Lost Series Finale: The Final Roundup

For so many of us, last night was the ending of a long trail of emotion, excitement, mystery and closure. Six amazing seasons of some of the best television ever produced culminated in 2.5 hours of pure adrenalin-rushed, brain teasing fun. Whether it was the Island-Sideways subplot, or the push and pull relationship between Science and Faith and so many other aspects of the Lost universe, there was no shortage of ground that needed to be covered in the Finale. Lindelof and Cuse did not disappoint. Like peeling the many layers of an onion, it's almost impossible with one blog post to sum it all up. Through a series of links, videos and quotes we will try and give you an overall sense of what the Finale accomplished, may have missed and what the reaction is from critics now that our beloved show has reached 'The End'.

Like all long-running successful TV shows these days, they must end on the set of a late-nite talk show somewhere. ABC's Jimmy Kimmel got the honor and subsequently offered up some supposed 'alternate endings'...
Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse's Alternate LOST Endings

And of course the obligatory comedic 'Where are they now?' montage. Keep an eye out for Charlie in this one :-)
'Lost': Where Are They Now?

In case you missed it, here is the final scene, the last 4 minutes of 'The End' where the major characters get their closure and finally 'leave'.
LOST "The End" Final scene

Lostwatch: All of This Matters
"The End," and thus season six, and thus Lost, was not perfect, because nothing is. I still believe that Jacob and the Man in Black were never characterized as richly as other characters, like Ben, which rendered Locke in the end too much of a generic baddie. And the final images--with the heavenly light shining though the doorway of the chapel, as Christian walked into it a la Close Encounters--were a bit overly touched by an angel.

But the finale, as good TV finales do, captured what the show's essence. Lost is a story about community, connections and interdependence. You live together, it told us, or you die alone. And when you live together--when you share of yourself and make meaning with others--you never die alone, even when you die bleeding out on the floor of a bamboo forest.

We didn't see Walt. We didn't learn about the Egyptian imagery. And now, yes, we also have to wonder who carved out that perfectly round bathtub plug at the core of the Island. For tonight, I have the answers that mattered. And I got them in a way that was moving and real and right enough that, as for the rest--I can let go.

‘Lost’ Watch: Embracing the White Light
Well, it was better than the “Life on Mars” finale.

But you have to think that the gauzy, vaguely religious, more than a little mawkish ending of ‘Lost’ – “Touched by a Desmond” — will not sit well with a lot of the show’s fans. Many of them will have thought that things were going pretty well for the first two and a quarter hours of the final episode, as the producers treated them to a series of montaged moments in the sideways reality world, in which the main characters regained their memories of the island. But then came the ending, in which most of the main cast members gathered at a church for the big reveal: they were all dead.

And they knew it now, though Jack, as always, took the longest to catch on. (Or maybe just Jack was dead, and this was his funeral?) His father told him: “This is the place that you all made together so that you could find one another. The most important part of your life was the time that you spent with these people. That’s why all of you are here.” With that, white light flooded the church and they all went … well, who knows.

‘Lost Finale’: The Ending Explained
Five minutes after this ended I was on Facebook checking for other people’s comments. I wanted to know what others thought. I texted throughout the show. We joked about Jack’s “super punch.” We speculated in media res. We even talked about commercials. But isn’t that so “Lost?” During the summers between seasons, ABC would produce a complicated alternate reality game that required fans to work together and gather knowledge to solve all the various puzzles. This is a show that necessitated communication and cooperation. That’s unusual in the world of primetime, Big Four network programs.

This was a thoughtful, ambiguous, fascinating show that functioned at the highest of intellectual levels in a corporate age that’s like something out of “Infinite Jest.” At the same time, I don’t think the “Lost” formula is easily replicated. It’ll be years before another cult hit like this comes along. We’ve all just witnessed something special. And now we should go to bed and think on it. And keep thinking.

A Newcomer's Experience With The 'Lost' Finale
Tonight I agreed to participate in a pop culture experiment. I am minutes away from exposing myself to the eagerly anticipated two and a half hour hour series finale of "Lost"… but I when I sit down in front of the TV, I will do so without ever having watched an episode. Why would anyone ever willingly do this to themselves? Why would a reasonable adult immerse himself in what is arguably the most cleverly complex (or excessively convoluted, depending on your outlook) TV shows of all time at the 11th hour? Hell if I have any idea. But I've agreed to it, so let's get this party started!

Before we dive in here's just a quick few words about me and my knowledge of "Lost." First off, I never intentionally avoided watching the show -- it was just one of those things that always seemed too daunting to get into after missing the first few seasons. But I don't live in a cave, so I do have some basic knowledge of the show… plane crash, island, Charlie from "Party of Five," something about a 'smoke monster'(?) and, recently, something about different versions of the original characters existing in parallel but overlapping dimensions (???).

REVIEW: Lost‘s Emotional and Frustrating Finale
The very long finale to ABC’s Lost was deeply touching, quite ridiculous and, in its very last seconds, so infuriating I erupted like the Smoke Beast and did a few cloudy charges around the perimeter of my apartment on the island of Manhattan. Then I ate my remote and sat down to collect my roiling thoughts.

Touching and ridiculous I was expecting: Lost has always been so far out on the edge — and so courageous about it — that the final revelations of Oceanic Flight 815 would have risen either like a phoenix or a magician’s pigeon forcibly flung out over the audience. But this …

'Lost' Finale: Did It Work?
Lost is not a story about an island or a plane crash or a Smoke Monster or some hippie-dippie 70s-era research crew. It's not just a story about a doctor with a God complex and daddy issues or a well-meaning fugitive or a paraplegic with conviction or a conman with great one-liners or an obese lottery winner. It's all that, but it's a also a story about a group of flawed yet lovable people experiencing life and death, pain and suffering, healing and joy in order to experience that moment of Oneness.

'Lost': If you come with me, I'll show you what I mean
“The End” chose not to tie up loose ends or make the mythology entirely make sense. It decided not to make more specific just why the Monster couldn’t leave the Island or why the Island had to exist for the rest of the world to go on as it is (at least, that’s how I’m interpreting the idea that the Island’s heart going out would mean the end of everything). It probably figured that vague notions in these regards were all we needed. …

Was this the right call? For me, absolutely. Big, giant answers about what the Island was or its place in the world’s cosmology or why it had Egyptian stuff all over it or anything like that were probably bound to be disappointing, as most of the answers dispensed this season were, only even more so. Saying what the Island is is like saying what the meaning of life is; it’s a question you can ask but never receive a really satisfying answer to. Really, what would you have liked? It was a crashed spaceship that somehow ended up in the ocean and had life grow upon it? It was a long-lost, fabled isle like Avalon or the Garden of Eden? It was Purgatory? The answer, here, I suppose was that some just wanted the show to say that the Island was SOMEthing, to put a definitive button on the show’s biggest questions.

The Lost Finale Was Incredibly Dumb
Once upon a time, there was a television show about a bunch of people on an island. For six years it was one of the most fascinating things on TV. And then it ended, in the worst way possible.

“Lost” ended tonight, and with it the hopes and dreams of millions of people who thought it might finally get good again. SPOILER ALERT: It didn’t. What did we learn? Nothing. …

Look: I had given up on getting any interesting answers to any of the thousands of questions I still had. When the explanation for “the whispers” came, I hung my head, and thought, “Well, I guess this is how it has to happen.” …

I have taken a creative writing class or two (can you tell?) and do you know this thing they teach you? “Don’t end your story with all your characters being dead.” It is like cheating. It is worse than cheating! It is the wussiest thing a writer can do.

LOST: “The End”
1. Does it work as an episode of television?

I don’t know that a person who’d never seen “Lost” would’ve been able to watch this episode and get much out of it (unlike the best “Lost”s in the past, which work as individual units of story), but as far as delivering action, emotion, wit and “whoa, what the hell?” I’d say “The End” was enormously entertaining. The best storytelling gambit in this episode? The full-arc-flashes, which put an emotional button on nearly every major character’s storyline, and allowed even the prematurely dead to have one last curtain call. …

2. Does it work as a finale?

Yes and no. As noted above, it was definitely emotional, and allowed fans to say goodbye to the characters. But “Lost” wasn’t just about the characters; it was about the place where the characters met and lived together and died alone and had that shared adventure that Christian Shephard insisted represented all of them at their best. … in focusing so much on the Sideways resolution, I’m afraid that “The End” doesn’t give The Island itself a proper sendoff. This is a magical place, right? I needed to feel that magic a little more in the closing moments.

3. Does the show work as a whole?

It’s too soon to say definitively. … I think it’s going to take time, and a start-to-finish viewing, to take the proper measure of whether all of “Lost”’s red herrings and blind alleys and weak answers diminish it as a piece of extended storytelling.

The final 'Lost' review: sweet, fun, Christian
Putting it in a TV-critic’s historical context: Was this an all-time great finale? I wouldn’t say so. The endings for Newhart, the aforementioned Mary Tyler Moore Show, perhaps M*A*S*H, St. Elsewhere, and The Fugitive all ended more decisively, with a more precise snap. But it was a better finale than an awful lot of other, more contemporary Highly Esteemed Dramas and Sitcoms. And as a way to bring this vast fantasy to an end, Lost had a finale that suited our troubled times: It was comforting, reassuring. It even had a dog that made me, for one, wipe away a tear.

What do you think?

TAGS: Critics, Finale, Lost, Review, Roundup, Season 6
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