The End

Well, "it only ends once. Everything before that is just progress." The producers of Lost weren't just explaining Jacob's theory of human growth, they were showing us their philosophy of story telling. Also known as, "it's all about the journey, man."

I got pretty torn up by this episode, and it had a lot of poetic stuff. The "awakenings" in the sideways were a sweet and well done way of revisiting and saying good bye to all those Losties we came to love. I really liked the ending with the plane taking off and Jack's eye closing, even though it was a mirror image that we couldn't help but see coming. I think they must have used shots of mirrors about 108 times in season six.


In "The End", Jack lived together, and he didn't have to die alone. Kate, Sawyer, Claire, Miles, Richard and good ol' Frank Lapidus all survived and escaped the Island forever. Hurley and Ben stayed behind to become the new Jacob and Richard - but with their own set of rules, dude. I guess Desmond stays with them too? I suppose that was his sacrifice. Rose and Bernard will live out their days in an Island paradise. And at the end, almost every other character in all of Lost was dead. (Uh, Walt? Aaron? Oh, nevermind!)

But we all die sometime, and most of the Losties met up in the Island's waiting room, in a Unitarian church, so they could all go together to their next stage of existence.

The root of it all, was that Jacob needed someone to kill his brother. Because of the rules that were established by Mother, Jacob is not supposed to hurt him. And because Jacob turned him into a smoke monster, the Man in Black was incredibly powerful and resistant to most damage. The only solution would be to shut down the magic of the Island, turn MiB back into a mortal, and then kill him.

Jack Flying Punch!!

Apparently, for over 2000 years Jacob recruited people to the Island trying to find his candidates, and who knows how many lives he altered. For instance, he might have manipulated the Shephard family for generations, who knows? In 1867 Magnus Hanso crashed on the Island, and in the 1970s his great-grandson returned to build the Hatches, seeking to stave off the end of humanity. Coincidence, or fate? Hard to say.

But what DHARMA never figured out, nor the Others (because Jacob never told anyone but the final candidates) was that the true danger was from his brother, the Monster. The Man in Black wants off the Island, and Jacob believes his escape could threaten the existence of everyone in the world. We'll never know if that's true, or just what Mother told him. In the end, it's possible that everyone lived and died because of a sibling rivalry that had no other consequence on the rest of the world.


Anyway, just as the Man in Black had a plan to kill Jacob, his brother had a plan to get his revenge. And Jacob's master plan involved an assassin and a fail safe, as well as a replacement. By pulling the plug on the Island's source of power, Jacob could turn his brother back into a mortal but the Island would sink. So, like something out of one of those point-and-click adventure games, he had to assemble his team and his tools. Jacob's candidate would learn how to kill the Man in Black - once the water was drained.


Whoever went in there at the end was doomed, so Desmond was there to take the first plunge into the water and pull the plug. Then, Jack battled and killed the Monster, and returned to the Source. Before he went to face his destiny, Jack anointed the new Island protector: Hurley. Then, he put the plug back in and fell into the pool, saving the Island and maybe all of existence.

The Source is protected, the Monster is destroyed, and the world goes on turning.

It's not quite the end of the story though. Some power granted the Losties a reward for their struggle.


There are dozens of ways to look at this. It's so vague, any viewer can come to their own conclusions. It's sort of a masterpiece of vagary. Here are some of the ways I like to look at the ending of Lost.

The Time Loop/Nirvana Theory: these characters have been born, struggled, and died, many times before. Each time, they battled against evil incarnate, and each time evil destroyed the universe, snuffing out all life. Then the cycle starts again. This time, Jacob finally managed to line up the proper candidates to defeat his brother. Then, the cycle started over again anyway. That's the sideways. It wasn't until each of the key candidates could "Let go" that they were able to stop the wheel of life, and move into the light together. They basically achieve Nirvana, and never have to be born again into struggle. Ben, Mrs. Widmore, Ana Lucia and the rest who we saw were "not ready" will have to go through another cycle, and hope they learn the lessons of the Island

We All Join Together: Throughout each individual's life, every person we meet makes an impact on us. Some people are truly special to us, and there are certain moments in life that make up the core of who we are. Those bonds are bigger than life, and tie us to the spirits of everyone who was special in our lives. When we pass on, we're united with a part of each of their spirits. And a part of us goes to bond with each person we knew, in their own special "sideways".

Island Reward Theory of Purgatory: The Island holds the power to eternal life. It creates a reality that's a holding area for all the souls who pass over it. Those who are "ready" move into a golden paradise together. Those who are not get to stay in the sideways. This is their reward (or consolation prize) for being pulled into the struggle to defend the light.

We could go on and on with this. The Island could be a living creature, somewhere between X-Factor's Ship and a Cylon Raider. It crashed on Earth a long time ago, and the original protector was an alien. Humans have been recruited to defend the ship, and a few were granted unnaturally long lives by some alien technology. Other technology onboard inspired human civilization, or leaps in technology like the Industrial Revolution. I mean, take it wherever you'd like to go with it. The producers left it astonishingly wide open.


At the end, Lost was never really anymore than what was presented at the beginning. A group of characters with "issues" all struggling to find redemption. It was generally about life and death, fate and free will, faith vs. science and all those other things. But in such broad strokes and sweeping generalizations, the writers completely failed to take a stand or say anything meaningful about any of it. "It's all about the journey, man."

I spent a lot of time writing about Lost, theorizing and trying to draw conclusions from the mess of a story. Even right up until the end, I thought I might be writing about it for a while. Picking apart little details as I tried to make sense of the whole story. But overall, Lost is so vague, so wide open, I'm not sure it will reward further viewing. I hope that with a little time, I'll be drawn back to the stories and characters I loved so much for all those years.

But in the end, it all seems empty. Each season was it's own little play, with new characters, plots, sets, and the rest - all swept under the rug because they kept writing themselves into corners. A series of repeated actions, images, and themes that add up to nothing but repetition for the sake of keeping things going. (Although, a lot of those images were pretty cool)


All through season six of Lost, I've been watching old episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation which is full of stories about time travel, alternate "pocket" universes, situations where something is "not quite right" and the characters must follow clues that lead them back to their "real" lives. All season I've been saying "Oooh, Lost could end with something like that!" And now when I watch an episode, I think, "Ohhh, Lost could have ended with something like that!"

For instance, I watched the episode "Clues" which more than ever reminded me of Lost. After the cold open, the characters are all unconscious on the ship. They wake, and it seems only thirty seconds have passed, but small details: an experiment that kept running, a clock that's out of synch, a transporter trace - all point to a period of "missing time".

The intrepid crew of the Enterprise gets right on the case. Everyone shares data, and they quickly assemble an outline of the events. They figure out there was an alien intervention, and Picard gets this great speech:

"The plan failed because clues were left behind that suggested a mystery. (there were) little pieces of evidence that suggested even more clues. And to many humans, a mystery is irresistible. It must be solved..."

It's great, watch it:



Ohhh, if only Lost had ended with something like that.

Clearly, the characters of Lost are not like the characters on Star Trek. No one on Lost seemed particularly curious, or interested, or helpful. For the most part, they weren't very likable. In the end, the producers told us that the mysteries we all found so irresistible were actually irrelevant. "It's all about the journey, man."

I feel like it was a bait and switch. I hoped for a group like the crew of the Enterprise. In season five the producers said they were going to "let our geek flag fly" when they introduced time travel. I hoped we were heading toward an ending more like that episode of Star Trek - the characters we love striving to make sense of things, and learn what it's all about. Instead, it feels like a generic multi-faith cop out that failed to address the majority of the story they had built up.

I feel so incredibly disappointed. Maybe one day I'll feel different. I don't know. But, I once set out to make the stupidest, mysterious short film I could think of, with a twist ending that was so dumb it invalidated the entire story, yet almost made sense.

Guess what I chose as my ending:


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Ripples: Round and Round

Round and round/What goes around comes around
-RATT

Wow. What a few weeks it's been. We're down to the very end of Lost, after six long years. After much mystery and obfuscation, the secrets of Lost have mostly been exposed. In the end Jack, Kate, Hurley, Boone, Sayid, Locke, Jin, and all the rest were brought here because of one man's mistake.

Everything we've seen occur on the show was caused by one family - Jacob, his brother, and their "Mother". One way or another, they've been responsible for everything that's happened. Both by manipulating events directly, and by the psychic trauma their battles have left on the Island.

This week, Jacob chose his successor. Flocke came up with a new plan using Ben, who seems to have finally gone off the deep end. And in the sideways, our characters continue to converge, as Desmond puts all the pieces in place using his EM powers.


Let's start with the family. The Mother stole two twins and raised them as her own. She showed them a magic light, but she wouldn't tell them its secrets. Later, she found the Man in Black would not stop looking for the light. She destroyed the Man in Black's people, and in retaliation he killed her. Jacob was enraged, and threw his brother downstream into the golden light, to "a fate worse than death". These events were like a rock dropped into a still pool of water. They have rippled out and caused almost every event we've seen on Lost.


Somehow, because of the "scars" this family left on the Island, everyone else who came there was doomed to repeat their conflicts.

The black pillar of smoke that appears on the horizon



Ben's mother appears to him, just like Claudia to MiB



Why did Rousseau go crazy? And Claire the same after her? There's a Crazy Mother template. Mothers, stolen babies, and a fear of being raised by another.



Why were Ben & Widmore fighting? There's a Sibling Rivalry template. And why couldn't they kill each other? "Mother" said, "there are rules."



Why were the Others so creepy, mysterious, and violent? Because there's a creepy, mysterious, violent Others template.



Backgammon and Senet. It goes on an on.

Now, Jacob gave Jack some wine just like his "Mother" gave him. I guess it grants mystical powers, just because you believe in it. "Mother" says so.


I have to say, I'm not a big fan of this. We've long wondered why Ben and Widmore were feuding. Why there was a Purge of DHARMA. Why do the Others act so creepy? And the answer is "Because." They do it just because it was done before, and what happened, happens.

As for this episode, like the rest of season six, I would say the highlights were the performances - particularly Terry O'Quinn and Michael Emerson. As Ben X and Locke X, they had some nice scenes that were a bit moving. But what I hoped for from the end of Lost was not "nice", but earth shattering and mind blowing.

I guess I imagined something that would link up all the little details dropped through the series, like the many fan theories that have flooded the internet. Instead of mind blowing, I got merely charming - the scenes with Ben, Danielle and Alex were gold. But they were just tiny nuggets in what should have been an all-out gold rush.

Terry O'Quinn continues to amaze me with the depth of feeling and character he can invest in Locke. Especially because at this point, he's inhabiting an empty vessel. His "Let go" scene with Jack was excellent. He had to spit out a lot of exposition but he made it feel like a genuine moment. "Maybe this is happening for a reason." I also loved the nod to the repeated phrase, sometimes used by Locke, "Don't mistake coincidence for fate." And Locke's retort here, "You can call it what you like."


John Locke is still struggling to believe. I hope his struggle pays off.

Meanwhile, Ben X finally got to meet the mother of his favorite student. I was really touched by the scenes with them and Danielle, especially as it was placed just after Island Ben signed on with the evil Man in Black.

In the sideways, Ben gets to be a much better father figure for Alex, and instead of leaving her mother desperate and insane, he wins her gratitude. It even seemed like there might be a few sparks flying between Danielle X and Dr. Linus. I think he'll be coming back for dinner. This bit really won me over.



Ben was awesome all throughout the episode. I was so glad to see him back in the action. I've written about Ben often, and long thought he was like Job, being tested by Jacob and if he would only seize his destiny, he could be the one true Leader. As it turns out, I think that was right. But Jacob was doing that to a whole lot of other people too, and finally Ben went a different way.



I think the Monster's plan worked perfectly. He tricked John Locke into thinking he was special, fooled the Others as well, and used all of that to brutally undermine Ben's faith in himself. It seemed to work better than even the Man in Black would have guessed, as he was a little surprised by Ben's zeal.

But boy is Ben screwed. After being "the bad guy" for so long early on, Ben had been reduced to a whipping boy, and lately even seemed to tease redemption. Then he slammed the door on the light side, and went full-on into the hands of the Man in Black. I think he made a terrible mistake in going along with the "incarnation of evil" in the hopes of gaining control of the Island.

The Man in Black presents Ben with the Island as a bargaining chip. Ben "can have it all to himself." Unfortunately, right at the end of the episode MiB reveals his true plan (cliffhanger alert!!) he says "I'm going to destroy the Island."



Over in the "good" camp, Jacob has gathered the last of his candidates to finally give them some straight talk. Jacob's says he's going to tell them everything they need to know. So he sits down and begins, "I don't know where to start..." What? Hasn't he planned for this at all?

Jacob's brother has had a plan for over 140 years at least! I wish the writers of Lost had shown us they were planning for a hundred and forty years. I thought with the advent of time travel in season five, season six would present an opportunity to tie up all the loose ends. For instance: What about Horace Goodspeed, who suddenly appeared to deliver the infant Ben Linus even as his mother died in birth, then brought Ben the future Leader to the Island?


He once appeared in a vision to Locke, claiming to have built Jacob's Cabin, and delivered Locke instead into the hands of the Man in Black. He rescued Ben along with a teacher named Olivia Goodspeed, and maybe they were married. He was also married to a woman named Amy, who was widowed when the Others killed her husband. Horace and Amy had a boy named Ethan, who later kidnapped Claire and said his last name was "Rom" which made his name an anagram for "Other Man". At the end of the series does any of that even matter? Who were those people? No one I guess. Never mind the DeGroots, Alvar Hanso, or any of the rest. Hell, what ever happened to Daniel Faraday? There are far too many dead ends in this narrative.

So anyway, Jacob was apparently bringing people to the Island for a thousand years, and subjecting them all to misery, horror and death. He says he hoped he would find his replacement.


Jacob tells the last living four that, "I brought you here because I made a mistake." They died because he made a mistake? "Someone would have to replace me. And that's why I brought you all here."

Wow. Jacob never bothered to mention to anyone that his brother swore, if Jacob brought a replacement to the Island, "Well, then I'll kill them too." He couldn't have told Richard that? Maybe have the message sent to Ben? "Oh, by the way. The Monster is not just sort-of threatening, he actually promised to do everything in his power to kill every single one of you."

But, it's all apparently OK that he recruited them into this battle for their lives with no information, because they were "flawed" and "alone". It really feels like Jacob is the "Monster" here. How many thousands of lives has he ruined in the course of this mad struggle? And why is it that Jacob could not learn the lesson of "Across the Sea"? If you deny someone the answers they desperately crave - on purpose - then that person is likely to stick a knife in you. It's not all making sense to me.


Finally, there's the cut on Jack's neck in the sideways. Jack wakes up with a fresh wound on his neck. And it's in exactly the same place as the mysterious cut he had in LA X. What gives? Simply more repeated action? Or is the sideways starting to go backwards, like it's swirling down a drain (not to mix my water metaphors)?


But back to the idea of ripples. I think the sideways is like the ripples that hit the edge of the pool and reflect back. If they hit the right wavelength, they might cancel each other out. Whether this means merging the universes, or destroying one of them out right, I'm not sure. But I can't shake the feeling that the sideways is a form of "happily ever after".

We'll all find out on Sunday. I can't believe it all comes down to this. I'm almost afraid to watch!
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And Then There Were Three

Moral ambiguity? What ambiguity? At the start of season six, I was firmly in the "Smokey might not be all bad" camp. This week Lost showed us, “There is no ambiguity...[the Man in Black] is evil and he has to be stopped.”

There are a lot of questions about when the Monster can take action, and who he is able to kill. Well, he can certainly dish up the slaughter - he must have killed a dozen people between gunfire and his Monster Rampage.


So, Locke really lives to blow up submarines with C4! Maybe that's his special purpose? Back in season three, viewers and Losties alike gasped "What the fuck?!" when Locke destroyed the Other's submarine - at the time it was the only way off the Island. Huh, just like now...those producers love repeated actions and images.


(hey, that music box plays Catch a Falling Star!)

Speaking of repeated actions, I thought for sure Sayid was going to pull a Charlie: locking the door behind him and maintaining the sub's internal pressure. Instead, he stood there doing nothing while the Monster's plan played out. He might have saved the Kwons, but I think it's Sawyer who bears the responsibility here - and expect to see him have a hard time dealing with it.

Anyway, it was still a bit like Charlie all over again, because if the Losties had only taken thirty seconds to secure the bulkheads, they could have blocked off the flooding and raised the sub, no problem. But, I digress.

Sun and Jin are gone - or are they? They're both still alive in the sideways, and I'm convinced there will be a "but we all live on" type ending. They've got to somehow "close the loop" on this crazy sideways, injecting the memories of their past in the "real world" into their X-selves. "See ya in another life, brotha."


A repeated phrase that I really enjoyed in this episode was, "I wish you had believed me." John was muttering it under his breath just before he woke. Jack repeated it in the hallway, trying to get Locke X to agree to spinal surgery. And of course, these were sort-of the last words of John Locke. When Jack X said it in the hall, for just a moment Locke hesitated. Was he remembering something? Hiding something? Is he "flashing" to the life of Island Locke, or is he MiB in disguise, just about to make his escape?


It does seem like John Locke. And man, I really loved that scene with them in the hallway. Terry O'Quinn was always one of my favorite character actors, but he's jumped into my list of all time greats. I watched it several times, and it was another great use of a repeated phrase (and honestly, I find it more emotional than the hackneyed drowning of the Kwons). John tells Jack he looked his father in the eye and said, "Trust me...and we barely got off the ground. I still don't re-....I don't remember what I did wrong. But I remember it was my fault." That kind of guilt reminds me a lot of the John Locke from seasons two and three, who was carrying this heavy spiritual burden. But that John Locke is dead now.

Back on the Island, there's no doubt Flocke planned this entire thing. He tells Claire, "Trust me. You don't want to be on that sub." You can see in his eyes - he's thrilled.


Even as Flocke, he's been saying "Don't tell me what I can't do" but we know for sure one thing he really can't do: kill one of the candidates directly. I think this must be what the mysterious boy meant when he said, "You know the rules. You can't kill him." I think he was referring to Sawyer, who was being led out to the Monster's cliffside cave.

So, apparently the Monster cooked up this scheme to get all the candidates into the sub with a bunch of C4. I don't know what we're supposed to make of the fact that the ancient Smoke Monster somehow slapped a digital watch onto some explosives and made a bomb, nor the insanely ridiculous digital countdown speeding up when Sawyer pulled the wires. And I don't understand how Jack lighting the dynamite was different from Sawyer pulling the wires on the bomb...so, I'll just move on.

The battle over the bomb was another great repeated moment though. Last time Sawyer trusted Jack about a bomb, Juliet died. There was no way in hell he was going to take it on "faith" that everything was going to turn out fine this time. Fate (or...something) has conspired to put Sawyer in this position where pulling the wires was the only decision he could have made. It was a brilliantly tortured moment, and I like where it leaves Sawyer. I really enjoyed his bitter performance at the beginning of the season, and now he'll be even more twisted. So twisted, in fact, I'm starting to think he's a perfect candidate for the Man in Black.

Now, there are only three candidates left: Hurley (8)+ Sawyer (15) = Jack (23) Or maybe, Jack - Hurley = Sawyer, as in Jacob, Richard, and MiB? Speaking of Richard...


Hey, remember Ben, Richard and Miles?

They trooped off to the Barracks to get explosives and blow up the Ajira plane, never to be seen again. And shouldn't Sawyer be worried? As a friend pointed out to me, season six has painted Miles and Sawyer as BFFs. Plus, they worked together in the DI for three years. Why does Sawyer now have no problem leaving Miles in the lurch? He's not even a second thought here. Fans still remember, and many were wondering if Richard, Ben, and Miles planted the C4 Flocke found on the plane. It's possible we'll see a flashback to those events in the epic finale, but more likely it was Widmore.

Widmore is more of an enigma than ever. Was that his C4 in the Ajira plane? If so, did he plan to use it on Flocke or the candidates? Why did Wimore put the candidates in cages behind the sonic fence to protect them, then have his people shooting at them minutes later? Since MiB has been exposed as "pure evil" we should probably assume most of what he says is a lie. Therefore, when he says Widmore's the bad guy, the opposite is true - so Widmore is probably working for Jacob. This make sense too, as Widmore was an Other and even the Leader. Wimore tells Sawyer, "I'm doing this for your own good." I guess maybe the C4 was his "fail-safe" against the Monster.

Or, what if Widmore really is power hungry, like some have told us, and he just wants the Island for himself? Now that Jacob is dead, Flocke will be gathering the candidates to kill them and try to escape. If Widmore could kill all the candidates, plus the Man in Black, he wipes out the power elite of the Island and takes it all for himself. Ehhh...probably not. We will see Eloise and Charles again, and I expect them to get some closure in the final episode.

And now, maybe MiB can use Claire to kill the rest of the Losties. He can't do it himself, but they sure left her high and dry with "evil incarnate". It was heartbreaking to see the moment she realized they were leaving her yet again. Who wants to bet Claire is the one shooting at the outrigger?



Flocke is off to finish what he started. Whether he means killing Desmond, killing the Losties, escaping the Island, or something more will remain to be seen. Whatever he's up to, he means business!


Next week, we travel back in time with Jacob and his Nemesis "Across the Sea". The title reminded me of this little ditty way back in season one:



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