What do you think of the ending of "LOST"?

Like Damon and Carlton said, "It may take 3 to 6 months to process." It was not the ending I really wanted but it was fitting and beautiful IMO. Many of the questions you pose were already answered this season, IE: The Island is the cork in the bottle, etc...

BEST show ever!

Anyone care to summarise the ending?

"Without coming off as insulting (hard to do in this case) anybody who was
disappointed with the ending of Lost was...

1. Not a true fan.

2. Didn't really get what the show was all about."

You forgot number 3:
Doesn't settle for cop out crap writing.

Without coming off as insulting, anyone who thinks this is quality writing and a fitting end to a great story likes being spoon fed pablum.

Sorry Steven, but we are 180 degrees from each other on this.The ending fits right up there with the "who shot JR" being a dream.

Sorry, but I agree for the most part w/ Steven on this one. One of the most clever written shows ever. The ending was absolutely amazing in my opinion. So good in fact that I'll probably watch every episode again this summer, just so I can pay attention to when each person actually dies.

I'm not going to down anyone for not liking it. But you literally have to just about watch every episode twice to catch everything that's going on. This summer will be about my 4th time to go through the episodes.

I will say this though. They did try to cram too much into the last few episodes. They could have stretched it out much further and given a few more episodes to jacob and his brother.

But I'm in agreement w/ Steven - probably the best television show ever written.

Absolutely correct about most of it, and I certainly wouldn't want to take away anyones enjoyment,but I am with the OP on this one, way too many unanswered or poorly answered questions..
I'm glad those of you that liked it did so,and I hope you have many hours watching it over and over again.
I think during the run of the show they had many many moments of brilliance,which sadly made the weak ending (imo) all the weaker.

This is very similar to LOTR, some think the movies were brilliant, I think the movies were "ok" but certainly it was a *******ization of the story, not a retelling of it.

I was hoping there would be a thread here to discuss the finale of LOST.

I don't think the finale sucked, but I have let it all sink in and I just feel unsatisfied with the ending. And not because they didn't answer all of the mythological questions they raised during the story, but because I just didn't feel like I was watching the same show anymore.

It almost seems like seasons 1 thru 5 were ONE show and season 6 was all its own. And it could be that the storytelling was extremely rushed this season, but it just didn't feel the same. If the sideways timeline was indeed where they all waited to "move on" then why was the island at the bottom of the ocean? Why did the flash sideways "waiting room" world exist in 2004 while all of the Original Timeline stuff was taking place in 2007?

Why did Faraday have that talk with Desmond about the nuclear bomb going off and "changing things?" How does one have a baby in the afterlife that is then dead as well? Why didn't we find out about the conflict between the Man in Black and Jacob before the END of season 5?

I'm an avid LOST fan but I'm just not feeling that all of these people crash landed on an island in 2004 to then find themselves in a "flash-sideways" alternate universe discovering that they are dead...

Does that mean that they died in the plane crash in 2004? How can that be if Jack's father told him that everything was real, it happened? Maybe I'm just seriously confused, but I feel the end scene was nothing more than Fan Service. I've listened to the podcasts and there is no way they planned the church scene from the beginning. Maybe the eye closing, but not the church.

Anyway. Irregardless if I loved the ending or not I am glad that it is over. I fell in love with this show back in 2004 and I've waited a long time to see the end -- I'm happy I saw it and that I can move on from what was an excellent TV show when it began and then literally got lost (no pun intended) around Season 3 and 4.

Mainstreetcm, I think you hit a lot of the things that made it unsatisfying to me.

Steven,
If this is referring to something I said, "If this is hack writing, I pity the poor people who really ARE hack writers
because they shouldn't be working in the business.", I never called it hack writing.
I called the episode Pablum, there is a big difference.
Now, if we want to discuss hack writing, I'd say 95% of the slop that actually makes it onto the tv is in that category.
( Geez I hate getting old, I had something I wanted to add and it just slipped right out of my mild..lol)

I don't think any of it was hack writing. I love LOST, I really do. I have always felt that the show was one of the best on television, maybe only matched by the epic that was Battlestar Galactica. I feel unsatisfied because what originally made LOST so great was the mysteries surrounding everything and I just didn't get the closure I was personally looking for.

It wasn't a bad ending by any means, and I'm sure there will be people who absolutely loved it, but to me it just seems like something was missing. Steven, excellent posts, and by no means am I trying to rain on your parade because you liked the finale. It's cool that you were a screen writer and that is something that I myself am striving to do -- so please don't think I'm trying to run in here and say this or that sucked. It was a good episode overall.

As for what I would had done differently?
I would have had them continue the cycle "until" they got things "right". The ending was having the characters reach the end of their journey only to see that they had been through it all once before. A perfect example is when Jack puts the rock back into the hole. As soon as he did, the light would show him that he failed, as he was supposed to "protect" the island and not send Desmond down to do what the MiB wanted.

The whole series from season 1 on would would then flash before his eyes, and to his horror he would realize that this wasn't the first time he failed. Then in another flash the magnetic properties of island would transport Jack back to the bamboo where his eye would open, back to the very start of the series. Jack would then get another chance to do things "right" by protecting the island... THEN I could have seen them moving onto the afterlife after fulfilling there destiny...

----

I'm sure some won't like that at all, but thats how I would have done it. All they talked about for five damn seasons was rules, black vs. white, more rules, listening to island over-rulers. Ben can't kill Widmore because of the "rules" but then all of a sudden in season six there are no more rules? None of the candidates can be killed -- but in Season 4 Jack would have killed Locke, but the gun wasn't loaded...

The Others, Widmore, even the Dharma Initiative, just about everyone was being controlled and/or killed by either Jacob or the MiB. There were rules set in place by these two (and later we found out their mother) to protect the island and its properties. And in true LOST fashion we never found out what the hell these properties were. But we knew they had to protect it, they didn't protect it and because they didn't do things within the rules the "system" reset itself.

So the Island was such a prominent component throughout the whole story, but the ending of the story is that everyone is dead in sideways land because they created it (how?) to "move on." What in the hell does that have to do with anything?

Again my questions about sideways land are: Why is the island underwater? How does one have a baby when they are dead? Why was Faraday so concerned about the bomb that "changed things?" Why does sideways land exist in the year 2004 while all of the stuff on the island is taking place in 2007? This is fan service and nothing more...

I think it's kind of smart the way they left it kind of open for interpretation at the end. It makes you want to go back and see how well the previous episodes line up with the way they ended it. And you could probably watch it all a dozen times and come up w/ a different theory each and every time. Good stuff in my opinion. Yes the end was cheesy seeing them all together and happy. But just about every other episode ended in that same cheesy happy way.

IMO I liked the ending, although I was a little confused on how they could all of been dead. Most of the deaths we saw. But some I don't recall seeing.

Ben and Hurly stay on the island to protect it and die at some point. But what about Kate, Sawyer and the others that left on the plane?

I have to admit that lost is the best tv show I have ever seen.

I do have one question though, why was Jacks father so important?

Apart from that I liked the ending....

How the heck can some of you guys be happy about an ending
that doesn't reveal a thing?

As for "I'm not a true fan" or I haven't understood it" or something
like that. NOT true. I've watched the whole series 3 times before
watching the last season.

It was a great show, and I still think of it as a great show when I
think about it. BUT they totally ruined it with the ending.

Sometimes I think that you guys who are saying that
the ending was good didn't watch the whole show, or
maybe you forgot lots of stuff.

I mean weren't you guys curious to understand the mysteries
of it all?

Let me show you some of the stuff that they didn't explain
again (because there's a lot)


1) The numbers

2) The smoke thing

3) Who was the adoptive mother of jacob & MIB and how did she
get there?

4) Why did the island have special properties?

5) Why is desmond immune against electromagnetism & how
can he see the future?

6) Why was walt special?

7) Why did pregnant woman die on the island?

8) How did jacob become special? As we saw in "across
the sea" he was just a normal person.

9) Why couldn't Jacob & MIB kill each other?

10) And why couldn't MIB kill the candidates directly?

11) How did charles widmore and the other people that
were with richard get on the island the first time?

12) What's the island exactly?

13) Why couldn't michael kill himself when he was off the island?
They said to him that the island wouldn't let him, but how? Was he
aready dead?

14) What's the DEAL with the island. Why does it need protection?
Why is it so important?

EDIT:

15) They say jacob brought jack & the others on the island. Just
as he brought other people to the island, but how did he bring them
to the island?

16) Remember when locke was pushed by his father and he broke
his back? Jacob was there, andsomehow he knew what was going to
happen. How did he know?


Those are the ones that I can remember right now. But there
are more. :/ If I remember more I'll post them.

So, I ask again... how can you be happy about the ending of
the show when it doesn't reveal a thing?

In fiction, mysteries are created to be revealed. If they didn't
explain one or 2 mysteries then it would've been okay. But
they barely explained anything!

IMO, LOST was just one big TEASE. 75% of the episodes that
were created were for nothing. They kept adding mysteries and
they didn't reveal them.

Clearly those of you who say it's a nice ending have forgotten
about all the mysteries that were created in the previous
seasons.

I think, as an ending to the story, it was a good ending and one I'm happy with.

I just feel like there's a large part of the story that hasn't been told and I'm unhappy that they didn't answer so many of the questions, even though they've had 3 or 4 years to plan it.

It's like they jumped to the end of the story and provided a great ending, but still missed out a chunk of story telling along the way.

IM Headlines... I totally agree with your post and you highlight many of my frustrations with the show ever since season 5. This would have been a good finale for THIS season, but as a show conclusion, I don't feel it was anything remotely fantastic.

Maybe I'm just a jaded lostie who needed to know all of these things, but I re-watched the finale after work and the church scene just doesn't have anything to do with LOST in my opinion. It like comes straight out of left field if you ask me.

I mean whats up with the scene where Desmond tells Jack to not send him down the hole because it all doesn't matter and something about them existing in a different place?

I gave up half way through the First Seaon and it appears that I guessed the ending after hearing about it.

Alright. So I watched the damn thing again. I guess I just can't believe things ended THAT way -- I was expecting something totally different and it might explain my disappointment with what we were given.

But I do have a question. Christian says "you guys made this place to move on." When did they do this? When did any one of the characters throughout the entire run of this show say "hey you know what? Who cares if we die, because we are going to create this crazy world where we can all be happy again..."

Is no one else seeing the straight-out-of-left field ending this looked like to some of us?

LOL glad I never watched a minutes worth of it. Sounds crazy with a silly ending. IM Headlnes sounds right. Sound slike they merely added things in with no intention of explaining them. Oh well hope you guys enjoyed it?

The numbers were first explained as the Valenzetti Equation, but was not canon.

It was explained in The Lost Experience ARG, between season 1 and season 2. Or between season 2 and 3... I can't remember which.

I much prefer that explanation of the numbers.

Was pretty much the ending I guessed within the first couple of episodes of season 1. That's not to say I haven't enjoyed it. Personally, I'd have been more happy if it had been left totally open on the explosion of the bomb.

The producers have said there will be no movie, but have also said that Disney would be foolish to let go of the Lost fanbase.

Apparently there's more story to come (but not on TV or in a movie), the producers said most of the story has been told but not all of it. I'm guessing the rest will be explained in the DVD box set.

"And of course, at the end of the day, its still just a friggin TV show."

I was disappointed....There was NO real closure...

It totally sucked. It had some great huggy feely moments, and reunions, but heck, for as great as the first 5 seasons were written, the ending was written by a 6 year old on idiot pills.

Just my thoughts, and of course, they are right.

Normally I don't like Phillip DeFranco's stuff, but he explained very well in my opinion. If you're the kind of person that needs their hand held and an explanation for everything, then you will not like the way Lost ended...


Also here's my main question to those that were disappointed with the ending. Did you actually make it to the last episode and think that every unexplained thing was going to be explained in the last 2 hrs? That would have made for the crappiest ending in the history of television.

This arguing over the ending reminds of the movie Stand By Me when Teddy tries to rewrite the ending to the greatest story ever told...

YouTube - Stand By Me: Gordie's Story

Ok you guys, let's hear Gordie's version of Lost...

I liked it.

I think some people are getting wrapped up in the fact that not everything was explained in a nice clean simple way. But that is just how life is.

Sure I'd like to know how the time travel all fits in. But in the long run it doesn't matter. It made the show interesting.

I really liked Christians expliantion of how they could all be in the sideways world at once. He siad (and not a direct quote but good enough) "some of them died before you, and some died a long time after you." So the sideways world was a meeting point out of time where they could all come together to move on.

My only worry is, where is Vincent? Shouldn't he be there as well in the sideways world? Or did he go to doggy heaven?

I agree with Steven Wagenheim. I thought it was one of the best shows ever produced. The writing, acting, and sets were all phenomenal. And the ending was perfect for the show. Sure there are still questions to be answered, but the overall 'why are they there' and what the island was about was answered, so I'm good with that.