I can only assume that the writers worked themselves into a corner that they ultimately couldn't get out of and did what Sawyer would do: con their way out. The whole “Lost is a metaphor for purgatory” was postulated by the fans back in the first season and was explicitly denied by the writers. So what happens? They half get off the island and then that half turns out to be purgatory. So in essence the island doesn't matter.
OK, it matters a little but in a show that features its location as a character the island should matter more than just a little. Let's get some things out there.
- The sideways flashes during last season take place far down the line when everyone is dead.
We know this because Jack's dad, Christian Shepard (frakking really?) knows all and tells us so. We also know that Hurley becomes the new Jacob and has since died so this could actually be taking place thousands of years after the crash of flight 815.
- The island is not part of the afterlife.
Once again, we know this because our good Christian Shepard tells us so. He tells Jack that the reason these people have to meet again in death is that the most important part of their lives are with each other. Since it's impossible to have the most important part of your life occur after your death....
What's wrong with all of this? Let's just agree to accept the Christian/Mormon afterlife that Lost throws at us in the final moments of the series. The first thing that struck me is that there are a good number of characters who Desmond didn't even bother “activating” with their memories. Where's Miles? Captain Frank Lapidus? I understand why Richard Alpert isn't there, as his afterlife is probably with the others, but this core cast is the only set of people who deserve to move on? And how can people like Ana Lucia not be ready when the mechanics of their afterlife bar them from growing through self awareness unless specifically activated by someone else? If Ana Lucia isn't ready then Desmond needed to help her become ready. And is Lost saying that without romantic love your life is incomplete and you can't move on? It also bothers me that Jack spent years of his life trying to be a good father, loving his son, and finds out at the end of the show that his son isn't real and doesn't have a soul and will never meet him in heaven. And speaking of rejection, wasn't Sayid in love with someone else when the show started and wasn't he desperate to get her back even though she was dead and wasn't she NOT Shannon? Why isn't she the one Sayid finds in purgatory and who is she going to love for all eternity? Pretty callous, god.
Those are just nitpicks about the way the Lost afterlife works and aren't the crux of why this finale fails. The big issue is that the sideways flashes were death. Why is that a problem? Lost established itself with odd storytelling about this mysterious island. It was partially character based but since so many of those characters come and go (I read that over 75% of the cast died within the show) the series is anchored in this island. It really was the unspoken character. Then this last episode comes along and explains in soft-focus, drawn out detail what happens to some of the characters and ignores the island completely. It is the same as publishing a book that is a murder mystery up until the last chapter and tacking on the final chapter of a romance novel for “closure”; it doesn't work for either part of the story. What the writers of Lost have done was slowly get the viewers emotionally involved in the mysteries of this strange tropical location and then tell everyone “But that's really not the point. Love is”. While love played an important factor in many of the character relationships we already knew that because we saw that love develop on the island. Love and the island aren't mutually exclusive so whay was any explanation about the island cut in order to show viewers the same romances blossom once more in yellow tinted montage bursts?
All of this goes beyond the science-fiction to fantasy problem that I've written about before. The island never stopped being science-fiction and the purgatory epilogue that was fantasy. That's fine. What is problematic is that nothing pertaining to understanding the island really mattered. That's 5 years out of a 6 year show wasted. The Dharma experiments? Doesn't matter. Whidmore and his life long quest? Frak it. Whidmore and his last minute experiments with Desmond and electromagnetism? Forget about that. Anything about the time traveling? Doesn't make any difference later so don't worry about it. The subplot about babies not being able to be birthed on the island, Walt's mystical powers, Charlie's psychotic episodes like when he kidnapped and baptized Aaron? There are countless little questions that we're left with. I'm not saying everything needed to be spelled out in the end but beyond that we're all told that none of it makes any difference. Those problems, those mysteries, those first 5 seasons of the show aren't important.
I don't mind not having everything spelled out in the end. I'd rather a show err on the side of unexplained rather than giving half-assed excuses. I think lack of explanation is the one smart thing about the end of Battlestar Galactica. My favorite show is The Prisoner. Lost, especially early Lost, borrowed a lot from The Prisoner like setting as extension of identity, knowing one's self as dramatic conflict, subjective versus objective narrative to blur the reality of a show. I don't mind not knowing everything. I don't mind when characters lie if it's part of their character. Obfuscation in a show can be very rewarding. But with Lost the entire concept turned out to be a lie. And not in the manner of a twist. A twist is an exercise in irony where the assumed subject specifically turns out to not be the true subject of interest. With Lost's limbo ending, well, that could be tacked on to literally any show at any moment. It's a completely stand alone idea and negates all earlier elements of a story. Really. Take any TV show that you've been interested in. Then replace the finale and any closure it established with “then they all died and fell in love and went to heaven”. It's such a self contained concept that it really can be tacked on as a preassembled ending to any story.
I don't even think it's worth the effort of analyzing the show now that it's over. Play back the finale without the side-flashes and it's pretty straight forward. Watch all the side-flashes in a row after that and even the afterlife twist is easy to understand. Other than the unanswered island mysteries there isn't much about the finale that is unclear. The mysteries of the island, well, you just have to let those go. We know that everyone (eventually) dies. We know that the afterlife is fundamentally in line with Christian mythology, with a heaven, hell and purgatory. More specifically we know that it's pretty close to Mormon where you take the knowledge you gained in life and use it to build your own afterlife world which you share with the soul mate that is meant for you. We know that the island isn't part of the afterlife because of the reason addressed in the above bullet points. On a technical level it is true that “then they all died and fell in love and went to heaven” is an ending. What's left to discus? From the characters' perspective I suppose that once their soul passes to heaven with their soul mate, all those pesky questions about science and time travel and free will (Faraday and his mother show us that there is no free will anyway) don't really matter much anymore.
Lost has always been, foremost, an experiment in storytelling. With Lost, the way the story was told was always more important than the story. Were there good parts to it? Absolutely. It had enough good parts to keep people watching for 6 seasons and the first season is flat out brilliant. It's just disappointing to complete this show's run only to find out that the entire plot wasn't just secondary but arbitrary. So in the end Lost was interesting storytelling, a mediocre story. But I think “interesting” is the biggest compliment that I can give the show.
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