Well goddamn, that was emotional. Choked up on more than one occasion over the last two and a half hours, and that’s no bad thing. Leaving behind these characters that have been so important to so many people (including myself) is tough. Without spoiling in the first paragraph I’m happy with the sense of closure but I’m not 100% happy with the finale (I’ll get onto that). Despite the finale’s shortcomings overall, those final 15 minutes just couldn’t have been better, they were perfect, I can’t think of any other show that ended in quite a way. Lost really was a truly unique show in so many aspects. So lets get down to business, here’s what I thought of the ending of Lost…
Let’s take this chronologically and leave that really juicy stuff till last shall we? The finale had action, climactic battles, reunited lovers, sacrifice and a million ways to make me almost cry. Oh yeah, and it had Rose and Bernard. Not to mention everyone’s favourite Labrador 
The final countdown
One thing I really appreciated was the way the first 30-45 mins or so were basically made up of our heroes trekking across the island for one last time. Complete with panoramic long shots of their surroundings and Hurley doing his best to keep up, so much about this final walk echoed the many times our Losties walked across that island towards something, or someone, or something. Just like always they weren’t totally sure what they’d find there, or what they were going to do, they just knew that they had to go.
Jack’s transformation into the Man of Faith takes over the early part of the finale, he has faith that Jacob didn’t bring Desmond back so that MIB could just destroy the island, this is a huge leap, one that season 1 Jack would’ve laughed in the face of. Of course we can’t be sure why Jacob brought him back, perhaps whatever his plan was, went belly up when Ben decided he looked better with a knife in him, maybe Jacob just knew that the end of his story was near and that Desmond would be integral to that ending, perhaps Jacob just royally screwed up. All we know is that Jack shouldn’t have let Desmond down there, he may have survived and carried on as island leader, Hurley and Ben might’ve gone home. Nevertheless down the magic hole Desmond did go, and what he found down there was pretty cool.
It was never just “magic”
I’ve personally enjoyed the magic glowing light hole thingy that Jacob has been guarding all this time. It made sense really, even right back to S1 Locke had a close encounter with a hole full of golden light. Its not like this is a new thing that they threw at us with just a few episodes to go. The island having a heart makes perfect sense, the way I see it, the island is simply one absolutely massive pocket of naturally occuring electromagnetism, the only one of its kind in the world. It is integral to the functioning of the world, the magnetic poles are set by it and the reason they inexplicably change in real life can be attributed to the moving of the Lost island.
The heart was purely that, the core of the islands power, the points at the bottom of wells all over the island just offshoots. The reason Desmond can go down there is left ambiguous but the way it makes sense for me is that he survived turning the fail-safe key through pure luck. The huge explusion of electromagnetic energy messed with his physical make-up in some way and gave him new abilities. The ability to see Charlie’s death being one, the ability to survive huge concentrations of electromagnetism being another.
Every weird thing that ever happened can be attributed to this, an unfathomably huge pocket of power like this would mess with everything: time, weather, physical location, the people in close proximity. They take artistic license in the fact that it heals people but it makes sense that babies can’t be born there. The healing was always integral to the experience anyway, it gave some of our characters their tabula rasa
I don’t think there was ever any original island inhabitants involved in the base origins of the island. I believe people just stumbled into it over the years, sometimes by accident, sometimes they were brought there by the island’s current guardian. The temple, the four-toed statue and the Dharma stations can all be put down to humans doing what they do. An ancient race of people, around the time that heiroglyphics were popular in north-east Africa, would’ve explained the weird goings-on on the island by assuming it was all the work of gods, this is fair enough, I can easily grasp that. Then moving onto the 20th century and mankind has gained the ability to be able to find and visit somewhere like the island, the Hanso Foundation funds the Dharma Initiative to set up shop in the energy pocket and figure out what mankind can gain from it, and primarily if there’s any money to be made from it. So they pull up with polar bears and subliminal messaging tapes to find out what they can about the island. Jacob doesn’t immediately purge them because he sees those older inhabitants in them, the ones that built a temple dedicated to his brother, however they can’t be allowed to carry on regardless, they are doing damage to the island and must be stopped.
I believe smokey has always been the heart of the island in manifest. When Jacob threw MIB down there the heart gained what it always wanted. A persona, somebody to become, this gave release to the smoke and the island began protecting itself. Smokey/ Flocke was never the same person as Jacob’s brother and I’m sure Jacob knew this. The normal job for the island guardian isn’t to keep something from leaving but to protect the core from being damaged, Jacob really had a lot on his plate being landed with both jobs but he managed because it was his fault the Island had been able to manifest itself. The smoke monster IS the Island, they’re one and the same, its the manifestation of the island’s heart and all it was ever doing was protecting itself and trying to escape. The island didn’t want to be the island, trapped, confined to that magic hole, it longs for escape and Jacob almost gave it the means to do so. Jacob was never perfect, in fact he very nearly ruined everything.
I KNEW Frank wasn’t dead!
Someone quite that cool doesn’t just get snuffed out by a fast-moving door. No Sir. It was awesome to see him appear in the ocean and then be the badass pilot saving lives and taking names. Yeah it was a little silly that he survived the sub but sillier things have happened in the show.
While the ultimate ending is the one getting all the attention I think Frank, Miles and Richard’s ending was just as heartfelt. I called it wrong by saying Richard would recieve release in the finale, but that’s fine, seeing him realise that he wanted to live out his natural life was very cool and good closure for the character. I’m a bit worried about him though, I don’t want him to end up like an even worse version of the guy from The Shawshank Redemption that can’t handle the way the world’s moved on 
I really hope Richard’s ultimate ending was a happy one.
I’m so glad that Frank had a real purpose, getting 3 of our originals off -island paid homage to one of the original mysteries, “Will anybody escape?”. It was disappointing not to see Frank, Miles, Daniel and Charlotte in the church at the end though. I guess Frank’s off in his own tequila soaked tropical paradise full of supermodels strolling around in Brazilian bikinis, I’m happy for him On a side-note we also missed Michael and Walt in the church at the end, I’m not 100% sure of an explanation for this, the only thing I can come up with is that Michael caused so much damage to the Losties, shooting Ana Lucia and Libby and just generally always looking out for number 1. Perhaps he didn’t deserve to be with them, the AU was the construct of our characters trying to find closure and move on, I don’t think they needed Michael there to do it, in fact a lot of them probably just didn’t want him there.
The Perfect Ending
So all season the AU has been purgatory? Or something like it without all the Christian connotations. We’ve been witnessing our characters trying to move on, to reconnect with the most important people and place in their lives and cross over to whatever comes next, to find release. The number one confusion about the interweb seems to be how Frank’s fellow escapees ended up in the AU at the end and how Ben and Hurley were there considering they stayed on as Island guardians. Well the answer for me is that the AU is completely seperate from our time, it doesn’t function like our world does, Sawyer, Claire, Kate, Ben and Hurley all lived out their lives, Ben and Hurley maybe even protected the Island for centuries before passing the torch to someone new. Once they died though their souls came to the AU to seek closure, time difference between deaths doesn’t matter, the AU simply exists, it doesn’t exist from just after Jack died or from any other point, its just there all the time, hence our characters crossing over when they were ready.
No TV show has made me feel quite like Lost did today, that final scene couldn’t have been more perfect. From Ben and Hurley ackowledging their time together to Kate saying she’d missed Jack for a long time and then finally to Jack’s eyes finally closing while the ever-faithful Vincent lay alongside. Its just… there’s no words to express how much I loved it, which is an unfortunate situation for a blogger to get himself into…
There’s a lot of people saying the AU was a waste of time and that the purgatory type ending could have been tacked onto the end of any show. I can understand the anger but I think our characters needed the full send-off, having them find eachother and move on all in the finale would have been cramped and rushed, in true Lost style they left it ambiguous all season, even the survivors’ final destination was a mystery. It couldn’t fit better in my opinion but there’s always going to be a party that wasn’t satisfied.
Lost ended perfectly, Jack’s story came full circle, he started off jaded and cynical, he ended up enlightened and faithful. This was a story about change and fresh starts, a chance to alter everything you dislike about yourself, every thing that holds you back. Only once our characters had achieved full enlightenment, once they had realised the transformation into better people could they move on.
Life After Lost
So that’s it, done. No more new episodes of Lost, as sad as it is I’m really looking forward to watching it all again from scratch, starting later on today. I’m not sure any other show will ever be quite like Lost and as sad as that is we all need to be grateful we were along for the ride. The years of discussion, confusion, laughter and incredible storytelling were totally worth it. And lets remember that very few shows get a chance to end on their own terms, I’m very glad that Darlton were allowed to give Lost exactly the send off it deserved.
Simpler times, who knew what they were in for?
I’m going to miss you Lost, but I’m so glad I was there.
-Kyle Davey
