Lost: The End

Okay. I'm going to try not to shit all over the last episode of LOST.

To some the question would be why not shit all over it? The answer is very simply that I thoroughly enjoyed watching it!

It's definitely a big "fuck you" for the hardcore fans, although I think the writers would prefer to phrase it as "you're missing the point". How well thought through the point was though, and whether it was the point until season 6, is debatable.

We're not allowed to care about what happened after the Candidates left 1977. We're not allowed to care about the maze of tunnels and carvings on the walls. Not supposed to think about why the Oceanic 6 really in fact had to return to the island to stop a lot of bad things that never seemed to materialise. Not allowed to care about the fact that there was a smoke monster, by what process he took on the appearence of Locke/Christian, or indeed what the hell he was doing the whole time. Nothing to gain from trying to understand why Christian appeared in so many places he couldn't be, even after it was supposedly explained. These are just some of the things that until tonight we weren't allowed to care about. Now there's more. What was the true aim of the Man in Black? How did Jack end up back outside the cave before he died? Are we sure a new Jack based smoke monster didn't also rise? Why didn't the plane rigged with Widmore's explosives explode? Jump back again - what was Widmore's motivation at any point ever? What was the sickness and the vaccine? Did it relate to being claimed? What did it mean to be claimed? Did it actually have anything to do with the Man in Black? How did circles of ash, sonar fences and japanese men repel a smoke monster? This was a long paragraph but I'm confident I could make it ten times this length, but however long I made it, the ending would always have to be, what was the island?

I'll be the first to admit that the ending confused me. After a bit of reading the best answer I can gel with is that everything that happened before and after the original plane crash was real, but of no consequence whatsoever to the viewer, or indeed the central characters. You know - the stuff we spent 6 years watching! We'll be told we were only supposed to care about how the characters related to each other, even though we spent just as much time being introduced to the inconsequential mysteries. They all died - Christian first, then Jack, then perhaps much later everyone else. Those that weren't in the church weren't ready, exemplified by Ana Lucia last week and Ben this week. Scott, Steve and all the other no names weren't there because they never made it into the in crowd on the Island. It wasn't important to them. They will need to make peace with the most important times and people in their own lives. Given that most of them died much earlier on, maybe they already did it before ths church gathering.

I like this as an explanation for the finale I can't change and did enjoy, but it's an explanation I would expect of a show informed of cancellation several episodes before it's 4th season finale (looking at you, Heroes - you should have wrapped things up a little), not from two head writers who spent the past three years repeating over and over again how lucky they were to have an end date.

I guess we'll just have to finish this story ourselves in our heads. Most of us have been doing it most of the way through anyway. What i'd like now is to hear Damon L and Carlton C's take on their finale and opinions such as mine, but they made it very clear some time ago that that wasn't going to happen. Had I been thinking, I would have realised this was a a red flag. They'll talk eventually, but by then we'll have moved on to whatever's next.

After all.., It only ends once.