the first to “wake up”, Charlie notwithstanding as Charlie was on drugs and therefore an unreliable source of information. At the airport, it is Hurley who directs Desmond where to go to baggage claim, and we all know Desmond was embroiled with Eloise Hawking before, so it’s obvious to start with him, making Des the messenger helping Hurley go around waking the other Lostaways to their island existences. (Hugo awoke himself via Libby in his own episode a few back, and wouldn’t it have been easy for now-immortal Hugo to communicate with spirit Libby and have her alter contact him in the sideways world?) And now that Hugo is the new Jacob, doesn’t it make sense that he’s out walking the earth, helping people? That’s what Jack said Hugo always did.
So at the end, many of the Lostaways gathered at the church where Eloise Hawking-Widmore kept her magical time-traveling pendulum thingy in the basement, when Christian Shepherd pointed out to Jack that he was dead, too, he said you all made this place so you could find each other here. By the end of the show, the sideways world was their purgatorial weigh station; a place they could finally experience some happily ever after before moving on, together, LOST no more.
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Perfect.